Inspiration to Follow Your Blueprint

You hear a lot about the challenges facing millennials in today’s workforce, yet these four childhood friends pursued an idea and found their niche.

“How a Group of Friends Made a Dent in the $6 Billion Bike Industry.”

The author of today’s article believes that fear can guide you to your ultimate purpose.

Can you think of a time when your fear turned out to be a signal that you were on the right track?

“To Change the World, Fear Means Go.”

By Paula Gregorowicz, Now What?® Facilitator 

People often ask me – how did you know you were cut out to be your own boss? How do you deal with the anxiety? The risk? The learning curve? There are many ways to be successful… I coach my clients how to navigate the inner and outer obstacles all the time. Yet, I will be the first to say that self-employment is not for the faint of heart, it’s not for everyone. So, how do you know if it’s right for you?

First off, there is no hard and fast rule. There is no one size fits all. Some people look like they would thrive as their own boss and then find they hate it. Others seem at home in corporate and yet break free and thrive as a business owner. You can’t tell just by looking at or talking to someone. After all, there are so many different types of businesses you could own…from being a solopreneur in a traditional field (lawyer, accountant, etc.) to being a high risk-taker in a cutting edge startup to becoming a franchise owner… and each has its own culture if you will.

Yet, there are some definite red flags you can be on the lookout for that would scream – stick to a steady paycheck.

1) Control Freak Syndrome – if you are a control freak and need everything “just so” and highly predictable, you likely won’t be able to stomach the ride of being self-employed.

2) Lacking Discipline – if you absolutely cannot follow through to things you commit to without having someone wielding a stick, you better stick to a job where you have a boss calling the shots.

3) Low Self-Worth – if you are looking to someone or something else to give you a solid sense of self-worth, you are setting yourself up for disaster. You are enough just as you are…much like when looking for a relationship, don’t look for your business to make you whole.

4) Unwilling to Take and Accept Risks – being your own boss is all about taking risks, calculated risks. If the idea of sound, calculated risks freaks you out to the point of paralysis, you need to do some deep personal growth work first before you take the leap.

5) Passion for What You Do — do not start a business because it seems like the next big thing or someone else tells you to. You need to be truly passionate about the product or service you offer if you want to succeed.

6) Give Up Easily — perseverance is one of the most important traits you can have as a business owner. One of the reasons so many small businesses fail is because the owners weren’t willing to stay at it or go the distance (or ran out of money before they could).

7) Dislike People — you do not have to be an extrovert or a raving people person to succeed, but you do have to be effective at dealing with others. Business is about relationships – period.

8 ) Unwilling to Delegate – while you may need to do all tasks when you get started, if you are not willing to delegate, you will burn out guaranteed.

9) Inflexible – if it is always your way or the highway, stick to the cubicle. While you don’t want to be a wallflower without boundaries and you never want to let others take advantage of you, you need to be able to bob and weave to adjust to business relationships and an ever-changing business climate.

10) Seeking Guarantees – there are none. I might point out that there are no guarantees when you work for someone else either, but there certainly is more predictability. If you want absolutes, focus on death and taxes, they are the only two you can count on.

Do you own your own business? If so – what other red flags would you add to this list? Would love to hear them…

by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang

“I can’t do that!”
“Who do I think I am?”
“People like me don’t do things like that!!”
“I have no business even dreaming of that!”

These are the mantras of the critic inside of you. The voice of ‘reason’ that talks ‘sense’ into you when you try to think outside the box, or in this case, outside your resume.

I won’t say unequivocally that you should not listen to them and just forge forward. I will say instead that they are there to teach you something about yourself. They are the walls you have built that you can take down. To keep them down, however, you’ll have to take notice of what they are made of.

Every belief you have that keeps you in the box was put there by an experience that shaped you. Without doing psychoanalysis or deep therapy, you can quickly take stock of where they came from to insure that they won’t bother you enough to stop you.

THE DISSECTION OF THE INNER CRITIC

1) Notice what you are saying to yourself
Iyanla Vanzant, a NY Times bestselling self-help author and friend likes to say, “You should not be in your own head without adult supervision!” I concur. You can’t let your inner critic run amuck. Notice what looping audio keeps going on in there. When you catch your critic yapping, make it stop. If you must, just yell ‘stop!’

Identify what you are specifically repeating to yourself and move to the next step.

2) Identify the Source
Who says? Who says you can’t change careers at this age? Who says you have to do the same thing your whole life? Who says?!!

You only believe what you believe because you’ve collected evidence that it’s true. Whether you observed it yourself or someone filled your head with it, identify what makes you think what you think. Even it’s the ‘norm’ it doesn’t mean the idea has merit for you.

3) Hurt of Serve?
Does it help your cause to indulge in this line of thinking? I doubt it, so what makes you persist with it? Where can you find an opening to see that you may be more than you are allowing with this assumption? What evidence can you find to the contrary no matter how small or circumstantial?

4) Choose Again
This is the ‘just do it’ part. You’re stuck. You’re miserable. You see no way out. This is the way out.

Change the critic to the defender and prove it wrong. Change the situation by framing it with what’s possible instead of giving it a gilded frame made up of your fears and doubts.

5) Measure by Feeling Not By Thinking
How does it feel to get to the other side of your inner critic? Pretty good, huh? Well use that for your new criteria as to whether a career choice is right or wrong for you.

Remember what it feels like to be in a volley with your inner critic, compare it to the feeling you just felt as the defender of your idea and choose. How would you rather feel?

“Am I just kidding myself, though?”, you might ask.

No. That’s just your inner critic trying to cut in again.

I know you probably think you’re nuts and deluding yourself and maybe others are saying that about you. In my opinion, that is a good sign. It means you’re on to something that’s right for you and threatening to the status quo.

Let me ask you this: Does it feel good to let that doubt back in? No? Then forge on. Scary is not comfortable either but combined with the excitement of the possibilities of doing something that really appeals to you, it should be enough to start taking action.

Time and time again when a coaching client starts in the direction of a scary new venture, I see them bump into opportunities and people that can help them get where they want to go.

That is the reward that awaits when you overcome the inner critic. The career transition Inner Critic is especially tricky but beatable. Please get started. The world needs what you are angst-ing over sooner rather than later.