| Feeling overwhelmed by the idea of starting your own business? You’re not alone! Join me as we navigate the fears of entrepreneurship together, turning doubt into determination and dreams into reality. Let’s embrace your inner entrepreneur and take that first step toward financial freedom! 🌟 |
Remember the first time you tried to assemble IKEA furniture? That’s how it feels to dive into entrepreneurship-daunting, confusing, and most definitely requiring a manual!
Unloading that box and staring at the millions of tiny pieces before you, it felt impossible that eventually that pile of screws and cryptically marked pieces would somehow transform into the beautiful dresser you picked from the website. Likewise, the dreams and ideas rattling around in your head may not feel like they amount to much, but trust me, following the manual and working methodically can allow those ideas to spring to life and take form into an exciting adventure leading you to the life you desire.
Entrepreneur. Does that word scare you or inspire you?
An entrepreneur (from ChatGPT): someone who identifies a need or opportunity and takes the initiative to create a business or project to meet that demand. They’re often seen as risk-takers who are willing to invest their time and resources to turn their ideas into reality. Think of an entrepreneur as a problem solver or innovator who sees potential where others might see obstacles.
Do you hear ‘entrepreneur’ and think of the geniuses of our time: Elon, Jobs, Bezos and immediately become intimidated, questioning if entrepreneurship could even work for you? Like the vast majority of women pondering entrepreneurship, I initially found myself feeling apprehensive.
Now when I hear the word entrepreneur, I hear this: A woman who dreams of more from life and believes she has the power to create the freedom she desires. Someone who is steadfast in working toward designing her life to allow her to do what she wants, when she wants, with whom she wants, and with the finances and time to live that life out loud! For many, this sounds too good to be true, but to an entrepreneur, this sounds possible, and they want to figure out how to make it happen.
With nearly twenty years of experience, I am happy to tell you that it is absolutely possible to create that dream life once you overcome your fear, develop the right mindset, and find support.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR FEAR
I have worked with many women over the last few decades and I truly believe that there are three fears that are nearly universal, and unfortunately, stop many women dead in their tracks. These three fears often take women out of the entrepreneurship game before they even get started, and too many women allow those fears to become dream-stealers. They are: the fear of failure, the fear of financial instability, and self-doubt.
I went to dental school where I was trained in, wait for it…dentistry. No business classes whatsoever. I never considered myself an entrepreneur, I never gave much thought to running a business at all. I guess I just thought people would magically show up in my dental chair and then pay me to fix their dental problems. It didn’t take me long to realize that the business aspect of growing a practice was just as important as the crowns and root canals. I quickly found myself forced into an entrepreneurial mindset and surprisingly discovered that part of my career really lit me up.
It wasn’t too far into my life as a dentist that I had four small children, and the demands of my growing family seemed to compete with the demands of growing my practice. I decided to leave the dental chair and stay home with the kids, a dream come true, but that entrepreneurial mindset was still cooking on the back burner. I would hear about different opportunities, and mull them over. I would wonder if there was something I could work around my kids. Could there be a way for me to scratch that entrepreneurial itch and still be at home where I wanted to be?
I often fell victim to the fears l listed above. I would shut down an idea quickly because I worried it wouldn’t work, or worry that the idea was good, but maybe I wasn’t capable of making it work. I quickly dismissed options I feared would be expensive to pursue, because I worried that I was already making our finances more difficult since I was no longer working outside of the home.
I suffered from the same fears that nearly every entrepreneur before me had encountered, and I have to tell you that those intrusive thoughts were VERY loud! It wasn’t easy to quiet them and let myself continue to dream.
It took some time, but I arrived at a point where I suddenly realized that my fear of NOT chasing those dreams was scarier to me than what would happen if I tried and wasn’t successful. I also truly believed that I had enough confidence and tenacity to work at it until I figured it out. I mean after all, I survived playgrounds in the 80’s, I don’t scare easily! #iykyk
FACING YOUR FEARS HEAD-ON
Step One: Acknowledge the fear.
Ignoring your fears is like ignoring your toddler in a candy store – eventually there will be a meltdown!
Step Two: Reframe your mindset.
Pump yourself up! If your best friend came to you with the desire of starting something new to achieve her dreams, what would you say to her? I am sure you would encourage her, tell her that you believed in her, and be her biggest cheerleader. Do the same for yourself. Pro Tip: Learn how to leverage affirmations and positive self talk…developing that “I can do this” mindset is invaluable and honestly useful in all aspects of your life! (If you haven’t yet, download my Free “Day Setting Affirmations” it’s a great place to start!)
Step Three: Take Action.
What is the first small action step you could take? What about setting up a dedicated workspace? Or reading a book like The Lean StartUp by Eric Ries to get the ideas flowing.
Yes, these are just the first steps, but baby steps lead to bigger steps. Think back to watching a baby learn to walk: one step, then a few steps, then that funky Frankenstein arms out stiff legged walk, until eventually they are walking without even thinking about it. That’s what you do when you begin to tackle your fears…you will be running like a toddler stealing a phone before you know it.
TOOLS FOR EMBRACING YOUR INNER ENTREPRENEUR
Self Discovery.
This is my very favorite part to mentor. Witnessing women entrepreneurs discover their calling is incredible. Ready to start?
- Get out a piece of paper and some highlighters or colored pencils. Okay fine, you can open a new Google document, but I’m old school and love pen and paper. Ask yourself, “What am I really good at? What is something I could help someone else do?”
- Just let your mind wander, let those ideas flow out onto the paper. Don’t censor your thoughts, don’t try to take the thought process further than the idea itself. Get as many down as you can.
- Then bust out those colored pencils and start highlighting the best ideas, the ones that get you the most excited.
- From there, start to imagine what you could do with that idea, just let your mind focus on the benefits that idea will bring. No negativity allowed…what would it look like if it all went perfectly? Paint that picture. Write it all down. Really visualize what it looks like and feels like to bring that idea to completion.
- What are three things you would do differently once your idea brought you additional income, how would an extra $1000 change your life? What about $10K and then go big, what would an additional $100K allow you to do? Get super specific in your mind, focus on how all those changes would FEEL, imagine them as though they have already happened. Imagine total financial freedom. What does your life look like? Write it all down.
- Now you have the roadmap of your dreams. Well done, you’re on your way.
Community Support
I am firm believer that you are the culmination of the five people with whom you spend the most time. It is inevitable that you will mimic their thought patterns and habits. If you aren’t connected to other financially free women or entrepreneurial focussed women, seek them out. I invite you to join our Facebook Community at DreamsGoalsFreedom or search for supportive communities in your area. Get plugged in. You will be amazed at how empowered you will feel surrounded by other empowering female entrepreneurs…spoiler alert, they are women just like you with a passion, purpose, and the tenacity to chase their dreams.
Celebrate Your Uniqueness
There are an infinite number of ideas that have the potential to help other people. When you can help people solve problems that they are struggling with, you will both benefit. Your unique life experiences or talents make you the perfect person to help someone with something that you are gifted in. It is your unique perspective and voice that will set you apart in the entrepneurial world.
STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS
Goal Setting. You know my philosophy. Turn your dreams into goals and achieve those goals to create your freedom. Learn to create realistic, achievable goals. Yes they should scare you a little, but if your first goal is to make a million dollars, that’s a tall order, and not achieving your goals is frustrating. I don’t want you to quit, I want to you to achieve goal after goal, until you arrive right where you want to be. Spend time learning the steps to setting SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound.
Continuous Learning. There are so many podcasts, books, videos, and digital courses out there. You don’t have to know how to do everything, the greatest skill is recognizing your strengths, and focussing on them. If there are things you don’t know how to do, find someone who does and learn from them.
Pro Tip: You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can learn a new skill. Just ask me about wallpapering my granddaughter’s nursery or crocheting my grandkids some blankets, trust me you can learn ANYTHING. You may not like doing it once you know how (above examples LOL) but then you can find someone to hire who is great at those things and move on to what you love most.
Action Plan. Break the journey into steps. How soon do you want this up and running? How many steps are there to accomplish in order to achieve the end result? Break it all down, create the goals we talked about earlier, and get going! Consider finding an accountability partner, someone you can share your action plan with who will hold you to it. It could be your spouse, your best friend, or a new female entrepreneur friend. Decide how you want them to keep you accountable and trust them to help push you forward.
CONCLUSION: MANAGING FEAR
We may never erase fear, but we can manage it before it robs us of the opportunity to create the life of freedom we desire. Fear is simply convincing your mind of a result before you have actually had the experience. Think about that. If you let fear convince your inner entrepreneur that she won’t be successful before she’s even tried, you are letting fear steal the joy she could experience when she knocks it out of the park and finds success.
No, ma’am, that’s not how we roll around here.
We stop our fear with confidence, courage, and certainty. We focus our mindset on success. We visualize positive outcomes. We dream big. We set SMART goals. We surround ourselves with other entrepreneurial queens, and keep ourselves accountable. But most of all we keep going until we create the freedom to live life on our terms.
I invite you to imagine what your life of freedom looks like and decide now to chase after it. What is the first thing you will do to achieve it? Comment below, I would love to hear and cheer you on! XOXO
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