From Employee to Entrepreneur: how to overcome the biggest obstacle in building your business

Moving from employee to entrepreneur requires one major mind-set change to see failure in a completely new light.

Everyone at some point has dreamed of telling their boss where to stick it, marching out of their office with their head held high to start their own business.

In the fantasy, this dream business comes together so quickly that the next scene is you working on your laptop in Hawaii - because now as an entrepreneur, you can work from anywhere and still make your millions.

Raise your hand if you've suffered from this daydream.

I would love to say that's totally how this happened for me.

And that as I write this, a shirtless waiter is bringing over a pina colada while I check my bank balance to notice that $100,000 has been deposited into my account without me feeling like I worked for it.

While I’m hopeful that this scene is scheduled somewhere in the movie of my life, I’m still on my yellow brick road of business.

If this post finds you some where at the point between your dream life (being a free-spirited entrepreneur) and your reality (broke and confused about what the hell you’re doing), I'm here to fuel you up with some hope, encouragement and a key mind-set tool that will keep you moving forward. Remember that just because the road is rocky, doesn’t mean that it’s the wrong road.

Hang in there lovely. I've been there and know that you won't stay there.

I’ve stopped and started my entrepreneurial journey many times over the past ten years. Every few years that I find myself in between jobs, I would have a go at being in business, then quit whenever a job came along. This year though, I decided to get off my own hamster wheel and commit to working for myself, “come hell or high water,” as we say in Jamaica, where I’m from.

This time my why was strong. After being let go from four jobs in six years, seeing friends being made redundant and reading about record industry job cuts, I know with absolute certainty that there is no such thing as job security. In fact, getting a job is probably one of the biggest risks you could take because you are completely out of control of your future.

I've always believed that it is better to learn the skills to create wealth for yourself and that business is the way to do that.

“But what business and how do I actually get it going?” you might ask.

This my dear is where you’re going to have to be patient, especially with yourself.

Having taken the leap into the great entrepreneurial unknown and resigned myself to never goin

g back to a full-time job, here is the biggest lesson I've learned so far.

FAIL!!!

Not what you wanted to hear, right?

You wanted to come out fierce...Like you own this!

Insert, reality check...

Most likely, this is not going to happen.

You have to release the expectation that success will come on your first or second or sixth go at this.

Even Robert Kiyosaki, the multi-millionaire businessman and author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” says that he tells his investors before a deal, “This might fail.”

He releases the expectation of success and perfection and learns from whatever happens.

If you are failing, you are trying.

You are moving, which is far better than sitting still.

I’ve observed something super interesting in my life.

When I commit to something - if I keep digging and go deep with it, eventually I’ll hit upon some kind of gold. I’ll reach milestones, which become the markers that lead me to my destination over time.

Those markers might look like failures but they are actually guiding me back on to the right path.

If you don’t try something,

if you don’t get that idea from your head and out into the world,

there is no opportunity for the road to appear.

Taking action and allowing yourself to fail provides the momentum for you to move forward.

Comparison is the constant enemy of us allowing ourselves to fail. We are always painfully comparing ourselves to a future version of ourselves in our imagination and coming up painfully short. Then we chastise ourselves for not having become that fantasy image as yet. (I'm super guilty of this one.)

Neil Donald Walsh, the author of "Conversations with God" tells the story of a dream he once had. In it, he enters a small village. As he explores it, he sees that all the locals are walking around in torture. As they walk, tiny tailors jump on to them sticking them with pins and lining them with measuring tape. The villagers constantly have to pick and shake the tiny tailors off. They walk around bleeding and haggard.

Neil notices one man though who is walking in peace. The tiny tailors don’t even notice him. Neil approaches him, “Excuse me sir... What’s different about you? Why do the tiny tailors not jump on you?”

Nonchalantly he says, “Oh... I decided to stop measuring myself.”

Decide! Decide to stop it!

Stop judging and measuring yourself against against an imagined future version of yourself or someone else who is far farther along their entrepreneurial path than you.

Stop it!!

The action you can. Take it consistently guided by what feels good to you.

Be brave and challenge yourself in ways that are in alignment with your spirit.

Be open to failing and be proud of yourself for just stepping out, if things don't go according to plan.

In fact, I’m going to set you a challenge.

Fail at something. Anything.

That idea that’s been sitting in your head, put it out there in the world. No matter how it turns out, celebrate the fact that you did it at all.

Celebrate the action and not the outcome.

Rinse and repeat this over and over again.

You will learn so much. You will learn how to do it better, faster or completely differently.

Test and measure. That is what an entrepreneur does.

One day it will click and you'll be off and running.

Here is another pearl of wisdom from Neale Donald Walsch on this subject. This is from a 2015 interview with my mentor, Sage Lavine of Women Rocking Business.

“My first requirement is to stay in my sense of who I really I am and why I am here and to remove myself from any need for any outcome or result. If I focus my life on outcome or result and I have to see things happen in a certain way by a certain time or else I think I am a failure ... if that becomes the focus of my life, it’s going to be hard to not become angry, frustrated and disappointed.

If you do, you have your eyes on the wrong goal. The real goal in life is your soul fully self realising itself - understanding who you really are and expressing that through the activities and functions of your life.”

Your real goal is to be of service, allow your spirit to expand and to express your aspect of the Divine. Leave the rest to God / the Universe.

Just because things didn't happen the way you had in mind, doesn't mean that it's not the best thing that could have happened.

Keep going and I just might run into you on that beach in Hawaii.

#entrepreneurship #howtobecomeanentrepreneur