Today is my 1 year anniversary of making the leap from corporate to becoming a full-time entrepreneur/solopreneur, and to fully embrace a future of work that works for me. While I miss aspects of my old corporate life, I have thoroughly enjoyed the past year and am very excited about my life and work moving forward.
This past year, I’ve spent more hours working on things that matter to me, took more vacation, spent more time with my family, and played more golf than I have in over a decade.
While I am still learning the toolkit of entrepreneurship, I’m excited for how it’s helped me create a career and life that works for me, and for what the future holds.
I spent some time last week reflecting on my first full year of being an independent business owner and wanted to share some thoughts to those who are on their journey or just getting started:
🔨 Entrepreneurship is a toolkit – When I first started thinking about moving to the solo-path, I thought of entrepreneurship as a pathway, very much like corporate had a “path.” I’m starting to see entrepreneurship more as a toolkit, that, when you learn the various tools, allow you to use them in ways to create the life and career that you want. As I think about the future of work, I think teaching these tools is really important, to create work and workplaces that work for more people. For me, entrepreneurship is the toolkit that fuels choice and agency, and that allows me to bring my strengths and talents to life through work in diverse and commercially viable ways.
🔨 Being at peace with limbo – At various points, I’ve gotten frustrated with myself for not having it “figured out.” Many days I feel lost, a bunch of projects I’ve had haven’t gotten off the ground, and sometimes, even as a trained marketer, it still feels hard to explain what it is that I do! Much like a lot of things in life, I’m learning that the beauty is not in having it all figured out, but rather, the journey it takes to get there. Some of this stems from my fear of failure, as well as a scarcity mindset, especially since this is new. But learning to hold space for the in-between, and build confidence in yourself so you’re not worried about the journey allows you to keep working and feeling good about where you are headed
🔨Career Development is just as important as an entrepreneur – Over the years, I’ve taught thousands of people how to manage their careers, mostly people that work for businesses and corporations. What I didn’t realize, was that while it’s important there, networking and career development are just as (if not more important) as an entrepreneur. When you work in a large company, you have the benefit and infrastructure of people, and if you don’t know something, you can find people to ask. Furthermore, while career development can vary company to company, there are always resources at your disposal as well as an infrastructure for things like promotions and new roles. As an entrepreneur, you’re in charge of your own growth, and for that matter, your own performance management. Learning how to figure out how you want to grow, how to ask for help, where to get coaching + assistance etc is a new kind of growth and development that I’m having to do.
🔨Community is everything – This year, I have had so many minute and little questions that I had no idea what the answer was, but because of asking other people, I was able to find a solution. I am so grateful to the many other entrepreneurs and solo-business owners who took the time to help me out or walk me through everything from buying insurance to how to pay yourself, to “is this a viable business model” and everything in between.
🔨 Showing up and doing the damn thing matters – Sometimes nothing replaces the art of showing up and shipping. I learned this from writing 400 blog posts on MBASchooled before launching a speaking business, but this past year I’ve learned it again. I’ve gotten multiple clients just from writing my weekly newsletter and posting regularly on LinkedIn. Not to mention, I’ve gotten better at refining my writing, speaking, and concepts of what I want to talk about. For every new trend or insight you should evaluate, consider the fundamental art of showing up and doing the thing
🔨 You can go faster if you let yourself – When you’re just working on something yourself, you often hold the keys in terms of the ability to start, stop, and continue on your business or idea. Your ability to “sense” and then “respond” to signals accelerates when you’re the only one in charge. As a result, I’ve been able to actually “fail fast” and embrace true experimentation. In each of the first three quarters, the biggest revenue generator has been different each quarter. The trick is, being able to pay attention by learning and being curious, and then fueling that curiosity into action.
🔨 Sometimes slowing down allows you to speed up – I always felt when I worked in corporate that time to think and slow down was undervalued and underappreciated. I’m starting to see the benefits of having that space now that I am an entrepreneur. This year, I have had more free time in my work day than ever before, and by many objective measures have produced significant outputs in arguably less time. When you start to separate out measuring progress and outcomes not just from doing tasks or being “in motion” and start to prioritize and value time to “think” and reflect, it allows you the creative space that when it does come time for you to “work” to be productive.
🔨 Money matters – Entrepreneurship, and not earning a steady paycheck, has tested and brought to light a lot of my relationship with money, and quite frankly, a lot of limiting beliefs I have with myself on this topic. I did not expect this, which has been challenging, but also has opened up a deeper understanding of how I view something that I had never previously thought about.
I am grateful for everything I’ve experienced and been given over the past year, and am looking forward to even more years on this path!