I had one of the best conversations the other day with Christy Wright, an entrepreneur and women’s business coach who offered her insights into why people tend to settle for careers that aren’t necessarily exciting for them.
We talked about how women often see themselves as being stuck in a work routine that keeps them from making more money and limits their ability to have a flexible schedule. She hears the same concerns across the country with her Business Boutique events and can personally relate to those who want more control over their career.
It’s challenging to pretend you are happy in a job when your heart longs for something else such as starting your own business. One of the challenges that women often encounter is the fear of the unknown and even though there is a desire to change, it’s the fear that tends to hold people back.
Christy offers a refreshing point of view in starting a business. “It’s easier now than ever before because you have so much access to free marketing. The Internet gives you the ability to launch a business and test out your ideas with no heavy upfront costs that would have been necessary in the past,” she said. You can start out by slowly testing your ideas on the Internet first before moving on to the next steps.
If you are on the career fence of “should I stay or should I go” here are five practical suggestions and encouraging thoughts that will help you get started.
1. Realize that fear is normal. Most people who sense red flags over career decisions heed the warnings and will turn back. However, when starting your own business, it helps to know that everyone experiences fear. Christy describes fear as a part of the journey and if you wait until you are no longer afraid you’ll never start your business.
She mentioned a scientific phenomenon that tends to affect more women than men called “the impostor syndrome” and behind the condition is a trait of a high achiever. You might be surprised knowing that some of the most successful women in their career fields have dealt with feeling like an impostor such as the Academy Award winning actress Kate Winslet or the Nobel Laureate Maya Angelou, who often thought each time she wrote a book people would find out she was “running a game on everybody.”
2. You don’t have to be the best to add value. Women tend to be more sensitive to intimidation and if there are plenty of similar businesses in the marketplace it’s easy to give up and not fulfill your dreams. There is plenty of room for you in the marketplace to add value, and no one can replicate your own style of conducting business.
3. Don’t let intimidation keep you from taking the first step. It is easy to get overwhelmed when starting anything new. Christy’s advice is to break it down into baby steps. For example, if you want to write a blog start with just one post, or if you want to teach piano lessons start with just giving one lesson. Just starting with one action fuels the second step and leads to more momentum – the snowball effect.
4. Just do it once. The best guard against intimation is to focus on doing things just once. Fear torments you with all the possibilities of failure such as: no one will like me, they will laugh behind my back. When Christy launched her first Business Boutique event she fought against the fears that no one would be interested or even show up. The event was a huge success and even with 1,200 tickets sold she still had doubts people would be interested in starting their own business. Here’s the catch she focused on delivering the event just once in spite of fear and today has a national event platform reaching thousands of interested women.
5. “Talk to yourself”. She referred to the outstanding accomplishments of Dr. James Gill. You may not have heard of Dr. Gill, but he is the only human being on the planet to achieve six double iron man events. He reached this unbelievable goal by defeating his negative thoughts with this habit, “you need to talk to yourself, instead of listening to yourself”. Talking to yourself cancels out the fear and instead listening to doubt start talking in a positive way.
The last bit of advice that Christy shared was “start now rather than waiting.” The problem with waiting until you feel ready is that you’ll delay your happiness by waiting on the right resources or the right market conditions. When you are in a career that feels unhappy waiting just prolongs the problem.
To help you reach your business goals Christy will be presenting at two live events in May that will teach you the steps in how to start your own business and reach your career goals. The events includes a host of speakers that specialize in various areas needed to help you launch a plan.
What keeps you from starting your business?
