Why I Quit my Job to Start a Business
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Have you ever felt like you never quite fit into the mold? Like there’s something around the corner waiting for you to discover but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it. You have a great work ethic. You’re passionate. You work hard but no job ever fulfilled you. You have all these crazy ideas running around through your mind but not everyone in your circle gets it. Well, come here. You might just be a natural-born entrepreneur.
Before I became an entrepreneur, I had lots of jobs. I worked in radio. I worked in event management. I worked in marketing. I worked as a dental hygienist. I worked with a lot of different industries. And in that, I had a lot of experience. I got to work with celebrities. I got to work on the radio with some of the top markets. And I got to put people on stages, people who are huge names now. I got to work with them before they became massive, I mean, books on your shelf, see them on TV. I had an amazing experience being able to do that.
As exciting as that was, it wasn’t fulfilling for me. I didn’t like having a boss. I didn’t like not being the lead. I wanted to be able to create and be on my own terms. So I left the exciting industry I was in, in entertainment, radio and event management. And I went into dental hygiene. Seems like a very different, a different leap. But what my intention was, was to be a dental hygienist while I could figure out what did I want to do. How could I invest my time into something that I did feel fulfilled? And while I was a dental hygienist, that’s when I found social media and video marketing, and YouTube and from there, I was able to take the leap, which is not just as easy as just taking the jump, because of course, there are the mindset and the family, or the people who just don’t understand or know what you’re doing that might try to encourage you to stay safe and that’s totally fine. But I knew that there was something more than I needed to do. So I took that leap and went all-in on this business.
And with this big decision, if you’ve been there or if you’re at that place yourself, it’s like you feel every emotion. You have fear, and excitement, doubt, imposter syndrome. This is when you have to fight through the resistance the most. Anytime you feel resistance or fear or constraint, it’s likely that that’s because that’s the most important place that you need to go. So when I left dental hygiene and went all-in on this business, it was so exciting to leave the nine to five and a lot of people might think, once I get there, once I’m able to leave this job, I’ll feel like I’ve made it. But the truth is, you’re never going to feel like you’ve made it. Because you just get to the next level. It’s like you climb that mountain, you think you’ve gotten to the peak but, guess what, it was a ledge and there’s a whole new mountain to climb. New level, new devil, it’s a new challenge.
So if you want to get a headstart on that mindset that’s needed to go through this journey. I’d love for you to download my “Thought Leader Handbook”. When you have a vision and you want it to come true the question isn’t should you start a business but that the question becomes what action will you take? Who do you need to be? What do you need to do to have what you want to have? For me, I needed to be committed to leaving the nine to five so that I could be committed to growing the business. I know you might have heard the phrase burn your boats.
Tony Robbin says that a lot of us don’t have that fallback plan. Go all in. Burn the boats. Not every entrepreneurial story started with this aha moment and then smoothed out from there. Mine surely didn’t. In fact, I actually left my nine to five in a position where I didn’t feel ready. It was actually my husband who was my fiance at the time. We were two months away from our wedding, had an accident. He had a dirt biking accident and was very injured. He actually had both arms in a cast, his tailbone was fractured. And he couldn’t, I mean, he didn’t have arms. He couldn’t take care of himself. He was in a lot of pain, and he couldn’t go to work so we just lost his income. But he also couldn’t take care of himself. So, I had to call the dental office and say, I can’t come to work tomorrow and I don’t know when I can come back. And from there I had a few clients on the side doing social media. I had already been doing a few videos for YouTube to get my name out there. And that’s where we went all in.
I always knew there was something more, something that I wanted to tap into and circumstances happened that left me with no choice but to just go for it. And it was one of the best decisions I ever made. When you take the leap and start your own business, there are some things that you may experience like incurring costs, even with an online, service-based business, there are softwares you have to pay for. Maybe you start to outsource some of your work. You hire a team. Another thing is doing it all on your own for a while.
When we first start a business, if you’re a solopreneur, you often have to do everything. You’re the CEO, the chief everything officer. You’re doing absolutely everything. And the challenge with that afterward is as you start to build a team, you still sometimes have that feeling that you have to do everything yourself but the only way you’re going to be able to grow is by delegating and learning how to lead a team instead of doing everything yourself. And another thing is realizing that you need to invest in yourself to be able to invest in your business. Like signing up for coaching, attending masterminds, seeking the help of a mentor. I always look at it as standing on the shoulders of giants. I want to hire people and learn from people who are doing what I want to do, who have the results that I want to have. And so I really, very much invest in my self, not just in mentorship but also in self-care and in my education and where I learn from but also how I feel in all aspects, mentally, emotionally, physically.
And lastly, the other thing that you may experience is cycling, shifting, in your business and we call it cycling because it’s like you go through a cycle where or a phase where you learn something and there are pros, there are cons, so for me, I mentioned this earlier, when you start your business you might be saying yes to everything because you just want the opportunities. But often, it’s where you have to say no to be able to learn from who are the actual people you want to work with. What values and what integrity do you want to have in your business? So for me, I actually, when I first started said yes to everything and I wanted to be this like Jack of all trades and be able to do everything. But my business grew the most when I was able to say no to specific clients who might not have aligned with my values or say no to things that weren’t my zone of genius. Yes, I know how to design websites. I know how to do graphic design. I’m actually good at it. But my wheelhouse, my genius, my best skills are in video marketing and strategy and offer creations so that I can help my clients build the business and get the huge results that they deserve and that their audience needs.
And so when I was able to narrow down what I’m good at and not say yes to everything, and even, especially a big lesson was to not say yes to clients that weren’t in alignment with me. That’s where I was, first of all, happier, more fulfilled in what I was doing, which attracts the best clients and the best opportunities to you.
If you’ve been around my channel for a while. You may already know that my expertise is using YouTube to build businesses. It’s one of the reasons why I was able to become visible and attract the right clients. I know the initial constraints that entrepreneurs have in the beginning and I’ve been able to use that knowledge to help other business owners find a solution.
And so I’ve included here a link where you can access the VIP Code, VIP stands for Video Impact Profit that gives you all the resources that you need to get started so that you can build your business, you can get visible, scale your audience and your ROI using video marketing.
But I want to know for you, what were your struggles that you had in your business? What were the big lessons that you learned along the way? Comment below and I’ll see you in the next video.
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