My Path from Corporate Employee to Successful Entrepreneur
You can have a successful business without it being your one and only passion, your dream. As long as you are passionate about some aspect of it, you can do it! Here’s an example. You can create an online business for an income stream. Maybe down the road it will become your passion and maybe it won’t but it will give you freedom of choice! My path to becoming a social entrepreneur took many twists and turns. How I came to be who I am today, the person who teaches people HOW to use the internet to turn their idea into a successful business has been a very long and sometimes joyous, sometimes agonizing journey.
I was in a corporate job that I hated, hated, hated! I couldn’t figure out what else I could do. At that time, all I knew was that I wanted to be self employed. That was what I was passionate about at that time, being self employed instead of having a job that I had to go to every day where I didn’t fit in or feel appreciated. I wanted out of the corporate rat race!! So I started on my journey from corporate employee, to self-employed to business owner. At that time, I didn’t know the difference between self-employed and business owner. That learning came later and I will talk about that more down the road.
The other morning I was thinking about my business. What is it that I am really passionate about? The truth is that I am passionate about giving people freedom! I give people freedom to make choices about their life. I teach them HOW to create income streams from things they are good at! I teach people how to take a great idea and use the internet to make it into a business. Maybe it’s not their life passion but it’s a step in the right direction.
As I write this blog post, I am filled with emotion because I am thinking back to when I felt so trapped in my job. I was so afraid to leave my “guaranteed” paycheck and benefits. The truth is that I was laid off from most of the jobs I had in my corporate career. Some were voluntary lay-offs where I opted to leave but I still wonder where I got the idea that I had a “guaranteed” paycheck! I know now that all those lay-offs were the universe, my soul, my divine guidance, or whatever you want to call it, doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself, but it took me a really long time to stop going and getting another job. It took me, seems like, forever to get it! I was so scared.
The thing that really helped me get through my fears of starting a business was information gathering. I started going to EVERY workshop and seminar I could find. This was in the mid 1980’s so there weren’t nearly as many workshops for entrepreneurs as there are now, or at least I couldn’t find them. But I found what I needed. I even took one of those seminars I fondly refer to as the “cosmic kick in the butt” seminars where you take those HUGE leaps of faith, commit to your goals, no turning back, life or death, etc….Yep, that was the year I left my last corporate job, 1990! I set a goal in that seminar of quitting my corporate job within a year. Within 3 months, you guessed it, another lay off, voluntary…and I took it!
How did I do it? How did I take that leap from corporate job to business owner? Well first of all, it wasn’t just 1 leap; it was thousands of tiny steps on the path towards who I am today…
I invite you to follow my blog to find out step by step how I transformed myself from “paralyzed with fear corporate employee” to courageous and creative business owner.
And I look forward to hearing your experience too!
internet business, internet Marketing, social networking
