Kristiana Corona
You have to be able to quickly adapt. You have to be flexible. You have to be nimble. You have to be willing to experiment with a lot of different things to see what is gonna meet the need ever. Feel like everyone else has leadership figured out, and you're just making it up as you go. I've been there. I spent two decades leading design and technology teams at Fortune 500 companies, and for years, I looked like I had everything pulled together on the outside, but on the inside, I felt burned out, overwhelmed, and unworthy of the title leader.
Then a surprise encounter with executive coaching changed my life and dramatically improved my leadership style and my results. Now I help others make that same shift in their leadership. This podcast is where we do the work, building the mindset, the coaching skills, and the confidence to lead with clarity and authenticity, and to finally feel worthy to lead from the inside out.
Hi, and welcome back to the Worthy to Lead Podcast. I'm your host, Kristiana Corona, and I'm so glad you're here for today's episode. So. Today I'm gonna be diving a little bit deeper into what it has been like becoming an entrepreneur after a lifetime of a corporate career. So for those of you who don't know me, the last 23 years, I have spent as a design and technology leader for Fortune 500 companies.
I have had a stable paycheck, I have had reliability, consistency in many ways in how I show up for my days, how I use my time, how I learn, how I grow. So this has been a huge shift, and for anyone else who's out there just thinking about this, this is something where there are a lot of areas you may not be thinking about going into it or a lot of areas you may not have had exposure to.
And so you are going to dive in the deep end. When you become an entrepreneur, I grew up with entrepreneurial parents, so I kind of had a firsthand view into what it was like and the uncertainty, and having to reinvent yourself over and over again. So I knew a little bit of what that was gonna take, and I went the opposite direction.
I went into a corporate career that felt much more stable and safe. However, at this point in my career, I knew that I needed something a little bit different, and I had had enough growth and progress throughout my career that now I felt confident being able to go out and start giving back to that community that I had been a part of for all of those years.
So I wanna share seven important considerations for you. If you are thinking about or if you have left, or if you've been laid off, and you're thinking about starting your own gig. These are things that. I have learned some of them the hard way and made mistakes, and so I'll be sharing a little bit more about that.
And some of these things are just based on what I've learned around entrepreneurs and what makes them fail and what makes them succeed. So I just wanted to give you a little snapshot today of what that looks like. And hopefully, this is helpful for you if you are in that place yourself. And I am cheering you on.
I am here for your journey, so please. Don't hesitate to reach out if this is you and you wanna connect and have some partnership along the way. So, to just kick us off, I wanna start with some stark facts. Um, I call this my adapt or die section. So, the entrepreneurial journey is not one for the faint of heart.
I call this section Adapt or Die, and that's because approximately 40 to 50% of small businesses fail within the first three years. And there are some specific reasons why that happens. So five of the top reasons why businesses fail when they're just kicking off is first of all, because they're building something that they think people want.
But they don't actually know that they want it. They haven't validated that that is actually what people want and need. So it's going in kind of guessing, saying, I have this really great idea, but I haven't actually gone out and tested to see if people want it. The second reason is because they have a lack of funds, or they just don't know how to manage money as a business.
They just haven't been trained in financial management, which, you know, for many of us, that is not what we went to school for. So this is an area obviously that can drain your business really, really quickly if you're not focused on it. The third area is, you know, your pricing is off, so either you are not pricing yourself effectively for the audience you're trying to attract, or you're not pricing yourself effectively for yourself, and so your business is not sustainable, and you just are running out of business.
You're not creating the profit that you really want, and you're not able to grow. The fourth reason is that people try to do it all alone. As an entrepreneur and as a founder, you're gonna be wearing a lot of different hats. And so sometimes people try to do all the things you're trying to manage, you're trying to execute on all the work.
Um, you're trying to be the salesperson and you're trying to be technical support. And sometimes that can be too much, depending on the type of business that you're building. It can be really, really challenging to do all of those roles constantly. And that is why there's a lot of burnout. There's a lot of people who just try and do it all by themselves without getting any help, and that can often lead to failure.
And the final one is what I was alluding to when I was seeing my parents go through their journey and having to completely adapt themselves and pick up new business models and try new things to see what was actually gonna resonate. You have to be adaptable. You have to be able to differentiate yourself when the market or your customer's needs shift, you have to be able to quickly adapt.
You have to be flexible, you have to be nimble. You have to be willing to experiment with a lot of different things to see what is gonna meet the need. And so if you get stuck in one track and you're like, this is what I'm doing, this is how I'm doing it, and I'm sticking with it, and it's not working.
Then you go down. So what I wanna do is talk about seven things that I think will help combat some of those common failure points. And they're things that I have really been diving into in the first nine months of my business to try and help set us up for success. So the first thing I would talk about is before you even start to prepare a runway to prepare a financial runway for yourself.
So, if you don't have to leave your job yet, I would recommend not doing that. If you are laid off, then it wasn't your choice, and you have to just work with what you have. But if you have the choice, what I would highly recommend is starting a side gig. While you currently have your paycheck, and part of the reason for this is because then you can sit down and look at your financial targets and not be in a place of stress and duress.
So what you wanna do is you wanna understand your risk tolerance. So if you were to make no money at all in your first year, would you have a safety net ready? Would you have the amount of savings that you need to pay your bills? Would you know your numbers? Do you have a budget? Do you have an ability to scale back any of those expenses?
Have you thought about scaling back those expenses just in case? So this is a moment where you're really thinking about your ideal scenario of what you wanna make, and you're also thinking about the worst case scenario of. If you made $0, how would you survive? And so you really wanna be realistic with those numbers and then understand, do you need six months of savings to feel good?
Do you need a year of savings? Do you need two years of savings to feel like you have enough safety net? So personally for me, I have been saving for a while and so I had at least a year plus saved because I knew that I wanted that safety net. Like I have not a high tolerance for risk. Uh, I have a large family.
I'm helping take care of this broader, multi-generational family, and so I am not about to not be able to pay my bills next month. That is one thing that really mattered to me. So, I started saving early and I really put those things together for myself so that I felt like I had a decent runway. Although I will say two years of savings is better than one because it's not like your business is gonna thrive and instantly make hundreds of thousands of dollars probably in the first year if you are a solopreneur.
So being realistic and saying, what is the number that I wanna get to compared to where I am today in my corporate gig, and how long will it take me to get there? Two resources that I will share that were really, really helpful for me in. Really understanding this financial runway and creating my money map and creating my forecast was working with Katherine Pomerance.
So she's an amazing accountant who has a financial program to help you become the CFO of your new business. It's called Unstoppable. And she does a couple of cohorts a year, and highly recommend if you have an opportunity to join that because she gives you a really great view into both how to plan and how to budget your money, but then also what are those weekly habits that you need to have in place so that you can become a savvy manager and not be afraid of managing your money.
Another resource that was really great was Michael Michalowicz's Book, Profit First, so I highly recommend that book. It is really about how do you fundamentally set up the model for making profit and paying yourself first as you build a new business, which is the opposite of what most entrepreneurs do, where they don't pay themselves for the first few years because they're so busy pouring everything into the business and it sucks away all of your money.
So his view is the opposite of that, and really foundationally thinking about the profit before anything else. So number two, I would start building your brand early. And so this one, again, great thing to do before you leave your job. So the ways that I would recommend doing that and that I started doing were going on LinkedIn and updating my profile.
And really putting some time and attention into making it look professional, having it be up to date, and having the featured sections, which are kind of below where your about section is. Making sure that is linking people to things that you want them to see or do. So if you have recent launches or you have things that you're really proud of the work you've done, you can link to that.
You can link to some of your best posts, or if you want to get people started building an email list, collecting their emails ahead of time so that you have that resource available to you. You could create a lead magnet, which is basically like a free download where someone gives you their name and their email to be able to get that downloadable resource.
So I would highly recommend doing some of those things on LinkedIn to just start quietly building your brand and building that email list. I would also say if you are not a regular LinkedIn poster. Just start posting once a week. That can make a huge difference. And so if you are going to events, if you are doing really interesting things, if you're launching cool products at the company that you work for, highly recommend posting about that once a week.
And the reason for this is when you start to become active, LinkedIn treats you differently and it's not about. Yes, posting every single day would be the best thing to do, but you don't have to do that. It's more about consistency. And so if you have a weekly cadence or you post once or twice a week, just being able to show up and talk about things that you care about, talk about things that your audience cares about, this is really gonna develop that brand and that momentum for you behind the scenes before you ever even leave the company.
So another great strategy that you can start ahead of time is to build your runway for yourself, is start connecting with more people. So the bigger audience that you have, the more followers you have on LinkedIn, the more people are going to see your stuff when you do actually have something to sell. So just developing a daily habit of going in and connecting with five people, five to 10 people.
This can be really, really helpful over time and can help you build thousands and thousands of people in your audience, where maybe you don't need them right now, but it's about building that future runway for yourself and having that broader exposure and that broader network to connect to the right people.
So this could be, you know, connecting with your colleagues that you currently work with. Connecting with colleagues you've worked with in the past, it can be connecting with people that you really admire, and then people who might be your future clients. And so who are those people that you wanna just start developing that rapport with?
So build that audience intentionally, and you'll be really surprised that once you start posting once a week and connecting with people regularly on a daily basis. You start to see that momentum building, and it's really exciting because the worst thing in the world is launching a business and having nobody hear you and nobody see you, and you put all this work into launching something, and nobody sees it.
So do yourself a favor and start building that audience now. And the final strategy on this, I started a podcast. A year before, I actually went out into starting my own business. And so this really wasn't intentional. It was sort of like coincidental that I wanted to start doing that more so as a habit for myself to be able to share messages and help develop leaders and to confident and empowered human-centered leaders.
And so this was something I was really passionate about anyway, but. It was really, really beneficial to have a podcast, 'cause again, that gives you a reason to talk to people, gives you a reason to put stuff out into the world, and to connect with people and to build an email list. So it can be a really great strategy if you have the time and interest to start something like that.
Okay, number three is to treat your business plan like an experiment and to start gathering data. So, like I was talking about before, it is very, very easy to put together a plan of what you think is going to work and what you imagine will work. But then when you get it into the real world, there are a lot of unknowns, and there are a lot of things that are going to change.
And so your business plan is going to evolve so, so many times in the first year, you wanna plan for the worst case scenario. You wanna plan for the best case scenario, and you wanna very, very quickly validate and get evidence about. What you're thinking about doing. So like we talked about in the failure points, have you validated that your customer wants this?
Have you validated that the price point is something they can afford? Have you validated that the way you're talking about it, the way you have branded it? Is attractive to somebody that they're gonna wanna buy it or that they're gonna see the value in it that you do. And so those are all what-ifs, right?
Those are hypotheses at this point. And so the first year, your business plan is really much more about evolving and learning and adapting and trying and getting as much evidence as you can to try and figure out what is working and what is not. So, for example, in my business, I started out initially thinking, okay, I'm gonna do, probably 90% of my business is gonna be one-on-one coaching engagements.
And I had been doing a lot of that in the past. I had been doing a lot of that at in a corporate environment. But when I became an entrepreneur, I quickly learned that there were other needs. There were other things that people would pay me for, and those were things that actually were moving the needle.
And so, for example, I got more into leadership development and running masterclasses, and then I formed a membership. For different leaders, which was a lower price point. And it was, you know, an area where people could come together and have community. And so this was something that I did not have in my initial business plan.
This was something that I learned along the way, based on what people were saying and what their needs were, and where I was finding clients who were saying yes to me, and they were giving me money. And so it's very important to stay flexible because you may have in your head, like. I am gonna make an online course, and an online course is amazing, and I highly recommend doing that.
I have also done that, but you may sell some online courses and then realize, oh my goodness, my course, people want a membership to go with that. Or maybe you started off thinking you were only going to do courses, but then people said, Oh, I really want hands-on support from you. So I would like to do one-on-one coaching or group coaching.
And so as long as you're thinking about your business from a flexible standpoint in year one and you're willing to try some different things, I think that is the biggest thing is keeping a flexible mindset, so you don't get discouraged when it doesn't work out exactly the way you thought it would.
But it is about just iterating and iterating, and you know, I would highly recommend, if you can, to start getting some clients on the side while you still have your existing paycheck in business. Getting clients on the side is really, really helpful because it allows you to de-risk your ideas. And so if you can start getting some clients and start iterating on your messaging and your pricing and you know, know how to make all the contracts and know how to follow through and know how to get all the payment and all of those things, you're gonna have so many less hurdles to jump through when you actually get to the point of going full-time.
So I had some clients that I started taking on the side, and even though I hadn't planned on kicking my business off in February this year. I think I had a few years down the road, in my mind imagined that that's when I would actually do this. I had enough to be able to say, Okay, I know roughly how this works.
I know how my contracts work. I know roughly what I wanna price at, and I have a payment system set up. So those were really, really helpful things. So this next one is a big one. Keep your technology simple. So. When you get started in a business, there's a desire to build all the things at once. Like you wanna have a thriving business, you wanna be able to have all these platforms, you wanna have everything talk to each other, and have everything automated.
But the thing is that there are so many choices for tools. There are several of them that seem really amazing, but then on the backend, they don't integrate or they don't do exactly what it was that you wanted when you saw the idea and the marketing for those things. And so for me, there was some experimentation with technology.
Like I knew in my mind what I wanted to have, and it didn't work out that way. With some of the tools that I initially started with. I had an assumption like, oh, of course this integrates with, you know, this calendar tool. Or, of course this integrates with this payment tool. It didn't. So do your due diligence.
Definitely look into the systems that you're going to invest in, and if you can, try and find systems that are a one-stop shop. So where you get lots of different capabilities and one tool set. So for me, one of those tools was Kajabi. And Kajabi for me is my website. It is my podcast. It is where I host events, and it's also my email marketing.
You can also build courses on there, you can have memberships on there. There are a lot of different things that you can do within Kajabi, and it just made everything so much easier to have an integrated ecosystem. So, for example, when I host an event and I want to send emails, automated emails after the event to those participants, I can set all of that up, and I have all of my email contacts in the same system, so I'm not importing and exporting spreadsheets and CSV files and all of those things.
It is just so much simpler. Another tool that we use is called HoneyBook, and that one is really great for creating contracts and project management, kind of like a pipeline management tool for creative businesses. But then we also do our invoicing and payment collection and other things like that through that tool.
So from that standpoint, you know, having a HoneyBook or maybe a Stripe account is really, really helpful because that will easily integrate with other systems. Another platform that we ended up using, we didn't start with, but we ended up using was Google Suite. And Google Suite has just been really good to us in that we don't need to have separate chat tools, video conferencing tools, calendar tools, document tools, spreadsheet tools, you know, all of these different things.
It is very nice and neatly packaged and it's easy to share and it's easy to collaborate on. So. We started out with several different tools in that area, and we ended up getting rid of several of them and reducing the cost because it was much more cost-effective to just do a Google Suite. And then the final two tools that we really love are Riverside FM.
Riverside is where we do all of our recordings. We can edit our podcasts and our videos, and they just have really, really amazing ability to make, like short little reels and, you know, longer form videos, and you get like a transcript automatically created. Super, super easy to use and fun to use. So we use Riverside, and then we pair it with Campa.
And Canva is, you know, everything design. So, of course, we use it for all of our design and our graphics, but we also use it to do animations and video graphics. And so when you can have a tool that's really versatile like that and integrates well with your other tools, it is a huge time saver. So from a technology standpoint, well, there are many lessons that I learned, but I'll say the biggest one is you can totally get down into a deep rabbit hole from a technology perspective and waste so, so, so many hours on stuff like how do I validate my SSL certificate, or how do I do a Zapier integration, or how do I troubleshoot these different things?
And so one of the most important things for us was, how do you get the technical support that you need with great tutorials, super great customer service to work with. You wanna get a system that is gonna help you out in those moments because you do not wanna waste your time as an entrepreneur spending 10, 20, 30 hours trying to solve dumb technical problems that are super easy for someone else to figure out, and very hard for you.
So I am a pretty tech-savvy person, but I found myself in some major rabbit holes here trying to understand how to make things connect and solve problems where it just wasn't working. And so being able to have great customer support and technology support is critical. Okay, so two other things a lot of people get stuck on when they start a business is I have to have a really fancy website.
I have to have a really beautiful website with all the content and all the resources and the library of downloads and all of these things, and you really don't. That could be something that you waste a ton of time on in the beginning of a business, and I did. Do that. I am a website designer by trade, and I enjoy it.
And so, of course I wanted to put all of my best effort into creating a wonderful website, and oh my goodness, so much time put into this, and I know I didn't need to do that. And so you can get away with a one-page website when you're starting. You can get away with a really nice LinkedIn profile. So don't overdo it, and don't worry too much about having the perfect brand, the perfect colors, the perfect logo.
Focus more on just delivering the right value about what you do, and make it really easy for people to call you or to reach out to you and email you. That's really all you need to have is, you know, just a quick summary of who you are and what you do and the services that you offer, and then how to get a hold of you.
And then you can build it out over time. But don't spin your wheels spending months or tons and tons of dollars making a really amazing, fancy website because you don't need it. Final recommendation on technology is AI has just been an incredible partner for us. Um, we use several AI tools and just learning to integrate those into your daily process, especially from a standpoint of trying to write perfect content.
I think for myself that was a rabbit hole at the beginning, as an entrepreneur is thinking about how am I gonna write all these lovely posts and all of these scripts and podcasts and training sessions and all of this stuff, and that can quickly become overwhelming. And so what I found was. I could be messy.
I could show up. I could just start talking. I could use transcripts of things that I had written previously and adapt them. And so if you think about your job as an entrepreneur to show up with the thinking and the ideas, AI can be that partner with you that is helping you streamline it, that is helping you, you know, stay within your tone.
So train it on your language and your personality and how you talk and how you like things formatted. But you have to do it almost as like a template. And then from then on it is so much easier to just put it through those templates and to be able to say, okay, this is what I want. This is my style, and it just helps you save tons and tons of time.
So from an entrepreneurial standpoint, this is one of those amazing, amazing things where you do not have to go down the rabbit hole of content, and you can use AI to help you stay on track with showing up consistently and being professional. Okay, number five is. You wanna learn quickly what your skill gaps are and then fill them or outsource.
So, as someone who has spent my entire career in corporate, I have a certain sense of being able to pitch and influence at a leadership level. However, I have never been formally trained to sell. And so this was one of those areas where I think a lot of people in corporate don't really think about, well, what does it take to sell?
What does it take to market yourself, and how do you do that? And like what kind of rhythms and behaviors are required to do those types of things? And so, as I was doing an assessment, there are certain areas of the business I love and I could spend hours and hours doing those things because I love doing them.
For example, executive coaching. I love executive coaching. I love designing trainings for people, and I love helping them refine their LinkedIn brand and tell their story and get that job that they wanted to get and interview effectively and and things like that. But. When it came down to selling, this was one of those things where I'm like, I don't have that muscle developed.
Like I don't have the reps of years and years and years of practice and what to say and how to handle rejection and how to handle pricing concerns, and all of those things. And so I. For me, it was really important to learn quickly and to start developing those skills. And so as I was learning in this particular area, and I think this is again an area where people stumble a lot as a new business, there are many, many ways to sell.
There are in-person ways to sell. There are ways online to sell, and everyone has their own flavor. There is no one right way to do this, and so it is going to be an experimentation for you to figure out what is your style like? Do you prefer going to in-person events, to Chamber of Commerce events, to conferences and meeting people one-on-one, and developing those relationships and contacts that way, or do you prefer doing it online?
Do you like being on LinkedIn? Do you like being on different social platforms and forums and participating in different communities and building your audience that way? And for me, it's been a combination, and so I've gotten a lot of advice from people one way or the other, and I've had to sort through, okay, that's great advice, but what works for me?
How do I blend the types of selling that feel authentic to me, that feel like they energize me to some extent, and that I can show up and talk about what it's like to share the services that I have with the world and feel good about that messaging, not icky and salesy and pushy. Right? So that is a really interesting area of skill growth that I think a lot of people will dive into, and one resource or one set of resources that has been really great at opening my eyes to all the different things that you can potentially do is Alex Hormozi.
So Alex Hormozi has lots of different resources around developing great leads, developing great offers, developing great business models, and how do you start building those things on top of each other to be really effective?
So, there's lots and lots of resources out there. I don't wanna go deep on naming a lot of them, but I think Alex Ramzi is a very accessible one. He's got lots of books and podcasts, and he is also got free resources on his website, so it's worth a checkout if you haven't seen his stuff yet.
Other skill sets that I quickly wanted to develop and started developing, even the year before I launched my business, it was really online marketing. Selling in courses, and you know, what does it look like to really show up effectively and build those lead generation funnels online? So I spent a lot of time doing online courses, and I love online courses because I feel like you can binge-watch them on the weekend.
You can get hands-on and start trying things right away. You don't have to wait. So, for example, when I developed my podcast, I used Jenna Kutcher's podcast Lab. When I started thinking about my business model and building my email list and thinking about online courses, I went to Amy Porterfield. When I started thinking about my membership and what it would look like to build a thriving membership, I went to Stu McLaren.
When I wanted to think about coaching best practices and building a coaching business online, I looked to Susie Moore, and so there are just a lot of really great influencers out there who are helping create the types of tools that you need as an entrepreneur to get your business going so that you have the building blocks and you're not wasting your time spinning your wheels going, what is, you know, what am I doing wrong?
You have this support and you have this community. So I have found those types of courses and community to be really, really valuable. Okay, so finally, if you feel like it's a skillset that you, either you don't wanna learn or you won't be good at, where do you outsource? And a lot of people wait to outsource.
They wait to outsource much later in the game to be able to say like, Oh, I know that I'm being profitable, and then, therefore, now I can outsource this thing. Or, I've learned to do this really, really well, and I've done it so many times now that I can teach someone else to do it. I kinda went the opposite route, and I started with help right away because I knew that for me, the vision of what I was building was gonna be bigger than one person.
And so I was so, so fortunate to have, uh, one of my coaching clients, Catalina, who I had been working with for years. Be able to transition in her job at that same point where I was transitioning. And so she was able to join me part-time to help with operations, to help me set up my systems, to help me develop my content funnels, help with training, like all of these different aspects of building that I needed to do as a new entrepreneur.
And that has been just absolutely incredible. Find yourself a Catalina. Um, highly recommend having someone that you can work with that becomes like a clear partner and supporting you, understands the mission, can like finish your sentences, whether that's an administrative support operation, support, maybe a writer, someone who writes your content with you.
Whatever part of your business you feel like you need someone else to support you on so that you can focus on the things that are really gonna drive the business forward. That is. Absolutely a game changer, and so I'm so glad that I did that. And I also started outsourcing, like getting help with my podcast production, because video production is quite extensive and takes a really long time, and so that has been absolutely amazing.
So for your business, whatever that looks like, just think about the benefit and what would actually happen if someone else is working on these pieces that would keep the machine moving forward, right? That would keep the progress happening. What would you be freed up to do? And how could you focus your time and your energy on the things that are gonna be the big bets and the conversations that lead to sales and the conversations that lead to growth and the investments that you wanna make in your business moving forward.
So this is a really critical thing to be thinking about from day one. Even if you go solopreneur for the first year or so, just be thinking about what does growth and scale look like and how do I start integrating someone else into that process so that I'm not my own bottleneck and I am not stuck based on the fact that I am not good at this thing or that thing, and that is the thing that's holding me back.
Okay. Number six. On a similar vein, like I was just talking about. Don't do this alone. So the entrepreneurial journey can be a really lonely one, especially if you are a solopreneur just doing this on your own, but it doesn't have to be. And one of the most brilliant and wonderful things I have learned along this journey is to integrate.
To be a part of a community, to reach out, to form connections, to talk about the business, to get feedback, to get ideas from other people. This has really generated a lot of energy for me and helped me, especially on those days where I was feeling down, where it's like, oh, this isn't working. I'm not making what I wanna be making.
I have found business mentorship. To be really great. So I was fortunate to meet some business mentors at a couple of conferences. I have a community of coaches that I'm a part of, and you know, developing those relationships where you're talking about best practices, like what other people with your services and your expertise are doing.
I'm part of a LinkedIn accelerator group, which has been really, really wonderful, and seeing what other people are doing to accelerate their business on LinkedIn, and then that's really leveling me up in a different way and how I show up. And then having coaches who are helping me with my mindset. So when I do get stuck, I have coaching sessions, I have people that I can go to and work out the details and work out the hard stuff, and be able to say, okay, I'm going in with this problem.
I have the resources that I need to figure this out. I just need that thinking time and that dedicated time to work through that. And then finally having partners and doing collaborations has been really, really fun and energizing. And so I've been fortunate to have other people in my network that are interested in partnering up on a masterclass or partnering up on a training or doing coaching together.
And this is just wonderful. Like, it feels like the integration and collaboration that you would expect within corporate, but oftentimes, you don't get that. In the entrepreneurial journey, it's, you know, you're doing everything by yourself, and so if you have someone that you're working with within your company or a contractor, or you have partners that you can pair up with and collaborate with on different ventures, those joint ventures are just really fun and interesting, and they infuse so many new ideas about what you can do differently with your business.
Okay, finally, number seven is. Be optimistic. Have an optimistic mindset. And the reason I say this is because, you know, with a 50 plus percent failure rate in entrepreneurship, a lot of people get stuck on when they're doing something that's not working and they can't figure out a way out of it, and they don't seek the help, they don't seek the community.
And you have to have that belief and that optimism that you are gonna be able to figure it out, otherwise, you would just quit, right? Like it's a challenging space sometimes, and there are days where you just feel like, ugh, nothing I'm doing is working. Why is that? Like, I don't feel the momentum, I don't feel the energy, I don't have what I need, or it's not the right system, or you know, whatever those things are.
I have had several of those days, and I'm a pretty optimistic person, and so what I want to focus on here is. There are ways to build optimism into what you're doing, and it's an intentional practice. It is intentionally looking back and celebrating the things that you have done well, where you have made progress, and also what have been your learnings because things are moving so fast.
It is very easy to forget what you did last week, what you did last month, even to see where you were before and what you've accomplished to now, it will fly by and you will forget it, and then you will think like, Oh, how come I'm staying still? How come I'm in the same place?
But really, you're not. And so what I would recommend is create a ritual around celebrating your small and your big wins. And so for us in worthy to lead, we have a wall of worthiness, and we have practices where we will regularly meet up, and we will put a whole bunch of Post-its in our virtual Post-It board, and we will talk about, like what were the wins we had.
Over the last few weeks, what did that actually look like? Where did we try something new and we learned something, or we learned how to build a new process, or we learned how to automate something, or we got a yes on a sale or a client, or maybe we put ourselves out there and Catalina got interviewed in a magazine like incredible.
You're building those skills of resilience. You're building the track record of belief in yourself and belief that you can have the results that you want. And so we capture all the wins, and then we capture the learnings. What were the things that didn't go well? How can we value that data?
And say, what is this telling me about the decisions I need to make differently next time? What is this telling me about the type of person I wanna partner with? What is this telling me about where I'm spending too many hours doing X, Y, Z, and you know what skill gaps that I still have to fill? If you spend all of your time looking forward at the goal of what you want and that number, that dollar number that you think you need, and you just keep looking at the gap of between where you are now and that dollar amount, you're gonna feel really discouraged and you're gonna quit and you're gonna not wanna do this anymore because it's too hard or it didn't work, or you know, all of those reasons.
But if you look backwards and you base your progress on what have I done, what have I learned? And what am I learning about myself? What are those trend lines? What are those patterns that I'm seeing? You are gonna be so much more encouraged. You are gonna be so much more resilient, and you're gonna follow through, and you're going to create that optimism for yourself that even though I don't see the evidence today, I believe that this is possible, and I just need to find another way.
So this has been really critical. I'll be honest, it is not easy to stay in that place all the time. It is very easy to sit in a place of fear or anxiety or worry, and you know, think about the risks of things not going well. And so you have to be a little bit more comfortable sitting in that place that is not in your comfort zone, like you are.
Basically, never in your comfort zone. You are always learning. You are always growing, you're always changing. And so being able to be comfortable with a little bit of discomfort all the time. And then in those moments where you feel discouraged or you feel like it's not going your way, how are you looking backwards at what is working?
What you have accomplished and what you are capable to do? This is really critical to success. Okay, so let's talk about how it's going now. You heard a lot from me about where I had some stumbles, where I learned some things, areas that I recommend investing in just to make sure that you are building and growing in the right areas to become a successful entrepreneur.
What I'll say is after nine months. I have a lot more focus on who I serve, how I serve them, what my brand stands for, what it is we do, what it is that we don't do. I have more clarity on, you know, what is affordable for people? What are they willing to pay? We have more rhythm within our business. So being able to say, how do we wanna show up in the world?
What does that look like? What time do we need dedicated to be able to do those things? And we have conviction. So we have this mission where both Catalina and I are both dedicated to this is who we serve and this is what we wanna be doing and this is what we're growing towards. So clarity has really come into focus over the past nine months.
And I would say the other benefit is Catalina, and I have worked together so much now that we can basically finish, finish each other's sentences. And so being able to have that like shared brain in doing this work has been really, really helpful. We have landed on the suite of tools that we really like, and I will definitely share those tools again with you in the show notes so that you have access if you're interested in checking them out.
We have found that they integrate, that they automate really well, and so over time we have been able to build up a lot of automations in our business to be able to do things much more efficiently. We have built a membership and helped create like what is that environment looks like. We have done leadership master classes and have been able to serve people in different capacities there, and have done corporate trainings that have been really fun.
We have go-to mentors that we reach out to on almost a weekly basis to connect and collaborate, and we have a big, bold vision for the future. And so. I'm really excited about the future of Worthy to lead. So does all of this feel easy now? No. Do I have it all figured out? No. Do I know a hundred percent that this is gonna work?
No. But is it worth it? Absolutely. The freedom, the creative control, and the alignment to the things that I really wanna do to give back to the community that I have been a part of for so long is just clear is about. And I think being able to spend that time to clarify what it is you wanna do and how you wanna serve others is really the biggest joy of all.
And so I'm really passionate about building this into the future, and I can't wait to see where it goes. So I'm a hundred percent glad. That I did this endeavor. So just as a quick recap, my biggest takeaways for you today, if I have to summarize what I learned, is prepare that financial runway. Make sure you know what your risk tolerance is and how much you need to be able to figure out in advance before you kick off and go full-time.
I would start building your brand early and really focus on LinkedIn as a strategy, as well as building your email list. I would treat your business plan as an experiment and start gathering evidence as soon as you can, especially before you take the leap. If you can take on some clients ahead of time, if you can work through how you pay, how you create contracts, all of those things ahead of that start date, you're gonna be in good shape.
I would keep the technology simple, so don't overdo it at the beginning. Just use the minimum amount of tools. Have a one-page website. Do a LinkedIn profile. Just keep it super, super simple and just give people a way to reach out to you. I would think about your skill gaps and either learn really, really quickly by investing in education, in online courses or mentorship, and if it's something you don't wanna be doing, then figure out who you're gonna outsource to.
How do you get plugged in with that person and start training them in so they can really be a part of that system with you as soon as you can? Because you don't wanna be the bottleneck. You don't wanna be the one that is killing the momentum in your business because you can't solve the technology issues yourself, or you can't commit to writing the content.
Another lesson that we talked about was not doing it alone. So again, find your people, find your mentors, get some coaching support. Find a community of people who lift you up, who energize you. You can find these people in a lot of different places, but definitely look at both in-person meetups and then also online resources as well.
Finally, take time to celebrate your wins. This is not an extra nice-to-have. This is part of building your optimistic mindset as an entrepreneur, and it's gonna be something that you lean on and that you need in the future to keep you engaged and to help make sure that you don't become 50% of entrepreneurs that quit or fail.
So if you're thinking about making that big move from a corporate career into entrepreneurship, please let me know, and I would love to be on this journey with you. I love being with other entrepreneurs who are early stage, who are figuring things out, who are experimenting and trying things. It is really, really fun to share insights with each other.
I would love to be connected with you. If you are enjoying this podcast, don't forget to subscribe so that you get all the new episodes as I release them. You can subscribe at Worthytolead.co/podcast. And please do share this with anyone who is thinking about starting their entrepreneurial journey, and especially if they're leaving a corporate job where they've been there for their whole career, I would love to encourage them.
I would love to make sure that they're thinking about the right things as they take that big leap. And I would love to cheer them on their journey. So please connect me and I would love to give them some encouragement and confidence. Until next time, keep showing up and keep doing the work that matters and keep leading like you're worthy to lead because you are. Bye for now.
So I know that we shared a lot of resources today and a lot of. Different lessons learned, and it's hard to kind of keep track of all of those things. So we put together a free downloadable guide for you to use moving forward that includes all of those things, plus the links to the tools and resources that we are finding really helpful in our business.
You can get a hold of that free downloadable guide at worthytolead.co/newbusiness. Please let us know what you think. Please let us know how your journey is going. I would love to hear what is working for you, what is helping you feel confident? What tools do you love? And I would love to be in community with you as you're going through this.
So please DM me and reach out and share how it's going. I would love to hear.
