How To Successfully Transition From Corporate Career to Entrepreneurship [Guest Post – Nicole Roberts Jones] #BankrollYourBrilliance

I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost 20 years. I love my work. It’s my calling.  My career training was in journalism and public relations so it only seemed natural to open up a PR firm.  As with everything, in order to stay relevant you must make pivots according to what’s going on in the market. I’ve been pretty savvy about “reinventing” myself and leveraging my career skills into a variety of PR and marketing products, programs and publications to serve my ideal clients. I’ve leveraged my skills and expertise to create mentoring programs, lives events, PR coaching programs, books, affiliate programs, membership programs, publications like Speakers magazine and on-going marketing consulting for organizations and private clients.  This economy is called the “gig economy” or the “freelance economy.” Bottom line: we must learn how to leverage what we know and get paid for.  In other words….#BankrollYourBrilliance

That’s why I am excited share my friend, Nicole Roberts Jones’ article, here it is: 
Whenever I talk to someone about entrepreneurship, the three F’s come to mind: Freedom, Flexibility, and Financial Potential. The benefits of being your own boss far outweigh the regular 9 to 5. The idea of not being penned to a desk and having to answer to a superior, the flexibility of being able to work anywhere you want when you want, and having a form of control over your earning potential can’t be beaten. These three F’s have many people in the American workplace running to entrepreneurship.
According to entrepreneur.com, there are 550,000 people every month in the United States leaving corporate America for entrepreneurship. It’s great that more people are taking that risk. However, there’s another “F” that I also must mention when it comes to starting your own business and that’s “Failure.” Eighty percent of entrepreneurs who set out to start their own business don’t make it past their first year of being in business, and a huge reason for this is because they don’t have a plan set in place to take them from A to Z.
It’s not enough to have a great business idea. You have to know how to turn your ideas into profit and you need a solid plan in place to get you from idea to revenue. In order to make the successful leap from employee to entrepreneur, here are 5 steps that will help you map out a plan and with the right movement and timing behind them, can easily steer you on the path to writing your own paycheck.

• Don’t quit your day job…yet Since flexibility and freedom are two of the main reasons many desire to be their own boss, quitting your day job is usually the first thing you set your sights on. However, unless you have quite a bit of a nest egg or a trust fund, it’s often the last step you should take. The smartest way to approach going into your new business venture is to build your business alongside your 9 to 5. When you quit your day job without any kind of gain in your business, you put yourself in a limited financial position and what I know for sure is, you need to be in a position of abundance in order to create abundance. Meaning, you can’t create more from a place of lack and when you’re worried about how you’re going to eat and keep a roof over your head, this becomes your focus. Yes, it has been done but it’s an approach full of unnecessary struggle. So my suggestion to you is to build your business alongside your 9 to 5 and when you get to predictable income, then you can jump ship. Here are the 4 steps that can lead you there.

 

• How Are You The Answer to a Need? I’ve seen this happen many times: people get super excited about starting their business, building their brand, etc., and they often go out and get all the business accoutrements (logo, business cards, website, etc..) and get stuck here because they haven’t fully thought through the next steps. While your logo and website may attract the eye, what’s going to keep your customer there? Remember this: you are 1 of 550,000 starting a business that particular month. How are you the answer to someone’s need in the marketplace? You must be able to define who you are in a way that provides clarity, confidence, and value to your potential customers. In my business, I help my clients to figure this out through what I call my “Fierce Formula.” When you are standing in the full power of what makes you the answer to someone’s need and you package it from that standpoint, the revenue automatically follows.

 

• How Will You Package it? The key to building a successful business alongside your 9 to 5 is to build it in such a way that it allows you to make money while you sleep. What’s the key to doing this? You have to establish a business model for yourself that doesn’t require you to be present. For example, whether I’m coaching one on one, or doing a group seminar, I’m simultaneously bringing in revenue through my online courses, yes those programs where I am not physically present. You only have so many hours in a day and if you’re only packaging your brilliance based on hours and you being present, you’ll never get to six figures in your business. You need to have 4-6 streams of income and at least two of those revenue streams should programs that don’t require your physical presence.

 

• How Will You Measure Success? One thing many business owners neglect to do upfront is figure out how much money they will need to generate, and how they plan to do so quarter after quarter, month after month in order to reach their desired income. A good starting point to help you figure this out is to go by what you’re making now at your day job. This allows you to at least begin with what you will need to sustain your current lifestyle. You need to have a plan that gets you to at least that level in your own business.

 

• What’s Your Give Notice Deadline? Once you know all the answers to 1 – 4, it will be easier to determine how long it will take you to be able to hand in that letter of resignation and start packing up your office. Begin by setting weekly and monthly goals for yourself, eventually working your way up to quarterly and yearly predictable income in your business.

Some people have a hard time seeing how they can create a successful business on their own. They’re successful in corporate America and contributing to someone else’s company but they can’t quite see how to duplicate that same success in their own business. It’s okay. Coming up with and executing the perfect formula for your success takes time. But if you stick to the five things mentioned above, you’ll be working from the resort of your choice in no time.
I am inviting you to join my friend, Nicole Roberts Jones, for a special virtual, no cost event called Bankroll Your Brilliance.  It’s time you stopped talking about your dream, and you started taking action. Learn more and enroll here http://bit.ly/bankrollyourbrilliance !