Click Here to Read the Transcript for This Episode You’ve seen the social media posts: “To be successful, quit your corporate career and strike out on your own!” “Entrepreneur ‘til I die,” “Don’t make someone else rich!” While the idea that becoming an entrepreneur leads to increased flexibility and income may hold true for some, it’s not a universal fit and often takes time to materialize. In this episode, I delve into my personal journey as an entrepreneur, recounting various challenges and setbacks. I discuss why I consider Journey To Launch a success, despite encountering multiple “failures,” and offer genuine advice for those contemplating a move towards self-employment. In this episode you’ll also learn more about: Various businesses I tried and failed before I began Journey To Launch Actionable tips if you’re thinking about jumping into entrepreneurship How to set yourself up for entrepreneur success in the beginning The pros and cons of working for yourself + more Instagram: @Journeytolaunch Twitter: @JourneyToLaunch Facebook: @Journey To Launch Join the Private Facebook Group Join the Waitlist for My FI Course Get The Free Jumpstart Guide Get The Budget Bootcamp for FREE Jamila Souffrant 0:02 I think the most important thing to understand is that your failures are not who you are. It’s a big part of having a growth mindset, and being able to make mistakes and bounce back from them. Not take your mistakes personally, the same way you would forgive someone you care about and that you love. If they make a mistake, you forgive yourself for making mistakes, even big ones. Intro 0:25 T-minus 10 seconds. Welcome to the Journey To Launch podcast with your host, Jamila Souffrant. As a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave Journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. If you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journey to launch.com. Or click the description of wherever you’re listening to this episode. In the show notes, you’ll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned and so much more. Also, whether you are in OG journey or are brand new to the podcast, I’ve created a free jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes, so listen to stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources, and so much more. You can go to journey to launch.com/jumpstart to get your guide right now. Okay, let’s hop into the episode. Jamila Souffrant 1:39 Hey, hey, journeyers Welcome to the journey to launch Podcast. I’m so excited that you’re spending time with me today. at whatever point you’re listening to this, if you’re listening to this in real time, hello, my book, Your journey to financial freedom a step by step guide to achieving wealth and happiness. It’s available right now, like literally, you can go hopefully into your local bookstore into any big chain bookstores like Barnes and Noble, online, target Amazon bookshop.org. Okay to support your local book shops to buy the book and get it immediately. It’s the perfect gift. Okay, so if you are enjoying this podcast, if you’ve been listening to me, you can buy the book and get all the goodness that is Jamila and my advice and the warmth, I hope that you hear from me over the mic into your ears, you can read it, you can read it and have it as a guide, and then also give it to someone else. Not everyone listens to podcast, I’m pretty sure you’ve been trying to tell some friends or family about this podcast. And they’re just like, what, how do I even download it. And so with this, you can give them a book as a Christmas gift. Or even if it’s a late Christmas gift or as a hey, let’s start the new year out, getting our finances in order so we can live our best life. It’s the perfect gift. Go to your journey to financial freedom.com. That’s the home of the book website. You can find all the places to buy it from there. See what special bonuses I have. And yeah, pick the book up. Okay, so this episode is going to be about entrepreneurship. It’s been a while since I’ve done entrepreneurship focused or based episodes, especially a solo episode, where I can share more of my thoughts and experience and entrepreneurship. I did a poll recently on Instagram. And the question was, what do you want my next solo episode to be about? And it was like budgeting, saving, investing and entrepreneurship and everyone it was 100%. The choice was entrepreneurship. So I’m like, okay, okay, I can do that. And so I want to do that. I do also talk a little bit about entrepreneurship in the book, because it has been a pathway for me to be able to enjoy working while on the pursuit of financial independence and being able to quit my job and do the work that I enjoy right now. A big part of that is because I was able to build a successful business that makes money that can pay me, but then makes an impact. But I’ve also tried other entrepreneurial ventures that did not work. And I actually had my sister… so my sister Shana, she was reading the book, I tasked her with reading the book before it came out. Because I wanted her to pull out some just information from her perspective on what might be interesting to highlight when I talk about the book. And she actually did send me a text and she said, I think you need to do an episode about entrepreneurship too, especially about the failures and what you’ve been learning. So she sent me a bunch of questions that I’m going to also try to answer and then I want to give some tips because you know, I like being helpful and giving you action steps or at least things that you can think about if you’re listening to my story, and lessons that you can apply to your own life. So how did I get here? You know, a lot of you already know my journey if you’ve been listening, but just really a quick recap. I discovered financial independence when I was pregnant with my first son in 2014. And at that point, I was working in corporate America for some time, I think at that point for almost a decade, or, yeah, just about a decade full time, or maybe just a little under. And I was past 30 years old, I was 31. And I had this long commute that I was comfortable in, even though I did not like it in my 20s. And before I had kids, it was bearable. If it took me two hours to get home, no big deal. Who am I going home to? I mean, I did have a boyfriend, fiance, and then husband, but it was different. Like we just had more time and energy. So if I got home at seven, it was fine. But being pregnant with my first son, and realizing I did not want this to be my life anymore. And I knew I wanted more children, I needed to find a way out. Now to step back just a little bit. When I was growing up, I always just envision being my own boss, I always had that personality of I don’t like telling people telling me what to do. I don’t like asking for permission, I like to be self sufficient. And so even when I got my job right out of college, and I started to work full time, I had to clear to myself, I’m not working for anyone past 30 years old, I’m going to get the hell out of here. And I with that mindset thought, Okay, if you want that to be the case, and you What are you going to do to earn money, because at that point I didn’t understand or know about the fire movement or financial independence, and that you could just invest and save your way to being able to quit your job. I thought you had to build a business, a multimillion dollar business. I thought you had to marry rich or win the lottery. So I did not matter which or what not dating fridge was dating for love. And I didn’t play the lottery. So I said, Okay, what businesses can I look at that can maybe one day be my main source of income? I believe I’ve done the vending machine episode before, I’m not sure if I did a magazine episode like sharing my journey. But if we did, I’ll put that in the show notes. But the first venture I tried was a magazine, an online magazine with my best friend Shelia. And we started it in college, it was called Empress magazine, a lifestyle magazine for the multi multicultural woman. And at that point, there weren’t really any magazines that were out that spoke to us. You know, there was the honey magazine, if you can remember that magazine. They were not around anymore. But there just wasn’t a magazine for young women lifestyle magazines. And so we thought, okay, we do a physical print magazine. And then of course, when we looked at how much that costs, we said, let’s make it digital. And so Empress magazine was something that my friend and I Shelia we started and in college, and we had our issues. And in terms of issues, meaning what we put out on a weekly or monthly basis in print, and they were little pamphlets, and we would give them out in our campuses, and then realized we needed to switch to digital. And so we had a website, we had a newsletter, we were doing all the networking. Now this is one of those interesting stories where in college, I had reached out because to the founder of Black Enterprise, so Earl Grey senior who has since passed away. And I remember learning about him because he started Black Enterprise magazine. And I said to myself, Oh like that is what I would want Empress magazine to be. And I remember finding out that he grew up in Brooklyn, and went to a school in Brooklyn. And so I sent him a letter, I wrote him a letter in college, expressing how I was a fan of what he has built. And that I myself had a magazine and I would love to learn from him. Do you know he emailed me back? And I remember it was his assistant that emailed back. And he said, Listen, you can come in and have a meeting with me. I’ll answer some questions. And this was again, I was in college when this happened. So I remember going into the meeting and he was very nice. And he one of the things he said to me was, you know if you’re going to be successful, because I get a lot of requests and mail, but I don’t answer much of them or I can’t answer a lot of them but something about your letter made me answer it. And I remember having that meeting and feeling so encouraged. Because I said to myself, wow, look at that, you know, he took out time from his busy schedule to answer little old me and my inquiry and also being able to see people up close doing the thing. Something that you want to do makes it more real. He definitely imparted words of wisdom. But you know, left that meeting and still charged on in terms of trying to build the magazine with then graduated from college and boat started working full time. And that’s when things started to dwindle a little bit in terms of our energy because it wasn’t taking off as much as we wanted it to. It was a lot of work. And then now we had full time jobs. And so both of us would be at our jobs, trying to do our task on the magazine on the side. And I just remember, you know, the first couple years of us doing that we tried to make it work, we’d be sending out our weekly newsletter, we’d have our Twitter account, or social media accounts at the time, which were just Twitter, and Facebook, there was no Instagram. And eventually, we both just started to fall out of love with what it took to make this thing work. And I started to just give up on the idea that this could be successful. And honestly, once you start to think that way, and then it’s a consistent thought process, it’s really hard to get back on track, and do the work that it is going to require for a business to be successful. So we ended up saying to each other, like, let’s just be honest, it’s not something that’s working, let’s close it down. And we stopped the magazine. And I still had dreams, though of not working in corporate America. So I said to myself, Okay, this is not working, or that didn’t work. What’s my next thing? Now at that point, I was working in real estate investments. And I knew I loved real estate as an asset. I loved it more than any asset at the time. This was before I understood investing. Because I love that, you know, it was a real asset that you can see, you can touch you can walk into a building. And I said to myself, Well, what about if I got my real estate sales license, so that I can sell real estate or rent out homes or apartments. Now in my corporate job, I was doing real estate or I was a part of real estate on the commercial side. But on the side, I thought to myself, well, you know, people make money selling real estate and renting houses out. Let me try that. So I went and I got my real estate salespersons license, I knew a realtor that I can work under. And I tried that for a bit. And I remember going to show my first rental unit. And I immediately knew when I was showing it that this wasn’t for me. Well, I did try I tried longer than that. I remember working out of a real estate office for a summer. On the side again, I was working full time. So I would come from my job and then work and you know, try to find leads and but I remember distinctly going for my first showing for a rental unit. And the people that I was showing the place to they were so finicky. And I can’t remember their attitudes per se, but I just wasn’t feeling it. And I said to myself, I don’t have the patience for this. And so it was another thing that I said, this is not going to work. I don’t want to personally sell real estate, I know you can be successful doing it. But I don’t want to put the work in to make it happen. And so I stopped doing that. The next business or side thing that I tried was vending machine. So at this point, I was getting more into Okay, passive income, how do I get passive income. And I knew people talked about vending machines being a source of passive income, you need to buy the machine. But once you set it up, and you have a great location, basically, you’re making money while you’re not there. And I found a company that sold healthy vending machines, or they branded themselves as a healthy vending machine. And they claimed to have the latest technology and had very good marketing. And so I said to myself, You know what, let me try the vending machine route. I’m going to buy three machines, and try to place them in locations. And one of the promises that this vending machine company or they made was, we will help you find location. So I said okay, because the biggest thing is location, location, location. And I went in I bought three machines. I paid I definitely feel like I did a podcast episode on this, but I overpaid for the machines. When I say I got scammed, I mean, you know, I willingly went into this. But I just didn’t understand really what I was doing or that I should not have paid that much for the vending machines. I think I ended up spending over like $7,000 for each vending machine. So it was over $20,000 that I paid might have been under 25,000. But it was a ridiculous amount. And I also remember at that point, it was between buying real estate so at this point to add on my property in DUMBO my condo, and I was interested in okay, maybe if I didn’t want to sell real estate, I can just own real estate. And I thought to myself, Okay, I can either invest in a property out of state or buy vending machines, and I went the vending machine route. So I ended up buying the vending machines and my husband now he’s my husband now at this point, he would be the one that would stock them or fill them up when they needed to be and then I would try to find the locations. We had shirts made. I remember having a name or our company at the time or the vending machine business was healthy vending for wellness bending, number four wellness, and we had shirts and it was about finding a location so I wouldn’t be I call all you know these commercial properties, hospitals. We even went to a couple of hospitals in person to try and pitch Hey, you should have a healthy vending machine. And we did end up placing the vending machines at a hotel in the city, in Times Square, and at a hotel in Brooklyn. And so I have success with placing them, the hotel in the city didn’t work out because the person there the manager, she just made things really difficult in terms of being able to fill it up. Plus, it was a hassle to drive from Brooklyn to Times Square to fill it up. And you know, that didn’t work out. But the location in Brooklyn was doing okay, it was doing well. But after a couple of years, the vending machines because the system or the technology was getting older, it would break or it would require someone having to service it. And at that point, we only had, I think, one or two vending machines at that location and the other third vending machine was in storage. So we were spending money on the vending machine and storage plus, now money to fix the vending machines that kept breaking. And it was just not something that after a while we were both interested in. And we had to come to the realization that this was not a business I wanted to stay in. And I wasn’t making money, you know, we’re just trying to make back all the money that I spent and put up front and buying the machines. So eventually, we ended up selling the machine with the location to someone who wanted to buy it, and then I ended up selling. I think at that point, now we had two vending machines and storage and selling it at a loss. And I counted my losses and walked away. And so at this point, I was with a vending machine, I believe I was late 20s, when that kind of fell through. So in my 20s this whole time, I’m thinking if I don’t want to work past 30, I need to start a business. Here I am trying and starting these businesses, I’m either losing interest, I’m not successful at it, or it’s just failing, like it’s not working the way I thought it would. And so after the vending machine fiasco, I said to myself, listen, you have a decent job, your partner has a decent job, everyone around you just works. Obviously entrepreneurship or getting rich through a business is not going to be it just work and be happy and be content. And that’s what I did. So this whole dream of not working past 30 years old for anyone else did not happen. I failed at that. But it was being pregnant with my son at 31. With this crazy commute, that I was reignited in No, this is not it, I have to find a way out, I didn’t know what that way out would be I didn’t know that people could invest and save a portion of their income over 10 to 15 years and then be able to quit their jobs. But at this point, I had nothing to lose. So I found out about the fire movement, and then started to devour podcasts and blogs about it. And was so interested in what I was learning applied it to my finances over a couple of years. And because I was so inspired by other people listening to them and inspired me to start my own platform. And so I started not initially wanting or knowing that this could be a business that made money, I really started as a almost a student of the space student learning what I could do to help myself, then, you know, I became a fan of other people who were already doing great things in the space. So not only was I looking at it as wow, this person was able to save and invest. But then I started to look at content creators, and realize that these people were making money. And I always loved you know, I know that this is probably happening to me at this point, which was why I still try to share as much as I feel comfortable. My journey and some of the numbers because I remember just being an observer or starting out and having the brand journey to launch and not making any money but watching other creators say Oh, I just got paid $1,000 to write an article, or I saw that they were talking about being brand brand partners with someone and getting paid to do it. And in some instances, they would share how much they were making $2,000 $5,000 or, you know, it was money. And I thought to myself, Wow, I didn’t realize that this could be a business itself. And although my initial goal or want up starting the brand was really in from humble beginnings of hey, let me share what I’m sharing. I don’t have a grand scheme to make this a big thing. But it’s something here. I know there’s a voice like mine missing in this space. So let me just start something and that’s what I did. But as I started moving forward, I started to realize that people were making money doing this. And if they could do it, why couldn’t I figure something out? And it was seeing other people doing what I wanted to do or I didn’t even know was an option that opened my eyes and showed me a new pathway. What I could do while on the pathway or while on the journey to financial independence that I had confidence to try it for myself. So as I started to be more consistent with journey to launch, I found my stride in making the podcast and consistently putting out an episode every single week without fail for years. I mean, I still do that to this till this day, where a new episode goes out every week. I mean, I’ve have done replays, I started to do that more recently. But in the beginning, I made sure that an episode went out every week. So as I became more consistent, as I began to grow my audience and the community of journeyers, I said to myself, I’m going to pursue this. And so I made a decision when I was pregnant with my third child, that I did not want to keep working, while working on on my business on the side and having a family to reach financial independence sooner. And at that point, I wanted to reach at 40 years old, I said to myself, I can quit my job now. Try entrepreneurship. And so make dirties launch my job, my full time thing that brings in money, while still on the pursuit of financial independence. And instead of investing into our retirement accounts, we switch strategies and invested into an fu fund saved up money to create this runway, so that I could quit my job, and then pursue journey to launch full time. And I definitely had fears about taking this route. You know, I didn’t journey towards wasn’t making much of any money. But I knew that if I had more time to dedicate to the business. And if I could really pour myself into what I was doing, then it could be successful. I always have backup plans. And I advise this for everyone when an alkyl over just some tips or if you’re thinking about becoming an entrepreneur or if you are one. But I always think about what is my backup plan if this does not work. And the backup plan was okay, we saved up enough money that can last us and help supplement our income at the time my husband’s income to cover us for at least two years. So if journey to launch doesn’t make any money and doesn’t lose any money, then we’d be okay for two years. And if you’re finding that this is not something you like or want to do, you need to go back and find a job or we’d have to totally change the way we lived. So that would be we would live on just one income. But that would require significant changes in our lifestyle. And I went for it. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t everything was easy or smooth. I definitely if you scroll back to some of the older episodes, I did share, I did start sharing my annual revenue, I shared my annual revenue for about like two or three years. Meaning you know, the first year I made like when I quit, it was like 17,000 I’m not sure the exact number. And then one year, I don’t know if it was immediately after, but there was a year that I broke like 250,000. And I share that in an episode. And then the following year, it was about 400,000. And I knew that while it was great having my own business, being my own boss, you know, some of the same challenges that came up even while I was working came up in entrepreneurship, because you have to still be a self starter. So yes, when you have a boss, you work in an environment where you have other people that you can lean on, it’s easy to hide, it’s easy to not go full speed or not put your all in. But it’s you can’t really do that when you have your own business. You can but it directly impacts your income or what your potential is. And at least in a job for the most part. As long as you’re not messing up a lot. You can hold back. Not put a lot of energy into it. But no you get a paycheck with your own business. I believe in the beginning especially just like with your financial journey, there is more upfront work to be done and more energy and more effort. But as you continue depending on where you want to go, you can ease up a bit and not coast. But it not be as intense once you’ve set up the systems. You have streams of income, you create a process. Same thing with entrepreneurship and your finances in the beginning stages versus as you get more comfortable. And so I’ve been a full time entrepreneur now so I quit my job in 2018 is now 2023. So that’s about five years. And I can’t imagine going back to a typical or standard job, I have been offered positions. You know, I’ve had a couple companies, one in particular came to me a startup, and they wanted me to work for them. And I considered it because, you know, one of the things about having a job, or working in a structured environment is, it’s nice to know, you’ll always get paid. Well, you know, I know some people can’t always say that. But for the most part, you can depend on a paycheck every other week, or whatever cadence that you get your paycheck. And there’s some security in that for a lot of people. One thing about being an entrepreneur, especially if you haven’t set up systems that are recurring streams of revenue, then it’s hard to, to see or to plan or to get comfortable. Because there’s so much uncertainty as you’re growing your business. And so I considered I thought about it. And I remember having the initial conversations with the people. And I think what definitely turned me off was meetings, they talked about, you know, they meet twice a week, and this the set times, and I’m just saying, Nope, nope, nope, nope, I remember it was around the summertime. And in the summertime, especially when it is nice outside, I like going to the beach, I like taking a walk or going for a run, I don’t like to be restricted. I like to be able to move things around on my calendar, even, you know, my lovely assistant, Johanna, we’re supposed to have a meeting every week, it’s on our calendar. But we don’t meet half the time, or most of the of the time, because I’m always ending up doing something else. And I just we both said each other, let’s just send, let’s just send the updates via Slack. So I don’t like to be confined or tied or locked down into having to do anything. Now, of course, having a business means I still need to do things, I do have deadlines for journey to launch. And having to get episodes out and send it to my editor and have people on my team helped me do this. So I do, I am responsible, or certain things, but they’re flexible. And that’s what I really love about entrepreneurship. And so I think ultimately, becoming a full time entrepreneur has been the best thing I’ve done personally. While on my journey to financial independence, there are definitely ups and downs. And I want to talk a little bit about the pros and cons. Because I think so many times we talk about all the great things of being an entrepreneur and I know it can feel appealing or it looks appealing from the outside looking in if you’re stuck in an environment, or restrictive situation. But I actually don’t believe entrepreneurship is for everyone. I believe that a lot of people can do well, in a corporate career, if they find you the environment, and people and managers in places in which they thrive. And if you can do that and make a good living, while pursuing financial independence, or while having a side business, you should do that. But of course, there is the appeal of dish, the time flexibility. And so many of us are poor in time, and poor and energy because the pandemic helped a little of this, but you know, with the commute time, and unnecessary in person meetings, this training. So, you know, entrepreneurship is a wonderful tool for a lot of people. But it doesn’t have to be your tool, if it’s not something that you feel pulled to. So I would say this for anyone who has a full time job who’s working and feels like well, I don’t want to do this, I rather be my own boss that you should consider if you are a someone who’s self motivated and a self starter, because in entrepreneurship, you need to be a self starter, there is no one telling you what to do. There is no annual review by someone else. Now you can create that in your own business, but you have to have the want to do that and to keep that up and that kind of structure in your life. So think about how you are currently in your job, and what are the things you don’t like about it. And be really honest with yourself if the things that you don’t like about your job are because of other people or because of your interaction or your energy that you bring to the environment. Because I’d say that that energy is still there. You know, there are many times where I thought it was because of my job that I felt this way that I didn’t feel good. Or I felt the heavy cloud over me you know, walking into the building, or I didn’t feel motivated sometimes to do my work when I’ve worked in corporate America. And sometimes I still have those feelings with my entrepreneurship journey in my current business, it’s still happened. So at the core, you don’t change your circumstances and how you are able to spend your time and energy will change with who you are just like, you know, the saying that money doesn’t really change a person, it just magnifies who you are. So if you were a horrible person, before you had money, you’re gonna be a horrible person after if you are a giving friendly, nice person without money. If you do get money, you’ll probably just be more of that person. I think it’s the same thing with entrepreneurship, or how your life looks, if there’s something bothering you. That’s why it’s so important to figure out what that is, and not necessarily tie it to what you do for a living. And while again, that can impact you, I understand I was there, making sure that you realize what it is that this is making you feel the way you feel. So that way you can help guide yourself while becoming an entrepreneur or as you are an entrepreneur. Some of the tips that I would say, if you’re thinking about becoming an entrepreneur is think about the way in which you want to pursue it. So I quit my job before drainage launch was making money, or enough money or replacing my income. But I also had a lot of security in place because I had a partner who worked. And so we had some income coming in, that’s definitely a privilege, he had health care that I can, that I could be on. So in a lot of ways, I was okay to take this leap, because I had some of these parachutes to help me in terms of not feeling stressed to bring in money. I also prepared for about eight months and saved up money to help me be able to not stress about earning money in the business. And so financially I prepared for that. So for you, you may be thinking, well, I want to quit tomorrow, which is fine, but then what. So I would create a multi month or month multi year plan, depending on your circumstances, and see how pursuing entrepreneurship on the side or your side hustle while working feels. And if you think about it, your full time job is your investor to your side hustle or in entrepreneurship. When I was getting those consistent checks in at my job, it was so much easier to make entrepreneurial decisions or invest in the business because I looked at my job as my investor, or my paycheck as the money that would help fund my business. Now, being a full time entrepreneur, basically the money that I make, I’m making this decision how it’s being spent, is it spent on expenses, or is it a profit that goes back into the business or profit that comes to me, so it’s really all in the business. So if you have a job, you don’t look at it more as a investor to what you want to do in the future. So that you can start to Save and test run, what it feels like to run this business. Now you also can have the opportunity to to take a sabbatical from your job I had rich, who was on the podcast, we’ll link that in the episode show notes. Rich who said he, you know was able to take a sabbatical from his job. And because of that, he thought, okay, maybe I’ll do entrepreneurship full time, instead of going back. But when he realized that he actually did not want to be an entrepreneur full time, he liked having the stability of a job. So I’d highly recommend listening to that interview because I thought it was really nice to hear from someone who said, Hey, I tried entrepreneurship full time, I thought that’s what I should do, because everyone around me is doing it. Or it looks so cool on Instagram that people are entrepreneurs. But actually, I liked my job. And I liked the stability of it. And he put boundaries in his job or around what he did on a day to day basis. So he feels more free, and now is making great money while still pursuing his businesses on the side. So ultimately, I think that is a great way to go. Now of course, if you have other responsibilities like I did, children, maybe family members that you’re taking care of a horrible commute that’s going to impact how much energy you have to be able to do all the things and you may need to make a choice. But think through and plan out and delay if you can, quitting and leaving a job behind if you’re not financially prepared to figure things out in your business. As you can hear, in the beginning of this episode, I talked about all the things I stopped or started and stopped or lost interest in and honestly I did have that fear with journey to launch that you know I’ve given up or I haven’t seen a lot of things through. I lost interest, or it just didn’t feel right. So I stopped pursuing it, which is not a bad thing. I mean, I love I love that about myself. But there was a fear of Wait, well, what if I don’t like doing Johnny’s launch in a year or a few months or weeks. And then what? And this is one of the things that if you have a personality like this, where you live too much in the what ifs and unknowns, and try to make decisions, based on circumstances that have not happened, that then paralyze you in the moment, is to really step back. And so that’s what I did, instead of worrying about what if I don’t like this anymore, I focused on how I felt in the moment. And I knew that at the end of the day, I shouldn’t look at journey to launch even though it is my business, it is still a job in a way. So there are some things like I said, I have to show up and do. There’s responsibility here. And because I want to continue on my lifestyle with my lifestyle at my block level of how I want to spend than earning money through journey to launch right now is important. And so just like effort that needs to be put into a beginning of your financial journey, or business or just on the journey itself. There needs to be effort applied to what I’m doing, and there will be friction. There will be times where yes, I’m tired. I don’t want to do this thing. I rather go sleep or do something else. But how is this feeling? Going through me? Is it a temporary feeling? Or is it a permanent one, and most things are temporary feelings. And so I think the most important thing to understand is that your failures are not who you are. It’s a big part of having a growth mindset. And being able to make mistakes and bounce back from them. Not take your mistakes personally, the same way you would forgive someone you care about and that you love. If they make a mistake, you forgive yourself for making mistakes, even big ones. So for me overcoming failure and having the confidence to do journey to launch even though I failed, what felt like failures in other areas of my life, I knew that they weren’t, I knew that all the skill sets that I picked up in my previous jobs, or in my previous entrepreneurial pursuits helped me today, I might not always be able to pinpoint how it’s helping me. But everything I am, everything I’m doing is because of what I experienced and learned in the past. So tips for my emerging entrepreneurs or would be entrepreneurs listening, prepared to take the leap, unless it’s something that you need to immediately leave because of safety or health reasons. Take your time and plan your escape route. And that may look like a one year plan or a two year plan six months, but begin to look at how you can get your finances in order. So there’s a couple of things here financially and personally in your finances. How can you make sure you’re okay? So that might mean paying down debt so that you have less to worry about paying when you’re a full time entrepreneur, it can mean figuring out what a budget will look like at different levels. So one of the exercises that I did was if we kept everything the same and did not adjust our budget, how far can our money take us? If we needed to adjust our budget and cut back? What does that look like? And so look at different levels of your budget at different ways you want to spend maybe, from you know Glock level five, which is more luxurious to walk level one, which is frugal, and think through what that looks like so that you can be financially flexible, if necessary. Should you not earn as much money or have some setbacks? What is your plan for your business? So you don’t need to have it all figured out. I’m you know, I’m a big believer in that. But what is your plan to make your business as successful as you need it to be to support your lifestyle and your enough point, whatever that enough point is. Ideally, when you are looking at whatever industry you want to go in, you should join communities and seek out people you can learn from, to feel like this is a possibility for you to also accomplish. It is one of the things that I would not be here today if I didn’t start attending the conferences, going to fin con seeing people like myself doing this work full time going to Podcast Movement when I went to Podcast Movement a couple of times seeing podcasters who were full time podcasters meeting business owners and being able to talk to them so there is this level of seeing people from afar and not getting the real tea, the real information and then there is going deeper with people and getting real knowledge on okay I know it sounds good that you’re an entrepreneur but what is what are your in this industry, but what are the setbacks What is your day to day life look like, just as you would advise someone going into a career that they should talk to people in that career. Same thing with entrepreneurship, but you should immerse yourself in whatever industry you are trying to be a part of. You should be seeking out the people you admire following them, and you know, not necessarily taking from them or copying their content, but seeing why their audience likes their work. Why do you like their work? How can you create a point of view and whatever you’re doing in this space, that probably has a lot of people doing the same thing you’re doing, but what makes it unique? Now, everyone is unique. Everyone has a distinct point of view, I think why some people can’t find that point of view is because they’re afraid to show who they really are. They’re afraid to make mistakes to be vulnerable. But it’s that same thing you’re holding back on that if your audience or someone you want to be your customer knows about you that they would love. And it’s something I believed into heavily in any salon, where I’m like, Oh, my gosh, should I say that? Or I don’t really feel like I sound smart, quote, unquote, or did I just pronounced that wrong or, and I’m just like, You know what, it’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to share who you are, and be real, because this is really who I am. And then I think that has helped me go very far in building this community, because when I meet people, they’re just like, you’re literally like my friend and my head, you sound like someone I will talk to. Ultimately, from where I’m standing right now, entrepreneurship has been one of the best decisions I made for my finances, for my family for my life. And if I can go back and do it again, I do it the exact same way. Now, there are decisions I’ll need to make in the future about how big I want to grow journey to launch how much more money I want to make. And quite frankly, I’m fine the way things are, of course, I would love to grow impact. I mean, it’s one of the reasons I wrote the book, your journey to financial freedom. I do want this message to get to more people, but not at the cost of my peace, and my time and my energy. And so for me growing journey to launch from a you know, one soul one full time person who is me, and no employees, but a lot of great, amazing contractors that I work with that helped me what does that look like? And that’s an evolution and step I’ll take when I need to. But you can begin to think about what your entrepreneurship journey will look like. And just know you don’t have to have it all figured out from the point of view in which you stand now. I hope you enjoyed this entrepreneurship episode. I believe I think I’m gonna come back and give some more tactical practical tips about starting a business. And so stay tuned for that. I know this, I felt like this was more hopefully inspirational and just my personal journey that you can learn from my book your journey to financial freedom. A step by step guide to achieving wealth and happiness is currently available. Go buy it. Go to your journey to financial freedom.com For more information, and until next week, keep on journeying journey airs. Outro 43:28 Don’t forget, you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to journey to launch.com. Or click the description of wherever you’re listening to this. And you can still grab your jumpstart guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to journey to launch.com/jumpstart. If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that’s Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you’re happening to listen to this and Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review number to follow me on my social media accounts. I’m at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And I love love love interacting with journeys. They’re three support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here. So show them some love for supporting your girl for and last but not least, share this episode this podcast with a friend or family member or co worker so that we can spread the message of Journey to launch. Alright, that’s it until next week, keep on journeying journeyers Transcribed by https://otter.ai Sign up to receive email updates Enter your name and email address below and I’ll send you periodic updates about the podcast.
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