Entrepreneurship – The Road Less Traveled

I believe that life is a journey, and just like any journey, it has some bumps in the road along the way. For me, those “bumps” came in the form of three layoffs in two years.  I drove home from my last job, the remains of its existence in a cardboard box beside me, and I received this message: “Why go to work for somebody else when you can work for yourself?” I literally looked around like, “Who said that?”  And then I realized: “This is my life. I need to create a way for it to support me and bring me freedom and joy.” So… I started on that journey of entrepreneurship.

I knew that the road to entrepreneurship would not be an easy one to travel – with fear, risk, and uncertainty lurking around every corner. But as I drove down that freeway, I also knew there was no turning back now. It was time to follow the right path, and for me, that path was helping others discover theirs!

That third layoff was a turning point in my life: a point in which I realized I needed to make a change. And that change resulted in helping others to make changes as well. In fact, this is a step in my “Stand Out, Be Juicy” program that I call Juicy Benefits – communicating how you change someone’s life. And we all do it! We, as entrepreneurs, all offer services that change people’s lives. You just have to realize it.

To illustrate this point, one of my clients, a professional organizer, wasn’t meeting her goal of making a six-figure income. While she viewed herself as an organizer of stuff, her clients were saying, “You’re so much more than a professional organizer!” She couldn’t see it. So I asked her: “How are people different after working with you?”

Like most people, she couldn’t answer. But I helped her find her voice, her answer, which was: “I help people get to the root of the cause of their clutter so it never comes back.” Ta-da! There it was. Her Juicy Benefits. She started charging more and hit her six-figure mark that year.

The answer to, “How are people different after working with me?” should roll off your tongue, but most likely, it doesn’t. For most entrepreneurs, this is the case.  My own dissatisfaction while working in corporate America should have been obvious to me, but it wasn’t. My point? We don’t always see what’s right in front of us. Sometimes it takes someone from the outside to help us see what we should see, say what we should say, do what we should be doing. Juicy Benefits is just a piece of the puzzle, one curve in your road to discovery. Take the wheel for a moment, and let’s see where we can go!