How funny. I am coaching people on how to protect themselves from overwhelming requests and how to create boundaries, and this is totally applicable to myself as an entrepreneur, and to all the other entrepreneurs I recently met too!What do they have to say ‘NO’ to or negotiate? What do we need to remember in the everyday challenge that is to have your own company or concept you are developing?
I remember one of the first big challenges I had in the pastwhen I worked full time in a company, was my own daydreaming. I could not stop thinking how the things I was doing, and learning could help me to grow my own business. Perhaps this happens to you? You see yourself in your own office; it’s you who decides everything, including where you will put the furniture you like; because you are the founder of a business that is totally yours.
To list other challenges that come to mind are:
- The uncertainty of what is coming next, especially at the beginning of the journey
- Needing advice and knowing that you might get discouraged along the way, especially if you are used to the stability of a fixed job.
- Unhelpful people asking you about money, how are you going to make this happen. And you pretend you know what is going to happen (secretly thinking “oh no, that could be true! Will I make enough to have a living?”)
- Saying NO when you feel utterly discouraged and YES to motivating yourself every day – it can only come from you!
- Having to have a presence in too many places at the same time: your marketing world, your writing world (if you like blogging), your video world (I love it!), your visualisation of the future world, your favorite hobby world (you have to continue with your life, your project is your life, but not ALL of it), your family/friends world.
- Being credible and accredited. You have something wonderful to offer to the world and everyone should know! Usually, for coaches, the best is to become accredited. Companies will ask you, and it is always great to be able to say “I am fully licensed”. It gives our clients trust. Trust is needed for rapport, and it is as basic as having a talent for coaching itself.
- Your own assertiveness: I am teaching assertiveness to others, I should present my company in an assertive way too!
Time management can be tough because if you like what you do, you can do it virtually all the time. Writing late into the night, dreaming up ideas for your business while you should be sleeping and dreaming; living with those butterflies in your stomach that just won’t go away and remind you of the first time you fell in love.
One important thing I would like to share with you all is: WRITE DOWN YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS. Your daily achievements. If you get your motivation from your task list it won’t last long because sometimes you won’t get everything done which is very de-motivating! So, write down which of the tasks you managed to do and re-read it before going to bed.
And remember, as the great Nathaniel Branden says in ‘The Six Pillars of Self Esteem’ “A purposeful, self-discipline life does not mean a life without time or space for rest, relaxation, recreation, random or even frivolous activity. And in any event, the temporary abandonment or purpose also serves a purpose, whether consciously intended or not: that of regeneration”.
Good luck to all entrepreneurs and to all dreamers with cool ideas!
Alessandra Patti, APC, Confidence coach, Zurich
To meet Alessandra, and find out more about how ‘find your way’ can support you achieve your goals too, see here https://coach-accreditation.services/directories/find-an-accredited-coach-or-mentor/entry/133/?pagenum=3