How hard can it be? Three surprising things I learned when I became an online entrepreneur.
“How hard can it be?”
These five words came back to bite me over and over the first two years of my becoming an online entrepreneur. I’d owned a successful private practice as a psychologist in Austin, TX and was proud that I was always full with clients. When my partner and I started considering moving abroad, I looked into transitioning into life coaching. Considering my years of working with highly traumatized people, life coaching seemed easy.
I decided to make the transition so that we could live in France and closed my private practice. After all, how hard could it be to create a new business?
Hard. It was super hard.
Psychologists and therapists are trained to focus on the client, which means rarely self-disclosing. No one wants to listen to their therapist waxing eloquently on her own depression. However, most people want to know that their life coach understands and maybe has even been in the same place as they are.
- Transparency is key.
I had to learn to open up about myself and this was harder than I imagined. I’d been in therapy for years, had been in group therapy weekly and felt I was self-aware. What I wasn’t aware of previously was that I was selective about my self-disclosures and was hiding behind my label of psychologist. It was second nature to ask a client what was behind the question they’d asked, rather than answering it (although sometimes I would answer it after exploring the intention).
As a coach, I’ve disclosed my history of sexual abuse, my depression, my anxiety, the trauma of illness and more. Many clients have cried when they find out they’re not alone with their experience. And they appreciate seeing that people can heal and move on. When I’ve talked about my own struggles with money and accumulating wealth, they can feel inspired to continue working on their own goals, knowing that I’ve been where they are and now thrive.
I still have therapy clients and I find that I am more transparent with them. When I make self-disclosures either as a therapist or as a coach, I am mindful of my intention and mindful of the client’s need.
2. Mindset is key.
Being an entrepreneur means a lot of alone time. It can also mean facing down fear after fear after fear. Previously, I thought of myself as competent, confident, and secure. But after weeks and then months of not getting any new clients, I was an emotional mess. I started feeling desperate, foolish to have engaged in this venture, certain that I was an impostor. Each day seemed to bring another certainty that I was an idiot for ever thinking I could build a new business. I can’t tell you how many times I cried over my perceived ineptness.
I started reading and researching ways to help myself and realized my fears were driving me. Fear is a natural response to taking risks and trying new things, but, unsupervised, it can take over and make you want to play small in an effort to quell the feelings it pulls up.
Many entrepreneurs experience fear and become risk aversive. Fear is one reason many entrepreneurs fail and have to seek employment. Fear is that voice that whispers, you’re no good at this, you’re always going to be broke, who would want to pay you?, who do you think you are?
Once I began working on my mindset, I realized I was playing out an old story of ‘you can’t have it all’ which translated to, ‘You can move to France with the love of your life but you can’t make money too. You’ll be too big for your britches!’ I dismantled that belief and went to work on affirming all the reasons I could have it all. I no longer was chained to an old story that was keeping me broke.
3. I had to find my own path.
It’s easy when you’re starting out to look to how others became successful. It’s also easy to fall into the trap of believing that someone else has the answers.
I enrolled in courses and learned to create sales funnels, launch programs, set up email lists and other business ‘essentials.’ I worked with coaches who each had their own ideas about how to be successful. I signed up for a yearlong mastermind that was costly and only marginally helpful. This showed me that once again I’d let myself believe that someone else could save me and my business. I watched successful coaches — well, I may have more likely stalked them — trying to figure out their success.
In the end, I let it all go. It wasn’t me. I had stepped away from myself and tried to replicate other people’’s models and their model worked for them, not me. I stopped creating the programs and courses that I thought I should offer (which weren’t selling anyway!) and slowed down to listen to what I wanted to do. Slowing down was hard because all the fears came bubbling back up.
Once the fears were managed (again!) I was able to tune in and find out what I wanted.
What I wanted? I wanted to coach, pure and simple. I wanted to help people get unstuck and fulfill their goals and dreams. I love listening to others and hearing what’s not being said as well as what’s being said. I delved into mindset work and married it with my psychological experience and knowledge. That’s when the shift happened and people began to contact me for my coaching services.
If you’re an online entrepreneur or thinking of becoming, then you likely resonate with parts of my story. My biggest takeaway from the first two years is how mindset is really what makes or breaks an entrepreneur. We all have beliefs that can stand in our way. Remember, however, that a belief is just something you’ve told yourself over and over again — and that doesn’t necessarily make it true. Change your mind, change your life.
