81 \\ Plan Your Transition To Self-Employment - How to come up with a REALISTIC Plan - Your Step-by-Step Guide to Entrepreneurship (From SCARED to CONFIDENT)

Speaker A: Hey, friends. Welcome back to Moonshot Entrepreneur to another episode. It's almost the end of the week and I was thinking about what I want to speak with you guys about so that you are best equipped to really let your Moonshot dream come true and take the leap and work on your path to, to becoming an entrepreneur, to leaving corporate, your corporate role, to leaving, um, your role as a corporate executive and to moving into business ownership. And I think the scariest part about that might be that you really don't know how to go there. And there's a lot of planning involved in that. If you want to do it right, you have to plan your move to self employment. Because guess what, if you don't do it, you're not going to get there. So I'm going to show you in this episode how you can come up with a realistic plan, um, step by step to build out your journey from being an executive to becoming an entrepreneur. So get ready because we are about to go deep into it. Hey friends. Welcome to Moonshot Entrepreneur. This is the place where you learn to build and scale your very own business, all while still working your 9 to 5 job and keeping your family and faith at the center of it all. On this podcast, I'll help you to get laser focused on using the business skills you already have. And I'll also map out all the building blocks and strategies you need to know to run a successful business. You'll also learn to create the time and income for your purpose driven business. Sounds like a Moonshot. Well, set your expectations high because when we dare to partner with God, anything is possible. So grab your notebook and pen and pursue with me your Moonshot dream. Let's go. All right, let me level it here with you, my friends. Um, becoming an entrepreneur, especially if you have a great role in a corporate firm, can be scary. Especially if you have a role, um, very wholesome, um, really, um, important responsibilities like being an executive, um, where you have been successful, where you have worked on your success, where you for many years. It can be a scary thought to leave all that and to go into self employment. It is scary because you don't have a plan other than your big dream that you want to be self employed one day so that you can do this or that, so that you have more time, so that you have more freedom, so that you can choose who to work with, how to work, what kind of products you make, how you offer your services, and so on and so forth. These are just the good parts of self employment that you're thinking about when you are dreaming about being an entrepreneur. And um, there might be days where it really feels good to dream about that. But when you honestly think about it more seriously, it might often just feel like a moonshot, like this dream is never going to happen. It's like the same chances of you going to the moon. Like you personally because you're not an astronaut. At least I think my audience, those listening to me, that none of you guys are astronauts. Um, anyway, I got off track a little bit. Sorry about that. But I want to show you today how you can come up with a realistic plan, a step by step plan of going from executive to entrepreneur. Because as I said in the introduction, it's not going to happen overnight and it's not going to happen if you don't plan for it and are not intentional about it. Now what I know about you guys, or at least about myself, is that if you have been successful for a number of years, you have perfected your skills. And I know the same is true for you. If you have worked in corporate for 10, 15, 20, even 25 years, chances are that you have become really great at what you do. And you are this expert and you have different parts within the firm who are also experts in what they do. You have people who do accounting, you have people for marketing, you have people for sales, you have people who do strategy, who do business development. Then you have others who do logistics and all those kind of parts. And hence your day to day work is actually defined by um, things and cycles and um, tasks that are highly planned, things that you know ahead of time. You might still get thrown a curveball every now and then, but basically your organization has been on the planet for some time and you guys know how to deal with um, new competition that is popping up. Popping up, or how you have to launch a new product, for example. Right? Right. The parts of your business, of your firm will work together to um, come up with the best response. Now if you're going into self employment, that's uncharted territory because you have to depend on yourself. You have to think about all these parts, um, by yourself. Unless you're doing this with some other person. Right. So how do you go about this? How do you become, um, more planned and clear when everything seems so chaotic? Even if you have, you know, a couple of friends and even if you guys are doing this together, you're never going to have the same level of sophistication or efficiency that a corporate firm might have. But you have other upsides if you stick with uh, a realistic plan. So if you want to become self employed, there are a couple of things that you have to do. And I speak about these things um, in my workshop by the way, a completely free workshop that I'm holding on November 22nd. It's a one hour workshop where we will come up with an entrepreneur game plan for you. I will show you how you can build your, your own path, how you can do this step by step. And I will um, go into more detail during that workshop which will be completely online so you can take part in it from anywhere in the world. I will give you the steps here in this episode, but it will be much shorter of course and there we'll have more time because it will be one hour. And I will cover with you how you can find the time, the energy and um, the money to do this, this transition to transition from a successful corporate career into entrepreneurship. And I will show you how you can turn your corporate skills into a business and build a clear step by step action plan. So if you're interested, um, go to moonshot-entrepreneur.com event, that's moonshot dash dash like the minus sign entrepreneur.com event and sign up with your email address and I'll send you all the details about the workshop. And um, yeah, what do you need to know about it? It's on November 22, Eastern Time, um, Eastern Standard Time, 11:00am Pacific Standard, 8:00am or GMT 4, 4:00pm and we'll sit down one hour and I'll walk you through the framework how you can come up with your own plan and we might even have some time for your questions. So if you have been wondering and thinking about something that has been burning a hole in your brain, just take that with you and ask me live on November 22nd. All right? So anyway, if you want to plan your move to self employment, you have to put in place certain things, um, which cannot be underestimated. First and foremost, you have to come up with a plan to deliver value to the market and your customers. And you have to commit to be excellent at doing that. There are ways to do that. There is a canvas you can fill out, for example, to find out how you are going to deliver um, good value to the market, what exactly you're going to do, what is your product, um, what is your service, how you're going to deliver it, how, what the cost structure of that thing is, how much, how much it's going to cost, um, what your revenue streams are and so on and so forth. So, so you, the first step here is to really figure that out and to commit to deliver value. It's not about making a big quick buck. If you want to have success as an entrepreneur, uh, you have to do it right. You have to do it for the right reasons. The only, if the only reason is because you did get passed up for promotion, that's not going to stick. You have to love your customers. And more than loving your customers, you have to love their problem because you have to fall in love with their problem to understand what they are going through so that you can come up with the right solution that really solves their problem. And I'll teach you all about that in my workshop. Now, um, that is the first part. But to give you just a flavor about what I mean with that, let me give you an example. Let's say you see a picture of a person trying to grab, um, something from a shelf in Walmart or Target or some other retail, uh, store. And you see that the thing they're trying to grab is on the top shelf, but they are not tall enough. So what does your customer need? The first answer most people come up with is they need a ladder. They really, um, need to grab that product, be toilet paper or whatnot, and they need a ladder so that they can grab the thing. Well, the thing is here, most people then go into developing a ladder and making sure that, um, you know, it's safe and all of those things, that it holds enough weight and that the person feels comfortable using the ladder. But the latter is not the only solution to the problem. You can also just decide to keep that specific product on a lower shelf. You have to understand the problem and go at it from different angles and try out different solutions and get feedback from your customers. And if you love doing that, you will love helping them. And if you love helping them, you will have created value in the marketplace and for your customers. So the first step of planning your move to self employment is to plan how you deliver value to the market. Secondly, you need to plan your time. You have to commit a certain amount of time every week, every single week to work on your business. I'm an executive in the corporate world too, and I know how crazy it can be. The work week, you know, I know how crazy things can get in the workplace. You'll have meetings and workshops and problems and operations that get stuck. And you have to find quick solutions and customers that are running off and people who complain and employees who quit and so on and so forth. So things can get pretty, um, messy at the Workplace and then you come home, you're already dead and beat and your kid um, is, your kid is at home and they are crying, they're all eyeballs out because they have been bullied or they got a, ah, bad grade in school or your spouse is mad at you because you forgot to, I don't know, something that you had promised to do, right? So life can be pretty hard. And then you um, fall down the stairs and you sprain your ankle and all kinds of things happen, crazy things. So that the time you should be having to work on your business gets always swamped. And if that happens you're never going to make any headway because you are not working on your business consistently. Take it from someone who has had some pretty bad experience in this. I have done that all, I have done all the mistakes. Um, I know what it means to wanting to go into self employment but not focusing on it, not committing to focusing on it consistently. Um, of having taken too many breaks, of having um, uh, put things off for too much time. You know, um, I know what it feels like. I know that life can happen. But there are tips and tricks to, to circumvent that. And one crucial thing is to commit a certain amount of time. You might not be able to work every Saturday on your business, but if you commit a certain amount of time, like one hour a week, two hours a week, three hours or even four, then you will make headway because you can put in those hours whenever it feels right during that period particular week. And it helps you to be more consistent uh, compared to committing every Saturday and um, having to fail that because Saturday is the only day um, you, you're having off. Right? So that is the second step. Then the third step or aspect into planning your move to self employment is to think about how much money you need to make this business run. And most people think they need to break the bank or invest a whole lot of money. But all you need to keep a business running these days is less than thousand bucks. And there is an episode, um, somewhere in the beginning. Let me quickly check in my Excel, uh, sheet over here. Which one it is? Just give me a sec. Okay, here it is. It's episode 40, um, how to run a great business for $1,000 or less per year. 40 Ah, episode 40. So go back and relisten to that episode in case you haven't had a chance to listen to it because there are ways to do that and you need to be clear of how much money you're willing and able to spend and how much you really have to spend. Of course there is a bare minimum, but you don't need much to get your business off the ground. It's the first phase of the business. And there is a thing called metered funding which means you invest a certain amount of money for, for this first phase until you hit certain goals. And once you hit those goals, it's okay to invest even more money or time or whatever other resources you need. And you can decide to do that once you hit those goals. Now those goals and the amount of money will be different for every person and every business that depends on you, on your budget and what you're exactly you're planning to do. But you can um, start with a, um, pretty low price tag. Then once you have done that, another very very important aspect of planning your self employment is to get the right kind of supporters and believers on board. Um, and here I really have to say I'm not speaking our people who want to invest in your business, uh, in the sense that they want to invest money, but I'm speaking about people who will have your back when things get rough and things get ugly and you stop believing in yourself. Um, that being said, I've been choosy who I tell about my business and my podcast podcast in the past. Um, part of it is um, that I don't want to, I don't want people to feel that there's an obligation that they listen to my podcast or support my business just because they know me. Like for example people in church or um, other people. But there are people in church who know about this. Um, but I'm choosy of how and when I say it and what I say about it. And um, another part about that is also pride. Pride in the sense that um, especially in the beginning I felt like I don't want to tell people about my plans of having a business or a podcast podcast because um, I don't want them to think less of me because right now I'm not successful. So I don't want them to know about it. Now that kind of thinking is sort of a bit messed up, right? It has to do with pride. But I had to overcome that. And there's also another episode about that, um, where I speak about it, about how I um, overcame that hesitation to speak about my business. And if you're struggling with that, go back to that episode and re listen to it because you might really have some nice takeaways from it. And um, that would be episode number. Oh, it's 41. So episode number 40 and 41 are the ones you need to look out for for. All right, so these are some of the things you need to put in place to come up with a realistic plan for self employment. And then finally, um, there is one more puzzle piece in here that is that you need to have realistic expectations about what success can look like if you are doing the transition from executive to entrepreneurship. And it also has to do with how focused you are and how much time you can invest in it. And I go into real um, depth about it um, during the workshop, during the online workshop on November 22nd. So if you want to know more about that, definitely come along to the workshop. But let me just quickly tell you from my experience from working with entrepreneurs and startups for a living, um, because I used to work in business development and innovation for about five years, six years, something like that. And um, what I discovered during that time is that you really need to have the right kind of expectation. Most people who have startups, they don't work just a year or two years before they become successful. Usually they work two or three years before they see um, the first, um, before they break even. And that too we have to bear in mind most of them at least, most of who I know have committed all their time to, to do that they have resigned their jobs or at least one person has and the other person was still working in some firm while one person resigned, um, from their job and fully committed to the business. And if you are doing this while still working your 9 to 5, it will take a little bit longer. So you need to have the right kind of expectation time wise and then also money wise. And I really look forward to going into depth with you um, during my workshop as I said, do sign up, um, spots are limited. Go to moonshot-entrepreneur.com event and I hope to see you on November 22nd. So what I want you to take away from this episode is this. Um, yes, self employment and success. Success can happen if you plan it, if you plan your move and um, crucial things to plan. Here are the value you want to bring to the market and how you're going to speak to your customers. Um, how you can commit time, money and energy to do so and how you get your supporters, people who believe in you and who will have your back when you even don't dare to believe in yourself. And if you do all that, my friends, you will get to self employment quicker than you think. So I want to hear all your stories about how you are applying these things that I shared just now. Um, do reach out to me. SupportOonsHotEntrepreneur M.com Support moonshot-entrepreneur.com and I look forward to um, really hearing your story. So shoot me an email. Okay? All right, so what's left for me to say? Think about these things guys as you go into the weekend and stay wrapped up in Christ's love until next time. Real quick before you go, if this podcast blessed you in some way, the number one way you can thank me is by leaving me a written review for the show over on Apple Podcast. I seriously am lit up every time I hear from you guys. So if this show has impacted your life in some way, just let me know about it. And here's the second thing you can do. Take a screenshot of this episode or of your review and go share it over on Facebook Facebook and tag me. God bless as you dare to make the change.