Financial independence opens up opportunities and fills your life with possibilities. It’s a beautiful thing, and it’s especially beautiful for women looking to build the future of their dreams. While it ain’t for the faint of heart (seriously), entrepreneurship is a winding, overwhelming, rewarding pathway to financial independence and creating the life you want for yourself and your family. I highly recommend it, and here’s how you can leverage entrepreneurship to make it all happen for yourself.
Own Your Time
I have a love/hate relationship with time. Entrepreneurship made me love time even more because I finally owned my own after years of working for “The Man.” But I hate it because it’s a nonrenewable resource, and it gets eaten up real fast when you’re living the entrepreneur life. The only way you get more is to buy somebody else’s.
No matter how short your supply of time, as an entrepreneur, you’re always in complete control of it, so you can optimize it how you want. Here are your options:
- Sell your time to clients and customers
- Develop passive revenue streams
- Sell your time based on your expertise
- Package your time in ways that serve you
If you’re going to own your own business, you have to make sure your time serves you. Running a business is way too hard to pour time into a cup you can’t drink from.
Once you’ve optimized your time, you get to reap the benefits, and for many women, especially mothers, this is, again, a beautiful thing. It means you can have it all—a career, a family, professional development, and more.
Dolla Dolla Bills
When you work for yourself, you’re not limited by company pay structures, bonus schedules, and who’s vying for that position you want. You also don’t have to tie your time to money. Instead, your time is connected to a salary. Billing by the hour can be limiting because you only get paid for the hours you work, and as we’ve already established: time is a nonrenewable resource.
Additionally, your time and earning potential are often tied to limitations dictated by other people, like the boss man or woman. However, when you’re an entrepreneur, only one person dictates your time and earning potential: you.
Some people prefer the stability a job offers. You have a job. Your job pays you. You work X amount of hours every week. So it’s perfectly fine to value stability. And that brings me to my next point. You have to get clear about your values to determine the right way to spend your time.
If you value independence, autonomy, limitless growth, entrepreneurship may be for you. Instead of those dreams being out of reach or decades down the road working for somebody else, you can reach new heights, laying the groundwork for yourself.
What are your values? Use them as a north star to guide your entrepreneurial journey.
Live the Dream
Once you’ve clarified your values and decided to pursue entrepreneurship, you get to dig into the truly juicy stuff: spending more and more time in your zone of genius, which leads to high levels of fulfillment.
The truth is the people you work for aren’t always going to see you, but you always have the option to see yourself. When you’re an entrepreneur, part of the job is increasing your self-awareness, starting with knowing what you do well and then figuring out how to take that to the next level. When you’re operating in your zone of genius, you’re in peak flow, and you’re contributing to your company, community, or even world in ways you’ve always dreamed of.
Do work on yourself. Understand your what, your why, and how you reach fulfillment, and then make it happen. As an entrepreneur, you face fewer limitations and have access to more of your potential than when you’re under somebody else’s thumb. Fly free.
Get in touch with your internal compass. Know what yes feels like to you—and no. Make choices in alignment with your moral code and what you know makes you happy. Leading yourself is the way to reach fulfillment.
Surround Yourself With Your People
I’ve worked for clients I didn’t believe in, for clients who yelled at me. And I can tell you that trying to operate at the top of my game in a toxic work environment did me no favors. But, when you choose entrepreneurship, you get to choose the people you keep in your court.
Unless you’re working solo, who’s on your team can make or break your work experience. As an entrepreneur, you get to build the team you dream of, people whose values truly align with your own.
Say yes to who you want to work with.
Say no to those whose values don’t align with your own.
As an entrepreneur, you’re uniquely positioned to pay it forward.
Say yes to people you want to create opportunities for.
Say no to people whose opportunities are waiting somewhere else.
As an entrepreneur, you get the privilege of surrounding yourself with people you want to grow with, celebrate successes with, and who can even become like family. These are the people who will support your dreams—and you will support theirs.
Build Your Future
If you’re ready to start the journey towards the future you dream for yourself, we have everything you need in The Starter Kit —from branding to operations. And after you’re done with that (it won’t take you long; I created it for busy entrepreneurs short on time), check out The Accelerator to reach those financial independence milestones sooner than you think.
