We are increasingly moving towards a more entrepreneurial way of working. This doesn’t mean you have to start your own business. It does mean that you can make money outside the corporate matrix.
Sheila is an accountant. She has been toiling away at different financial service firms throughout Fairfield County for the last twenty years. She hit her limit of playing corporate warrior sometime last year. It wasn’t one thing. It was the steady drip of phoniness, stress, time away from her children, and, perhaps the feeling that life was slipping away.
Sheila was culturally programmed within the old world of work – as was I, particularly since I’m older than her. But, I have been in the new world of work since 2000. So, I know that work life outside large organizations is not only possible but breathtakingly liberating.
Sheila had to work through a variety of psychological blocks before we could even address her practical concerns. The fear of uncertainty, fear of failure, fear of financial scarcity etc. are all legitimate concerns. She seemed to really need to hear my story – sole breadwinner of a family of five – to believe that she, too, could break free. She also heard the stories of several of my similarly situated clients who also broke free from playing corporate warrior.
We then moved into the practical way of setting up her new business. Skill plus marketing equal money. Other than applying for jobs, Sheila had never marketed herself. I trained her in the art of high tech marketing and guided her in relation to high touch marketing.
Sheila is a happy solo entrepreneur today and wrote me a wonderful Christmas card wondering why she hadn’t moved forward with this type of life years ago.