The Identity Shift Nobody Talks About

You're listening to Build a Business You Love, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping expert entrepreneurs just like you, coaches, consultants, and advisors, build a business that not only earns you a great income, but a business that you can enjoy building along the way. A business that is aligned with who you are and how you want to show up in this world and serve the people who you're meant to help. There are a lot of gurus out there telling you that you need the latest and greatest. But what if business could be simple? Each week I'll bring you an episode with ideas that you can try on.

And if you like them, you can implement them at no cost. Because I believe that when you build a business that is aligned to your values and your vision, you become unstoppable. Now let's get started with today's episode. Welcome to this week's episode. I'm Ashley Frank, your host.

And this week, let's talk about something that I believe is not being talked about nearly enough. It is the transition from your job or an employee to starting and running a successful business. You see, when we leave the corporate world or we leave our careers or our full-time job, we think that we're stepping into a world of freedom, freedom of time, freedom of income, freedom to do what you want to do, freedom to build something that's really truly yours. You know, nobody's going to be telling you what to do. And while it's true that you're stepping into a lot of freedom and really endless opportunity, there's a massive transition that's happening.

And I've experienced this over the past six years and just kind of worked through it quietly, you know, among myself, building the business. But as I work with more people, and in particular the most recent class that I've been involved in for the coaching certification, I've noticed that there are a lot of people leaving long-term careers who are stepping in to start their own business, you know, share their expertise with the world. And the struggle isn't necessarily starting the business, the struggle is trying to figure out who you are and where you fit into this world. And today I wanted to share some things that nobody's going to tell you about moving from an employee to a business owner. And I have six points that we're going to talk through today.

Hopefully, some of these hit with you. And if there's one that really stands out in your mind, I'd love you to jump on over to Instagram, find me at the Ashley Frank, and let me know which point really stood out for you. The first point is there's going to be nobody telling you what to do. The day after you leave your job, you're excited. Maybe you should take some time to travel and disconnect.

And then you're ready to start your business. But when you wake up in the morning, there's nobody there to tell you what to do. No matter how high up in the organization you may have been, you've kind of always had somebody to be accountable to or somebody telling you what to do. And when you go to start your own business, you no longer have a job description, you no longer have a manager, you no longer have stakeholders, you no longer have KPIs that you're measuring against. The quarterly measurement, what's that?

Because every day just seems to blur together. Deadlines, they really don't exist. And structure, well, that's gone out the window. As a business owner, you have complete freedom, which sounds absolutely amazing until you realize that freedom also remains it, also means that you have complete responsibility. And that's a little bit terrifying.

You have to be self-accountable, you have to create your own structure, you have to make decisions without really bouncing them off anybody on your team because often you're a team of one. And some people really miss that environment of structure. I know people that I've spoken to recently who their biggest struggle is trying to figure out if they're allowed to take a nap at 2 p.m. Because they have a lot of freedom on their hands and their calendar is no longer full. And I think in the corporate world, we get so caught up in staying busy, feeling like success is a fully booked calendar, all of those kinds of things that when nobody's there or there's no structure in place to hold you accountable, it can feel really alarming and make you wonder if you're good enough, if you're doing enough, you know, if you're not busy all the time, does that mean that you're not going to be successful?

All of those kinds of things. Point number two is that revenue all of a sudden becomes personal. Now, if you're leaving a career or a job where you've had severance or maybe, you know, a pension, maybe the revenue is not as important. But for many people, they're leaving this corporate world or their job to get more freedom, to earn better income, to you know, kick the bucket and do what they've always wanted to do. However, there's a huge difference because revenue all of a sudden becomes your sole responsibility as a business owner.

You see, as an employee, if the company had a bad month, the company would still exist and you still got paid. As an entrepreneur, if you have a bad month, you don't get paid. So you're responsible for that revenue, you're responsible for that income. And that can become even more stressful if you're leaving your career, whether by choice or maybe it's a restructure, and you have responsibilities, you have a family, you have things that you're responsible for. All of a sudden, you don't have that guaranteed income.

And yes, as an entrepreneur, it can be amazing because you can earn a whole lot of money in one month, but then have several months that are quiet. And if you don't know how to budget the money as it comes in or plan accordingly for your sales, this is really where things can fall apart. And as a new business owner, we oftentimes like to think about all of the fun things, creating the logo, the branding, you know, all of the product creation, which is fun and amazing. But if you don't have a way to build the business, revenue will eventually catch up to you and it becomes painful and it becomes personal. You go through feast and famine cycles.

There's a lot of sales anxiety with people. You may be awesome at what you do, but mention the word sales, a lot of people start to shut down. The financial uncertainty, it's real. I've had months, I've had quarters not knowing where the next revenue was coming from, knowing that my runway was getting short and that I needed to make something work. And that's ultimately why I do the work that I do today.

Because I believe that if you're leaving your corporate job or you're stepping into doing your own thing, you deserve to have a fair chance, and sales is the underpinning of all of that. And it's oftentimes the reason why people who start their own businesses start looking for jobs. That revenue gets scary, right? And all of a sudden people start to go back to what's comfortable. And that's just our human nature, go back to what's known.

Point number three: your skills are not the problem. You see, you've gained a lot of experience. I work with expert entrepreneurs. You are an expert entrepreneur, you have some kind of industry knowledge. You are an IT professional, a web designer, a coach, a consultant, maybe a tradesperson.

You could be a trainer. You name it, you have expertise. But the surprise is for a lot of people, just because you're really good at what you do doesn't mean that the business is automatically going to be successful unless you have a built-in audience, right? You've let people know that you're leaving, you've built the audience, you have a really strong network. Maybe that's going to supply you for a little while, but long term, that's not going to last.

And most people show up with the idea of look how great I am. I have X amount of years of experience. I've done all of this kind of cool stuff inside of my career. Then they get out there and realize that they have to build the business. And there's all kinds of other skills that you need.

And these skills typically don't come easily. You know, point number one relates to one of the skills. It's being able to be accountable to yourself, plan your day, and know what activities drive your business forward. You see, inside of your business, there are certain activities that really move the business forward. Those are things like your messaging, your selling, your ability to follow up, your ability to deliver, and your cash flow.

Those are key elements, but they're not skills that we necessarily understand or know. Maybe we understand them from a corporate perspective, but heck, we had a team that did all of our messaging. We had a team that did our selling. Now you're responsible for yourself to do this or finding people who can help you. And one of the big things that I see with people that I work with is they're trying to outsource all of these key functions.

And it's it's kind of expected because maybe inside of the corporate world they were outsourced to a team. But when you're building your business, you need to at least understand the foundations. You at least need to understand how your sales system works and make sure that it's it's in a functioning state before you bring somebody else into your organization to handle it because you're gonna be responsible for everything in the end. You need to make sure that the systems are working. And I've watched this, I've watched people go, I don't like selling.

So I'm gonna go out and hire an experienced salesperson. And the experienced salesperson often will come in with a track record of closing sales, but now you're putting them in charge of selling something that's new to you, new to them. And maybe there's no structure in place, and that person may not know how to put the structure in place. And they could take your business and your reputation into a completely different direction unless you have a system in place to help them stay on track and make sure that you're both moving the business forward in the direction that you like. Nobody pays you to be talented, right?

At the end of the day, when you're in this expert entrepreneur space, nobody's just telling going to pay you because you're talented. They're gonna pay you because they can see the value. And they will only see the value if you can position yourself well through messaging and an offer and a sales approach that doesn't feel forced, but instead guides that person through a journey of working with you. Point number four, you become the product. This expert space, you are the product.

Yeah, you're selling yourself. And people don't buy your expertise, right? They don't necessarily just buy your consulting experience or the outcome of what you can provide. Those are things that back you in the selling process, but they're buying trust, they're buying credibility, they're buying your perspective, they're buying the magic sauce that makes you you, what makes you different in the industry, right? For me, I focus on a human approach to building sales and growth inside of businesses.

That's my uniqueness. That's what it brings people to me. They know that my sales approach and my methodology is not going to be a hard close. It's going to be leading a conversation, it's going to be helping people make decisions, and it's going to help people shift perspective as you're working with them. That's what people come to me for.

And it's backed by my credibility, it's backed by my 20 years' experience. But nobody's working with you just because you have X amount of experience. You really need to build things around you as the product. How are you standing out? What is that unique offer?

Who is the specific person that you work with? Is your brand clear? Are you really good at what you do, but you're hiding behind what everybody else says you should put out there in the market? Because that's not going to help you stand out. And hiding becomes expensive.

So you may have this mindset of you need to say you do things in a certain way because that's the way you did it in the corporate world. But my friend, that's not going to help you stand out as an entrepreneur, especially as an expert entrepreneur. And this is probably one of the most critical elements that I'm going to talk about today. You, as the product, it's a little bit intimidating, it's a little bit exciting, but how you position yourself and the brand that you build is more important than ever in today's market. Port number five is there's this concept that freedom is earned twice, especially when you step into entrepreneurship.

Now, what I mean by this is there's kind of two stages to stepping out into the world and starting your own expert entrepreneur business. Step number one is leaving that employment. If you're in a job, you either have decided to step away or you've been helped out of the organization by restructure or whatever, whatever it may be. But the important thing is that you've decided to start a business. Now, step number one of the Freedom Earn Twice is you've made the decision, you've stepped away, you've cut the cord, and that's exciting.

And on the first day, it's very exciting. On the second day, it might still be exciting. But by the third, fourth, fifth week and month, things start to feel a little bit different. And you need to start building systems. Because if you just go out and try to build a business like you were an employee, you're going to become your worst boss because building a business is different than being an employee.

Building a business is about how do you build something around you with structure and systems that allow you to do the things that you're really good at while stepping away from the things that you don't enjoy or that you're not good at good at. And also, how are you building systems that allow you to grow over time if that's your goal? So you can't just leave your corporate job and then start doing that like doing your new business like you did as an employee. Because if you're showing up just charging minimum rates, doing a little bit of everything, you know, trying to handle the entire business forever, you're going to work yourself into a point where you don't have the freedom of time, you technically don't have the freedom of money, and you're going to come become become miserable and probably start looking for another job. So the second part of that freedom is earned twice is to build systems, to make sure that you have clear offers, to make sure that you have a way of getting in front of clients and turning them into happy customers and clients.

And making sure that you're building some cash reserves. When you're first starting out, you may have a little bit of savings, but you'll find out very quickly that a few poor months in your business will lead to some financial stress. And you want to make sure that you have some cash reserves. Don't spend every cent that you make. I've watched this so many times with people who are starting their own businesses.

They spend every single dime that they make. And they're spending that dime as a sole proprietor. Therefore, they're taxed at a personal tax rate. And at the end of the year, they get the tax bill, and most of the purchases that they made can't be tax deductible, and they end up with a massive tax bill. So make sure that you're setting aside and planning for that.

And remember that freedom is earned twice. When you leave the job, and the second part of the freedom comes when you start building systems that are repeatable that allow you to step away from the business and gain that time and financial freedom that you're truly looking for. The last point is point number six. And it's probably the biggest one. So I said number four was important because selling yourself and your expertise and how to position and building the messaging and the marketing and the offer and the sales is so important.

But number six is really an overarching one. And it is the foundation of all of this. It is your identity. You have moved from employee to entrepreneur. And on the surface, it sounds exciting, but internally, it's a real struggle.

And it's an ongoing struggle for a while. So if you're feeling this shift right now of not knowing who you are or not knowing where you fit in the world, it's okay. Because starting a business, especially as a solo entrepreneur or an expert, it can get pretty freaking lonely out there. And you might be asking yourself things like, Who am I without the title? Who am I without that corporate title?

Who am I without that team that I was leading? Who am I without being part of that team? You might be asking yourself, can I really trust myself? Can I make these decisions? Am I qualified to make these decisions?

And can I handle all of the uncertainty that comes with this? Because let me tell you, there's a lot of uncertainty. But what I do know is when you build the systems and you build people around you who can support you along the journey, things become a whole lot easier. And most people struggle hard with the identity piece and it overarches across all of these points that we talked about today. And the identity is not because they can't do the work.

You're good at what you do. It's because you are shifting into somebody new when you step away from your job and into entrepreneurship. And that's a rewiring of beliefs. You can on the outside say that you're an entrepreneur, but internally you need to believe that. You need to feel that, you need to live that.

And if we're operating from an employee mindset or from a title that we no longer hold, it can be really intimidating and a struggle that not enough of us are talking about. And we're trying to put ourselves out there in the world, make things look good on the outside, yet the struggle on the inside is real. And having people around you who can support you along that journey is really helpful. If you are in the middle of a transition right now, maybe it's a new transition, maybe it is an ongoing transition, maybe you're a few years into this and it feels harder than you expected. I'm gonna tell you this there's nothing wrong with you.

You're just building a business and you're shifting your identity and you're doing both of them at the exact same time. If you're rebuilding the way you think about work and money and responsibility and freedom, it takes time. It's exciting, but it's also darn stressful. And if you have uncertainty, uncertainty tells you that you're moving in the right direction. And having people around you who can help you figure this out is really important.

Because remember, you have expertise, but maybe you don't know how to build the business. Maybe you don't know how to get your sales under control. Maybe you just don't know how to shift your mindset. And if that's something you're looking for, I encourage you to follow along on my Instagram at theashley Frank. And there I talk about things about building business, shifting mindset, how to use your humanness as your competitive advantage.

And I also have some programs that might be of interest to you. No pressure, you can join in, check them out. But I bring groups of entrepreneurs together who are building cool things in a way that they can support each other, build their businesses in a supportive environment where you're not feeling alone, and ultimately get to the freedom and the results that you're looking for. So if there was a takeaway, love to hear from you over on the Instagrams at the Ashley Frank. And until next week, get out there, keep moving forward, no matter how daunting the task may seem.

Know that you're on the right track and you're going to get that freedom and results that you're looking for.