“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Lao Tzu

The journey you are traveling to simplify your life and share your purpose will be exciting and sometimes a bit scary. It’s a little bit outside of your current comfort zone. A close friend of mine says, “You can’t have exciting without scary.” That comment reminds me of riding a giant roller coaster: sitting in the car, gripping the safety bar as you click up the tracks to reach the top of that first towering summit before you speed down the hill on a thrilling and exhilarating journey.

In this blog, you can follow through the next steps that you will take to transition from being a successful business professional to sharing your passions and purpose.

Bridge the Gap

There are six simple steps that will help you climb to that summit of entrepreneurship as you journey to share your purpose.

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Looking at the entire staircase can be overwhelming. You probably have a million actions to complete right now. You are so excited to learn. You are seeking information from everywhere to take it all in. You are finding answers through podcasts and have turned off the TV in an effort to focus. You can’t get enough information, but there is a time to learn and there seems to always be one more step … learn more.

There is a wealth of knowledge and tying everything together and implementing is the next step.

You may be asking:

• How do I take everything I am learning and create daily steps?
• How do I describe what I’m doing with friends and family?
• What if I fail? It’s scary to put myself out there, this is my purpose and passion; I do not want to look like a fool.

It takes time; however, with the six steps you will learn in this post, you will be much more prepared. Focus on the end in mind. Slowly but surely, day by day, with vision, practice, and service, you take one step after another as you cross the bridge and share more and more of your purpose.

The Six Steps of What’s Next

1. Seek support

Support teams are vital to your success into entrepreneurship.

Much of the success you will experience on your path to be where you want to be will depend on your commitment to living your dream; however, I never could have made my journey alone and neither should you. Have a good support system and surround yourself with others who challenge and encourage you on your journey. As you pursue your path, you will meet people that you connect with who are a few steps ahead of you on the journey.

The path of entrepreneurship can be lonely at times, so being there to support each other just to listen can be extremely helpful.

Having someone beside you is important, so connect to friends who have already started their company a couple years before you. You can be there when they need to vent and they can share their experiences of the road ahead of you. You will have many great conversations together where you can be there to support each other.

One tool that I encourage all of my clients to use is group coaching. Group coaching calls help you share your challenges and triumphs (especially with others who are traveling similar paths) so everyone can all learn together. Everyone within the group should pair up with another person in the group to ensure you have an accountability buddy.

2. Identify your identity

Do you think like an employee or that of an entrepreneur?

Since graduating college, you have been a business professional of some sort. You had to dress a certain way and while you may have noticed it or not, that became the “armor” you put on and it also helped create the lens through which you viewed the world. So much of your identity is linked to how others have shown you that you should look and act as a business professional.

What does your identity into entrepreneurship look like? Who do you need to be? What does your day look like? Breaking free from habitual patterns can take time. When you work on your business, what do you wear that helps you connect to your purpose and passion? Invest the time in discovering who you are. Being uniquely you will help more and more of your authenticity shine, which helps you share your purpose. (More on that in step 4…the younger you.)

3. Uncovering the four stages of learning

Move from “Unconscious Incompetence” to “Unconscious Competence”.

Abraham Maslow spoke the the four stages of learning.

1. The first of the four levels of understanding begins with your unconscious incompetence. In other words, you don’t know what you don’t know. Therefore, you are not good at it because you didn’t know that you weren’t good at it because you didn’t know “it” existed. (How’s that for confusing?) How can you expect to be good at something that you did not even know existed before?
2. The second level is conscious incompetence. You know what you need to do, but you are not good at it yet.
3. The third level is conscious competence You know what you need to do and you are good at it, but you must consciously practice it.
4. The fourth and final level is unconscious competence. You know what needs to be done and you do it very well with no conscious thought behind it.

Identifying where you are in the levels of understanding (i.e., in entrepreneurship) can help you identify why some things might be frustrating you, because you don’t even know that you don’t know them yet. Unless you know the road ahead, you can be walking in the weeds trying to find the path. Confusion costs a lot of money …

Having someone who has been on the journey can help you uncover your “unconscious incompetence” on your journey, helping you discover what’s ahead much faster than you going alone.

4. Younger You

Get in touch with your Younger You to discover your true identity

You must understand where some of your conditioned behaviors come from. So much of what you need to do is unlearn the things you have learned. This process helps you come home to who you have always been and helps you shed all of the layers of you that are not even you (they are society’s vision of you).

I have a concept that I use in coaching called the “Younger You” and it is powerful. This is much more conducive for one-on-one sessions, but I do cover some of the concepts of the “Younger You” in group coaching sessions (I just will not go as deep as I do in a one-on-one coaching session.)

Once your identity is aligned, it is much easier for you to see your vision because you are not looking at how society will think of your idea since you will then be speaking from your heart. Here is a blog I wrote about it called Your Real Identity.

You will discover what is causing you to have certain thoughts, find ways to interrupt thought patterns that you may not even know you are running and put into effect simple habits that will help you unplug and become less reactionary and more focused on your direction.

Now that you have support, a clear identity and vision that aligns with your purpose, the next thing for you to do is to begin practicing.

5. Connect to “Why”

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek has a great TED talk entitled, How Great Leaders Inspire Action. Sinek states that you should “start with why” and even has a book by the same title. A great read I highly recommend.

Do you struggle to answer the question, “What do I do?” At a networking event or new introduction meeting, if you speak with 10 different people, do you change your message 10 different ways? Does it take you over 5 minutes to explain and when you finish explaining, others are still confused or unclear of explaining to another what you do?

If you are struggling to explain what you do, you aren’t alone; many navigating through entrepreneurship struggle to explain what they do. I even struggled to explain it to my friends and family. Write your ideas down so you can see everything you are saying. Be consistent and get feedback on what you are saying: does it make sense to whom you are speaking?

There is power in clarity, and being able to articulate your essence in a sentence is powerful.

6. Dashboard

Tool for direction and clarity

Direction and clarity are important elements as you are walking a new path. You are more than likely overwhelmed as you are traveling this entrepreneurial journey. You need to create a way to simplify your life so that don’t end up working 17 hours a day and at the end of the day wondering what you even accomplished. I created the Daily Dashboard for this purpose. Stop being reactionary and take time to be directionary.

During group coaching sessions, I discuss discipline and focus so that you can begin to budget your time towards your vision. Being intentional with your day is one way to achieve this goal. In addition to discussing how the Daily Dashboard will help you budget your time, I will offer other simple strategies to find direction and clarity.

Experiencing is Believing

Clients whom I have coached for over a year are thriving after consistently applying these six simple steps! Together, we will cover more concepts to create your clarity to turn all your ideas into clients you wish to serve. To learn more about the Dashboard to take back your day and create time, click here

There are no coincidences, and as you are reading this blog, you are sensing that you can share your purpose in a way very few people do.

I encourage you to enjoy life daily.