In this episode...

Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies

Laura Hargrave: Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com, and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it.

Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.

Sophia Noreen: Welcome to the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen and I took an Etsy startup and launched it in big-box retailers within 12 months. As a creative with an entrepreneurial drive, I left my full-time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career, family, and self-care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day.

There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you!

What's up everyone, and welcome back to another fantastic episode of the Boss at podcast. My name is Sophia Nareen, and today we're going to be talking about entrepreneurs or somebody who might be presenting as a entrepreneur.

Now, for people who don't know the term entrepreneur, it's somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur. But hasn't been able to take that first initial step to get them started. They will research the business they wanna do, they will talk about it, but they won't move forward with that first initial step.

So today, if we're gonna present a few reasons why there may be entrepreneurs, what's preventing them from moving forward in the line of business that they're interested? And you might be identifying as somebody in this boat. So of course it's going to be helpful for you. And even if you started a business, you may be preventing yourself from moving onto the next step in your business trajectory for the same reason.

So listen up to what those could be. And then I'm gonna give some tangible action steps for you to take to help you move past these. Okay, let's get into it. All right. One of the first things I have heard from many people, or I know from my own experience, is that it's the fear. It's the fear of something new.

It's the uncertainty of success and this fear that surrounds the potential failure in a business that you wanna get started is something that might be preventing yourself from either scaling your business or even starting your business. Fear is one of the number one reasons why people don't get started.

And of course, if you don't know what you're doing, if you don't understand the entire business from beginning to end, it's natural to be fearful, and it's also natural to be fearful of the uncertainty around the business. Working a nine to five is very secure, right? You don't have much variety other than maybe negotiating new deals if you're in that type of industry or meeting and greeting with new people, the most part, people go to their nine to five and they're secure.

They get a paycheck, they have benefits, government or private benefits, and they are taken care of in that environment. But when you move into a business situation where you now are your own. Or you are now taking on the risk of bringing a product, be it digital, physical to life, or providing a service and not knowing when the next client will come.

There's a lot of insecurity and uncertainty around it. So naturally fear is going to be one of the reasons why people don't get started. Your own situation. My suggestion is if you are catching this episode and you find yourself your fault, either start your. Or fearful of the fact that you need to scale it to the next phase or take a big step, then really understand if fear is what is preventing you from moving forward.

And my suggestion on tackling this one is essentially ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen? Now if you missed our previous episode, we talked about not burning your boats too soon, meaning don't quit your nine to five and jump into. I suggest working both, and I suggest that obviously there should be no conflict of interest between your employer's position and the position or the business you're starting, as assuming there's no conflict of interest.

You should do both. In my humble opinion, have that security of finances that backs you up so you can continue your livelihood while you are starting your business. That is one way of helping you bring that fear level down because now you won't be wondering when the next paycheck will be coming. That is my best way of conquering that fear.

And then if you are already at a stage in your entrepreneurial journey where you've left your full-time position and you are now scaling your business, you have to ask yourself, what's the worst that can happen if you take on a new risk or new project and you lose that money? That is just money. And I know that is coming from a place of privilege when I say that.

So I. State that money is a big deal for many people, but it's a tool. And when you look at business and you look at how money is being used, it's a resource and a tool for you to use to grow your business, scale your business, and to survive. And that's all it is. So really coming to terms of what is preventing you from a fear-based situation, if it's that lack of security that could be providing you that fear and preventing you from moving forward.

Just be real and maybe take some time after this episode or pause the video or the podcast and go and write down what are a few things that you're fearful of happening if you were to take your business to the next level or even start your business altogether. Another thing that I wanna talk about when it comes to fear is the fear of judgment from others.

There could be people out there that may say things like, why is she starting a business? Why is he starting a business? Who do they think they are? They don't need to start a business. They have a good job. Or why are they taking that type of risk? I say that if you have that instinct and or desire to start a business and you feel like you can live more congruently or aligned with your mission, values and goals, then it's your right to start a business.

And I feel like sometimes people are going to be saying that because they're either projecting their own fear of starting a business, be it that it's not secure. There is a bit of risk involved or they're not able to help you in this venture of starting a business cause they've never done it themselves.

So that insecurity there is preventing them from supporting you wholeheartedly at the beginning. So again, you may have the risk or you may have the fear of feeling like you're being judged by others to start a. Just understand that it could be that they're projecting their own insecurities of starting a business or their own inability to help you with this path in life that you've decided to take.

So that's another big point when it comes to fear that it might not be just the fear of money and security and livelihood. It could be the fear of society and the judgment of others. So be real with yourself there and make sure you are accounting. Because sometimes you don't realize it until you ask yourself those really difficult questions that perhaps you are living out of congruency or out of alignment with your true value missions and goals because you are afraid of disappointing somebody else.

All right, let's go into the next one. Another common reason why people won't move forward with their business or scale their business and they stay stuck as a entrepreneur is because they don't know where to start. Now, I've been having so many conversations with so many of you on the Instagram, so if you go to Boss at club, you will catch us over there and you can send us a dm.

But basically a lot of people don't know where to start. You may have this great vision or a great idea and you actually have no idea how to execute it because you either haven't had somebody in your immediate circle, family schooling, or any other prior experience in business, and that was where I was as well.

I trained as a physiotherapist, physical therapist, and I don't have any immediate family members in business. We are all health professionals or accounting professionals for lawyers, so very much the white collar positions. And my friends, some of them are entrepreneurs, but nothing in the same line of product-based business.

So really I had to learn everything on my own, and I became very resourceful by seeking out podcasts and YouTube videos and then reading manuals for big retailers to know that I'm actually following their rules and regulations and how do I learn that? How do I do that? How do I learn supply chain? So one of the reasons why you might be stuck or feeling like I can't move forward is because you don't know what to.

So I'll tell you this, you're doing the right thing by seeking out podcasts and YouTube videos and resources, and then mentors and programs to help you expedite your trajectory towards your goal. Because if you are ignorant about what's to come, then you are prone to making mistakes. And there's a few very good examples I can give you about.

I prevented myself from paying the price of ignorance, which is paying the price of not knowing and making a mistake. And what I would do is of course, seek out YouTube videos. I would seek out ways of doing things that may not have been typical. So one really good example is when I started the business in Canada, you have to register your.

And for whatever reason, I decided to register my business as a corporation. Some people thought that was a bit too soon, but I knew based on my research, that if I wanted to expand this business, that it had to be a corporation. I had many people actually advise me, that's not the right thing to do. Now you need a professional to file your taxes.

You can't file them yourself. So even from the beginning, understanding certain things when it comes to business development and understanding supply chain, it will help you, and especially in my industry, while where it is a product-based business. I had to know those tangible things. So my suggestion is if you have a business idea or you are trying to do a specific service, I would seek a mentor in that industry to help you of course, navigate all those unknowns because you won't know what you don't know until you get stuck in a situation where you have to take a few steps.

We did talk about that as well in two episodes ago where we said that sometimes it's better to take two steps forward and one step back. And the only reason I say that is because you can continuously manage where you're going and ensure that you're aligned with the path that you're following. And there's a few other reasons.

So catch that episode. I'll link it here either in the show notes or somewhere on the screen if you're watching the YouTube. So the point is, pay down the ignorance. Ensure that you find the right resources, ensure you find the right people, the right circle to help you, and don't go with it alone. The more you ask, the more you'll know and the more confident you'll feel to take that big step to either starting your business or scaling your.

Another common reason I hear people say they're not able to start their business or scale their business is because of lack of capital or lack of funding. Now, this is a tricky one because yes, it costs money to be able to start anything, be it a few hundred dollars to a few hundred thousand to millions of dollars, and I'm not gonna deny this, but there are ways.

To either secure funding through government grants, so you need to go check those out wherever you live to see if you can get grants. There are ways of securing bank loans if you are okay with paying a certain percentage of interest, and there are ways of funding by getting funding from family and friends or your own capital.

And I say start small. You don't need to develop a whole big enterprise at once. Yes, you have these big audacious goals or perhaps you don't, but the point is, I don't believe that money or capital should be the reason why you don't start. I went to do a talk at a class and one of the students did ask me, how do you manage.

What happens if you don't have money? Can you still start a business? I said yes, because like I said before, I don't believe in leaving your nine to five position. I do believe you do both for a while, and I believe that you can take a little bit of your own money, your own capital, because I do say try your business along with your own money first.

Don't borrow money from others to experiment because you should be confident enough to use your own money to start. That's a personal value of mine. I would not invest in anyone's business unless I knew they had their own skin in the game when it came to capital. So basically you can take a little bit of money and you can test out your product or your service and then take a few steps forward that way before going and requesting funds from other means.

It is difficult at the beginning when you don't have funding, but it can be difficult later when you do have funding anyways, so you're better off now trying to manage the money you. And be really, really scrappy when it comes to getting things done. For example, I have not yet been to a trade show with our product-based business, but yet we are sitting in many big retailers' shelves.

That was because a little bit of luck, but a lot of resourcefulness. When I first started, also Sophia, I went to The Indigo, which is a popular bookstore in. And I literally talked to the store manager and they took our products and put it on the shelf. I could have gone and spent $10,000 at a trade show and put myself on the shelf there and hoped that the Indigo buyer would've walked by.

But instead, I decided to not do that because I A didn't have the funding for it. And B, why not just go directly to the store and ask them if they're willing to check out the product? And. And it worked. So sometimes you need to look at other ways of doing things before going for the most expensive route or the most commonly used route, because sometimes you'd be surprised how effective other means could be.

There's a few other tips I have, which I'm going to tell you now. I want you to start small. We touched on it a minute ago, but you really need to take that first step. So it could be anything, just starting to research your industry. That is the first step, right? And you could even think about, okay, my first small step is reaching out to somebody who I think could help me in this situation.

Ask for a phone call. That's the first. So really take some time again after this podcast, when you have a time tonight or you know, when you're sitting down to have your tea or your coffee, think about it. Get a scrap piece of paper, get a notebook, get a pen and paper, and write down that first single step.

That is really what helps people get into action when they actually write it down, like write it with their. And then they go and they actually account for it in their agenda or their timetable saying, I'm gonna do this particular activity at this time. It really helps you keep accountable to that promise and goal that you've kept for yourself.

And the next thing I'm gonna say is it's really hard to do these things alone. So if you are able to secure a network of individuals who align with your vision, mission, and. And they are entrepreneurs. They're entrepreneurs going to be come. Entrepreneurs just like yourself. I would find a group of people like that because it does help.

And if it's from the same industry, it's even more helpful. So if you're into real estate or real estate investing, Or if you are an accounting professional who's starting their own firm, doesn't really matter if you can find that group of individuals, even photographers, I know many photographers meet and greet and work together in online communities.

That is my suggestion because you will feel more energized when you have other people around you doing the same thing. Especially if you come from a family or from a social circle that do not have an entrepreneurial spirit or do not have the goal to be an entrepreneur and they're working there nine to five, they won't really fully understand the obstacles that you are coming up against versus people who may perhaps be in the same industry as you.

Okay guys. So that is the end of this episode. Thank you again. Remember, we try to drop an episode every other week, so make sure you hit the bell and subscribe. And I haven't been saying it a lot, but I'm gonna say on the end of this episode, make a plan and take action, because that was the tagline and I, for some reason, it kind of trailed off there.

But that is the reason why I do make these episodes. I really want you guys to make a plan and to take. Because sometimes you just talk about it and then you're gonna regret or didn't feel like you didn't fulfill what you really were trying to do. So make sure you do take some of these pieces of advice that I've given you today and put into action.

And remember, we're on Bossa Club on the Instagram, so you can check us out there too. And we will talk to you guys soon. Okay. Take care. Bye.

Sophia Noreen: So my fellow bosses, did you enjoy that episode? Now is time for you to make a solid plan and take action. But first, remember to subscribe and follow the boss at podcast so you receive a notification.

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This list is exclusively for podcast reviewers, so don't miss out. Now, remember, bosses make a plan and take action in all aspects of your life. Yes, you can have it all.