
The Most Important Business Decision I’ve Ever Made

“Every decision you make reflects your evaluation of who you are.”
~ Marianne Williamson
I want to share with you a personal story about a turning point decision I made in my business a decade ago now because it’s one of the most important decisions I think I’ve made.
I had worked for someone else my entire life. From the age of 12, I pretty much always had a job of sorts. From paper rounds, stacking shelves, call centres and cleaning jobs early on to a 12 year career in PR and Communications first and Project and Program Management later on. I was a good employee, I worked hard, I usually did more than was expected of me and I was always keen for the next promotion. I wanted to do well and I was motivated to work hard.
That is until I became completely disillusioned with my career in 2012.
At that time, I was working for one of the largest charities in the UK, in one of the most senior positions in my chosen speciality (programme management) and was earning more money than I ever had.
But I was miserable.
I hated the toxic working environment I was in. I felt like the work I did wasn’t having any real impact on the people we were supposed to be helping and to top it off, I had a gruelling 2 hour (each way) commute from Brighton to London. I had to get up at the crack of dawn to go to a job I loathed and I didn’t get home until after dark.
I spent my days watching the clock and my weeks counting down the days to Friday.
By early 2012, I’d had enough and knew that there had to be more to life than this. I quit my well-paid London job, sold everything I owned and bought a one-way ticket to Thailand, armed with a backpack and a plan to build a coaching business while travelling the world.
It was an exciting time but my big dreams soon came up against reality.
Despite many years of experience of working in an organisation, I had zero experience of working for myself.
Despite being proud of my action-oriented nature and ability to get things done. I suddenly found myself procrastinating over every single aspect of getting my business off the ground.
Heading to the beach with my then best friend (now love of my life) or going to a local yoga class was far preferable to me than sitting down and working on my business.
So for 2 years I sort of coasted. I talked a lot about setting up my business, I did a lot of research about growing an online business and I waxed lyrical about my big business dreams, but the truth was I was stalling on taking any concrete action towards achieving them.
That is until a life and business coach reached out to offer me a gift coaching session and I jumped at the opportunity. He was a coach I’d been following for some time and for whom I had a lot of admiration.
I don’t remember the details of that session, but I do recall it was powerful enough for me to hire him for the next year (draining my savings and maxing out my credit card to do so!).
Around the same time (probably recommended by my coach), I read a book called Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. If you haven’t read this small but powerful book, I highly recommend it.
Its content, combined with the support of my coach, helped me to finally make the decision to start taking my business seriously.
To, in effect, turn pro.
The book helped me to see how I was treating my business more like a hobby than an actual business. It showed me how I was selling myself short at every turn by behaving like an “amateur” (Pressfield’s word, not mine!) rather than a “pro”.
This booked pulled no punches.
And as a result. I decided that if I was going to make this thing work, I needed to take it as seriously as I had all of my previous jobs.
And that’s exactly what I did.
Allow me to share a little of what that looked like.
I stopped treating my business like something I could or even should do and started treating it like my job. My career. My livelihood.
That meant showing up on time, every working day and doing the work.
It meant doing the homework and taking the actions recommended to me by coach, even when those actions terrified me.
It meant switching my mindset from…”I’m not the kind of person who can…” to “I don’t know how to do that now but I’ll learn…”
It meant creating a professional working environment so I could show up powerfully for my clients, even while living off the grid, surrounded by swamp and jungle.
It meant making the work of making my business work my top priority.
For a year, Joan and I lived in paradise on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. We were housesitting an incredible property that sat on the edges of the Mexican jungle on a stunning beach, where just off the coast was the most incredible coral reef and the most perfect snorkelling spot.
I could easily have spent that year sunbathing and snorkelling but instead, having made the decision to turn pro, I spent a great deal of my time working on growing my Life Coaching business.
Do I regret not snorkelling or sunbathing more and working less? No, because the hard work I put in that year is what has allowed me to have the thriving business I have today.
The business that allows me to earn more than I did at the peak of my former career in London. The business that allows me to take long leisurely walks in nature before I sit down to my first session. The business that means I can take a long 2.5 lunch with my children in the middle of the working day and the business that allows me to set my own hours including taking the morning off if my kid isn’t feeling well and wants to stay home for cuddles with Mama.
Have I had to make sacrifices? Sure. Building the business I have today has required a lot of me. But I am so glad I made the decision to go for it. I’ve always been someone who hates the idea of feeling regret in later life. Now as I look back at that year in Mexico and all of the years that followed, I don’t regret the work I’ve put in to building my business, in fact I’m proud of it.
These days I regularly meet with business owners who seem to be struggling with the decision to really go for it with their business. There’s a lot of mindset issues, fears and self-doubt that come up but under those is a deep desire to have a business that can support them financially and fulfil them personally.
Most of the work I do is strategic but the mindset piece around the decision to really show up for your business has always fascinated me.
Over the years, I’ve analysed what it was about that book and the decision I made to turn pro that made it such a huge turning point for me and I’ve identified 5 key shifts I made.
1. I made the decision to turn pro (easier said than done!)
2. I examined and shifted my mindset around what was possible for me.
3. I became more aware of my habits and sought to cultivate habits that would lead to greater business success.
4. I made sure that my working environment (physically and digitally) was set up for success, and
5. I put in place solid systems and processes.
Together these 5 shifts, took the struggle out of business building and helped me to regain control of my days as a solopreneur.
And now I’m curious, can you relate? Have you made the decision to turn pro or does reading what I’ve shared here make you realise that you haven’t?
Get My Turning Pro Training
Given how important the decision to turn pro has been on my own business journey, last year I created a workshop that walks you through how to make these 5 key shifts to turn pro in your business.
This 3 hour training will give you a thorough understanding of what it means to show up powerfully in your business plus practical tools you can implement in your business to feel more in control of the backend of your business.
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