Are You Ready To Be Your Own Boss?

The thought of working for yourself creeps up on almost everyone with a steady job from time to time. Craving something different to the usual ‘9 - 5’, and/or something where you are no longer “working for the man” and answering to someone else. It could simply be the motivation to do something that is more aligned with your passion.  This begs a big but important question, are you ever really ready to start your own business? With a big feat and a massive learning curve ahead chances are the answer is probably no, however, all the experts out there will tell you to start before you're ready and I for one certainly believe this from my own personal experience! 

Venturing into your own business makes you the ultimate decision maker and empowers you to live the life you want. Once you break free from the daily grind of working for someone else, every element of your business and your life will be in your hands. The journey to become your own boss will be the most rewarding journey you will ever go through. As the saying goes outside of your comfort zone is where the magic happens, the personal growth and development, this is where you as an individual can truly thrive.

Here are our top six points to consider if now is the right time to work for yourself: 

1. You want do something you truly enjoy doing and design the life you want

You’re a big picture thinker and have a vision and passion for your life which involves making an impact on members' health and fitness journey, aspiring to inspire others. You want to do something that gives you purpose and be the creator of a thriving community, guiding people to unleash their limitless potential. You understand that success without fulfilment is the ultimate failure and working for someone else’s dream is not fulfilling you.

When combining your love and passion for what you do everyday will give you every opportunity to flourish, feel aligned in your sense of purpose and live a truly fulfilling life.

2 . You are ready to serve others

You understand your business is bigger than yourself. For your business to thrive you have to put the member and your team first. Yes, your business is a vehicle to create a life that you want and truly deserve, for that to happen you need to put your members and your team before you. The community experience is the heartbeat of the business and ensuring you are adding value to your members' life is why they will keep coming back.  Community is everything to a successful Fitstop, providing a fun, welcoming environment with a bit of banter along the way. 

You also need to build a really strong team, look after them and serve them. If you look after your team, they will in turn look after your members. Your team will help you build your business and create an environment so great and so valuable that your members become your raving fans, so look after them. 

Your success is a by-product of providing an amazing member experience and creating a strong and empowered team.

3. You are willing to do the work

Being your own boss means you're in charge but it also means you need to put the work in, there is no one else responsible -  it’s all down to you. When you become a business owner, you’ll quickly realise that gone are the days of work-life balance, as a business owner you will see a work-life integration. Despite what you may think, you may “work” longer hours than you ever have before BUT as Thomas A Edison once said ‘I never did a day’s work in my life, it was all fun.’  When you are really aligned in your life with what you are doing it will no longer feel like work, you will truly enjoy what you do. 

It’s not a job when you love what you do!

4. You are ready to invest in yourself  

You’re about to enter into a new phase of your life with a steep learning curve. Growing and improving yourself, skills and building on your business acumen is all part of this new and exciting journey. A business will never outgrow it’s founder/owner and therefore if you want to be successful you need to continue to grow your skillset to keep the business moving forward. Up-skilling yourself in both your emotional intelligence and business skill set is the fundamental key to growth. 

At Fitstop we empower you with the all right tools, system, structure and support you need to succeed but it’s up to you to take these tools and implement them.  As a business owner it’s vital to take accountability for your own actions and as mentioned previously, do the work. 

It’s strongly recommended by most experts out there to invest in your own personal development by listening to podcasts daily, reaching out to people in your field to learn from them and surrounding yourself with people who are already where you want to be. 

5. You’re naturally a passionate, self-motivated person and believe in yourself. 

The most successful business owners will be naturally passionate and motivated by what they do. Sure there’ll be times where you really don’t feel like taking that session or making that sales call because of some external factor but you need to be able to get yourself out of this head space and push forward knowing that the input you have in your business will equal the output. 

6. You are resilient 

Outside of passion and the willingness to learn, one of the most important characteristics of a successful business owner is resilience. There are times where things don’t go to plan (a global pandemic for instance), in the face of adversity is a time to dig in and do whatever it takes to put one foot in front of the other and move forward. Don’t give up! You have all seen those memes of those graphs with what success looks like, a squiggly line that goes in roundabouts, it’s never a linear journey. You will have good times and you will have set backs but if you are willing to keep pushing forward and remember why you started in the first place then you will succeed.

 Steve jobs once said ‘your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else's life,’ so if you can answer a big YES to all of the above then don’t waste another day,  take the plunge and you will be well on your way to living a life you have always dreamed of. You get one life, this isn’t a practice run so start doing the thing that will light you up today. 

For more information about how you can become your own boss please contact me on rebecca.hull@fitstop.com