I believe that you have the freedom to live life on your own terms – a life without the cubicle walls closing in on you, working on projects you don’t really care about & limited vacation time to only see friends and family once a year.

It’s possible to live life on your own terms. I know, because that was me just 10 months ago sitting in my cubicle doodling business names and coming up with services to provide my non-existent clients. I was SO desperate to leave the corporate world, but I didn’t know how and felt guilty for not appreciating the stability.

For as long as I can remember i’ve been searching for my purpose and I couldn’t shake the feeling that by sitting at a desk job that didn’t fulfill me completely, I was wasting my time.

I thought there was something wrong with me. My parents or older peers would say, “You’re just not used to it yet” or, the worst, “that’s just how life is”. The thought of sitting in this cubicle for the next forty years literally brought me to tears as I would drive home every night.

Let me tell you something, THAT IS NOT “JUST HOW LIFE IS” and if you don’t feel fulfilled everyday & you have an idea you want to turn into a business – DO IT. The world needs you.

Today I’m going to share with you the exact 5 steps you need to take to make your idea  a business, leave your job you dislike & start making money and live your life on YOUR TERMS.

1. Invest

The first step is the most important step because if you’re not willing to invest in yourself, why would anyone else? You have to be open and willing to take yourself seriously and treat your business like it’s your sole source of income (don’t quit your 9-5 yet) in order to be a success.

I’m not talking about investing just $$$, although that is part of it, but also time. If you want to develop a business you have to be willing to invest the time it’s going to take to get there. You need to just BEGIN and everything will start to move forward!

Action steps: 

Find 2-3 books that are directly related to your niche and read them.

Other book suggestions:

You are a Badass
7 Spiritual Laws of Success
4 Hour Work Week

Research, research, research your competitors, future clients, marketing strategies, business strategies, ask your friends what they think!

2. Business outline

Wouldn’t it be great if you just told the universe you have this idea and then BAM! it’s brought to fruition. Yeah, that would be awesome, but in the wise words of every successful person ever – if it was easy everyone would do it. 

A business outline will be the foundation of your business and what you’ll refer back to time and time again. It will change, be edited, updated, added to, but just starting with a solid foundation will prove to be a HUGE help in the long run.

Your business outline doesn’t need to be a million pages long, it just needs to have the general questions answered like, who your target audience is, what your mission statement is, what services you offer, etc.

Action steps:

I’ve put together this free. Brand strategy workbook for you so you can develop a solid foundation and get in front of your ideal customers. Download it. Fill it out. You will thank yourself immensely

3. Clearly Define Your Services

You could have the prettiest Instagram and website in the world, but if no one knows what service you can provide them, you’ll never get paid. Make clearly defined services of exactly what you want to do and base your whole business around them.

Refer back to your brand strategy outline at your mission statement and ideal customer profile and develop services that directly cater to that audience. Defining your services will allow you to create a portfolio for those specific clients and you know what to expect to serve them.

Action steps:

Make a list of everything you love doing and want to offer. Think of packages that you can create to bring similar services together or create just one package to offer and then develop the verbiage for your future client to understand.

For example, I offer three different packages:

1. Brand & Website Design
2. Brand Strategy
3. Social Media Management

You can look at my services here as an example.

4. Website

Pretty much everything is online these days and you need to have a website, because well, your competitors do. Your website serves as your online portfolio for the whole world to find and it should work just as well as your best sales person.

Your website should have everything you want your future client to know – your story, your services & how to contact you. It doesn’t need to be anything really fancy (we can get into that if you want to work together) but just something that people can see to know you’re a real business.

So, going back to step numero uno: invest. Don’t have any of that yadayada.idon’townmydomain.com nonsense (any Seinfeld watchers?). If you don’t invest $18 a month (yes, that inexpensive on SquareSpace) then, who is going to invest $500/month for your services? Makes sense when I put it that way, right?

Actions steps:

Read the blog posts linked below about setting up your website and then do it. Keep the template that’s there and fill everything out with your information. Again, IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE FANCY, it could literally be one page, just put something out there for people to see!

Related Blog Posts:

The Top Elements Your Website Should Have

5 Ways to Brand Your SquareSpace Site

If you’d like to work together to design your website, I’d love to work with you! Contact me here

5. Marketing

You can have the best outline, amazing services to offer and a bomb website, but no one is just going to shop up and hire you. You have to put yourself out there and show your future clients that they need you.

I wrote a blog post on how to market on budget and you can also watch the video here.

Starting a business is hard work, but if you believe in your mission and have the desire to create your own life, I have no doubt in my mind that you’ll be successful. There’s obviously also some legality stuff that you have to handle, but that’s a post for another time!

Stop second guessing yourself & get going! The world needs what you have to offer & we’re waiting for you! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out & don’t forget to download your brand strategy outline.