A new era of stay-at-home-preneurs

For a lot of people over the last two years, what was once an impossible dream became necessary for survival. As jobs all over the world were lost and large companies plunged into demise, lockdown behaviours quickly changed from jigsaw puzzles to market research, gardening to candle-making, TikTok scrolling to TikTok strategy, and a new era of stay-at-home-preneurs was born.

For some, the passion project really was just an expensive hobby and once the world righted itself again, many returned to the 9-5 life. For others though, life took a radically different turn, and what once felt out of reach became a profitable-enough venture that it replaced previous incomes with something far more fulfilling and soul-satisfying.

So what does it really take to replace a corporate income with your own business? There are many factors to consider, and while I’d love to tell you one magazine article will give you everything you need to become an overnight success, there’s one thing that no article, no book and not even a business coach can give you: grit.

Initially every business will feel like an expensive hobby as you plunge time, energy and money into your business baby, willing it to fly, willing it to succeed. Statistics show that the majority of businesses fail within the first three years. I don’t believe this is down to poor strategy, a poor product or a novice business owner. I believe anyone can sell anything to anyone, but it takes a certain type of person to hold the vision of success and carry a steely determination through the hard times. And hard times will be plentiful in the early days of business as you learn to navigate all the different skills you must learn, the roles you must adopt, and the challenges you’ll face with zero experience. That said, if you think you’ve got what it takes, read on.

You really can sell anything to anyone. The keys are mindset, energetics and strategy. In that order. A mantra I’ve held for decades, and one that’s served both me and my clients well, is “the best-laid strategy in the world will be unsuccessful if the mind behind it isn’t aligned”. Where I see many people going wrong is learning expensive strategies from coaches and business programs, mapping out said strategies, and believing that their “solid strategy” is all it takes, to then be bitterly disappointed when it didn’t work at all.

Mindset

Human beings are meaning-making machines. In a world where spirituality has gone mainstream, everything from a white feather to a misplaced planet can have aspiring entrepreneurs in turmoil, believing the reason their product didn’t sell is because Mercury was in retrograde, an owl flew into the window or the tarot draw pulled the joker card. I jest. I have a lot of time and respect for the spiritual mechanics of our world, but despite being fluent in astrology, numerology, moonology and more divination tools than you can shake a broomstick at, 16 years in business has proven to me — your mind is the greatest tool of them all.

Be mindful of the excuses you create as to why something didn’t “work”, for example, why you had no sales today, this week or even this month. Women especially are susceptible to attaching self-worth and belief in future success to the absence of immediate results. Men, on the other hand, are more inclined to shrug it off and keep going.

Ladies, we can learn a thing or two from our masculine counterparts. While many men don’t have the capacity to spin a gazillion different mind-plates, which actually makes us very strong candidates for becoming successful entrepreneurs, men are far less likely to get emotionally attached to the end game or the immediate results or lack thereof. Channel your inner Steve Jobs and stay brutally focused on your desire and the end goal. Refuse to listen to anyone who says it’s not possible or you’re incapable, especially when those voices come from inside your own head.

Doubt will become your worst enemy if you let her. Choose trust instead. Build your self-belief like you build your butt in the gym. It takes practice, sweat, determination and a commitment to keep turning up even when you really don’t want to. Body builders will tell you there’s no such thing as a day off. When it comes to the mindset and energetics of business, the same is true. Daily focus and commitment to the power of your mind, your self-belief and your vision for the future is paramount.

This doesn’t necessarily mean working on your business seven days a week. I don’t subscribe to “hustle culture”. But it does mean working on yourSELF every day. You are your business after all. Without you, your business doesn’t stand a chance. Mind-gym every day. Bat away the voices that tell you you can’t. Practise out loud the declarations that say you can, and you will. Bounce around on a trampoline if you must to get yourself in a hyper mood, turn up the radio and dance around the kitchen, promise yourself you’ll do whatever it takes to lock in the mindset of resilience, self-belief and resourcefulness. Without a regular mind-gym, doubt quickly spirals into fear, and fear was the reason you didn’t have a business in the first place.

Energetics

A strong mindset becomes your foundation for energetics. Please do not attempt to move from mindset to strategy without this connecting link. It’s a game changer for a successful business, but one that often gets dismissed as spiritual nonsense. Insider tip: the one per cent know and practise energetics … that’s why they’re the one per cent. Decide which club you want to be in before you continue reading.

The foundational difference between mindset and energetics is that the mind controls the thoughts you have, while your energetics controls the feelings you have. Both emit a frequency that makes you an energetic match for what you desire. Thoughts and feelings are tangible. They are felt by other people, most importantly your customers, your social media followers, your suppliers and anyone else you engage with through your business.

If you have a negative, scarcity-based mindset, one drenched in disbelief, frustration, “not enough-ness”, cynicism and a lack of self-worth, this directly impacts the energy you show up in, so when you show up to supplier meetings, write your social media posts, put your website together and even fulfil customer orders, the energy you’re in is the same energy they receive. Are they likely to come back for more? Highly doubtful.

But, when you’re excited about your product, in full faith and belief of what you can offer the world, when you choose to see all events as opportunities rather than hurdles, fully commit to yourself and to your business, and refuse to be swayed by anything that threatens your dream, your energy, a.k.a your energetics, transmits differently. People are drawn to you, magnetised to you even. Suppliers look forward to your next meeting, clients can’t wait to buy from you again, your social media followers actively search for your profile to see what you’ve posted. You become a force. You become memorable. You become someone who people want to be around.

Always treat people with grace, humility, respect and compassion. Assume the best in everyone. Trust everyone around you to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Treat everyone like they’re important, like they matter, like they are worthy of your time. This is all energetics. The energy that you show up to life in, to business in, will be a hugely determining factor in your success.

It goes way beyond being a nice person. It goes as far as taking permanent radical responsibility for your mindset, your emotions, your energy, your inward thoughts and outward behaviours. It’s choosing to see the gold in every single moment, even the hard ones. This is life advice as much as it is business advice.

People who moan about life, who can’t find joy in anything, who always find themselves in difficult situations and never have a positive thing to say don’t exist in the one per cent. That mindset and energy won’t make it. The only person who can change the mindset and the energy is the one inhabiting the body. And it really is as simple as a choice, followed by daily commitment to never be swayed. No, it’s not easy and many fail. But this is why we have a one per cent.

You can choose to join with your thoughts, your energy, your choices and your commitment to yourself. There are no other entry requirements. Your successful business is all on you. There are no limiting factors. The economy, global events, algorithms, competitors etc are not reasons for you to fail. These are all things you can choose to believe will set you up for failure or not. Mindset and energetics will make you successful before you even catch a whiff of a business strategy.

Strategy

Strategy is our final puzzle piece and while I could write an encyclopaedia of all the different business strategies available, it would only ever serve as inspiration, and never guidance, because there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all strategy. In my 16 years in business, I’ve covered many industries — from education to interior design and property, performing arts, music, dance, fitness, management, life coaching, business coaching, spirituality and energetics to sex, relationships, love, intimacy, mindset, childhood trauma, money mindset and many other spiritual divination tools.

What I can tell you without a doubt is you can’t buy a strategy that is guaranteed to work. But you can buy a route to success through learning, implementing and committing to finding a method that works for you. No one strategy is superior to another. Reminder: strategy is not the key to success. Mindset and energetics are.

That said, finding a strategy that gets you excited and bouncing around your kitchen with the radio on full blast is probably a good indication that you’ve landed on something that will “work”. Your energy will guide you to what feels good and what doesn’t. Following what feels good is really important. If a strategy feels restrictive, contracted, uninspiring or deflating in any way, don’t do it. Your mindset and energetics aren’t worth it. Strategy has to feel good. You have to be inspired to follow through on a methodology that lights you up. It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing, if it makes you feel crap, your energy will sink that ship long before the strategy does.

To give you a tangible example, as a life and business coach, the standard model is to spend huge sums on Facebook ads, drive traffic to a free event which demands a lot of time and energy, sell the event attendees into a low-cost offer, up-sell them yet again into a high-ticket offer, and then spend your life on Zoom calls defined by a strict schedule and a requirement to be available 24/7. I used to do this, until I realised I’d prefer to live my life without a schedule, without Zoom calls, without a humongous ad budget, and without being drained by the demands made upon me by clients. So I got myself into the mindset that this was possible, I alchemised my energetics to match, and found myself a strategy, through experimentation, that I love. I work a few hours a day, procrastinate a lot (it’s just who I am), have a global audience of thousands of women, am available for clients on my own terms and truly live an incredible life.

Your strategy must be an extension of your values, how you want to live your life, what makes you feel good and how you want your brand or your business to be experienced. As online entrepreneurs, what we’re really doing is creating an experience for our clients and customers. We’re putting on a show. It’s a party. This is where the memorable piece comes back in. You want your customers to remember you, talk about the experience they had with you, recommend you to friends and family, post about you on social media and keep coming back for more.

What about your product or service moves people? How do you make them feel? What are your brand values? What do you stand for? What are you passionate about? How do you share that passion? How do you activate your clients and customers to move with you? What’s inspiring or magnetic or thought provoking about your brand? How much are you screaming that message from the rooftops?

Even if you’re baking cookies in your mum’s kitchen and shipping them out to a five-kilometre radius, there’s something about you that’s special. There’s something about you that wanted to do this. You have values, visions, beliefs and ideals. Who you are and what you love goes into those cookies. Let them see it. It doesn’t need to be a profound humanitarian mission. I’m not asking you to donate your profits to save the whales. But I am asking you to believe in your tiny little business, and to believe in yourself, and to allow the creativity that sparked your business idea to spark your strategy, to think outside the box, to perhaps even research competitors and determine what gets you excited and what doesn’t, and then come up with something that’s uniquely you. The more you your business is, the more solid the strategy will be, because it will be in full alignment with who you are, and your mindset and energetics.

It sounds so simple. It is. One of the things I have to coach many of my clients out of is the belief that business is hard and complicated and requires a million and one things to keep the machine whirring and generating cash. It couldn’t be less true. It’s only the belief that it’s hard that keeps them stuck. Remember, the best-laid strategy in the world won’t work if the mind behind it isn’t aligned. If you’re convinced you’re doing it wrong, that you’re missing something, that what you’re doing isn’t enough, then that’s exactly what you’re going to experience because that becomes your energetics. But if you can believe in your excitement, in your vision, in your commitment to seeing this through no matter what, and allow yourself to play and get creative with your marketing, and your strategy, so that the business is a full expression of who you are, what you stand for, and what you believe in … well, I can’t wait to see the end result, because I’d bet every penny I’ve got, It’ll be something I’ll always remember.

Harriette Jackson is a money and energetics coach based in the United Kingdom. She teaches her global clientele of spiritual freelancers and entrepreneurs how to achieve abundance in all areas of their lives. For more, visit @ask_harriette on Instagram.