If you quit your 9-5 to start an online business after corporate burnout. These entrepreneur mindset shifts NEED to be taken seriously, or you’ll risk creating yourself another job.
I spent twelve years managing a $380 million fashion business and presenting strategy to some of the industry's biggest boards, and none of it prepared me for the entrepreneurial mindset shift I would have to make to run my own business. In this episode I break down the four specific habits from your 9-5 that you are going to have to drop so you don’t burnout in your first years in business. If you actually want to learn how to think like an entrepreneur instead of an employee before you quit your 9-5, these are the habits I wish I knew I needed to change sooner!
Timestamps:
2:20 - The pricing mistake that comes from an employee mindset
12:17 - Why busy isn't the same as productive (unlearning corporate burnout habits)
14:32 - Designing your own work hours instead of copying the 9-5 structure
17:38 - Saying no: unlearning people-pleasing as part of the mindset shift
In This Episode You'll Learn:
How to price your offers properly as a new entrepreneur coming out of a 9-5.
What career burnout looks like when you've built a business that just replicates your old job.
How to think like an entrepreneur instead of an employee when it comes to your working hours.
An entrepreneur mindset doesn't show up the day you quit your 9-5, you build it on purpose, one unlearned habit at a time. I teach this exact shift inside Foundations, my signature course and group coaching program for building a business around your own version of success from day one. Start an online business? Check it out here: https://onlinebusinessschool.itssophiebiggerstaff.com/Freedom-Model-Method
Working For Me is for high-achieving dreamers on a journey to build a business, and a life, that actually works for them.
Whether you're still stuck in a corporate 9-5, wondering how you can navigate the transition from employee to entrepreneur, or you've already quit your job to start and your business is feeling anything but free - this podcast helps you find a better work life balance by building an online business that's set up to achieve your goals.
Hosted by Sophie Biggerstaff, Anti-Hustle Business Mentor and Writer/Host of Working For Me - each episode explores real strategy and honest conversation about doing what you love and building a business that's genuinely working for you, not one you work for!
Subscribe for real entrepreneurship stories, and practical strategies for building something that's genuinely yours.
Success isn't just a fantasy - but you do need to write your own version of it - this podcast helps you do exactly that.
Ad | The Episode Is Sponsored By Email Marketing Tool Omnisend - Unlock Your Exclusive Listener Discount Here: https://www.omnisend.com/sophiebiggerstaff/
Transcripts
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Sophie Biggerstaff
When I quit my 9 to 5, I had to literally unlearn everything they had taught me. And I want to talk about that because it is not widely spoken about in the world of entrepreneurship, that it is so vastly different to how we operate in our 9 to 5 jobs, and we have to be able to adapt our routines, our habits, our behaviors, the way that we work to survive in entrepreneurship.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
Because building a business is very, very different than working for somebody else. I learned this the hard way, and it led me to so many burnouts throughout my early years in entrepreneurship. Johnny. Now I have been in the world online business for the past six years. In case we haven't met yet, my name is Sophie Bickerstaff. I'm an online business mentor and strategist, and I help high achievers build businesses that work for them, not one they work for.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And I specifically talk about working for you because you need to build a business in alignment with the things that you want, the way that you want to work. Otherwise, there is a high possibility that it's going to burn you out, drain you, and you are not going to enjoy the process of becoming an entrepreneur. So that is what we talk about on this podcast.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
in:
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And I've held that career for almost 12 years. By the time that I had left, I still didn't really understand how I was going to set up and build my own business and spin it. That wasn't even really my intention to start out with. When I quit my 9 to 5 job, I had the plan to go traveling.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
I was going to go traveling around Latin America. Now, obviously, when the world shut down, that plan went to shit and I couldn't go traveling. So I was forced into starting my own business because I was living in London. I had a mortgage to pay, and ultimately I needed a way to pay my bills. So I was like, okay, what can I do?
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Sophie Biggerstaff
My company is not going to take me back at this point, because they were making people redundant and they were putting people on furlough, and people were leaving at a very fast pace because there were no jobs in the fashion industry. Essentially all of the shops had shut. That wasn't an option for me, so I had to very quickly figure out what am I going to build, what am I going to create in order for me to actually earn money?
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Sophie Biggerstaff
I kind of had an idea of what I could do, and I started off thinking about like, what are my skillsets? What are the things that I can offer? So I built a business around my skill sets and very quickly, those skills that turned into money. And one of the biggest things I struggled with in those last few months was how do I price my services now, this is a mistake that I don't want you to make, and that is why I'm talking about it.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
Because when you transition out of a 9 to 5, you have been conditioned to believe that at the end of the month you are going to get a paycheck, you are going to get a salary, you are going to get a lump sum of money that you've put in your bank account because you have worked so hard that month.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And you, that is what you have been great to be paid. Now when you transition and you start building your own thing, the salary goes away. There is no such thing as a salary in your early days of business because you don't have clients. You don't have anyone that is just going to hand you out money every single month.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
You are probably investing the time. You're still working the same amount, if not more, than what you did in your 9 to 5 job, but nobody's really paying you for it. So that is the first concept that we need to address. Because if you think about in a 9 to 5, you show up at whatever time you've been contracted to work for.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
You stay until the contracted end time. And regardless of what you're doing in those hours, most likely you are being paid for it. And you're probably also getting paid for things like holidays, bonuses, any like benefits that you get with the company that you are working for, paid time off, sick pay, and you don't get any of those things when you are running your own business.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
So if you have transitioned out of this 95 and going into entrepreneurship, you're trying to figure out how much money to charge for your services or your products. That is a really big question mark, because you are only know what it is like to receive money for a whole entire package of a job that you have been working in.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
So it is a huge transition to understand how to price yourself when you become an entrepreneur. When you start selling your own services, particularly they're based around your skill set. I made a huge mistake because what I did was look at the value of what I was worth in a 9 to 5, and try and translate that into the value that I would be worth as a solo preneur.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And this is a huge mistake, because if you think about it in a 9 to 5, as I mentioned a minute ago, I was getting paid regardless of how I was showing up that day if I was not feeling very well. But I still went into work, I would be paid and I might not do. I might only be showing up at 50% capacity in that workday, but still, I'm going to get the paycheck at the end of the month.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
If I was in back to back meetings and I didn't actually sit down and look at my laptop all day, still getting paid for that, you know, like there's so many examples of where going out on our lunch break, we're getting paid for the lunch break. We're going to go and take a five minute coffee shop, right? Go to the toilet.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
We're being paid the whole time. We are in the office in that job. As long as we are showing up, we are being paid. But what you need to factor in for when you become an entrepreneur is if you're sick, you are not getting paid. If you're going on holiday, you are not getting paid. If you're going to go out to the gym on your lunch break, you are not getting paid.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
So what I started off doing when I was trading my skills and my experience to my clients, I was charging by our festival, which was a huge mistake and I had worked out that hourly rate based on what I was being paid in my 9 to 5 job. Now, if you work out, even if you've got a really good salary in a 9 to 5 job, if you work out hourly, right, I'm going to bet you will be shocked to find out what that actually looks like.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And I was pricing my services based on an hourly rate based off of what I had been paid in my 9 to 5, and that was so detrimental in my first six months to a year in business, because I was working all of these hours, probably more than the hours that I was back in my 9 to 5.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
I'm getting paid way less because I didn't factor in for the fact that I wasn't working with any of my clients full time. I was working with most of them on a project basis. I didn't factor in the fact that every now and again I needed a day off. I didn't factor in that I was potentially going to get sick.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
I didn't factor in. I needed to pay for things like taxes and insurances and softwares and systems. I didn't think about any of those costs, and because I've been conditioned to just have this salary that drops into my bank account every single month, I didn't know anything about invoicing. I didn't know how to set up payment terms. I didn't know how to set up how somebody was actually going to pay me.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
So these were all really big lessons that I had to learn in that first six months business. And I had to completely unlearn trading time for money, because trading time for money doesn't work when you are offering a skill, set a value to a client and you are not working them for them full time, because ultimately you are going to be underpaid.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
You need to be pricing based on the value that you are offering, the experience that you have, the things that you can actually offer your client, and the results that they're going to get based off of the things that you are offering. And then you need to be up charging that based on what is the lifetime potential of the information that you're going to give to your client, that how long are they going to be using that information for you?
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Sophie Biggerstaff
Also, I want to factor in the systems and softwares that you might be have invested in in your business that is going to support that client and you deliver the work. You also need to factor when you're not working for them full time. So you need to be thinking about how do I accommodate for any sick days that I might need, any holiday, that I might need to take, anything that might go wrong?
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Sophie Biggerstaff
Or what if I don't pay you? You have to be factor in all of these things. And when you are coming out of a 9 to 5, that is a brand new world that you need to be thinking about. So you have to unlearn anything that is tying your working hours to a monetary value. That is the first thing I want to share with you, because it is going to save you and make you so much more money than I did in that first six months in business.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
Well, I was massively, massively under charging myself. Now, there is a little caveat to that, because obviously when you're first starting out and you don't have testimonials, you don't have proof that your services are worth somebody buying into under charging isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world because you can build client testimonials, you can build case studies, and you can get people to invest in you very easily.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And then you can build trust with your audience and then slowly increase your pricing. But in an ideal world, we want you to be paid for what you are worth. So do not approach your pricing strategies in your entrepreneurship journey as you would accelerate in your 9 to 5. The second thing I want you to unlearn is that being busy means that you are being productive now.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
Being busy and being productive are two separate things that you have to detach now. When you are in a 9 to 5 in a in real world, you probably want to look busy so that you're not got your bosses on your back, right? Like, you want to say that you're doing all of X, y, z things and that therefore you are being productive.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
But the reality is, when you are an online business owner, you are going to have 101 things to do at any one time. You can have so many tasks that you could potentially do, and if you try and take on all of those tasks at any one time just to make yourself look productive to yourself, then it is going to be a fast track to burnout.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And we don't want you to burn out really early on in your business. We don't want you to burn out at all, but definitely not in those early days, because that is where you are most susceptible to burnout. So to untangle the busyness and productivity apps, you have to look and get really clear on the things that are needing to be done versus the things that you want to be done in your business.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And there is a big difference between the two. And so many people don't recognize that. So many people will always say, oh my God, I have to do all of these things. Well, the reality is, you are just trying to do all of those things to make yourself look busy. A lot of us certainly high achievers that have come out of 9 to 5, have learned that busy equals productive, productive equals success, and that is not the case.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
That is why I'm so big on teaching people how to build a business that works for them, and their vision of success, because we can identify what is our true version of success, and then we can make sure we're only really doing tasks that are going to move us close to that, and not just busywork to make us look productive.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
In which case what we used to think was successful in 95. We need to scrap that mentality. Now, the third thing that we need to unlearn is our work hours are work hours. When we are in a 9 to 5 asset for us, we are expected to be at a location to work at a certain time, and we're expected to stay there until a certain time.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And then we're expected that we take certain days off in the week. We are expected to only take a set number of holiday days. Now, when you are an entrepreneur, you are in control of your schedule. You do not have to succumb to the hours that you used to work in your 9 to 5. And this is a trap that so many people fall into because they think working equals being at their desk eight hours a day between a certain time period.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And that is absolutely not. Most of us set out to be an entrepreneur and start our own businesses, because we wanted more freedom in our lives. Now, when we are working to a set schedule that was dictated to us by our 9 to 5, that is anything but free, we are basically just creating ourselves another job. And this is a mistake that so many entrepreneurs actually make when they're first starting a business, and that is why I set up my business to help people not make that mistake of create themselves a job and really build a business that they want to work for.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
That's dangerous because if you are building yourself another job, you are going to again, going back to the past two points, you're going to be focusing on doing busy work. You are going to be trading all of your time for money, and that is not the way to make and build a scalable business. That is literally, as I said earlier, a fast track to burnout.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
We want to be making sure that we're aware of how we are working, how we're structuring our days, and disassociating that eight hours a day working method that was working in our 9 to 5. From the way that we're going to work in our online business, because it does not need to be the same, we can set our own working hours, we can set our own working days, we can set our own schedule.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And I'm going to do another episode on how I actually set my own schedule to work for me, because I know, for example, that I love having the morning off to accommodate for whatever it is that I want to do in my own day and set myself up for success in the afternoon. And then I work in the afternoons, and I have a really clear way on how I structure my to do list.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
Allow me to accommodate for that. So don't forget that when you are running your own thing, the power is in your hand to design your own schedule. You do not have to work in the way that the 9 to 5 taught you how to work. Now, I actually shot so many more of these tips in my playbook, the Freedom Founders Playbook, which is available scrum patches in the link in the show notes, and I document my entire journey from 9 to 5 into entrepreneurship and how to navigate that transition, because it is definitely a huge transition, and I will guide you through that entire process so you don't make most of the mistakes that I
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Sophie Biggerstaff
did. The last thing I want to talk to on what you need to unlearn when you transition over 95 into entrepreneurship is saying, yes, we need to stop saying yes. We need to say no. When you are in your 9 to 5 and you have got all of your bosses asking you for things, there is a natural, people pleaser that comes out of us because we want to please, we want to serve.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
We want to do good in our jobs. We want the promotion. We want the pay rises, all of the things we don't want to say. No. Now that I'm a bit of a caveat to this because I said no a lot in my 95, and I was a little bit of the jack in the box where I would say no, and then I'd get pushed back down.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
If you're like me, you probably already have it in you to say no, but you probably still have an element of guilt around that. No, an element of people pleasing that you want to sustain. And I think that's quite normal when you have been in a 9 to 5, particularly one that is high pressured, particularly one where maybe you've been micromanaged or your manager hasn't necessarily been a true leader and given you the autonomy over your work because you're constantly having to play somebody else to get the desired outcome for yourself.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
That can translate transition over when you're starting your own online business into having a lack of boundaries. And if you are running your own thing where you don't have set working hours, you don't have set pricing, that means you are susceptible to succumbing to somebody else's way of working somebody else's turn, somebody else's boundaries. Now, it's really important for you to hold your own boundaries and set the way, the terms that you want to work to.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And if you don't want to work in a certain way, you have the freedom to say no. You do not have to say yes to all opportunities. You do not have to say yes or clients just because something is coming to you. You don't have to say yes to it. Particularly not if that means that you're going to be people pleasing and doing something that doesn't feel in alignment to you in order to accommodate that person.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
So saying no is an absolute blessing in disguise in entrepreneurship, because it is going to save you so much time, so much energy on doing things that you don't actually want to do. And that gives you more capacity to say yes when the right opportunities show up. So if you have been a bit of a people pleaser or not really been able to set boundaries in your 9 to 5, that is absolutely something that you need to unlearn and learn how to say no and set the boundaries that are going to work for you in your online business.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
Remember, building a business that works for us isn't just about not doing all of the things that hustle culture taught us to do. It really is about defining our own vision of success and looking at the things that we want, how we want to run a business, how we want to show up. And it's quite natural when you leave a 9 to 5 to just carry over everything that you learned, how to do when you were in it.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And honestly, we have so much more freedom of flexibility when we start our online businesses. This is your permission to design a business. But truly, what's the you don't carry over everything that you land unless it's working for you in your business. If you think that there are better ways, essentially that the 9 to 5 working system wasn't designed for every single person's brain or one way of working or learning styles.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
And when the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is that when you are running your own online business, you're in control. You can build a business that is completely designed around your boundaries, your time, the money that you want to charge, the people that you want to work with. But there is an element of unlearning everything from your 9 to 5 because ultimately, that's all you know, right?
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Sophie Biggerstaff
So this is going to feel a little bit uncomfortable when you try and practice some of these unlearning behaviors because they're new. Now, if you are starting an online business right now and you want to build it with your own value and success in mind, that is exactly what I teach you how to do it. My signature course and hyper group coaching program foundations.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
The link to check out foundations is in the show notes. Essentially, it is your roadmap to starting an online business from scratch in alignment with your vision of success, in alignment with the way that you want to work and really build that online business around the life that you want to live. I will guide you through six months of starting your online business, taking it from idea all the way up until launch, and you will step into your business completely away from any of these 9 to 5 beliefs that you have had, and start it on your time.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
I hope today's episode has helped you think about some of the ways that you are maybe working in your business, or some of the things that you thought you were going to carry over into your online business. If you're just starting from your 9 to 5 and looking at it from a different perspective, a different lens on what you could change to make your business work better for you and not feel like a job that you are working for.
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Sophie Biggerstaff
Ultimately, what's the point of building ourselves another job if that is what we've just left? If you want more tips on how to start a business or build a business that works more in alignment with you, make sure you like and subscribe this podcast. Because that is exactly what I'm here for and I will see you in the next one.
