My kids love roller coasters. My son, in particular, wants to ride the most extreme, fastest, scariest he can find. Me I like watching from the ground. Seeing their faces when they step off, and then run around to queue up again.
The life of the self-employed / entrepreneur / freelancer can definitely be a roller coaster. When you are busy you do not have time to look for new business, then all of a sudden there is nothing and you scramble for revenue. More often than probably many of us would want to admit we consider the alternative. Going back to corporate. I will readily admit it has crossed my mind several times over the years. I even had that discussion just yesterday with a former client. “Would you go back to corporate?” Emphatically we both said NO!
Then this morning, in a private mastermind group I am in, one of the members posted this;
Time to open up a little.
I’ll start with a question. Has anyone ever gotten to the point where debt, stress and vision of the future has just become too much or too clouded causing you to step back into the “corporate” world in order to bring some balance? If not how did you overcome the hurdles?
This is a question I’ve been asking myself this week and something I’ve been struggling with.
I immediately felt their pain and knew exactly how they were feeling. Here was my response:
Yep, several times. You are doing one of the best things Christopher, reaching out to peers in a mastermind type of environment. Making that more consistent, with a small group could help you immensely if you are not doing that or working with a coach currently.
I have approached this a few different ways depending on the time
- Re-connect with your WHY? Who/what are you doing this for? It’s different from Vision. If you have not read it get Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why?
- Reflect back on the last piece of work you either did for a corporate or when you were in corporate, that did not go well. Often it’s because of the entrenched, bureaucratic, blinkered processes that stop things from actually getting done. Self-employed you can probably get more done in a day than a week or month in corporate and you are your own boss.
- Go back and have some interviews with corporate. That was enough to put me off and get me back on track- LOL!!
Hope that helps and keep doing what you believe in.
Sometimes the answer is yes, go back, re-group and think about starting again sometime down the road. Or decide that the roller coaster is not worth riding. But first make sure you walk around to where the people are getting off and see the elation and emotion they experience from being on board and decide if that is what you are seeking too.