Are you courageous enough to abandon a practice that has made you successful in the past?

If you become an entrepreneur, you’ll find many things change:

Firstly, your network needs to be overhauled.

Talking to corporate executives won’t help you get clients (unless you’re selling to large corporations), nor does it help you obtain an entrepreneurial mindset. In the past, executives might have helped you get a new job, but to be successful as a founder you must build relationships with other business owners who face similar challenges you do.

Secondly, your level of risk taking has to increase.

You have to start investing your own money now and be clinical with the use of your time as you create and build a business.

It’s like a newborn baby needing to be nurtured. It needs oxygen to breathe and food to grow. But too many times startups die young due to a lack of funding and effective use of the founder’s time.

Thirdly, you don’t need to please your boss anymore.

Initially, this can be a huge relief…until you realize that unless you make money and bring in sales yourself, you’ll have trouble paying the rent. Your stress has shifted focus and getting a good night’s sleep becomes an art.

Again…are you courageous enough to abandon a practice that has made you successful in the past?

You’ll need to have the courage to stick your head above the parapet and not worry about someone firing an arrow at your head. Because you need to be able to withstand people telling you your idea is stupid and will never work.

Dan Kennedy said, “You will find the people who raise themselves up to exceptional power and wealth, and raise brands and entities with them, tend to be direct (lacking time to be otherwise), blunt (lacking patience for the sensitive) and unflinching to criticism, disapproval or outright combat.”

It’s all about courage…

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau