Should You QUIT YOUR JOB and GO INTO BUSINESS?

Hello, you super duper, double delicious person, you. Have you ever thought of starting your own business? Or maybe you've even tried and now you're wondering, is it. For me, reality is, I am the biggest fan of entrepreneurship. It's the best decision I ever made. And for years, I said, I wish I had a magic wand, which technically I do, but I wish I had one that worked, but because I would wave that wand and I would make every indigenous woman into an entrepreneur. Then I realized I probably shouldn't do that, because not everyone's cut out to be an entrepreneur. I follow Layla Hormozi, and recently in one of her videos, she asked four questions. Four questions that'll help you decide whether going into business for yourself is something you should do. Let's talk about it. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the loon clan. I'm a proud member of Seine River first nation in Treaty 3 territory in Northern Ontario. And I empower women who empower others. I support women in health care, whether it's hospitals or clinics, in higher education, our colleges and universities, in our municipalities, in our First Nation communities, and in small business, because they are the change agents. They are the ones who reach out and want to bring me in to help them invoke the change that is needed. Our hospitals and universities struggle with indigenous patients because of a cultural difference. I can help with that. The colleges and universities are losing programs. They don't have enough students, and the indigenous population is growing. I can help with that. Municipalities usually want to either establish or improve their relationship with the nearby First Nation community. I can definitely help with that. And as I mentioned in the opening, I've been an entrepreneur for going on 16 years. I can definitely help you with that. So today we're going to focus in on should you go into business for yourself? Do you have what it takes? Do you have the personality type? Do you have the. I'm not going to say that on a video. Do you have the nerve? There's. There's. That's how I'm going to put it. As I mentioned, I follow Layla and Alex Harmozi, and recently, Layla did a video where she asked four questions to help you decide if you should quit that job and start your own business. And I thought these questions were so valid that I wanted to share them with you. So forget handy dandy index cards. I got my notebook. By the way, you're gonna love this entrepreneurial spirit. And you see that? Subtle. I'm so subtle. Okay. First question. So I want you to imagine for a sec, or the person I'm talking to, you have a job or a job you've been doing, right? If you technically don't have a job right now, you're probably gonna apply to get the same kind of job you had before. So job compared to starting your own business. So the first question is which opportunity, the job or starting your own business will allow you the greatest opportunity to grow? And what I mean by growing is improving your skills. Whether it's people skills or sales skills or, or detail management, time management, whatever it is, because each one of them comes with skills. Which one is going to give you the greatest opportunity to grow? Now, as we go through these four questions, I'm going to use my career path as an example. When I quit my job to start my own business, let's just say I was at the top of the food chain. I had gone from secretary to all the way to the top, the executive director of a $4.2 million indigenous employment and TR agency. I was making seriously good buck and I was getting silly things like paid vacations and stat holidays. Those things you don't see as an entrepreneur. That is what I was walking away from. I. My mileage. My mileage checks were the size of a paycheck and I received once one of those once a month. Which kind of gives you the idea of my workload. That was the days of the BlackBerry. And I can remember distinctly sleeping with my BlackBerry on my pillow because I had a board of directors that if they texted at 2am they expected an answer at by 2:15. One of the things I got back by going into business by myself is my freedom. Now, which offered me the greatest opportunity to grow the job or starting my own business? Well, the job there was definitely opportunities to grow, but the reality is I had that job not because of what I was going to learn, but because of what I already knew. I was top of the food chain because I had been doing that work for 20 years. I had worked my way up. So in my case, it was the business that had the greatest opportunity to grow. I was going to have to learn customer service and sales and marketing and how to design products and how to build a website and how to maintain a website. All of those things, all of them I have learned, by the way. So question number one. Which opportunity is going to give you the greatest opportunity for growth? In my case, it was going into business. Question number two, so. Oh, this, this is why Leila makes the big bucks. Because I Wish I had asked this question. It wouldn't have changed my mind. I still would have gone into business. But it's definitely a question you should ask. The second question is, what's your track record on how you react in stressful situations? So when it all hits the fan, when the bottom falls out, when you get taken out at your knees, what do you do if you're the kind that gives up? Get a job. Get a job because you can call in sick and quit for that day. Quitting is not an option when you're running a business because it depends on you showing up. You gotta be the dust yourself off type. You have to be. Honestly, I have said it a million times because I'm in business and have been for 16 years. I have been knocked down so many times that I don't waste even one minute questioning whether I'll get back up again. The pandemic didn't shut down my business. I got it. Will there be challenges? Absolutely. Will be. They be the kind I've never seen coming before. Probably that's why they're going to be challenges. If I've seen them before, I know how to handle it. That's not challenging. That's just part of business. But I know that when it gets tough, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. And I'm tough. I find the solution when it feels like nothing. Now, I might need. Like when the pandemic hit, that required three days crying in bed. Because back then I was only doing live events. I wasn't doing anything virtually, but I adapted. Within six weeks I had my first video course out and within three months I had four out there. You adapt, you figure out a way. So what's your track record on how you handle stressful situations? If it's not something you handle well, the job might be the way you want to go. Just saying. Number three. Section number three or question number three? Oh, this is one I never consider, probably should have, but honestly, success was not a failure. I'll talk about that in a sec. Question number three is, what's the worst case scenario if you do go into business or you don't go into business? So there's two parts to question number three. So what's the worst case scenario? So for me, again, worst case scenario, if I get a job, I'm going to hate it. I'm going to be told what to do. There's going to be limitations. It's going to feel like I live in a box. Someone else is going to tell me the hours I work, I'm going to have to ask someone else for a day off to spend with my grandkids. They're going to limit my vacation time. If I don't want to work on a Tuesday afternoon, I'm still going to have to work. And they're not going to let me work on Sunday afternoon. When I do want to work, I'm going to hate it. Worst case scenario. Worst case scenario. In business, I go bankrupt, I go broke. No one hires me anymore. I the pandemic times a million. Worst case scenario. Now that you have the worst case scenario, the second part of the question. What's the probability that it could happen? What's the probability that if I took a job I would hate it A hundred percent. After sixteen years in business, I'm never working. I would get fired so fast the first time someone said, you can't do that or you can't say that. I worked really hard a lot of years to have my own voice. That's not happening. So job high probability. What's the odds that I'm going to go bankrupt in my business? Zero. I repeat, the pandemic couldn't take me out. I'm always coming up with new ways. Are there slow seasons? Absolutely. Does the market change? Absolutely. Do I have to adapt on a regular basis and keep training? Absolutely. But my success is in my hands. How big my bank account gets is up to me. If I work harder, I make more. If I do diddly squat, I make nothing. It is totally dependent on me. So the odds of me going bankrupt in my business, such you answer for you. Boo. And last question number four. Would I make more money in the other opportunity than what I have now coming in? And would you make enough? So if I went and got a job working for someone else, would I make more money than I do right now? Possibly, depending because of my skill set, Because I've been working for so long, because I'm an expert in the field, I come from good chance I could make more money. Would I make enough to cover what I need? Yep, really good chance. So that's a positive on the job side, on the business side, would I make more than I have now? Very good chance. Because with every day my skills get better, my skills get sharper, I learn more things, I get better at marketing and sales, whatever. I am constantly training, so that's not an accident in it. So will I make more than I do now? I bet on it. And would I make enough? 100%. I have for 16 years. There have been Dry spells. My creditors could tell you that there's been times, slow season, they got to wait a little bit. But I have fed and take care of myself and bought my Grandkids presents for 16 years. We're good. So which one? Well, for me the price is just too big here. Even though I could make more money, I don't want to set an alarm clock again. I haven't used one in 10 years. I. If my daughter needs me, my grandkids need me and I don't have a meeting booked or even if I do and I can't reschedule like, I mean the chances are that I can do so much more on this side of the fence. So in my case, based on my answers, business is the way to go. So now Leila does mention one thing at the end of her video and I thought that's, that's an entrepreneur. Her point was the desire trumps logic. Even if all of your answers say you should go get a job if your heart wants you to go into business, from a Nishna based standpoint, I believe that is crater telling you this is what you were meant to to do. I can also tell you now, forget about Leila. This is totally Sandy speaking now. I can honestly say as Anishna be quay as an Ojibwe female, that's why I love entrepreneurship so much that the complete freedom, the escape from the oppression, it's not dependent on what mainstream thinks of me for me to be successful. Because the first eight years I worked in our communities, my teachings are part of what I do. I don't have to be excluded. I am successful because I remembered who I was, not forgot. I don't have to do it the mainstream way. And that is the payoff I used to always say, and I haven't said it in a long time, even though it still applies, that with my work, doing seminars and workshops, especially in First Nation communities or with non indigenous entities, that I operate under a two check system, two paychecks. The first is the money. I get paid to do what I do, to do the seminar, to do the keynote, to do the workshop. That's the obvious one. The second paycheck is the results. The look on someone's face when they finally understand. The look on someone's face when they realize they now have the recipe to fix whatever was stressing them out, that they can. They have much better tools now, more tools to be able to save their job or save that relationship or whatever the case may be. And when I'm in a First Nation community. And I can empower women to realize their domestic violence past doesn't have to be their future because it wasn't mine. Even though that is my past, that is worth everything. So I'm dying to hear in the comments, did you do the four questions? What's your results? Should you go into business? If you're indigenous and female, I'm hoping you see the benefits of doing it. It can be scary, but guess what? We've faced scary and we're still here. Until next time. I love you. Take care. Bye bye.