Yesterday I delivered a guest lecture at Birmingham City University. The subject was my personal entrepreneurial journey. Well, I definitely have a lot to say about that!
As I prepared some slides to go with my talk I had to take a look back over the last 6 years since I launched my photography business. Â I describe my solo career until now as quite organic and in many ways I simply went with the flow and in whatever direction I was drawn to next.
Of course, by looking back I’ve seen how far I’ve come.
How much more knowledge I have now about business and what works and what doesn’t. All the skills I’ve developed. All the people I’ve met.
Talk about throwing myself in at the deep end when I first started out! I didn’t know how to get customers, I didn’t know what to charge for my services (often letting the customer dictate a price to me!), I didn’t know about marketing or promotion (but I knew that social media was going to play a huge role in my business), I didn’t know about negotiating, telling my story, networking…..all the ingredients that go into making a business work….I knew practically nothing. Looking back it’s a wonder I survived at all!
But I’ll tell you what drove me on; the sheer will to succeed.
The sheer determination to never get caught up in the 9-5 cubical world where I had spent many a soul-destroying year. I wanted to do feel that when I was asked ‘What do you do?’ I could proudly answer and not be tempted to answer, ‘Well, I work here, but that doesn’t define me, that’s not who I am really, there’s so much more to me than that, honest!’.
Now, when I am asked ‘What do you do?’, I’m proud to answer, as my career now IS ME. It’s defines me. Â That’s who I am. That makes up part of my WHY.
Preparing the lecture also made me realise the successes I’ve had.
Sometimes it’s easy to keep looking forward, moving towards goals, taking action, and not stop and take note. Of course there are many ways to define success, and the most popular is by financial success, but there’s also ways to measure success.
In this video, I talk about some of my personal measures of success and they are areas that you may consider successful for yourself too.
Don’t forget how far you have come!
I want you to think about your successes.
I used to work in the rat race for over 16 years, until I decide that I couldn’t take it any more and I wanted to live my life My way, on my own terms, doing something I loved.
THIS is something I love doing! What do you love doing?
I love showing people how to see their success, find ways to achieve their social media & business goals in ways that’s going to help them prepare for opportunities and of course, create opportunities! Looking back I can so easily agree with the adage that the things you do today predict your success for tomorrow.
I love this quote. How true!
I shall leave you with that for now and of course, wish YOU every success! 🙂