Hey there, Freedom Seeker! Welcome to the exhilarating big sky of small business entrepreneurship! I wrote a book for you. This book reveals the Unbiased Small Business Research Formula developed from decades in the trenches of American Main Street and online business as a small business entrepreneur and a coach. Its objective is to help you become the successful creator of the new life you envision by objectively guiding you in researching and choosing the right business. In the next weeks, I’ll share free sections of the book with you before it’s released for publication and available for purchase. CHAPTER 2 – Where you decide if this book is for you “In the end… We only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have, and the decisions we waited too long to make.”- Lewis Carroll. At 22 years old, I packed my life in a red duffle bag and left my native France to see the world. Living in Paris, the glorious City of Lights, I had become a gloomy and depressed worker bee laboring for forgettable companies in stressful and unfulfilling jobs. My life bored me to tears, literally. They were the sort of tears that show up randomly when one feels stuck because their future is going nowhere interesting. New world adventures began in California. To my surprise, soon after setting foot in Silicon Valley, I sensed a kinship with the American culture. For the first time, a world of possibilities paraded in my mind. Entrepreneurial ideas and creative energy seemed infused everywhere. The fog preciously clouding my future had lifted. Three months after landing in the great US of A, I promised myself that, one way or another, this would be my forever home. More than anything, I wanted to be an American. That was the “what.” The “how” would come later. Fast forward a few years, and I was able to return to the US for good. Like countless immigrants before me, creating my own job was my ticket to survival in this new land. My small immigrant business began as a humble skincare studio, bootstrapped on a shoestring from my small savings. Within a few years, the tiny business grew from a basic service offering into a full-fledged, 4,000-square-foot day spa in a prime retail location. Our team of forty employees offered a sanctuary of relaxation for the overworked denizens of Silicon Valley, primarily women juggling challenging careers, family responsibilities, and social lives. Later, a nascent internet paved the way for e-commerce, expanding our market to sell our spa products nationwide. This twenty-year journey of growing my business from the ground to a seven-figure venture gave me a flexible lifestyle and ample opportunities for personal and financial growth. With this first business, I discovered how small business entrepreneurship can be a superb vehicle for freedom, allowing us to prioritize who and what truly matters. Having plenty of time and location flexibility became especially paramount to me when I became a mother. My beginnings as a business owner started like many other first-timers; part from a gut feeling, part with luck. I was 25 years old, and my life purpose was unclear. I had picked this new venture more on a vague interest and potential income than from its alignment with my personal vision. Lack of planning and research led to a steep learning curve and costly errors. Even though the business gave me more freedom and growth than any job, the stress of running it resulted in severe burnout that left me feeling lost and depleted. The initial enthusiasm I had for my spa business began to wane as the company matured. Eventually, I was bored, dissatisfied with the company’s day-to-day operations and my role. Lack of purpose led to a restlessness that eventually morphed into resentment. A few years later, I had become disillusioned, trapped within my own creation. I wrestled with the contradiction of feeling stuck in a venture that was meant to give me freedom. As the business lease ended, a renewal option was off the table for reasons beyond my control. For over a year, I struggled with the difficult decision of either investing in a new location or closing the business for good. Drained physically and emotionally, I leaned for the latter. Soon after, in an emotional medley of remorse, grief, and fear, I closed the doors of my small business for the last time. With a heavy heart, I bid farewell to a significant chapter of my life. “Risk is the tariff paid to leave the shores of predictable misery,” from Chef John Folse, is a belief that resonated deeply with me. Following the closure of my first business, again, I was adrift with no clear direction. Still, I was determined to reinvent my life by researching ideas for a new business. In search of answers, I volunteered for non-profit organizations that supported small businesses. I also interned for a network of angel investors. Concurrently, I pursued an MBA program. These experiences gave me crucial insights into the realities of startup founders and the cost of their freedom when trading equity for seed capital. Ironically and in contradiction with the teachings of my professors, it deterred me from the idea of creating a startup funded with venture capital. At that stage, my freedom was more important than the prospect of creating a startup that “could” make it big but came with strings attached. Meanwhile, as I mentored small business owners, I was profoundly impacted by their stories; many mirrored my own experiences. These narratives highlighted the struggle of entrepreneurs tied to businesses that brought them misery rather than fulfillment. A revelation led me to identify the systemic issues in the small to midsize business (SMB) sector: a lack of impartial guidance for first-time aspiring business owners, resulting in high failure rates and widespread dissatisfaction. In a moment of clarity, I realized the problem was tied to my highest value: the freedom of a life lived to its fullest. Too many business owners live in quiet desperation, unable to attain fulfillment due to a lack of objective support when they decide to start their businesses. As I had with my first business, they find themselves unintentionally trapped in a company that ends up more confining than a traditional job. These insights inspired the launch of my next business, OPEN FOR BUSINESS LAB, with the mission of creating a system that preemptively addresses business failure through careful research before embarking on any business. From my experiences working with business owners, buyers, and sellers of businesses and franchises, I am determined to guide aspiring entrepreneurs in avoiding these pitfalls. Through OPEN FOR BUSINESS LAB, we provide a platform for prospective business owners to launch their ideal businesses built on a robust foundation. The objective is not just to achieve greater and faster profits but also to live a fulfilled, regret-free life. From these cumulative experiences, I developed a guide for you and others who seek freedom, titled “Right Business Right Life™” or RBRL. It is an unbiased method to launch your ideal small purpose-driven business successfully. RBRL comprises several stages, from its preliminary research to vetting to planning to its grand opening. This book dives deep into the first and most vital stage, “The Research,” which emphasizes the importance of aligning yourself with the right business for your success and happiness. From these lessons that I learned the hard way, my greatest hope is that they will save you valuable time, money, and emotional energy to guide you in becoming the successful creator of your new life. What is immensely gratifying to me is to help those stuck in soulless work and depressing life situations become empowered by starting an exciting new chapter with the right business to leads them to a successful and meaningful life. It took a few detours, but at last, my business fits my purpose and life vision: it’s the right business for the right life for me. Today, I get up before dawn every day with a spring in my step, not because I have to, but because I get to work on what motivates me. I never use an alarm unless I must travel. After several hours of creative work, I usually go for an hour-long sunrise hike. Then I work with clients until mid-afternoon when I go for a swim. In mid-life, I am in the best physical and mental shape of my life. Whenever I need a digital detox, I’ll take a middle-of-the-week trek in the mountains, sometimes locally, like in the Sierra Nevada, and other times internationally. For a few blissful days to a few weeks, I escape to the rugged and rejuvenating wilderness carrying food and shelter in “Sky,” my reliably heavy and life-sustaining backpack. As of this writing, OPEN FOR BUSINESS LAB is five years old. It doesn’t just provide me with time, location, and financial freedoms, a life crafted by my design; it also aligns with my highest values and my big “why” by granting me the privilege of helping others do the same. When we work together, we focus on your ideal business that not only can be successful but that will let you create a life story that fits you. Is it easy? Of course not. If we want to grow our business, we need to grow ourselves. The only way to grow is to step outside our comfort zone and accept mistakes and failures as learning tools. And that can be hard, like writing this book. It proved to be more difficult and took longer than I expected. I’ve always been an avid reader but never fully appreciated how mentally and emotionally challenging writing a book can be. I found it easier to return to college and graduate school in midlife than to write this book. Nevertheless, I am obsessed with my mission of sharing with other freedom seekers the roadmap to start a business for the purpose of living a life we love. The best way is by writing it down. The point of this long rant about my journey from a depressed employee to surviving immigrant to a stuck business owner to today’s purpose-driven business and lifestyle is to share with you that having a business, even if it is financially successful, doesn’t guarantee that you will have a better life. I was a fed-up employee who became a small business entrepreneur but who eventually learned the hard way that owning a business can be a prison too. Perhaps you, too, had a business that left a bitter taste, and you returned to trading your time for dollars because it was familiar. Or you have been dutifully following the job path, and now you crave more substance in your career. I am here to warn you that to live the better life you envision, you must carefully plan your transition to business ownership by spending time interviewing yourself, as well as the market of business ideas, and to make sure that you invest in and launch the right venture. The formula I discovered from my mistakes, which I share with you here, cost me tremendous time, money, and grief to learn and create. It is a series of systems. SYSTEMS is an acronym for Save Yourself Significant Time, Energy, Money, and Sanity. My greatest hope for you is that you will use this system to your advantage and build the wonderful life you envision. You deserve to live your best life! It is precisely for you if you are curious and want to identify the best business to deliver the life you wish to have. Now your most critical resolution is that you are not here because you want to start or buy a business. You are here to create the life you want. The business you pick is just your instrument to get you that life. When aspiring entrepreneurs follow a sensible framework to research and plan their entrepreneurial careers, they maximize the success they dream of as business owners. It begins with preparation and planning, which is how you make your entrepreneurial journey most rewarding. The great news is that there exist thousands of viable businesses and ideas for businesses out there. That’s also the bad news. Unless you are systematic in your research, success as a business owner becomes the luck of the draw. The Right Business Right Life Formula™ presents you with a unique systematic approach to researching what businesses you might own and how to decide which one is right for you. With introspection paired with your unbiased research, you will confidently identify the dream business that will transform your life. Let’s dive into this unbiased small business research formula for the venture that best fits you and vice versa. TAKE THIS SELF-TEST! How ready am I to begin my exploration of small business entrepreneurship? Below, rate yourself on a scale from 1 to 5 on how accurate the statements are. 1 means not accurate at all, and 5 means most accurate. Once you have rated yourself for each statement, total up your scores and then use the answer key to determine your next steps. Exploration Exercise Self-rating 1 – I have worked for others my entire career, and I am tired of office politics, commute, glass ceiling, and the hamster wheel: ________points. 2 – I was pushed out of corporate after a long career, and new job offers just aren’t appealing: ________points. 3 – I want to decide when and from where I work. I need flexibility and freedom: ________points. 4 – I have had a great career, and I feel ready for a new adventure as captain of my ship: ________points. 5 – I have no business ideas, but I am interested in investigating: ________points. 6 – I want to start a business, I might have an idea, but I don’t know where to begin: ________points. 7 – During the pandemic, I got a taste of working from home, but now my company demands that I return to the office. I need more flex time for hobbies and/or family: ________points. 8 – I don’t trust that my company will keep me for long. I want to explore alternatives: ________points. 9 – There’s got to be more in life! I need more meaning in my work: ________points. 10 – I just entered the workforce, and I feel like a fish out of water. I want to explore if starting a business might be my calling: ________points. TOTAL: ________points. Less than 15 points: You are certainly on the fence, and you may have occasional thoughts of starting or buying a business. Is it enough to prompt you to make the leap to entrepreneurship? After you read this book, you might change your perspective. 15 to 35 points: Your life is a turning point, and it is time to explore your options for a new chapter. This book is designed to expand your approach to researching the possibility of business ownership for you. 35 to 50 points: You have been thinking or dreaming about a business for a while because you seek greater meaning and a life that you enjoy more. The book was written to give you a strategy to research and begin your entrepreneurial journey. If you already have a business idea or several, use it to verify that you are on the right track and that your business idea can be a good fit for who you are and how you want to live. Would you like early access to your copy of the book as soon as it is released and receive a bonus book companion coaching session? During the private coaching session, I’ll guide you through the exercises and templates in the book. Available to the first 20 VIPs who purchase the book. To join the VIP waitlist, click here. Getting started If this is you…[Free Book Preview #4] ~ RIGHT BUSINESS RIGHT LIFE™ – From Fed-up Employee to Freed-up Entrepreneur
Lessons learned, lessons shared.
What loving your life with the right business can look like
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