Corporate Catch? Maybe You Can Be Entrepreneurial Right Where You Are.

I talk a lot about the freedom that comes from entrepreneurship.  And I do believe there is no better way to be truly free than to work for yourself doing work that is sustainable.

If you are a corporate catch, with the right business model in place you can be a corporate renegade and make great money, without being tied down by the 9-5 job.

I’m working with a client right now who is definitely a corporate catch.  He builds sales teams that sell high ticket items.

And he was about to leave the corporate world altogether to pursue his dream of entrepreneurship.  Once we began working together to build out his sales and marketing systems, he began to think that maybe he was not cut out for entrepreneurship.  (Carol Roth, your book the Entrepreneur Equation was a real eye opener for him!)

Being an entrepreneur can be a major emotional roller coaster and my client discovered that he has a lot of internal work to do in order to hang on and have it feel good to be on the roller coaster.

At the same time, now that he had begun putting himself out there as an entrepreneur suddenly he was getting all sorts of calls from recruiters looking for someone with just his skillset.

So we decided that while he is still building his entrepreneurial venture he should go on a couple of job interviews.

Lo and behold, he discovered- he is quite the catch out there in the corporate world.  And that he may be able to have the benefits of the corporate world without being tied down, dependent or feeling trapped like he once did before.

Now, we are working on a business model in which he can take a job if it feels like a huge home run OR he can be a corporate entrepreneur and build his business model around serving these big corporations he once worked for.  And it can be a super simple business model that allows him to have a handful of clients he is doing great work with and getting paid handsomely for without having an employees.

Either way, he wins.

If you are in the corporate world and feeling trapped, I wonder if you may be able to shift your perspective one notch from where you are now and see a whole new possibility that allows you to integrate all of your experience in the corporate world with your strong desire for more freedom and possibility.

Or if you have recently left the corporate world and are not yet making it in your entrepreneurial venture, how you can leverage all of your knowledge and experience in that world to serve the freedom-based business you want now.

One of the things I am learning post-Eden is how to truly live the both/and of who I am.  I am finding the middle way of embracing all that I am and all that I am evolving to be — Alexis Neely, the strong lawyer, the powerhouse entrepreneur and Ali Shanti, the free spirit – all of me.

By the way, this is one of the ways the Money Shadow shows up in our lives – telling us we must pick, we cannot be all of ourselves.  I get it.  I struggle with it.  If you cannot see the money shadow in your life, you might want to watch this video training I made about the Money Shadow.

What would it look like to embrace all of you in the best, most delicious mash-up of all times?  What part of you are you currently leaving behind in your current reality and would love to integrate, if only you could?  I’d love to hear from you.

3 Comments

  1. Denise Duffield-ThomasSaturday, May 21, 2011 at 12:26 am 

    Isn’t that great?
    I’m actually really suited for being an entrepreneur but I have friends who struggle with exactly your client’s problem because they feel guilty about being corporate 9-5’ers when actually it suits them perfectly.

    I love it – no rules, also means you can be “conventional”!

  2. Carol RothSunday, May 22, 2011 at 3:32 pm 

    Fantastic post, Alexis and I am glad the book was helpful.  There is a way to be entrepreneurial without taking on the financial risk and I am so glad that you highlighted this to say it’s ok to be where you are!

  3. Samantha FlickMonday, May 23, 2011 at 6:48 am 

     Maybe it’s because I’m young-ish, but I have so much trouble narrowing down what I really want to be doing in the world.  If I had it my way right now, I would be able to study dietetics, psychology, music production/composition and multiple languages and be a good housewife slash cook and clean and all that lovely domestic stuff I love to do… with functional businesses creating music and helping my husband and possibly others do the same, and facilitating other people all over the world in leading healthy, fulfilling lives.  In their native languages, of course.  *sigh*

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