25 Reasons To Start Your Own Business, Even In Midlife

Do you constantly have the Sunday Scaries? Monday Mayhem? 😱

There are other ways to earn an income that doesn’t involve languishing in a soul-sucking 9 to 5 job.

Here are 25 reasons for starting your own business in midlife:

1. You want to do work you love.

2. You want to live more authentically.

3. You want to design your work around your lifestyle.

4. You want to work from any location or country you choose.

5. You want to spend more time with family, friends, pets, or hobbies.

6. You want to do something you’re passionate about.

7. You want autonomy in your work.

8. You want to do work that doesn't feel like work.

9. You want to be happier doing something that matters to you.

10. You want the flexibility to choose who you work with.

11. You want to spend your days positively impacting people’s lives.

12. You want to retire earlier than 65.

13. Your 9 to 5 job doesn’t meet your financial goals.

14. You want to escape from a fixed income and have control over your income.

15. You want to pursue the dreams you’ve put on hold for so long.

16. You want to adapt your work to fit your life circumstances.

17. You want to do work that better aligns with your values and beliefs.

18. You’re tired of living other people’s expectations.

19. You realize that you hate your 9 to 5 job and that it no longer serves you..

20. You want to fulfill your passion and your purpose.

21. You want to do something in retirement that generates income and brings joy.

22. You want a creative outlet for self-expression and innovation.

23. You realize that you can monetize decades of accumulated knowledge.

24. You’re tired of endless meetings and the 9 to 5 grind.

25. You want to leave a legacy.

Some of my own reasons are included in the above list.

❓ Do YOU want to start a business? What's stopping you?

I run 3 part-time businesses outside of my 9 to 5 hours - freelance writing, personal development coaching for entrepreneurs, and photography - sometimes during early mornings, sometimes evenings, sometimes weekends, and sometimes all three! And I started them when I was a single mum.

Get in touch with me if you want some help.

𝙔𝙤𝙪'𝙫𝙚 𝙜𝙤𝙩 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙩 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙨. 𝙄𝙩 𝙄𝙎 𝙥𝙤𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙗𝙡𝙚.

To your mission, vision, and passion,

Mary Kay xoxo 💙

The Key to Confidence: Your Beliefs

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a loop of self-doubt, unable to break free? Are you tired of watching opportunities slip by because you lack the confidence to grab them? What if I told you that the key to unlocking confidence lies in understanding how your beliefs play an important role? Let’s dive into how your beliefs could be keeping you stuck.

What is confidence anyway?

Confidence is like having a secret power that fuels you to take on challenges, try new things, and to bounce back when life throws you a curveball.  It’s that voice inside saying “You got this.”  It’s the unwavering belief in your capabilities. Without it, doubt and uncertainty can creep in causing you to hesitate and procrastinate. It can even impact your overall well-being and lead to stress and anxiety. Confidence is the cornerstone of your personal and professional growth, empowering you to become the best version of yourself.

How do beliefs impact your confidence?

Imagine your beliefs as the soil for growing the tree that is your confidence. Just like nutrient-rich soil gives life to your tree, your beliefs about yourself feed the roots of your confidence. Your beliefs shape how you see yourself and your sense of worth.

As humans, we take actions based on what we believe about ourselves. When you’re an entrepreneur, if you believe you’re not good enough, you’ll shy away from opportunities that might have propelled your business forward. These could be things like going to a networking event, writing an article, or accepting a speaking engagement.

The Connection between your brain and beliefs

How about some brain science on this? We know that your brain creates neural connections based on your thoughts and experiences. This is the physical aspect of your beliefs. You may have heard of the popular neuroscience phrase, thanks to Dr. Donald Hebb, “Neurons that fire together wire together.”

Think of your brain’s pathways as train tracks. If you’ve laid the tracks for self-doubt through consistently thinking you’re not good enough, then your thought train will by default travel down that track.  But when you repeatedly think that you have the skills (or can learn them) or that you can do the things that you want to do, you are physically wiring your brain to reinforce your positive self-view.

“The brain is a learning machine. When two neurons activate together or start talking to each other, the connection between them strengthens. Then, they’re more likely to have that same conversation again in the future.” - Minnesota Neuropsychology

Cultivating positive beliefs

The beauty of beliefs is that you have the power to shape them. Remember your tree of confidence? You can nurture its growth by tending to the soil around it. Thoughts are the building blocks of beliefs. If you can change your thoughts, then you can create new beliefs.

There are so many ways to cultivate positive beliefs! While I won’t get into all the techniques here, I’ll give you some easy ones.

Awareness. Start by becoming aware of your self-talk. Those little whispers of doubt or criticism? Practice noticing them. When you start noticing them, then you can challenge them. Is that thought really true?  If you find yourself thinking “I can’t do this,” you can then explore why you think you can’t do the thing and recycle that thought with something empowering like “I have the skills to do this” or “I am capable of learning.”

Evidence. Once you can come up with a better thought, look for evidence to support it. Here are a few ways to shop for evidence:

• Try thinking back to times in your life when you've overcome challenges or achieved successes.

• Research and gather real-life examples of individuals who have successfully embodied the belief you're trying to install. Read success stories, watch interviews, or listen to podcasts where people share their experiences related to this belief.

• Think about those times when someone patted you on the back, gave you a thumbs up, or said, 'Hey, great job!' It could have been about something close to the new thought you're aiming for. Positive feedback from others serves as external validation of your capabilities, reminding you that you’ve got what it takes.

Environment. You can also seek out environments (and people) that encourage growth and learning. When I started losing confidence in myself back in 2021, I joined Clubhouse, a social audio app, to find other life coaches and inspiration. I was quickly surrounded by positive people who uplifted and supported me. They also challenged me by inviting me to participate in their discussion rooms. It didn’t take long for me to regain my confidence in public speaking by renewing my belief that I was good enough.

The more you immerse yourself in positive experiences, the more your beliefs about your abilities and worth will flourish.

Confidence isn’t something you’re born with

Confidence isn't something reserved for a lucky few at birth; it's a mindset created and nurtured by the foundation of your beliefs. By understanding the link between beliefs and confidence, you gain a superpower in decision-making. Positive beliefs about your skills and business can lead to bolder choices and drive growth. Picture this: Your choices become bolder, and challenges start to look like opportunities.

Harness the power of your beliefs to build your confidence and propel your business forward.

Keep going. You got this. 💙

Are You In a Career Situationship?

The ‘FLASH Framework’ can help you move forward

The word ‘situationship’ is most commonly found in the dating world. It’s when you find yourself uncertain about where you stand or about where the relationship is going. All you know is that you’re somewhere between a friendship and a committed relationship. You might feel frustrated. You might feel resentful.

What about your career? It’s where we spend at least a third of our lives. Maybe there’s tension or uncertainty about where your job is heading. Maybe you’re trying to figure out how to get to the next level. Maybe you don’t know where you want your career to go. If you’re feeling uncertain, frustrated, or resentful about your job, then you might be in a Career Situationship.

That’s how I felt early in my technology career. Up to that point, year after year, my year-end performance reviews were filled with positive feedback. For a time, I assumed that as long as I did my job well, eventually I would be promoted. However, my career wasn’t moving and I didn’t know why. That was the typical blueprint, right?

It turns out that’s an outdated blueprint. Thirty years ago, if you were consistently great at your job, it was reasonable to expect a promotion. Your performance drove your advancement from junior to intermediate to senior and then to management. Growth was practically guaranteed.

Contrast this to the current state. Employees can no longer expect to be promoted simply because of consistently strong performance. It’s unlikely that you’ll be tapped on the shoulder for a promotion without asking for one.

So, there I was. I felt trapped in the fog without a map of how to get out. All I knew for certain was that if I continued to do a bang-up job, I was destined to stay in my current role.

When I first realized this, it sounded like bad news. Until it didn’t. After all, others around me were climbing the ladder so there must be a way, right? I set out to discover what would clear that fog in front of me: Destination Clarity here I come!

Clarity Feels Good

A 2015 study, “The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity”, showed how when subjects looked at blurry images it triggered curiosity and tension. The sharper the images became, the more the subjects’ reward centres lit up. Getting more information about the picture alleviated the tension caused by curiosity.

Creating Daylight

Just like in the experiment, I was keen to acknowledge the fogginess about my future and work to try to clear it. Fog evaporates as daylight arrives to raise the temperature above the dew point temperature. So, how would I create the daylight?

As a photographer in my spare time, I’m lucky to know a thing or two about light, like when using a flash. Using a flash, even when photographing outside, fills in the shadows and brings out the details in your subject.

I gathered information from my recently promoted peers and found that they all used a metaphorical flash on their careers.

“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust

Although everyone did it differently, their actions shed light on who they were, where they were, where they could go, where they wanted to go. Once they knew a little about these things, they would be able to determine what they needed to do to get there. The common key for everyone seemed to be continuous discovery. That was my light bulb moment and The FLASH™ Framework was born.

It was created out of my need for some structure and my love of repeatable practices. FLASH™ became the lens through which I looked at everything around my career. This structure can be used by anyone who wants to expose the details around their career to create an actionable growth plan.

Using Your FLASH™️

FLASH™ stands for Find, Learn, Action, Stop, and Happy. These are the five (5) practices that make up the framework. Grab a fresh notebook and let’s examine these, one by one.

Find

Start where you are. Before you get clear on where you’re going, you’ll have to get clear on where your “You Are Here” arrow is on the map. What drives you? What do you like doing now that you want to do more of in the future? Write these down.

As you expose your values, your interests and your experiences, you’ll gain valuable insights that you can use as data to drive your decisions about where you want to go. Use these insights to create a few goals. For example, if you love giving presentations, one of your goals could be to seek out more opportunities in your current job or look for other jobs that would allow you to do more of that.

When I started on my own Find practice, I noticed a trend. The most fulfilling aspects of my work experiences were related to helping people navigate through processes. With that, I also gained clarity about one of my priority values, which is service to others.

Learn

Once you have one or more goals, start looking for what stands between you and those goals. Identify knowledge gaps, areas for improvement and anything that might be an obstacle. Make a list of these. For example, a knowledge gap could be that you lack advanced PowerPoint skills or that you want to be more confident in public speaking. An obstacle could be that you feel like you don’t have time to dedicate to learning.

Decide what things you could learn so that you can deal with the gaps or the obstacles. Write these down, too!

Action

This is my favourite of the five practices. It’s the “How” part. It’s your executable FLASH™ plan. With some goals, knowledge gaps and obstacles in mind, as well as some potential learning items, you can now figure out the things you can actually do to address them. An example of one action could be to research free courses for advanced PowerPoint skills or time management. Another could be to find public speaking courses or to join Toastmasters to improve your skills.

Think of singular actionable steps and write them down. Once you have a few written down, you’re not done with this practice yet! Start executing those steps NOW. You’ll find out why later in this article.

Stop

Take regular pauses as you’re moving through the Find, Learn and Action practices. Ask yourself these questions. What’s working? What’s not working? Are there any adjustments you need to make to your goals or your action items? Use this retrospective information to grow and adjust your action plan.

The more you discover about yourself and the things you want to do, the more you can expose the details of your path forward. These “stop and review” activities are meant to be regular checkpoints to assess how you’re doing and to provide opportunities to refine your FLASH™ plan.

To do this, schedule FLASHlight and Floodlight reviews. Put them in your calendar. The FLASHlight is a daily or weekly review that you would do on your own. The Floodlight is a monthly review that you would do with someone else like your manager, mentor or coach. They might be able to provide you with a different perspective, some insights and also some support.

Happy

Do you remember that study I mentioned earlier? Researchers Kidd and Hayden showed us that finding clarity feels good. Do you know what else feels good? Accomplishments! The Happy practice harnesses our built-in rewards gained by seeing actual progress. The Happy practice is a reminder to celebrate each completed step as a small win. The more steps you complete in your action plan, the more progress you see and the more it builds your confidence and motivation.

I practice Happy by playing a song by Queen: Another One Bites The Dust. I play it every time I finish one of my action plan steps, no matter how small. It keeps me motivated and creates momentum. Choose whatever celebration method works for you.

Now, back to continuous discovery. Working through the FLASH™ practices is not a one-time activity. As I learned while figuring out my own direction, career growth and development is a continuous proactive process. Keep going and refining your FLASH™ plan as you go.

Final Thoughts

We spend about a third of our lives in our career. There’s no need to spend that time feeling uncertain and frustrated. Use the FLASH™ Framework to shine a light on where you are and where you’re going!

No more Situationship.

Get curious.

Get clear.

Get into a committed relationship with your career.

Mary Kay

💙

Thank you to Elizabeth Dawber, Editor @ The Startup + Curious + Blank Page.

(originally published March 11, 2021 by Curious on Medium.com)

7 Bricks in the Road To Building Self-Confidence

Managing insecurity, one action at a time

A bloody nose. A typical school day. My “new kid” appeal hadn’t faded yet and neither had my accent. Born in London, England, my family immigrated to Toronto, Canada the year before and right after my 6th birthday. In the early 1970s, Toronto’s multiculturalism did not exist yet. My voice, my frizzy hair and chubby physique painted a bullseye on my forehead. On this particular day, I was marked by the humidity, inflating my curls into a jab-worthy mess.

Andrea (not her real name) was the lead bully, and would regularly push, punch and pinch me whenever the mood struck her. She would enlist the rest of the Grade 2 army to hurl insults. Worse though, was Andrea catching me alone in the school bathroom to endure multiple pinching and taunting.

I never reported Andrea or any of the other incidents. I never told my parents. As new immigrants, I decided that they had enough on their plates. Had I known the future impact of maintaining the silence, my decisions may have been different. Fortunately, my childhood home was a safe and happy place where I could shed my school day and lose myself in books about faraway places with princes on white horses.

I spent the rest of my primary school years nourishing the seeds of my insecurity. I learned to extinguish my British accent. I learned how to straighten my hair each morning after my parents left for work. This was a daunting process, involving a clothing iron, a blow dryer and six empty soup cans. Good fortune struck when a new television show called Charlie’s Angels dominated the ratings and Farrah Fawcett, with her signature hairstyle, released me from my daily strand-taming ritual.

Enough Patches to Make a Quilt

I escaped Andrea and my other tormentors when my family moved away a few years later. But, by the time we moved, the effects were already part of my fabric and travelled with me to our new home. You see, I had already manufactured my own Frankenstein (thanks Mary Shelley), stitching the past events together and upcycling them to create a quilted ally. This ally would serve as my trusted companion and chauffeur: Insecurity.

My creation wrapped itself around every aspect of my life. I learned to choose safety and the path of least resistance every time. I learned to melt into the crowd. My internalized bully was remarkably reliable. Whenever I faced rejection, I could count on Insecurity to support the result by reminding me that I wasn’t good enough anyway.

The Seeds You Water Will Grow

As a child, I wasn’t able to see my options for managing my situation and this didn’t change in my early adulthood. Looking back to my early twenties, I could have chosen to put energy into nourishing my self-esteem. I could have sought counselling. I could have searched for ways to heal. I could have declared the unacceptable. For the first four decades of my life, I watered the seeds that allowed me to sprout in the crop field with everyone else. I didn’t realize that life had other farms and different crops!

One great example of the power of choices is Paul Nadeau, author of the book Take Control of Your Life, an impressive example of declaring the unacceptable, despite the environment of his childhood. He describes suffering at the hands of his abusive father and then employing that trauma to choose a different path. He decided at a young age what he wanted to be when he grew up: a police officer so that he could arrest people like his father. Paul went on to dedicate his life to serve and protect others and became a decorated police detective, hostage negotiator and international peacekeeper, and continues his service by inspiring others as an author and a sought after motivational speaker.

Consciously Uncoupling

In 2007, I was about to turn the Big Four-Oh, become a divorce statistic, and change careers all within weeks. As my big milestones approached, I chose to seek counselling for the first time in my life.

Part of the therapy involved evaluating my life. My evaluation confirmed that I had done “meh” really well and earned a PhD in Mediocrity. I began asking myself some typical mid-life questions: Would anyone (other than my family) miss me if I was gone? What would I be remembered for?

I arrived at the question: Who had written my life’s first chapter? Have you ever wondered this? I suddenly realized that it was I who held the pen. That and my Frankenstein was the editor. I needed to consciously uncouple from this as well. This term was created by Kathryn Woodward Thomas, a marriage therapist and refers to a process which strives for an amicable divorce. I didn’t want to live another 40 years of humdrum. I reasoned that if I could leave my marriage and my career, then I could uncouple from insecurity as well. I sought comfort in this logic.

You’re Fired!

I committed to writing my life’s Chapter 2 without my internal editor and began to regularly call Insecurity into the arena to fight for the pen. Whenever she announced “You can’t do that!”, I would joust with “Watch me”. We tangled and sometimes Insecurity won. But, not every time. The more I challenged her, the weaker she became. It felt so good to rebel. Eventually, I fired my internal editor.

And Now, the Bricks!

There were many more defining moments where I banished my bully and pressed on. The decisions made during those times accelerated my personal and professional successes beyond anything resembling a vanilla existence. Each small step I took was a brick that paved the road to self-confidence. What follows is a description of those bricks.

Self-Confidence is a Skill

“The expert at anything was once a beginner.”

— Helen Hayes

Confidence is a skill and that means it can be learned and mastered. As my confidence seedlings began to sprout, so did my desire to stop hiding in the crowd. Others around me began taking notice. Colleagues approached me to ask for coaching and I wanted to help. So, I reverse-engineered what I had practiced and began to share it with others.

1. Test your rejection resilience — Canadian Jason Comely created a self-help game called Rejection Therapy to take the sting out of being rejected through controlled exposure. Take tiny steps to confirm that you can withstand rejection. The object is to be rejected by at least one person a day. This can include things like asking someone if you can cut in line in front of them, buying a lottery ticket, asking for discounts at the grocery store, and any other small ways to ensure you get a rejection. Over time, this gives you a proven track record of overcoming rejection!

2. Be your own cheerleader — Remind yourself daily that you are enough. Set a reminder in your phone to read the words “I AM ENOUGH”. Celebrate all of your accomplishments, even the small ones.

3. Watch for your Frankenstein — Be vigilant for insecure thoughts. Make an effort to notice your thoughts and evaluate them as either helpful or not helpful. If they are not helpful, imagine closing a door on them.

4. Do something for someone else — This can help you to be more confident in your abilities. It doesn’t need to be a grand gesture. Call a friend that is struggling and check in on them. Offer to shovel your neighbour’s driveway. Helping others activates the reward centres in our brain and shows us that we can positively impact someone else’s life.

5. Take a small step toward one of your goals — Each accomplishment will not only get you closer to your goals, but it will also feed your self-esteem by acting as evidence that you are good enough.

6. Treat your internal bully like a toddler — This one is fun! Visualize your Frankenstein as if they are a small child. Then, imagine putting them in a Time-Out chair. Ask them to sit quietly and wait for you while you do the thing you are anxious and insecure about. This helped me when I first started public speaking.

7. Find mentors — If your internal bully is your anti-mentor, then find others who can mentor you. They can help you boost your confidence in your abilities by providing feedback and helping you grow. Approach people online and cultivate a relationship. The worst that can happen is that they ignore you or say no. More Rejection therapy!

“Although our fears and limiting beliefs won’t completely disappear, over time they lose their power over our daily thoughts and actions.” Bonnie Marcus, Forbes

Final Thoughts

Just like any skill, your self-confidence is built through practice. Think of it as a muscle-building exercise. Each small step you take will lead you to take bigger steps later. How many reps do you need? As many as it takes!

My insecurities still get triggered from time to time, but that once-reliable voice no longer drives my decisions nor edits my story.

If your internal bully fights for your mind’s steering wheel, tell them to go hang out with mine. There are enough Time-Out chairs for all of them.

Keep going.

💙

(originally published by The Innovation in Medium.com)

How To Create Your Progress And Grow

Focus On What You Can Do, Instead Of What You Can’t Change

“I hate school. Nobody pays attention to me.” A few weeks after my son started Kindergarten, every morning became a protest. I started to explain how making friends would take time. Then, I remembered that I was trying to reason with a four-year-old.

I wanted him to have proof that he mattered, so I gave him a mission which promised a little attention from his peers: wait until storytime when the classroom was quiet, and let out a loud, dramatic yawn, and then watch everyone catch it and start yawning, one by one, like falling dominoes.

The following day after school, he declared his mission a success, including teaching the other kids the contagious trick. To my son, it was magic. One small win with many more to follow. Progress.

Lay The Bricks

If you’re like me, sometimes you feel frustrated when you can’t control what’s happening around you.

But there’s good news.

When it feels as if there’s nothing you can do, do SOMETHING. Each something is a brick paving your road of progress. Seeing progress is a huge motivator, perhaps even more than external motivators, like money. Loyalty reward programs leverage the incentive power of progress. A study at Columbia University indicated that customer buying behaviour changed when they noticed progress: “The closer they were to filling the [loyalty] card, the shorter the average time between coffee purchases”.

Do Something. Anything.

If you’re in a tunnel, even a tiny step forward helps you to gain momentum and moves you closer to the exit. There’s always something you can do. Here are a few of my favourites:

1. Complete a small task. Choose anything you know you can finish quickly like washing the dishes, writing your grocery list, making your bed, or folding the laundry.

2. Practice mindfulness. Do a 3-minute mindfulness exercise like any of the ones in my earlier article.

3. Prove to yourself that you’re not trapped. Go for a walk. Focus on each step. Look back often to see how far you’ve walked.

My son is 18 now and in first-year university. I worry about his online learning experience, tethered to his laptop all day. One morning, I went upstairs to check in on him during class. He lowered his headset and whispered that his professor was 20 minutes late. I could hear laughter and cheers coming from his headset. On his monitor, I could see the students playing Tic Tac Toe on the virtual whiteboard. None of them were griping about having to wait. Instead, they chose to do something fun to pass the time.

Whatever you’re facing, you have the power to do something. Something that shows you that you’re moving forward. Focus on those things.

You got this. Keep going.

💙

(originally published by A Few Words on Medium.com)