128. Is Entrepreneurship Right for You? How to Build Income on Your Terms

Have you ever thought about starting a business—then instantly talked yourself out of it?
You're not alone. In this episode, we break down the fears, myths, and mindset blocks holding you back from entrepreneurship—and how to start small, smart, and scrappy.

You’ll hear how my client Lonnie went from working two jobs (including one that drained her) to building a creative crochet business that’s not only fun but financially fruitful. Plus, I’ll share the three signs you might be ready to launch your own business—even if you're not flashy, extroverted, or sure where to start.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The difference between a hobby and a business (and how to stop undercharging)
• Why entrepreneurship isn’t just for influencers or extroverts
• How to know if you're ready to try entrepreneurship (3 telltale signs)
• A step-by-step approach to test your idea without a website or fancy tools
• The simple way to budget for your business—even before you're profitable

Whether you want more purpose, more freedom, or more alignment, this episode will help you take the first brave step toward building a business that fits your life.

🎯 Ready to explore your next step? Book a Career or Business Audit at AccelerateYourLegacy.com/apply

🔁 Share this episode with a friend who's always saying, “I should start a business!”

Learn more about working with Laura Sexton

. Join the Facebook group Legacy Builders Network.

· Become a master with your money. Learn more here!

· Checkout the resource library here!

Want to ask a question Laura can answer on the podcast? Connect with her here!

Want to receive a live money or career audit? Apply Here

Send an email to Laura@AccelerateYourLegacy.com or send a DM on Instagram @accelerateyourlegacy

Elevate your coaching with daily devotionals and prayers from 'Seasoned with Salt.' Get your copy HERE!

Transcript

Laura: 0:02

hello and welcome to money and career mastery from overwhelmed to ownership. I'm Laura Sexton, your abundance and legacy coach here to help you navigate the world of money, debt payoff, and career growth with confidence and clarity. In this podcast, we'll tackle the financial and career challenges, holding you back, optimize your income and build the freedom that comes with true ownership. If you're ready to break free from overwhelm, create a budget that aligns with your values and design a legacy that empowers future generations. You're in the right place. Hello accelerators. Have you ever thought maybe I should start a business? But then you instantly talk yourself out of it. Well, let's talk about what's really holding you back and what to do about it. So today I wanna tell you about one of my clients, Lonnie. Lonnie, has created BOLOS Crafting, which is one of the premier crocheting destinations. If you think anything nerdy and crochet, this is where you wanna go. Harry Potter, cauldrons and Death Star pillows and Mario Star pillows, and she's got gnomes, she's got dragons. She has all of the nerdy fandom things, and it's amazing. You definitely wanna go check her out if any of that makes you excited. But when Lonnie and I started working together, she was working at McDonald's for her side hustle. Now, there was nothing wrong with that, and she was very good at what she did. In fact, I wanted her there more often than she was willing to be there. This was her second job. She had a full-time job. She still has a full-time job, and she wanted to pay off her debt. McDonald's just wasn't cutting it. In fact, it was sucking out her soul. And that is the last thing we want. What we really want is for her to find something that she enjoys and that she's really good at, and it turns out what she's really good at is crochet. She's in fact in the guild as a master crocheter. So she has this side project, and what we are working on right now is building that up so it brings in an income. It's not just a hobby. What's the difference between a hobby and a business? A hobby is something you do for fun, whereas a business brings in income. If you are working, working, working at a business and you are making no money, you just have an expensive hobby that's taking up a lot of your time, that's not a business. A business needs to be bringing income into your home and helping you reach your goals. Let's take a quick side here to talk about what entrepreneurship is not. Entrepreneurship is not a get rich quick path. Entrepreneurship is difficult. Most small businesses close within the first two years, and it takes about five years to get up and running. Think about that. You have to be in this for the long game. Sometimes there's a requirement to burn the boats, and what that means is we are just going to go all in. There are no other options, but sometimes we need to build our side business up alongside our nine to five until it is making enough money for us to be able to step out onto the dock. We wanna make sure that what we do is bringing in income is financially sustainable. Because if you were stressed out in your business, you are not going to be bringing in the clientele that you think that you should be. You're not going to be bringing in the people that could be using your services because they're gonna feel the desperation on you, and nobody wants to work with desperate. Nobody. Nobody, not a single person. Nobody wants to work, but desperate and they can smell it on you. So you have to make sure that you are doing this in a smart way. Another thing, entrepreneurship is not, it is not reserved for extroverts and influencers. You can look at me and go, well, she's clearly an extrovert, and I am. I love being around people. I'm filled up by having conversations. So for me, entrepreneurship and being a people-focused business is ideal, right? But you can own your own business and not have to be out and about and flashy. Lonnie, my client, she's fabulous in her own way, but she's not flamboyant the way that I am, but she's very good at what she does. What she does is amazing, but she's not out here being flashy and flamboyant. She's being herself and she's found something that she enjoys doing, and she's doing it with kindness, with care, with precision, and people reward her for it. So here are three signs that you might be ready to try. Entrepreneurship sign. One. You keep having ideas, but you never act on them. This is actually a sign of a latent calling. You know that you're made for something more, but you aren't sure what step to take. This can be really hard. I know for me as a creative entrepreneur, I have ideas all the time and I'm constantly thinking, thinking, thinking. Some of those ideas are great and some of them are terrible. But I have a calling on my heart and I need to get it out there, and that's why I keep having all these ideas. If you are having all of these ideas, the things that you wanna try, it may be time to pick one and move forward. Sign number two, that you might be ready to try entrepreneurship. Your current work drains you, but your creative energy comes alive outside of it. You feel like you're thriving in your off hours. You're helping your friends, you're freelancing, you're dreaming up solutions for people. This is great. This is a great sign that you might be ready to get started. You might be ready to try entrepreneurship. You crave more control of your time, your income, or your purpose. You aren't necessarily chasing more money. You just want more alignment. You want your life to reflect what matters most, and isn't that what we're doing here? Isn't that the whole point of the Money and Career Mastery podcast? I want you to align your life to your values, not just your money, not just your career, not just your time, all of it. This is a holistic approach. This is all encompassing. I want your life to be a reflection of your values, and that means sometimes that we start up our own small business. Right? And I do want you to start small. I don't want you to jump all in and do something crazy like go out and finance the small business. No, no, my friends, we're doing it scrappy. Start with a problem that you can solve. For me, I started with my own personal journey and people came to me and they said, help me make a budget. Yes, I wanna help you make a budget. And they said, help me pay off debt. And I was like, yes, I wanna help you pay off debt. And then in the process people started asking me, well, what about my career? You see, this has grown and it's expanded. But I started with one problem. I started with, I don't know how to manage my money. Can you help me? Yes, I can start with a problem that you can solve. Offer it to a real person in exchange for money. Now, this may sound crazy. You're like, I haven't proven anything and I haven't been able to express this, and I don't even know what my messaging is. No, no, no. My friends offer it to one person for money and see what they say. They may say, that's absolutely ridiculous. I would never pay for that. Well, guess what? That's one person's opinion. If multiple people say No, I would never pay for that, guess what? They're never gonna pay for this and this business that you wanted to start. It's not the right one. We need to try something else. But go ahead and keep it simple. At this stage, you don't need a website, you don't need business cards, you don't need any of that. Let's do things for free. Social media is free. You can create a Facebook page for free, and that can be your business website for now. But since this is the Money and Career Mastery Podcast, let's talk quickly about how to budget and track your money as a business owner. Because yes, it is different than what you're doing personally. For starters, you need a separate business account. It needs to be separate from your personal money. The best way to do this is to just go ahead and open a separate account, have it completely and totally separated. Why one, your accountant or your CPA will thank me. And two, it's too easy to intermingle things that shouldn't be intermingled. I know too many business owners that pay for their groceries out of their business account, and they're like, oh, I'll put the money back. Put the money back, change the money around, move it around. There's too many brain calories. You don't have the energy at the end of the day to deal with all of this. So just separate it ahead of time. It keeps things easy. And you know, I like money to be easy. The second thing that you need to do with your business money is just keep a simple income and expense tracker. I do this in Excel. I say, here's top of line. This is how much I have coming in. This is how much I am spending. And then at the bottom, that's how much I get to take home. And that's the third thing. You have to pay yourself intentionally. I don't want you to pay yourself whatever's left, I want you to pay yourself first, even in the beginning. If it's only 25,$50 a month, be intentional about this. Make sure that you are getting paid first off the top, because I want you to be able to do that when you have a much larger income. When your business blows up and you are making thousands of dollars a month, pay yourself first. Don't pay somebody else. Don't pay the expenses. Make sure that you are paying yourself first. Let's talk about what entrepreneurship teaches you about your legacy. Entrepreneurship's not for everybody. Maybe it's for you, maybe it's not, but you get to decide. Just like with your legacy, you get to decide what is and isn't right for you. Think about what your kids are seeing and they see you go after your dreams. I think about my kids. It's hard for me. I'm gonna be completely honest. Some days it's really hard'cause my kids go, no, I don't want you to do your calls. No, I don't want you to be working right now. Just come play with us. And I play with my kids very intentionally on the days that I'm not working. But especially right now in the season that my family's in, it's very important for me to work and work diligently. And it's also important in the season of life that I'm in, that I play really hard on the days that it's time to play. So I have to ask you what's most important to you. If you want to start a business, it's gonna take time and it's gonna take energy, and you need to make sure that you have both of those things to devote to it. If you start a business, this is not a hobby. This is something that you have to actively work towards and participate in. So let's say that you're thinking entrepreneurship is totally right for me and I wanna do it. What are the actionable steps that you can take this week to test the waters, right? So the first one is to brainstorm three business ideas that are tied to your skills and your passions. Look at what are my skills, what are my passions, and what problem could I solve for somebody else? Take a step back. This could be one of those things where for me, budgeting came really easy and it was fun for me. And I thought, well, everybody knows how to budget. No, no, they don't. And I found that out. Not everybody knows how to budget, and this is a skill that I can offer to other people. So think about the things that come really easy to you. That may be your main business idea. The second step I want you to take this week is to test one offer. I talked about it earlier. I want you to offer to do something for someone for money. Maybe it's pet sitting, maybe it's, you make the most delicious bread in the entire world. test the market, see if it can happen. And then number three, if you decide that you wanna do this, set up a business budget. All you have to do is use a simple Excel spreadsheet or pen and paper. It doesn't have to be fancy if you were thinking about entrepreneurship, but you feel stuck. Let's have a conversation. Go ahead and book a career audit@accelerateyourlegacy.com slash apply, and let me help you work through some of these things so that you can win with your entrepreneurial business. That was hard to say, and we can get you going quicker, faster, because you're not going it alone. We're going it together. That's it for this week. Accelerators go out and make a difference. thank you for spending time with us today on Money and Career Mastery from Overwhelm to Ownership. Remember, your legacy isn't just about financial freedom. It's about living with purpose, taking action, and building a foundation that lasts for generations. Don't just listen, implement what you've learned and share it with someone who could use a financial or career breakthrough. If you found value in today's episode, help us grow by rating, reviewing, and sharing the podcast. I'll be back next week with more strategies to help you master your money and career. Until then take ownership of your future and build your legacy with intention.