Becoming An Entrepreneur — A 5-Step Shift In Identity!
Written by: Jenny Vukovcan, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Becoming an entrepreneur requires a shift in identity. This part of the entrepreneurial journey is often overlooked.
You might be a parent who dreams about realizing your full potential and making money doing something you love. Or you are an employee who is working to make ends meet, and you dream about becoming successful at something specific so you can feel like you are living your purpose and power.
As in all changes in life, whether you are becoming a parent or an entrepreneur, going through a divorce or getting married, moving, or hitting another milestone in age, you get to level up to a different version of yourself who looks, acts, and thinks differently.
Using NLP Master Robert Dilts’ process Neurological Levels as a guide, I like to envision us, humans, as an onion with many different layers of identity. The center, or the core, is who we innately are with our personality, characteristics, and ways of thinking and being when we were born.
The next layer is us as a child with all the same characteristics and personalities but now with added thoughts and understanding, which changes our behaviors, skills, and beliefs. These layers keep being built out throughout our lives, and for every change we encounter, another layer is added with a new set of skills, behaviors, beliefs, and identities.
We often align ourselves unconsciously with these new identities because of the obvious changes in our behaviors, skills, thoughts, and appearances. For example, becoming a teenager means puberty, different schools, and a change in interests and activities. And becoming a parent means a change in priorities, added multi-tasking abilities, change in body form, and a new home environment.
I have noticed from personal experience as well as with the people I coach, that sometimes we go through major life changes like becoming parents or starting a business, and another layer is added with new environments, skills, and behaviors, but our thoughts, beliefs, and identity often remain at the identity below. If we consciously or unconsciously do not align ourselves at this new level in ALL areas of our lives, we can often end up feeling unfulfilled, purposeless, depressed, and unmotivated and wish for things to “go back to normal.”
Last year during Covid is a prime example of this. Many entrepreneurs stayed in confusion and inaction and, as a result, felt trapped, lonely, and powerless, while others rose to the occasion and started new businesses or pivoted an existing one and 10x their revenue.
What is the main difference between the two?
I believe the ones who took charge of their circumstances and created a positive outcome for themselves were the ones who had aligned themselves with this new identity of being an online entrepreneur (and living in the middle of a pandemic) and changed their environment, behaviors, skills, thoughts, and beliefs to match this new identity.
Those who didn’t often got stuck on one or some of the levels and resisted becoming this new version of themselves because their new identity wasn’t aligned with what they had envisioned.
If you feel this message resonates with you, you can take the first step today to becoming the person you want to be and designing the business and life you envision by answering these 5 questions below:
What’s missing right now from you living your full potential?
Which of the neurological level is that challenge on?
Imagine the future you that has all the success you want. Who is she/he? (Describe where you are, what you do specifically, how you express your innate talents and skills, what beliefs you hold about yourself and the world, what your purpose is here)
What gets to change in your environment, behaviors, skills, capabilities, and beliefs to match that new identity?
What is the first step?
Whether you are an entrepreneur or not, once you match your environment, behaviors, skills, thoughts, and beliefs with the person you want to be, you can start living with a renewed sense of purpose, fulfillment, and personal freedom.
Jenny Vukovcan, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jenny is a Lifestyle Coach and Business Mentor for heart-centered start-up entrepreneurs. Her mission in life is to empower others to own who they are, live their soul purpose, and create lives they love through entrepreneurship. She has worked as an NLP Somatic Coach and NLP Master Practitioner for over 15 years and helps her clients reach new levels in their business and life. Originally from Sweden, Jenny has four children, lives in California, and combines mom life with a thriving business working only a few hours a day. Running a successful online business academy for the modern boss, Jenny coaches, and mentors start-up entrepreneurs on how to access their inner wisdom and implement simplified strategies to build a business and life they'd love to wake up to.
