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Employee vs Entrepreneurial Mindset
Employee vs Entrepreneurial Mindset If you google these two concepts, you’ll find a wealth of information on the differences between them, what they mean and the pro’s and cons’ of each. The first thing I want to clarify here is that my usage of the term ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ doesn’t only relate to those who want to start their own business. In this context, here’s what I’m referring to: Employee Mindset Simply put, you work for a company, and your decisions, skills, future is based on what they need from you, the value they see in you. To some extent, you’ve outsourced your career and future to a company to decide…
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Professional Accounting Qualifications – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
I have a professional accounting qualification, is it all it’s advertised to be? It took me eleven years to complete my professional accounting qualification. I studied part time, worked full time, studied at night, weekends, made huge sacrifices. I did my articles, (my training contract), after my post grad and qualified as a Chartered Accountant at the age of 28. I guess that I had believed (and most students that I work with have the same unarticulated belief) that the day you qualify, everything will be okay, you will ‘be’ successful. You are so used to being on a path, and the only goal you can see is getting those…
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Why the education system let me down
‘Starting again’ has been HARD, and my education didn’t help I ‘started’ again in my late 30’s, and I feel like the education system hasn’t helped me! New career, new country, entrepreneur instead of employee. (I discussed this a little in a previous post). “I started over” – It’s such a short and simple sentence that hides a volume of challenges, emotions, experience, change, frustrations, excitement, life lessons and character building. It was a gradual shift for me, from employee to entrepreneur, from perfect student to rebel, from accountant to creative, and from fixed to growth mindset. I feel that my education and what I was taught about how the…
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My entrepreneurial journey
I am definitely still ON my entrepreneurial journey I share my entrepreneurial journey with people because I know that I needed to understand more about the ups and downs, the challenges, the anxieties, and the MANY MANY different forms that entrepreneurship takes. As I share stories, lessons I’ve learnt, and advice for those looking at their own entrepreneurial journey, you can understand the context I speak from. Here’s my journey. I’m a qualified Chartered Accountant Part of the attraction of this qualification was the employability of professionals. I hear this question from so many students as well. “Will this qualification mean that I’ll get good jobs?” It took me 11…
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‘Nobody loves me’ – My tale of entrepreneurial rejection
No one loves me! I’ve been feeling fairly disheartened that my business ideas haven’t really worked out the way I’d like them to. I’ve worked incredibly hard on my content and I feel that I add a lot of value for the audience. (Can you feel the ‘no one loves me’ narrative?!). But the revenue is not what I need it to be. I’ll be honest, it’s also a little annoying to see that someone’s video clips of a squirrel running an obstacle course can attract such an ‘easy’ audience and revenue. It is NOT as easy as it sounds, especially if your specialism and content is not focussed on…
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What My Fear-based Decision Taught Me This Week
I’m good at fear-based decisions! Without really realising it, most of my life decisions have been fear-based. (More about that elsewhere!) I’ve consciously tried to change this, I’ve moved out of my comfort zones in HUGE ways over the last few years, and continue to do so. This doesn’t mean that I don’t struggle though. I think it’s important to realise that entrepreneurial journeys are a rollercoaster. Sometimes entrepreneurship makes you feel self-employed, and sometimes you feel unemployed! I’ve managed to pay the bills on the basis of what I’ve been doing over the last year or so since we moved from South Africa to Montenegro (keeping in mind that…
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Is the Social Contract between Employees an Employers broken?
We don't expect employers to look after us the way we used to, but we still give everything we've got to our employers. We're honouring our side of a broken Social Contract
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11 Lessons I learnt from having breast cancer
Today is the two year anniversary of my mastectomy. Reading that sentence feels surreal. Saying it sounds surreal. I went through this, and somehow it still feels surreal. Just over two years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Stage 1, fairly aggressive. I was 36. I share my story in the hopes that it pushes people to take action if they generally don’t, pass on a few lessons that I learnt, and as a reflection of the gratitude I have for how I came out of this. I was extremely blessed throughout this experience. I have an incredible husband, great family and friends, good health insurance and insurance plans, and…
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Our Kitty Foster Fails
Montenegro’s strays One of the challenges of living in Montenegro is that you see stray cats and dogs everywhere. There’s quite a bad problem with strays. It’s so easy to say ‘just ignore it’, but we’re animal lovers, so naturally, we got ‘involved’! Now we have a bunch of Foster Fails, and Foster Work-in-Progress! I get a lot of people asking me what’s up with ALL the cats on my instagram account… well, here’s the story! Kotor is known for all their cats. The Old Town is full of them. They’re not feral. They’re friendly and are keen for a snack or a scratch! There are some great people doing…
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I’m starting over.
Just over a year ago, my husband and I decided to ‘start over’. We left the groups of companies we had shares in, the company we co-founded, sold everything, and moved from South Africa to Montenegro. Such a simple sentence! It still feels pretty surreal. Obviously, it’s never as simple as it all sounds. We had been considering moving overseas already, but were planning on moving to the UK, one of the businesses in the group was based there, so it made sense. Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2018, and everything changed. I had a bilateral mastectomy and a bunch of reconstruction surgeries. This put me…
