My "Big Why"

In the MYX: Evergreen Niche Workbook, I ask you to take a moment at the beginning and write out why you are choosing to take the first step towards an entrepreneurial adventure. This is because putting pen to paper makes a psychological connection in the brain that aids in memory and comprehension. Thinking on paper is important and is becoming a lost art with technology constantly at our finger tips. 

Take a moment to answer the question: “Why I am I pursuing entrepreneurship?” In other words, what’s really causing you to take the leap now?

People become entrepreneurs for lots of different reasons. Your “why” can be ‘ because I gotta make rent’ or it could be ‘ because I want to be self-employed’ or even, ‘I was bored’. 

I want you to know that I practice what I preach in Business Basecamp so I want I’ll start by sharing my ‘why’.

I started a site called Adventure of Existence intentionally in 2015. It had been a bucket list dream of mine to start my own business. That was it. Just start a business. Vague, I know, but it was on there. My husband and I had been married for a little over a year and a half when he challenged me to get serious about doing it. If I was going to get something up and running, it was now, before we had little ones clamoring for our love and attention. I also knew I wanted to be able to work from home during the early years of starting a family and being able to set my own flexible hours was a must. 

Additionally, my husband and I are big dreamers. One dream we had is to purchase our first home IN CASH. We are Dave Ramsey Gazelles all the way. This business is one aspect of our ‘gazelle intensity’ about doing things debt free. 

Lastly, I participated in something called the World Race in 2011. I learned SO MUCH practical application about leadership, followership, teamwork, non-profits while traveling to 11 different countries. It was an incredible experience. It was also out of this experience that a need I had been seeing was 100% affirmed. That need is this:

Everyone needs a mentor but not everyone is afforded one. 

I encountered so many people with incredible visions for business, non-profits and ministry with solutions for all kinds of problems. But I also saw people floundering. Directionless, dreams without strategy, lacking solutions for being underfunded and understaffed as small organizations. I walked away with a broken heart for burnt-out workers around the world with big dreams and even bigger hearts. 

This was really the heart and dream behind Adventure of Existence-to better equip people, young and old alike, with tools, and skills that are necessary to launch a start-up with heart that can be sustained with strategies they can fine tune over time. 

But that adventure dream got put on hold. At the time I started the original blog, my husband and I were missionaries in Central America (that little piece of info makes our dream to buy a house in cash all the more crazy. But we never said how big...could be a tiny house...). I had been blogging intensely for about 4 months when we received a phone call to come home.

You know, I really hate cancer. It's a thief. It robs folks of lives and dreams. Everyone knows someone touched by cancer. The person on this side of the screen is no different. 

So we made some big life transitions, some temporary, some have permanence that is yet to be determined but I put the blog and business on hold because my people are my priority. (Yours should be, too).

So in Summary, I had four reasons for launching the Adventure of Existence. 

1. It was a bucket list dream
2. I wanted to work from home when we are ready to start a family.
3. My husband and I wanted to purchase our first home in cash. 
4. It was a solution to the problem of a lack of mentorship that is inaccessible to certain people.

But now I'm back and have had some time to think about the journey of entrepreneurship. I realized it's also okay to stop along the way and refine your why.

So here is my refined "Big Why" in light of recent events. I've boiled it down from four to two:

I want to run my own business in order to afford myself and my family the opportunities of financial peace of mind and freedom of choice.

I want to run my own business in order to provide solutions to a lost and wandering generation seeking purpose and intentionality for their lives in light of an unstable global economy. 

Your ‘why’ isn’t silly. No matter how big or how small.  But don’t be afraid to be you and to dream big. 

I took a break from my business due to life detours but my why is the thing that pulled me through the pause and back into hustle and bustle of it all. That what your why should do.

What’s your ‘why’? Share below or jump over into the Facebook Community dialogue about the reasons we've found ourselves in online business.