I need some advice on making the psychological shift from being a business employee to a business owner. I started a couple of businesses five years ago, and I’m surviving as it is, but I’m right on the lower limit. I can feel that it’s my own psychology that is holding me back. I don’t struggle with the practical running of the business, my problem is feeling like an exploitative schmuck because I’m charging people money for stuff. I can push just enough to let myself survive, but after that I freeze. It’s a big block for me, and I just can’t seem to get past it on my own.

I know there are tons of business self-help books out there, but I don’t have the time/money to sift through all of them to find the non-icky diamonds in the rough. And I figure there have to be at least a few people out there who have made this transition and faced the same problems. So:

  • Have you confronted this problem for yourself? How did you approach it?
  • Were there any resources you found helpful to wrap your head around the transition?
  • Do you have any experience with business coaches and/or associations, and were they helpful (ie. worth the money)?
  • Are there any Lemmy/Reddit/Discord/other groups you found supportive/helpful?

Thanks much in advance,

~Archie

  • robdrimmieEnglish
    1·
    13 days ago

    Okay, I wasn’t sure if I could jump in here before but knowing your profession now, I think I can speak to it from a client’s perspective. My family of 4 disabled people works with several therapists of different sorts (psycho, occupational, etc). Our annual income is greater than the national average and we have a fair amount of financial stability, food safety, etc.

    You should charge people like me more than you charge the people who are having a rougher time. I am grateful that most of our therapists have sliding scales and I’m grateful that I’m able to contribute on the higher side of that scale. Every single one of our therapists raises their fees every year and it’s by a reasonable amount. Some of our therapists set higher fees for new clients but keep existing clients at the same tier and then do a percentage increase for everyone every year, and I’m grateful for that compromise as well.

    I want my therapists to have lives as comfortable as mine, the value I get from them is extremely high and it is worth the price. I don’t want my therapists to be food insecure, I want them to be able to take vacations (your job is fucking hard!), I want them to live in clean, comfortable homes.

    • archipherousOP
      2·
      13 days ago

      That’s actually really helpful, thanks :) I’m certainly not starving, and I do make time for self-care. I’m mostly just a little frustrated with myself for not being better at marketing, and with the fact that I was never taught how to do any of this business stuff, which makes it all seem very uncertain and insecure.

      But I’ve always run a tiered fee system like the one you describe, but even now anything to do with charging (and increasing) fees gives me the ick. I’m an anarcho-communist at heart, so living and working in capitalist reality is like stepping through the looking glass and the whole world is upside down and inside out.

      Where I’m really struggling is that I want to get into writing psychology/self-help books, and my creative sideline is as a musician and novelist. That’s where I find it very difficult to charge for work, because it’s literally just a bunch of entertaining/profound stuff I came up with in my crazy brain. It feels weird to require people to pay me before accessing it.