Ten Ways to Be the Entrepreneur of your Own Life
Guest article by Tara Agacayak, GlobalNiche.net, a transformational media company founded to show people how to use their creative content and a professional web platform to create opportunities that are in alignment with the vision they have for their life.
What are you willing to do *today* so that ten years from now you don’t look back and wonder what might have been?
Today’s the day to consciously choose the next step you take to get there.
I’ve come to this conclusion after years of living abroad and experimenting with different ways to work that would suit my situation and satisfy my spirit. What seems to work best is thinking like an entrepreneur – to solve both personal and professional challenges.
Ten years ago I followed my heart from the US to Turkey after marrying my Turkish husband. I left a life on autopilot as a data specialist with the Department of Defense and jumped into culture shock and a debilitating identity crisis soon after settling in my new home. The quest to find myself came by experimenting with various jobs that I could do in the small town we now lived.
I was an English teacher, a translator, and an editor. I wrote test questions, tutored students of varying ages and bought a self-study course in the hopes of becoming a freelance copywriter. What I learned through all that messy experimentation is that I longed for freedom and flexibility, I needed to write, and I thrived around creative people.
One of the experiments was selling souvenirs from the Covered Bazaar in Istanbul through an auction site on eBay. Though this was just becoming a mainstream opportunity, I found it satisfied my need for freedom and flexibility. I could work in Turkey or the US as long as I had an internet connection. With time I recognized I needed more; I longed for the work to have meaning, not just freedom.
After attending a women’s leadership program where they emphasized global citizenship and social responsibility I decided to use my online shop to support local Turkish artisans by offering their handmade products on the world market through the internet. I soon discovered that I could support many more people by teaching them how to do this themselves and worked with the municipality to give lessons in online marketing to the local community.
Through my global and social network, I met my business partner and friend Anastasia Ashman. With 20+ years of expatriatism between us we recognized the lessons we learned as expats — creative problem solving, overcoming culture shock, living through identity crises, surviving under any circumstances, etc. — applied to a much broader community. With Anastasia’s repatriation last year, we have come to see that location independence starts at home and that anyone, no matter where they are, can build a portable career – one that matches their unique set of needs and desires about how they want to live and work.
We call it your global niche. It’s about being the entrepreneur of your own life and building your unique place in the world. Anyone can do it regardless of where they live, how old they are, or how much money they have. It’s about creating opportunities and being the agent of your life as opposed to being held back by your circumstances.
Here are ten ways to be the entrepreneur of your own life (watch a talk on these 10 lessons):
- Lose yourself – get out of your comfort zone
- Identify problems – or there’s nothing to solve
- Ask questions – instead of making statements
- Believe in a goal – instead of yourself
- Don’t listen to others – unless they’re supportive
- Build a web platform – it’s like your reflection
- Take care of yourself – invest resources in what you love
- Don’t wonder – about what might have been
- Take (safe) risks – by taking small steps forward
- Overcommit – dedicate yourself %110 to something meaningful
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Tara Agacayak is COO and cofounder of GlobalNiche.net, an educational media company working to empower the global you with Web 3.0 and Life 3.0 strategies, web chats and global community.
