 I wrote my two books and before I started my business I interviewed over a hundred women about why they left their jobs to start their own business and I talked to them about their journey. And what I discovered through talking to all of these women is that there was a really strong pattern that emerged from all of them and essentially it starts like this. A woman starts to feel unhappy in her work and typically from my research I found out that she feels disenfranchised by the culture. She feels that the culture's toxic, that she's not getting heard, decision making's poor, leadership's poor and basically she starts to get this feeling of unease in her workplace. Then over time this leads into a higher feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction and she starts to think there's got to be more to life than this and then she starts to move on to say I'm worth more than this. And then typically when this dissatisfaction starts to grow a life event has happened in their lives. So either they get very sick, their partner gets ill or dies, their parent dies, they get divorced or they have a birthday which interestingly is typically 40 or they might have a child. And so one of these life events then conspires them to change their perspective. And then they start to look at their world and their work quite differently and that's when this dissatisfaction intensifies and the journey to leave speeds up. They then start to look at options and one option is that they just get a new job but then they start to think that they want more control and more freedom and flexibility over their lives and that's when they start to think about starting their own business. The study that I did before I started my business corporate crossovers was based on a quantitative piece of research from 300 corporate crossovers in the US and in the UK. And there are probably three astonishing results from that. The first one was that 68% of these women make less in their own business than they did in their last job. And of that most of them were very unhappy with that number yet the second astonishing result was that they all said that they would not return to their work, their traditional work because they loved the freedom, the flexibility and the control that they had. And then the third fascinating result was that only 1% of these women cited the glass ceiling for the reason that they left corporate. And then what I took that to mean is that is the glass ceiling a myth. And the key reason they decided to leave their jobs was because they'd had enough of the culture and they wanted to work in a way that really worked for them. When you leave your job to start your own business, it's a huge transition and in life there are many transitions that we have and probably the most significant transition that we experience as a human is the death of someone close to us. And Elizabeth Kerbler-Ross, who is the author of a book called On Grease and Dying, created this fantastic model called The Five Stages of Grief. And through the interviews I'd done and the work I'd done with my clients, I started to see that there was a lot of similarities in their transition with the stages of grief. And when I thought about it some more, I could see that what they were grieving was in fact the loss of their old life. So then I devised, based on the Kerbler-Ross model, a model for the corporate crossover transition. And there are seven stages to it and very simply the first stage is anticipation. You leave your job and you're excited and you think, wow, the future's in front of me and I've got liberation and I'm going to create my own path. And then after that the reality sets in because they don't have to get up and go to work anymore. They might not get out of their pyjamas before noon, but with this they start to realise that there's a big to-do list that they have to complete to start their own business and there's no money coming in. So that's the first step of reality. Then they move into shock and the shock is that they start to feel very isolated because they may not have workmates. They've got none of that office banter that we all need to feel socialised and the shock is that they realise that their success is completely up to them. So when that reality kicks in some more, they then move into a slump and literally they lose energy, they lose their motivation and they start to think, is this it? And then they start to think, should I get real and get a job or do I really push this along and make it work? So that's the danger period for these corporate crossovers to skip back and get a job. But when they get through that, they then move into the next stage which is called adjustment. And at this phase they've started to get a rhythm and a routine to their life that works. They've started to create a network around themselves that supports them and understands what they're going through. And then they also have got some wins. They've started getting some money coming in. So once they've gone through adjustment, they then move into momentum. And momentum is the phase where they start to understand what this is all about. They've got used to the peaks and the troughs of the income because it's always a bit like this. They've realised that they can talk about themselves confidently and their identity is much closer aligned with what they're doing now. And importantly here, they start to view themselves as a success because they're no longer judging themselves as a success based on what they used to do and that success criteria. They've transitioned their whole identity success criteria to what they are now. And then lastly, they get through it all and they're completely committed and then they say, I could never imagine going back to what I used to do. I'm aligned, my values are aligned, I love the work I do, I love who I work with and I accept the money for what it is. What can make that journey less painful and shallower and much easier? I've really distilled into three things. And the first thing is to have a network. And a network comprised of people who are also running their own businesses because they will get what you're going through unlike your friends and unlike your family. They'll also be your cheerleaders because running your own business is like the most intense personal development course you will ever do. So you need people on your side to help you through that. Then the second thing that you need to get through this is a really clear, strong, compelling vision of what you're creating. Because when you can really picture what it is that you're going to bring to the world and you feel motivated and passionate about it, then that's what's going to fuel you through that journey. And then the third thing is a really strong reason why you're doing what you're doing. Because to have that passion and the motivation and the tenacity and the resilience that you need to build a business, you have to feel it really in your heart. So when I've worked with women before about starting their own business we talk about building a network, being very clear about your vision but absolutely tapping into that deep reason why you're about to do what you're going to do.