How to Shift Your Mindset from Corporate Employee to Badass Business Owner From Day ONE [ Freelancing to Financial Freedom ]
Make it stand out
Are you still thinking like a corporate employee even after you've started your own freelance business?
Spoiler: YES, you are.
Many new freelancers expect freedom to come naturally, but corporate habits often linger, stunting your business growth and confidence.
This episode reveals the mindset shifts that help you stop operating like an employee and start making decisions like a business owner from day one and how that will help you see massive success in your freelance business.
In this episode, you'll discover how to:
How to stop thinking like a corporate employee and embrace your new identity as a business owner.
Break free from corporate habits that limit your flexibility, productivity, and confidence.
Build healthier boundaries around your schedule, client communication, and professional identity so you can create a business that works for you.
Press play now to fast-track mindset shifts that often take freelancers years to develop, so you can build your business with greater confidence from the very beginning.
Connect with Kiri, the host:
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Episode Transcript:
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By the end of this episode, you're going to figure out how do you shift your mindset from corporate employee to badass business owner from day one.
Welcome back to the show. If you're just joining right now, we are on a 7-day streak, and I'm breaking down the mindset shifts, financial realities, stability concerns, and readiness signs to help you confidently decide whether freelancing is the right next step for you. Please, take a listen to all the past episodes. This is going to be day 6 that we are on, so you've got a lot to catch up on, but it's all great. This is for people wondering if they're ready to quit their job and even some nuggets in there for a lot of you who have already quit and just need to get a little bit better at freelancing, right? Today, we're talking about how to shift your mindset from corporate employee to badass business owner from day one. Because I don't think a lot of people realize this, but… God, it's like… The corporate-ness… How else do I say this, guys? It just digs its claws into you, and you don't even realize it, and it prevents you from reaching your full potential. It really does. And you have this mindset of a corporate employee, even when you become a freelancer. I've literally been doing this for 10 years, and I still sometimes have trouble. Like, I'm not kidding. I still sometimes have trouble breaking corporate mindsets. I'm gonna tell you, I'm just gonna jump to the one that I still have trouble with. Changing calls. Oh my god. Like, if I have a call on my calendar, it's, like, locked in. I do not want to change it, ever. And that is totally from corporate days, 100%. Because in the corporate mindset world, like, you know, if you have a call on the calendar, that means it's there, and you don't… you don't shirk it. Because that makes you look bad. And I still do that. And of course, it's like, it's great, it's a sign of professionalism that you keep your calls, but there are times that I need to change them, right? And then, it took me even longer, I think… well, so the… okay, let me just say, changing calls, big one for me. I still have a lot of trouble with that. another one that took me a long time. Like, okay, I want to say 9 years to break this? Hey, I don't have to book calls when I don't want to. Oh my god! Mind blown! I don't have to book calls when I don't want to! So now, I try to keep my Mondays free, because I hate Mondays. They were giving me, like, the Sunday scaries, and as a freelancer and a business owner, like, I freaking created this monster, basically, by myself. Like, I never used to get Sunday's carries, and then I started getting them again, and feeling like I needed to work at night and catch up, and I was getting really anxious about Monday, and I realized it was because I booked all these calls on Monday, because in my head, I had this corporate mindset of, like, hey, Monday calls, we get it all done and out of the way, and then we'll be good for the rest of the week. But in fact, it was just giving me anxiety! Now I don't do that anymore. I don't book calls on Mondays or Wednesdays, if I can help it. Now my schedule's gonna be changing soon, but still, like, that feels so freaking good. I can't even tell you. So, realizing that was like, wow, that was definitely from corporate, where I thought, like, every day that I had free, or I didn't have one of my kids around, like, that had to be packed with calls. not the case, alright? So I jumped ahead. That was a point I was going to keep for later, but I wanted to give my own background there, so that you guys realize, like, I'm here with you, and I've been doing this over 10 years, okay? I think when you're going from employee to CEO, or, like, I don't like saying CEO, honestly, because, like, C-level CEOs, like, let's not kid ourselves, like they're running multi-million dollar companies, or even, like, more than generally a freelancer is running, right? Like, fine, if you want to say employee to CEO, cool. I like to say employee to business owner, right? Like, I think you need to start realizing how many different aspects you actually handle. So when you're going from an employee to a business owner, You're gonna start realizing you handle so many different aspects of the business, and that in itself is gonna help you realize that you're also in charge of how much you get paid. So think about it this way, right? You've got all these different, like, you're doing operations, and invoicing, and accounting, and marketing, and sales. You're handling all that big companies, they have different people and different teams handling all that. But now that you're your own business owner, you handle those different aspects, so why can't you also handle how much you get paid, and be in charge of how much you get paid? Because you need to factor in all of that other stuff that you're doing a bunch of different jobs in one. It's not just your client at work. And for me, this was a huge shift, being like, wait, I do call the shots in all this. I call the shots in accounting. I call the shots in when I get paid. I call the shots in my marketing strategy. I call the shots in how I handle my sales calls. I don't have a script, I don't follow a script handed to me by someone else. Okay, so why don't I also call the shots in how much I get paid? Bam. such a mindset shift. And that was like, okay, I'm a business owner, I'm gonna decide who I say yes to that I want to work with, and who I'm gonna say no to. big one, alright?
Now, number two, what I want you to think about when shifting from corporate to business owner is, I don't think you should be calling yourself a freelancer. unpopular opinion, I think. And I'm gonna actually link, to an episode in the show notes I did quite a while ago about leaving the term freelancer behind, right? It's very important to me that we get out of the… the mindset of saying, I'm a freelancer. Because freelancers… I think people just look at a freelancer as making less money, and if you really want to own more income, more freedom, more flexibility, and at the end of the day, more choice, you need to move away from that title and say specifically what you do. Now, I love the term fractional. I think people get paid more when they say fractional. You can even say contractor if you want, but freelancer, I think, will hold you back. Because you're not just a freelancer. If you're working for an agency right now, you're a freelancer. But if you're working for yourself, and you're trying to get clients for yourself, so you can call your own rates, you are not a freelancer. You are a marketing strategist, copywriter. Executive assistant? Virtual executive assistant. Fractional marketing strategist. Fractional Social Media Manager. Marketing assistant, whatever you want to call yourself. Do not call yourself a freelancer unless you are working for an agency. Because you're handling many things, and you are a business owner. Step away from the freelancer, right? I think… another… Shift in your mindset that you need to make. is that freedom can feel really uncomfortable at first. And you think… you think it's not going to you, because you're just craving it, you're longing for it, especially when you're freelancing, you're just like, oh my god, I just want to be able to do whatever I want during the day. But you're gonna find yourself, especially from a corporate past. Like, maybe you won't set an alarm in the morning, but you'll still work probably 8 hours a day, and you'll be sitting there in the business hours, same time everyone else is, you know? And freedom actually starts feeling uncomfortable. And you're like, hey, didn't I want to go to the gym at, like, 11 o'clock in the morning? Why can't I do that? Like, why am I still sitting here, like, working? And then I feel like, oh my god, if I go to the gym, I'm going to miss some emails. I can't do that. Well, you can. And the sooner you're able to accept that and be like, you know what, I'm gonna go food shopping. F my clients. I got this covered. Doesn't matter. I'm not here on their schedule, I'm here on my schedule. You're going to start breaking that corporate rigidity that holds onto you with the schedule, and trust me, I know, because I still struggle with it, very much so, and having kids actually helped me break it, because having children at home, I should say, helped me break it, because my son does go to daycare some days, and then I, like, squeeze all my work in during those hours he's gone, but when he's home with me, oh my god, I'm so much more, like. thankful that he's there and able to break that corporate rigidity that I still hold onto. And, like, he's gonna be going to kindergarten, not this September, but next, 2027, and I do sometimes worry about that, like, will I go back to my old habits? Have I shaken them? I don't know! Like, I've had kids at home with me for so long, right? And I think freedom does really feel uncomfortable, because it gets, like, the corporate schedule gets into us so much, and I want you guys to be able to step away from that and start actually scheduling Stuff during your day? that allows you to step away from the desk on your own time. Maybe it's food shopping? Maybe it is taking a walk, maybe it's going to the beach, maybe it is, you know, going to the gym. Maybe it's going to a therapy appointment, whatever it is, during the middle of the day, because you want to, and it's your schedule, okay? So, own your schedule. That kind of relates back to the first, like, you know, point I made about the calls, and not booking calls when you don't want to, and moving them, all of that. And finally, I want to say don't have email on your phone, unless you want to, or they're paying you a high amount of money, or both. Like, I think people from a corporate past automatically assume if they have a retainer client, they need to put their email on their phone. They should not have that access to you unless they're paying a lot of money. And again, we come from this corporate mindset of, like, you're expected to have your email on your phone. You don't have to. You can say no to that. And that's beautiful. That's a beautiful thing to step away from technology. Unless they're paying for you that… for that. Again, if you decide to build that into the contract, make sure they're paying you more money to have that access to you, because that's important. You're not an employee. In order to shift your identity to being a business owner, and not an employee, and not just a freelancer, you do have to ditch that freelancer title. You have to own your schedule. You have to realize that since you handle so many different aspects, actually, you also handle how much you get paid, and you get to make that deciding. That deciding… decision… you get to decide how much you get paid. And remember that freedom actually does feel uncomfortable at first, so you need to start scheduling yourself to go out and do things during the day that you wouldn't normally to release that hold of, like, oh my god, what if they need to get in touch with me, right? This all comes back to how to shift your mindset from that being a corporate employee to that badass business owner from day one, and I wish I had put some of this into my own life. Instead, it took me 5, 6, 7 years. To start realizing how much the corporate employee mentality still was hanging onto me.
I hope you guys have been enjoying this series. We're wrapping it up tomorrow, and tomorrow we're going to be talking about that big question that so many people ask me. How do I know when I'm ready to quit my job? When is that there? When is that sign there, right? And we've kind of touched on it in different episodes, but tomorrow's the day we're gonna really be diving deep into it, and how to know when you are ready. So keep flourishing. See you there tomorrow when we wrap up.
