Ready to Build Your Startup? You’ll Need the Right Mindset for Success

Even before Shannon Claire’s marriage unraveled, she knew she needed to boost her income. She had three kids, after all. The 38-year-old from Mechanicsburg, Pa., was working at a daycare at the time, and started shooting photos on the side. Her first gig was a wedding.

She waited tables on the side to earn money for the equipment she needed and meanwhile built her reputation as a photographer. In 2017, she finally parted ways with her ex-husband, moved in with a friend and decided to go all-in with her side hustle. Within months, she was more than able to support herself and her kids on her photography alone. She moved into her own place and dedicated herself to what she loved.

“I had faith it was going to work,” she recalls. She did everything she needed to do–picking up extra work, depending on the kindness of friends and facing challenges head-on–to make her new career a success.

That faith–that mindset–was key to Claire’s success.

Getting your startup to succeed isn’t just about the capital or the contacts, though they obviously help. There will be obstacles of all kinds. You have to have the right mindset to stick with it through the good and bad times to get to your goals. For Claire, embracing the attitude that she would find a way to make the business work, no matter what came her way, was critical.

Today, success for Claire looks a little different: “Now, success to me looks like the time freedom to be there for my children when they need me and to live life on my terms,” she says.

“I'm not ruled by working a certain number of hours, with someone else telling me what I can and can't do. It's also being able to finally save for retirement, have six months of ‘paychecks’ saved in the bank, seeing my business sales double from this time last year, working with clients from all over the world, and to continue getting repeated referrals.”

That can-do mindset will give you a strong foundation, and we’ve gathered more from entrepreneurs who have been there and done that. Here are some other attitudes that can help you put your business on strong footing.

Nicole McCullum started Captivate Designs, a New York-based digital marketing business, as a side hustle in 2017. She was still working in a full-time job as a conciliator at the American Arbitration Association, negotiating settlements for no-fault medical claims. She really wanted to quit on account of her boss—they did not get along–but had to balance the two for a while until she couldn’t take it anymore. She quit, despite recognizing that the timing wasn’t ideal.

“Even though I wasn’t quite ready, I had the business coming in,” she says. McCullum never looked back and is 100% dedicated to her small business branding and web design company.

Micala Quinn, 32, was working as a high school English teacher when her eldest child was born. She wanted to spend more time with her baby.

“I didn’t want to have a job anymore, but I needed to have an income,” Quinn recalls.

Quinn, based in the Kansas City, Kan., area, started searching for a side hustle that would allow her to bring home at least $1,000 a month—the amount she cleared from her salary after paying for daycare. She tried making and selling hair bows, then cakes and cookies, but the returns weren't worth it.
Then she heard about working as a virtual assistant—a type of remote administrative professional. In 2016, she signed up for a job board and “applied for anything and everything that could be a good fit for me.”

She was rejected, and a lot.

“It was challenging to wake up early before going to work and hear ‘No’s,’ but I reminded myself, ‘I’m doing this for a reason,’” she says. “My mindset was ‘Whatever it takes, I’m going to figure this out.’

It took Quinn eight months to get her first project. She did email inbox management, scheduled client calls and created social media graphics. More virtual assistant work came in and she was able to quit teaching the following year.

Other moms started reaching out to her with questions about how to do what she was doing. Quinn started a Facebook group to help out, which led to the creation of an online course on how to launch a freelance business.

Today, she brings in revenue in the mid-six figures, mainly from her online course, which costs nearly $1,500.

It wasn't easy or quick for Claire, McCullum or Quinn to build their own businesses. But armed with mindsets of persistence and self-confidence even amid failure, these women proved it can be done.