Nothing is secure in life as everyone is profoundly reminded of every September 11. I’ll leave it to others to comment on the meaning and aftermath of what happened on this tragic day.

Really what motivated me to post this comment is an article I read last week about how 400 workers found out by email that they were losing their jobs at Radio Shack.

Then yesterday I got an email from a woman who’s been interested in getting into home staging for some time. She knows she has a talent and passion for it but she wanted me to give her some kind of guarantee about how much she’d earn and whether it would work as a business in her area. She’s been a stay at home Mom for 6 years and now she’s decided to reclaim her own identity by doing something she believes she’ll love.

You know what?

There are no guarantees in life that anything you do will work out 100% as expected! There are no guarantees that ANY job is secure, whether you’re working for someone else or working for yourself.

I can tell you that I’ve been an entrepreneur since 1989. During that time, I’ve always had a mortgage and no spouse to support me. I created my first full-time business at the age of 30, after quitting a job that at the time was paying me $75,000 a year. That was a lot of money in 1989 and still is today. All my fellow MBA graduates thought I was nuts. They were all working for big companies and had very important positions.

Guess what, the recession came with a vengence in the 1990s and I actually had more job security than any of them, despite the fact that I was growing a brand new company. It’s all how you define “security”. They sat in their comfy offices terrified that they’d be laid off at any moment. I meanwhile had no weekly pay check but I was building my own company. I was marketing my business, building contacts… shaping my own destiny instead of hoping that someone else would take care of me.

Was I terrified? Of course! Being an entrepreneur IS scary!

Anyone that has heard course 1 of the Staging Diva Training Program, where I share my secrets for survival as an entrepreneur, knows that I spent at least a year in my first business making what I now call “My Bag Lady Projections”.

I’d list everything I owned and could sell, and all my savings, list all my expenses and debts, and I’d calculate how long it would take me to be homeless if I never earned another penny. I did this almost compulsively for some time. I was acting out of fear rather than from a place of appreciating my strengths and that it was highly unlikely that I’d suddenly never be able to earn another penny.

It’s not easy being self employed and having to daily stand in that place of knowing that you’re the driver of your own life. When we work for someone else, or we rely on a spouse for support, it’s easier to stop taking responsibility for ourselves and our lives. We don’t have to make all the decisions because someone else makes lots of them for us.

Personally, I like to shape my own life. Some things work out better than others, but at least I always have the satisfaction of trying, learning and growing.

Of all the businesses I’ve run over the years, I like home staging because it’s very creative, offers lots of diversity, gives me free time to do other things and it’s also very lucrative. I make more doing a two hour home staging consultation than many people earn in a whole week working full time.

I created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, because I had a lot of experience to share and I wanted to help others who loved decorating and real estate learn how to take their innate talent and turn it into a business that could support them financially while feeding their soul. At the end of the day, it’s not just about the money, it’s about how else you define success for yourself and the life you want to create. That’s a theme that runs through all my courses as any Staging Diva Graduate can tell you.