5 Mental Shifts That Helped Me Build a 6-Figure Online Business in My 20s

6 min readDec 17, 2020

Here’s what nobody tells you about entrepreneurship.

Sinem Günel on Instagram

I decided to become an entrepreneur when I was 19 years old. I didn’t have a groundbreaking idea and no clue how I’d make money, but I knew that I didn’t want to pursue a traditional corporate career after my studies.

All I knew is that I wanted to be independent — financially, locally, and mentally. I wanted to work whenever, wherever I want and be able to choose the projects I work on.

Today, four years later, I’m in that fortunate place where I’m living that reality: I built a 6-figure online business with my better half, work on projects that excite me, and experience the freedom I dreamt of.

But what they don’t see is that I spent almost three years trying to figure out what I actually want to do. And they also don’t see that I had to make many mental shifts in order to go from frustrated wannabe entrepreneur to 6-figure business owner.

I started my entrepreneurial journey by organizing personal development workshops for students — here’s a picture of the first one in 2017:

Photo by Author — October 2017

In the following years, I hosted dozens of workshops per year, invested in my own education, and became a certified trainer.

But even though I enjoyed these events, I knew that I didn’t want to spend my entire life organizing workshops, so I started to explore digital business models.

site:

In summer 2018, I launched my first online courses:

A “Peak Productivity” Course on Udemy — Launched in August 2018

I recorded these courses with my phone camera and a horrible microphone. In total, they probably made $1,000 until now.

A year later, I still didn’t know what I really wanted to do, so I self-published a book that includes everything I learned about personal development in the past three years:

My book “Selbstpotenzial” — Launched in October 2019

Long story short: I spent the majority of my entrepreneurial life not knowing how to turn my dreams into reality.

I tried a lot, failed a lot, and learned a lot.

And I experienced many mental shifts that helped me start from scratch over and over again until I finally figured out what I want and how to get it.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
— Max Planck

From Reactive to Decisive

In the beginning, my biggest fear was to be too expensive.

I wanted my products and services to be affordable for anyone and was afraid of charging money. I’d rather do something for free instead of starting an uncomfortable conversation about money.

Guess what happens when you do that? You end up not making money. At least not as much as you intended to.

At some point, I realized that it’s me who decides how much I charge for my services, not the market, my customers, or my competition.

Today, I’m making sure that I’m not underpriced. If I don’t lose a potential customer because of my pricing for a few months, I know that I could increase my rates.

5 Mental Shifts That Helped Me Build a 6-Figure Online Business in My 20s

Here’s what nobody tells you about entrepreneurship.

From Reactive to Decisive

Written by reklan