After a fulfilling and exciting 26-year career at the Walt Disney Company, working 19 different jobs (including Vice-President of the Magic Kingdom), Dan Cockerell decided it was time for his next life change. He and his wife, Valerie started their own consulting and speaking business. 

Dan shares some valuable insights into how things are different between living a corporate life and his life as an entrepreneur.

Corporate work:

• A lot of things are defined for you and done for you. 

• You're given the plan when you're working in a big corporation so you’re just in an execution mode. 

 Independent work:

• You need to figure out how to put materials together and what your product or message is. Then you have to execute it so the work is double. 

• If you do nothing, nothing's going to happen. So you have to be totally in charge of yourself and you have to be self-reliant. 

Dan’s Insights into Customer Discovery:

1. First, you’ve got to sit down and list all the experiences you've had because a lot of times, you don't realize how valuable those are and that you actually have some expertise. 

2. Focus on becoming relevant and known in the world. The words “author” and “authority” have common roots. So when you are now an author, you become an authority. Or you could already be an authority before, but once you write a book, you even have more authority on a certain topic. 

2. Build your mailing list. Send out an article to your list regularly to give people food for thought on how to get better.

3. Let people know who you are. If people don't know your name, it doesn't matter how good you are.

4. Word of mouth costs you nothing and it’s very powerful so treat every person like gold.