E. 01 - The Exact Moment That I Became The Boss Of My Business
It was 2014, and I had been hustling trying to build my branding agency for 3 years. From the outside, I looked like I was succeeding. I had a super cool office in Brooklyn, NY, two full-time employees, and the last project I was invited to pitch for was a 20,000 square foot restaurant in Times Square that wanted that cool Brooklyn vibe.
I had all the glitz of a successful owner, but behind the scenes, things looked very different.
I was networking every day, hoofing it around NYC to meet with whomever would have coffee with me, I was pitching project after project and either not hearing back or just losing them. And my overhead was high. By March 2014, we had maxed out all of our credit cards, were overdrawn on our bank accounts, and had no idea how we were going to make payroll in two weeks.
I was desperately trying to figure out how to bring money in. Not only did we need money to live, but we needed to pay back this $40,000 we now owed. Tell the prospects with proposals that we would bargain with them? Network… MORE? Just cry in the corner with my fingers crossed that one of these proposals would close in the next week and pay a deposit? And if none those things worked, I assumed the only option left would be to give up, admit that I FAILED to all my friends and family, and get a regular job.
I was working SO hard to get clients and busting my butt 24/7 to be at the beck and call the few clients we had, so why couldn’t my business at least support itself?
I had the best intentions, I had done my homework, read every book, studied other success stories, pounded the pavement networking, took courses, and was willing to work round the clock on my business while giving my all to deliver for my clients… I was doing everything that every expert, guru, mentor, and colleague had recommended. I had even thrown money at my problems by hiring other service providers to solve them for me and not only did that not work either, but it also cost me more money I didn’t have.
But despite all my knowledge, experience, and effort, none of it was showing up in my bank account. It felt unfair. I was depressed and felt more and more like a failure.
And one night, while having dinner with my husband and business partner Steve, I was in a catatonic daze over the crushing burden of my failing business while he was just chatting along as if everything was fine, making me even more anxious! Just as my anxiety was turning to rage, the adrenaline must have heightened my senses and I snapped out of my failure coma to hear him say
“...why don’t we just let the employees go?”
For all my butt busting and desperate efforts, I am embarrassed to admit that I had not even considered that as one of my options and that was a wake-up call.
Because I was trying to create an agency, a big business that looked like what I imagined success was, in my mind, letting our employees go would be failure and the end of my business. Because I was on a trajectory of building an agency, I refused to entertain any ideas that felt like backtracking and saw any of my efforts that didn’t achieve that goal as failures. I was so set on a specific idea of what a successful business looked like, that I was actually entertaining closing our business to get a normal job instead of entertaining the idea of running a different kind of business.
Now Steve had my attention and he was saying more great stuff… he said we had built a LOT of value in our business, had a lot of experience, great work to show and happy, satisfied clients. We weren't at a dead end, we actually had tons of options of what we could do with what we had created and achieved.
He forced me to entertain the idea that there were infinite options available to us, and just because they were different from what I had originally planned, didn’t mean they were inferior.
My lightbulb not only went off – it popped.
A huuuge weight had been lifted off of me and I was able to see my business with a ruthless, cutting clarity that was unencumbered by my previous fears of failing (because I already had!).
Now I was free to do ANYTHING.
Immediately, my new terminator vision was assessing my business problems.
Fact: We couldn’t afford the employees right now and hadn’t been able to for some time, hence the debt, so keeping them was no longer an option. I had been avoiding that fact for months. The second I accepted it, relief washed over me.
We won’t need to find $8,000 for them this month. WOW. I had just made $8,000 in a moment of clarity.
I’m gonna date myself here but you know that game Minesweeper? Where you’re clicking the boxes without clicking the mines? And every once in a while you click an empty box and the whole area opens up all at once? That’s what this was like. Everything broke open for me.
THAT was the moment I became the boss of my business & my whole demeanor changed
We started looking at our business as a clean slate and started brainstorming like crazy all the possible ideas of what we could do next. We started listing all the skills and assets we had and how to make money off them. We questioned why we had done everything the way we had, and why we felt we had to do it that way.
We were EXCITED for the first time in a long time. It was like when we first started our business and anything was possible again. We were no longer desperately trying to do what we thought we had to succeed. We were asking ourselves what we really wanted out of our business and how we could structure it to get it.
In that MOMENT, I went from being at the mercy of my business and the situation I was in, to stepping up and showing my business who’s boss.
Before that moment... I thought MONEY was my biggest problem.
So I thought if I just had more money, more clients, more work, things would be better.
Before that moment... I blamed all the people I was pitching for my business’ problems.
They would take our proposals and then end up hiring other, less expensive companies... how could I compete with that?! So I thought they’re just ignorant of the value of my services.
Before that moment... I thought I was doing the best I could at marketing my business.
I was networking like a maniac. I was posting on Facebook, blogging, trying to speak at events. Nothing I was trying was bringing me enough business, so I thought marketing doesn’t really work.
Before that moment... I thought clients were really difficult and annoying.
They always wanted more, more, more, and never wanted to pay what the work was worth (and almost never on time). So I thought clients suck and there’s nothing I can do about it
However, after my breakthrough moment, I could see how all these beliefs weren’t true and had been limiting my ability to succeed.
I now realized there were always, so many more possibilities available to me that I had never even considered.
And I had the power to whip my business into exactly what I wanted it to be.
And so I did.
Over the next few months…
I went from being oppressed by my business to leading it.
I went from being stuck in a whole bunch of assumptions and stories that were holding me back, to being free to entertain, create, and experiment with new ways to run my business.
I also realized that it could go any number of ways and a lot of those possibilities started to look way more attractive than my original plan of building a big agency with lots of employees.
In the 12 months that followed we changed our entire strategy and made $500,000 selling our branding services, and we did it without the employees while working less than we had before.
Not just that, but every year since we continued to make more and work less than the previous year.
Each year we set new goals for how we want to live and work backward from those goals to mold our business to support the lifestyle we want.
The extra income and time also created space to grow my business in other ways. I wrote and marketed a best selling book, I became a speaker, I’ve written hundreds of articles on my blog and Forbes column, I learned how to build, market and successfully sell multiple online courses, and we’ve traveled to over 30 cities and countries, sometimes taking months off at a time for adventures.
All while working less than 25 hours a week.
That didn’t just happen. It happened because I MADE IT happen.
You see, Showing your business who’s boss all starts with OWNERSHIP. And no, I don't mean that you own your business.
I mean you show up and own your shit in your business.
Everything I’ve accomplished since my business “rock-bottom” moment happened because I started owning mine, and showing my business who’s boss.
I started taking responsibility for everything that was happening, starting with why clients were happily asking for proposals... and then hiring others who were cheaper.
I started owning that it wasn’t that the clients that were cheap, it was us. We either weren’t pitching the right people, we weren’t making a good enough case for them to hire us, or both.
I started owning that more money wasn’t going to solve our business problems. In those moments of desperation, had we closed a client like I desperately thought I needed, we would have been in the same situation a month later. Another client, some more money… they weren’t going to fix the FUNDAMENTAL problems in our business.
I started owning that my fear of failure, or even worse, my fear of looking like a failure, was blinding me to all the opportunities in front of me. I was so concerned with being successful according to other people’s definition of success, that I didn’t even know what success really meant for ME! I finally realized that I would never be successful until I figured that out.
I started owning that I had been operating my business for the past few years by trying things, and then crossing my fingers hoping they would work. When they didn’t work I would just throw up my hands and say “oh well, it didn’t work” and then move on to the next option, instead of trying again until I MADE it work.
I started owning that all the mistakes I had made were not mistakes, they were actually HUGE, VALUABLE lessons that could teach me how to build a really strong business, if I would only LISTEN.
I started owning that if I wanted to be a business owner, I needed to operate like a business owner. That means understanding that the service you provide is the product, NOT the business. The business is the machine: the brand, money, the process, the marketing, and the sales. If I wanted to show my business who was boss, I needed to be the boss of a business and not just try to hock our services to whomever was willing to pay for them.
Shifting from being at the mercy of my business to showing it who’s boss every day since then, has been THE difference between constantly hustling while fearful of things not working, to feeling like I can hold my entire business in my hand, and manipulate it to do what I want.
And as what I want evolves and changes, I can use my business to fulfill those new goals.
How would you feel if you had that kind of power and control over your business? If you felt like you could use it as a tool to get what you want, instead of this hungry beast that you are constantly trying to feed?
How could you use your business to both fulfill you, AND enjoy your life more?
Steve helped switch the light on for me that night, and if you let me, I’m going to switch that light on for you, and every service expert who is fed up with struggling to get the results they want from their business.
It’s about how you show up each day, looking for possibilities and opportunities where others see problems and challenges. It’s about taking ownership so you can make decisions from a place of power and confidence. It’s about showing up ready to kick ass and take names like the boss you were meant to be.
If you want more of that in your business, then I started this podcast to inspire you to start showing your business who’s boss.
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Show Your Business Who's Boss is produced by Yellow House Media. Production Coordinator is Sean McMullin. This episode is edited by Marty Seefeldt. Production assistance by Kristen Runvik. Creative Direction by Steve Wasterval. Our Theme Music is Glass Prisums by Western Runners
