In business we set big dreams, sometimes really big big dreams - which is exactly what you should be doing. Setting big dreams and going after them takes a truck load of courage! But in reality sometimes those dreams don’t end up happening! And that leaves you vulnerable to experiencing all kinds of uncomfortable and disappointing feelings.
In this episode of the She’s in Business podcast, I want to expose the finish line to be not all it’s cracked up to! Achieving the big dream, the big goal is not the be all and end all. Your life will take you to remarkable places if you believe in your ability and keep moving yourself forward. And I believe the word that best describes this is resilience.
Before we jump into this juicy episode - I have a Christmas gift for you! A token of gratitude for tuning into this podcast. It’s 25 Christmas canva templates that you can use to save time on social media. You might be thinking… Christmas is only a few days away - it’s too late for me to use this. But you should still go ahead and take advantage of it, just squirrel it away for next year and be super prepared for the silly season. Go to www.donnahann.com/sillyseason
As a business owner it goes without saying that being courageous and vulnerable is part of your chosen career - and by continually stretching yourself to grow your skills, knowledge as a result you will see business growth and profitability - but there is a need to develop resilience too.
If you’re new to starting your business, I don’t want to discourage you because being your own boss has sooo many perks! But I do need to let you know, that it’s not always smooth sailing. If you’ve been a busy owner for a while - you’ll know I’m speaking the truth! There are great rewards for running your own business, but there’s also great challenges - like I say to some of my private coaching clients who are feeling stuck or on the path to burn out - If business was easy, everyone would be doing it!
The reason I want to chat about this today is because we’re getting very close to the end of 2021, at the time this episode is released it will be the 21st Dec. It’s very very common to feel exhausted, beaten down and deflated for business owners. And if this is you right now - rest assured you are not alone!
2021 has been a tough year for a lot of people, we’ve been operating in a constant state of uncertainty wondering how covid will affect the future of our businesses and how to manage changes which seem to keep rolling in. If the pandemic created an opportunity for you to pivot your business to either maintain or increase your revenue that takes a considerable amount of energy and resilience. So people are feeling tired!
Also, things may not have panned out the way that perhaps you had hoped they would. Those goals or dreams that you set at the beginning of the year, the courage it took you to put those goals out there, the steps you made to try to make those dreams a reality - maybe they didn’t quite happen which has left you feeling disappointed and drained you of confidence.
If that’s you! I want you to stop what you are doing and listen to what I’m about to say. Tune your full attention into this
You need to trust that all of your hard work is leading you somewhere, you will create miracles in your life that you didn’t initially intend but that will deliver amazing things. The beauty of allowing trust in believing that all of your hard work is leading you somewhere, is that the miracles you create may not even be the ones you imagined - maybe they will be even better than you imagined - just allow it time for them to be realised.
Life will test you, business will test you - but if you show up for yourself, in the mirror every day, maintain that positive attitude - you will eventually end up where you are meant to be!
You have to believe that, you have to believe in you! Your dream is just a map which helps you to have a direction to head in. That map may or may not lead to the destination you think it will. And that’s ok! Every experience you have as a business owner is a lesson that will strengthen your resilience, a lesson that will shape you to be a better person, a better business owner, a better leader.
As I said at the beginning of this episode, in business we set big dreams, sometimes really big big dreams - which is exactly what you should be doing. Setting big dreams and going after them takes a truck load of courage!
To be courageous, you also open yourself up to be vulnerable - they go hand in hand, you can’t be courageous without being vulnerable and you can’t be vulnerable without being courageous - I know personally this is very testing. At every stage of my business journey this has tested me.
It takes courage to open the doors of your business, to tell people (family, friends, potential customers) what it is that you do, at every growth stage, to ask for a sale, to ask and listen to feedback. Not only does it take courage to build up your business, but it also takes courage to stop the things that are not working! Perhaps to reduce your working hours, reduce the number of products/services on offer, reduce your team.
If you are a new listener and don’t know my back story, I started my first business at 19. I’ve always been very curious about business ownership from a very very young age. I can’t imagine doing anything different!
So my first business was at 19, and since then I’ve had 4 businesses that I consider to be proper businesses. There’s been a few other projects that I experimented with, but the 4 proper businesses over the past 18 years have been a kids entertainment provider, small online retail and pop-up shop catering to outdoor/travelling families (those two businesses I sold). Currently, I run two businesses - a brick and mortar biz and an online biz. I run a super successful Dance studio called Dance Kix turning 6 figure profit annually and I have She’s in Business and the ready to rise program, which involves online coaching and business training for Mum’s who are made for more and want to achieve great things without burning out! You can discover more about that on my website donnahann.com if you are interested
My biggest business lessons, hands down have come from running my dance studio which has been operating for the past 6 years. When I started out, it was basically to keep my brain active doing something I loved, whilst being flexible with my two boys who were 3yrs and 6mths old at the time.. It started out very small, 5 classes a week. We (I say that because it began as a partnership in 2016) we started in two locations, to reach more people and grassroots marketing, all organic reach through facebook, being out and about in the community.
Within 12 weeks it has exploded! More classes were added, we tested out a new location and that took off too! We had 100 kids enrolled and things were going great guns. Things continued to grow, the demands of responsibilities grew too with juggling a business and a family, plus my business partner was working part time as well - so our partnership ended in 2017 and brought out my business partner and continued on growing the business.
I have always had big dreams and goals. And the dance studio was no different! I could see the positive difference it was making to the kids who were coming to classes, I was growing to team (I had 10 teachers by this stage in 2018) the student numbers had grown to 250 which considering we are located in a regional town in central coast QLD - it was very fast growth!
Both locations at this stage were very solid, our retention of students was very strong term to term was about 90% and year to year about 80%, but I could feel myself burning out because I was stretched across two locations, which were 20km apart. 3 nights a week we had classes running simultaneously in two locations, my husband work on a rotating shift roster or day shift and night shift, so I was constantly juggling babysitters and the two locations also meant I needed to have double the number of teachers, so that meant a big chunk of my budget went to wages.
Whilst we had great systems in place, and my team was great - it was a lot! And every year, in Sept/Oct when we start planning the timetable for the following year, every year I would get to that time and agonise over merging the studios into one location. Logistically it made so much sense, financially it made sense, physically it was impossible to be in two places at once - so one location seemed like a good move. But for 3 years… I pushed through. I didn't have the courage to close the second location because I felt so vulnerable to what that looked like from the outside looking in. I was scared of what people would think… I was worried that people might perceive that as the business sinking. I was worried about letting some of my team go because there wouldn’t be a position for them. I was scared that I would lose customers because they wouldn’t be willing to travel 20km to the alternative location. I agonised over that decision every single year for 3 years - I have pages and pages in my journal trying to work out what I wanted to do, pros/cons, fears all of it!
My big dream of having two locations, being the biggest dance studio in our region - in reality it wasn’t what I thought it would be. So in 2019/2020 we had 300 students, and the highest profit on record - but for the beginning of 2021 I made the decision to merge two locations into one. I cried! I beat myself up over if I’d made the right decision over and over and I felt so vulnerable!
But even though I downsized my business at that point, I had to be courageous - and follow my inner knowing that it was the right thing to for me, my stress levels, the management of my business and as a result I feel that the customer experience has improved because everyone is less stretched, our systems flow so much easier from one location and I’ve learned soo much from that experience that I can now apply to other areas of my business and pass onto other women in business who are on the path to burnout.
It comes back to trusting yourself and your inner knowing. Allowing trust in believing that all of your hard work is leading you somewhere, because I have no doubt that I would have burnt out had I kept going that way. And as I said, twists and turns are little miracles that will be even better than you imagined - just allow it time for them to be realised. I would certainly not have had the capacity both with my time, energy or creative flow to have started She’s in Business - which I believe is my greater purpose and has already given me so much joy and I get to work with amazing women everyday to help them realise their goals and ambitions!
Life will test you, business will test you - but if you show up for yourself, in the mirror every day, maintain that positive attitude - you will eventually end up where you are meant to be!
So now is a great time to pause and reflect on what your year has been like and what changes you want to make for the new year. You can change your course on that map of dreams that you created for yourself - you are the boss - you get to make the choices of how your business runs and what you want it to look like in the future.
Perhaps your dreams are serving you really well, you know you need to do more of what you are doing - amazing - go do that!
Be it positive experiences or negative experiences to test your courage and allow yourself to be vulnerable in the process. Every experience you have as a business owner is a lesson that will strengthen your resilience, a lesson that will shape you to be a better person, a better business owner, a better leader.
This marks the last podcast episode for 2021. Thank you for listening along this year, it’s been really encouraging to see all the downloads each week. I would be so grateful if you could take the time to review this podcast on spotify or apple podcasts AND please please please share it with your friends to help me spread the word.
Because I’m the boss… I’ve decided to take a break from the podcast over January, to allow my brain some extra creative space to think about the topics I’ll cover in 2022 and who I’ll invite to be guests on the podcast. So I’ll be back with fresh episodes in February and in the meantime you can binge on the show episodes that you have missed!
Have a beautiful Christmas break, enjoy your family and friends, enjoy the rest - rejuvenate your mind and creativity and I’ll see you back here in Feb!
