EP 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.