Latest / You're Overqualified Podcast - Career and Leadership Strategies for Women / 107. Business Lessons I Didn’t Expect to Learn in 2025

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107. Business Lessons I Didn’t Expect to Learn in 2025 · You're Overqualified Podcast - Career and Leadership Strategies for Women

• 0:08
  Hi, I'm Danny Tan. And if you are here, you are in
• 0:11
  the right place. Welcome to the Pivot and
• 0:13
  Promotion podcast where we say forget the rules because they
• 0:16
  weren't written for us. I'm Danny Tan, I'm your host as
• 0:19
  well as career and leadership coach and a proud advocate for
• 0:21
  redefining what success and leadership looks like.
• 0:24
  And here's what I know. You can lead at any level.
• 0:27
  You can pivot at any age and you can make moves that feel right
• 0:30
  for you, whether you're climbing the corporate ladder, starting
• 0:33
  something completely new, or just figuring out your next
• 0:35
  step. I've got you covered with
• 0:36
  strategies, stories, and straight up inspiration.
• 0:39
  So let's make some moves. Hello, and welcome to today's
• 0:47
  episode. I'm talking about the business
• 0:49
  lessons I didn't expect to learn in 2025.
• 0:52
  And so there's always gonna be lessons we're going to learn,
• 0:55
  but I think some of them we may think to ourselves like, oh, I
• 0:58
  learned that lesson so long ago, or I know what to do in that
• 1:02
  scenario. And then life just kind of
• 1:04
  pleasantly surprises us or maybe humbles us and, and tells us
• 1:08
  otherwise. So in this episode, more of a
• 1:11
  personal reflection about the uninfected things that 2025
• 1:15
  have. You know, they kind of brought
• 1:17
  me in business when it came to being a business owner, a
• 1:20
  leader, a coach, and so many different levels and really
• 1:23
  setting the tone for what I want to bring into 2026.
• 1:26
  And so I'm going to give you about 5 different lessons that I
• 1:28
  learned because there's too many.
• 1:30
  And so I had to make sure I capped it.
• 1:31
  And then as always, a little light tie in of, you know, how
• 1:35
  our brains kind of interact with these lessons that I learned and
• 1:38
  then a little bit of a reflection at the end.
• 1:40
  So the first lesson, which I thought I would have learned
• 1:44
  this one quite some time ago, is delegating is important.
• 1:48
  But also it does not mean detaching, which obviously I
• 1:50
  know. But I think especially when I
• 1:52
  was working in corporate and I had big teams, I was like pretty
• 1:56
  masterful, I would say it delegating, delegating,
• 2:00
  organizing, just in general, like my tasks, my teams, the
• 2:03
  projects. It's like one of my jams, I
• 2:05
  would say. And I would say going into being
• 2:08
  a business owner, I have my amazing, amazing, amazing
• 2:12
  assistant. She crushes it.
• 2:15
  And I also have a coordinator and I also have somebody else
• 2:18
  who helps with the blog. I have so many amazing team
• 2:20
  members. But I think one of the biggest
• 2:22
  things that I had a hard time with was there's certain things
• 2:25
  you have to kind of just like surrender and let go of.
• 2:28
  So for example, like maybe everything will not be done
• 2:30
  exactly as I would do them, but they're going to get the job
• 2:33
  done kind of a thing. And to give, you know, the folks
• 2:36
  on my team, the women on my team, the liberty and the
• 2:39
  freedom to go ahead and do things with a little bit of
• 2:41
  twist of their own as well has been a big thing for me.
• 2:43
  And I think the other thing is too, when it comes to just like
• 2:46
  delegating or having help on your team is like the mental
• 2:50
  part of the financial part. And so if you're somebody who
• 2:55
  maybe has a hard time asking for help or even like being able to
• 3:00
  like pay for the service of having help, right?
• 3:02
  It can feel difficult and uncomfortable to be like, why
• 3:05
  would I pay for help if I could do it myself or if I know how to
• 3:08
  do it myself? Or what if I'm worried if I give
• 3:11
  it to this person and it doesn't feel like me or sound like me or
• 3:14
  is it me and I or I would do it a different way.
• 3:17
  So that could be a big thing that comes up.
• 3:18
  But the biggest thing that happens, you know, as a business
• 3:21
  owner, as a leader, as a coach, which is a mentor or anything,
• 3:23
  is that you kind of have to let go of being in the day-to-day
• 3:26
  tasks of things. And you can do that without
• 3:29
  letting go of your leadership, without letting go of your tone,
• 3:31
  yourself and all those things. And it really is about trusting
• 3:34
  your team and trusting yourself, trusting yourself that you have
• 3:37
  picked the right people to be on your team and trusting your team
• 3:40
  so that they're going to be in alignment with like your values
• 3:42
  and what you stand for in your mission.
• 3:44
  And so I think a big part of this lesson for me has been like
• 3:47
  delegating does not mean I'm detaching from the work that I
• 3:50
  do. I'm still like ever present and
• 3:52
  aware of what they are doing and you know, and what is like
• 3:56
  essentially going to execute towards the vision it is of the
• 3:58
  company that I am running, the business that I am running.
• 4:01
  But I still think it is right. And I think the financial piece
• 4:04
  too has always been this hard part of, Oh my gosh, I'm
• 4:07
  investing in this, you know, I hope I get my return on
• 4:10
  investment. What are things that result very
• 4:11
  quickly? But when you're a business
• 4:12
  owner, you're going to have to take some calculator risk.
• 4:14
  And so for example, for me, it's just making sure I have
• 4:17
  marketing going out consistently, consistently one,
• 4:20
  just because it's helpful content that I usually create
• 4:22
  for, for my audience, my community, whatever you'd like
• 4:24
  to call it. And so I always want to make
• 4:26
  sure I have helpful pieces going out, but I also want to make
• 4:28
  sure I'm having pieces that also are going to, I'm a business
• 4:31
  owner. So like they're generating
• 4:32
  marketing, they're generating interest too, you know, And so
• 4:35
  with doing that, I can sit for hours and create content.
• 4:39
  Like it's one of my favorite things to do is to create things
• 4:41
  of how could this be helpful for somebody or where is somebody
• 4:44
  getting stuck right now? A lot of things that I write
• 4:47
  are, and I'm going in a little bit of rabbit hole here.
• 4:49
  A lot of things that I write are things that I'm thinking about
• 4:52
  of clients and maybe some problems that come up for them
• 4:54
  pretty, you know, commonly or their prospective clients who
• 4:57
  have asked me questions. And so I create content off of
• 5:00
  that. And so I could do that all day,
• 5:01
  but if I didn't have my team who I could delegate to make sure it
• 5:05
  gets scheduled and sent out, it would just be sitting in a
• 5:07
  Google Doc in my computer forever.
• 5:09
  And so I think one of the best lessons I have is that, you
• 5:12
  know, you do have to delegate and it doesn't mean that you're
• 5:14
  detaching from your business. Sometimes it actually means that
• 5:16
  you're helping your business, like get out there because I
• 5:19
  have endless Google Docs of content that I have written and
• 5:23
  scripted and worked out. And so it's just about getting
• 5:25
  it out there. So biggest lesson is that does
• 5:27
  not matter at what point in your, your levels or life where
• 5:31
  you've like, I'm comfortable with delegating.
• 5:34
  Sometimes something new, a new challenge comes out.
• 5:36
  So my last little personal example would be this is that
• 5:39
  there were years ago, I would never hire help to clean my
• 5:43
  apartment. You know, living in New York, I
• 5:45
  would never have somebody come from my firm.
• 5:46
  I have to do it myself. Like, why would I hire someone?
• 5:48
  I could do it myself? And then eventually I sort of
• 5:51
  hiring help to help clean my apartment.
• 5:52
  And I was like, Oh my gosh, like I have more time to do the
• 5:54
  things that I want to do. When you have how I hope you're
• 5:57
  able to work on things that are a bigger focus for you, whether
• 6:01
  it's like strategy, whether it's like just having time to breathe
• 6:04
  and and to rest. Like it's just so crazy how when
• 6:07
  you actually remove yourself from these things that can have
• 6:09
  support and help. Well, you're actually opening up
• 6:11
  your mind and your opportunities for us.
• 6:13
  So I think that part, it's something that I always think to
• 6:16
  myself is like, what are the tasks that I'm doing and are
• 6:19
  these tasks in alignment with what it is that I'm actually
• 6:21
  trying to achieve. And then the second lesson I
• 6:24
  learned is that you can slow down and still grow.
• 6:27
  Now I learned this lesson in a big way in 2024 when I quit my
• 6:30
  corporate job and went full time in my business.
• 6:33
  I had taken basically half the year off and and worked the
• 6:36
  other half and I wanted to reset because I'd heard a lot of
• 6:38
  business owners say that they went from having a corporate job
• 6:41
  to going full time in their business and never having a
• 6:44
  break. So I was, it was really
• 6:45
  intentional about having a break.
• 6:47
  But The funny thing that I noticed in that year and again
• 6:49
  in this year is that anytime I slow down and I take time off, I
• 6:53
  don't know if it's like the universe or whatever, but I
• 6:56
  always come back to like calendar books with sales calls,
• 6:59
  people looking for either workshop speaking or coaching.
• 7:03
  And so I always say like time off is sacred for me because
• 7:07
  time off actually generates revenue for time off, brings me
• 7:11
  new clients, brings me new partnerships.
• 7:13
  And so I actually love taking time off because it just means
• 7:17
  that there's some, there's room and space for things to
• 7:19
  percolate. So I usually have like natural
• 7:22
  times throughout the year where I block time off.
• 7:24
  Like I usually take a block off in the summer and a block off
• 7:26
  during like the holidays. And then I try to like sprinkle
• 7:30
  some throughout, but I usually have two big segments where I'm
• 7:33
  taking a good chunk of time off. And I think before, you know,
• 7:38
  and especially if we were conditioned or used to my, you
• 7:41
  know, output, my, excuse me, input equals XY and Z output.
• 7:46
  We're like, we always have to do more, more, more.
• 7:48
  It's never enough, right? And so the biggest thing that I
• 7:52
  learned is that when I travel and I get to be restful and
• 7:56
  there's less urgency and I just like lead with the ability to
• 7:59
  kind of have some easefulness in my day, that's actually when
• 8:03
  growth comes. It's actually cuz I've created
• 8:04
  space for it. And so that's a lesson that I
• 8:07
  continue to learn even this year, this year.
• 8:10
  So like I was saying in 2023, so excuse me, 2024, I took like 6
• 8:15
  months off throughout the year, not all at once, like
• 8:17
  sporadically throughout. And then this year I had taken
• 8:20
  some months off, but I actually started grinding.
• 8:22
  I got back into that like old energy that I had before of like
• 8:26
  always work, work, work, work, work.
• 8:28
  It kind of, I tapped accidentally back into it for
• 8:30
  too long. Like it's good to have
• 8:32
  temporarily, but I tapped into it for too long this year and
• 8:36
  then I started to get a little burnt out, like the feelings of
• 8:38
  burnt out. So I was like, this isn't the
• 8:41
  energy that we wanted our business.
• 8:42
  This is why, this is the reason why we started a business was to
• 8:45
  not feel like we had to be in this urgency energy all the time
• 8:48
  of always doing more work. So I had to like Createspace in
• 8:50
  my calendar again. I had to cut back, you know,
• 8:53
  some of the partnerships that I had because I was like, no, you
• 8:56
  know, this isn't who I want to be and I don't need to do that
• 9:00
  for any reason except for that. I'm just doing it to do it.
• 9:03
  So I started to scale back again.
• 9:04
  And then when I did that, it opened up space for projects
• 9:07
  that were more aligned again. So I think for anyone here who
• 9:10
  is hearing this pieces, I always tell my clients, my clients are
• 9:14
  very ambitious, very high achievers, very over indexers.
• 9:17
  And the idea of taking like a break or rest is like very scary
• 9:21
  to them. And so I always remind them
• 9:22
  like, you know, slowing down actually allows you to speed up
• 9:26
  and not that we have to be speeding up, but slowing down
• 9:28
  actually allows you to speed up because you've taken on the
• 9:30
  break. I think a lot of us see it as if
• 9:32
  I stop, I'm going to have this huge gap delayed to my next
• 9:36
  step. But in reality, when you stop
• 9:39
  and you take a break, I swear it's like you speed right up.
• 9:41
  It's like an accelerator where you shoot right up to it at a
• 9:45
  faster pace a lot of the times. And so I was like to say that
• 9:48
  and that your nervous system is like, honestly, I'll talk about
• 9:50
  it more is a big piece to your business as well as your life.
• 9:53
  I always talk about business and life as one picture holistically
• 9:58
  because they are all intertwined.
• 10:01
  And so the next one that I will go ahead and share is number 3
• 10:04
  is not every pivot needs to be public.
• 10:07
  I feel like, and I have a lot of entrepreneur friends and I feel
• 10:11
  like we talked about this is like it's like everything
• 10:13
  doesn't have to be announced. Everything doesn't have to be on
• 10:17
  display. Like you can have shifts quietly
• 10:21
  happen behind the scenes as you see fit.
• 10:23
  You don't have to announce everything in this huge
• 10:25
  grandiose way. And so for example, it's just
• 10:28
  nice to have quiet shifts behind the scenes.
• 10:30
  Those could be the most powerful versus being like, you know, my
• 10:33
  program is changing, my pricing is changing, this is changing.
• 10:37
  Like it's OK, like just doing you to do it's fine.
• 10:39
  And I think that's something that's been really important.
• 10:41
  So like an example could be like if you're reworking one of your
• 10:43
  offers or how your team is structured or like what the
• 10:46
  client journey looks like or was included with certain services.
• 10:49
  It's like I realize like, oh wait, I don't have to make an
• 10:52
  announcement every time I make a change to my business.
• 10:55
  It's going to be OK. Obviously, like if you have
• 10:57
  something major that happened, go for it, but it's not
• 10:59
  necessary and it's OK. And I love that.
• 11:01
  I love that piece of being like everything doesn't have to be a
• 11:05
  big announcement. It's going to be OK.
• 11:07
  So I touched on this a little bit before, but the 4th 1 is
• 11:10
  like your nervous system is your leadership tool because your
• 11:15
  nervous system is you. And so it's about leading
• 11:16
  yourself. I mentioned this many times
• 11:18
  before I worked with an amazing, I mean I've worked with two
• 11:22
  amazing somatic coaches, but the one I worked with most recently
• 11:26
  is also a dear friend. And I would say the biggest
• 11:29
  thing for me is that I have done cognitive behavioral talk
• 11:31
  therapy. Oh my gosh, majority of my life.
• 11:33
  But if you are a talker and an over thinker, really it's
• 11:36
  someone who's overly analytical, you can get like stuck and
• 11:40
  trapped in the loop of the thoughts versus actually sitting
• 11:43
  with the emotions. And so semantics in general and
• 11:45
  tapping in and understanding your nervous system helps you
• 11:48
  really work through the emotional piece of it, which is
• 11:51
  what really gets trapped in our bodies.
• 11:52
  And so we are probably hearing nervous system way more than we
• 11:56
  ever have before. Because I feel like I see it a
• 11:58
  lot like on social media, but in reality, it's just like checking
• 12:01
  with your body. Like we don't have to make it
• 12:02
  that dramatic, but it's just checking with your body in
• 12:04
  general, understanding what these different feelings and
• 12:07
  emotions look like for you and being able to like help identify
• 12:11
  them. I think UD, my Somatics coach
• 12:13
  does it so beautifully. We are not striving for a
• 12:17
  perfectly regulated nervous system.
• 12:19
  So if you see that like, no, we're not striving for a
• 12:22
  perfectly regulated nervous system.
• 12:24
  We are just striving for nothing.
• 12:26
  First of all, we're just opening up space to actually experience
• 12:30
  and witness our emotions and sit with them and to understand how
• 12:33
  we can support ourselves when they are going through maybe the
• 12:35
  waves of emotions that we're in. So how can you create a support
• 12:38
  plan for yourself, which is that she has taught me, which I will
• 12:40
  have for the rest of my life of like, if you're having a down
• 12:42
  day, what can you pull from your support plan to kind of help you
• 12:46
  during that day? And if you're having an up day,
• 12:48
  how can you like bottle up and like keep the memories in the
• 12:51
  evidence of that day that went well?
• 12:52
  I think this has been so important because this has
• 12:55
  grounded me when it comes to traveling non-stop and moving
• 12:59
  around a lot. How can I reground myself?
• 13:00
  What are the, the tools that I go after to make that happen?
• 13:04
  And then it's also helped me in my business when I'm like kind
• 13:06
  of spiraling out and I'm worrying about something.
• 13:09
  It could be that I'm, you know, worried about a client.
• 13:12
  I want to make sure they're OK and they're getting things they
• 13:14
  need. Or it could be about, you know,
• 13:17
  business in general about like a partnership with like, is it
• 13:19
  going to go the way that I want to go?
• 13:20
  Like, you know, so many different feelings that can come
• 13:22
  up, come up. And like, that is the ultimate
• 13:23
  tool because if you can like really learn how to lead
• 13:26
  yourself, identify patterns in yourself when these things come
• 13:29
  up, it just helps you be able to support yourself and your
• 13:32
  business. And I think that's the biggest
• 13:33
  thing is that from when I started the idea of trying to
• 13:37
  build a business to today, you know, the first few years I
• 13:41
  always had a coach and then this year in what year we in my gosh,
• 13:44
  2025, I did not have a business coach going into this year.
• 13:49
  And I actually didn't even get any coaching until like a month
• 13:52
  ago. I was like, you know what, I
• 13:53
  could do a tune up. Let me get a tune up coaching
• 13:55
  call. But I was like so happy and
• 13:59
  impressed with myself. Not that you should go without
• 14:00
  coaching, but I was happy to impress myself because I felt
• 14:03
  like I had taken all the tools that all the coaches had taught
• 14:06
  me before, Like I had a digital nomad coach, I had a business
• 14:09
  coach, I was in a mastermind. I did somatic coaching.
• 14:12
  I feel like all of these coaches from like the years prior, I had
• 14:16
  finally really like grown and integrated the things that they
• 14:19
  taught me. So I'm coming into this year.
• 14:21
  I was like, I think I could do this and I have and it's been
• 14:23
  beautiful. And so now I'm in like my tune
• 14:25
  up season. I'm doing this all.
• 14:26
  I did a tune up here. Would you do next month and like
• 14:29
  just a good check in because sometimes, you know, we need
• 14:32
  that. So nervous system is a is a
• 14:33
  great, great place to be and I feel like my capacity
• 14:35
  emotionally has changed immensely.
• 14:38
  I feel like I would have been avoided and hiding and running
• 14:41
  in so many ways to Sunday previously and that in 2025, of
• 14:46
  course these are going to have our tendencies, but I'm I'm much
• 14:48
  less so I'm hiding from things or letting myself get like kind
• 14:55
  of pulled into things. And so I'm super grateful for
• 14:57
  that. That's an amazing thing.
• 14:59
  I don't think I realized like what level of importance it has
• 15:02
  until you start to identify those patterns.
• 15:03
  So I love that lesson that I did not expect this year.
• 15:06
  And then the last one, which is it's kind of like cheeky, but
• 15:09
  you don't have to monetize everything.
• 15:11
  And I don't think I am a person who thinks everything must be
• 15:14
  monetized, but I definitely think and believe that it's out
• 15:17
  there. They're like, that's an idea,
• 15:18
  monetize it, that's an idea, monetize it.
• 15:20
  And so I think that I sometimes like have this like little
• 15:25
  thought of my mind of like, Oh my gosh, I should be monetizing
• 15:28
  this and this and this, and I should change the software in
• 15:30
  this program and blah, blah, blah.
• 15:32
  But then I remember why I built my business and why it's
• 15:36
  important to me and what is the focus of it and what do I
• 15:39
  actually need financially to be comfortable and have options and
• 15:43
  security and making everything into something that's monetized
• 15:46
  is not the vibe for me. I don't need it to scale
• 15:49
  everything. And it could be a really cool
• 15:51
  idea, but maybe it's just not aligned with what it is that I
• 15:53
  want to do in this season. Like I've had so many fun ideas,
• 15:56
  but I think the biggest thing that I have, I had set myself as
• 15:59
  a goal last year and this year is I want my business to be
• 16:02
  boring. I want my business to be like
• 16:04
  simple. I want to be able to anticipate
• 16:06
  the needs of everyone because that's how you fine tune and
• 16:09
  become really awesome at what you do.
• 16:11
  And then I can always go ahead in another year or two and
• 16:14
  elevate and change things. You know, of course I always
• 16:16
  take feedback and I iterate off of, but I don't think everything
• 16:19
  has to be like the next best thing.
• 16:22
  What do you think has been an overarching theme for me of like
• 16:24
  not wanting to bring the energy in on so many different ways of
• 16:27
  that? Like you can have growth in
• 16:28
  exactly where you are right now. So those are some of the lessons
• 16:31
  I learned in 2025 when it comes to business.
• 16:34
  And maybe some of these lessons surprised you or maybe they
• 16:37
  didn't, but I'm super curious for you, what lessons have you
• 16:41
  learned more about most about yourself this year 2025?
• 16:44
  What lists I've learned about yourself and what do you feel
• 16:46
  like you're? Going to bring into 2026.
• 16:47
  So for me, I'm bringing all these things to 2026.
• 16:49
  So it's been great and I'll talk to you soon.