Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / Why I Decided to Go Back to School to Get My MBA

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Why I Decided to Go Back to School to Get My MBA · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

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  3, 10, 1, 0, ignition, liftoff,
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  Ending small business failure.
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  Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert Melinda Emerson.
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  Bolinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
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  you need to succeed and live the life you've dream of.
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  Now here's the small biz lady herself.
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  Melinda Emerson.
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  Hi.
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  This is Melinda Emerson, and you are listening small bitshep podcast.
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  Today, I wanted to talk to you about why I decided to go back to school and get my MBA.
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  Now I know that many of you are probably thinking to yourself, why in the world would
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  she do that?
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  She's been in business for 20 years.
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  So what in the world would make her get an MBA?
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  Well, I have to be honest with you for probably the last 7 or 8 years, I've been contacted by
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  5, 6 colleges who asked me to teach wanted me to be adjunct faculty.
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  And when they found out that despite the fact that I've written several books, one of which
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  universities actually used to teach entrepreneurship, my first book becoming our
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  boss in 12 months because I didn't have a master's, I could teach.
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  I mean, literally, I could not even teach a community college without a master's degree,
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  particularly I was told because my undergraduate degree was in journalism.
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  And I was so disheartened by that because I was like, wait a minute.
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  I wrote a book that you guys used to teach yet I am not qualified to teach here.
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  I don't know about that.
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  Why would that be?
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  Well, you know, something I always wanted to do was be able to be a college professor.
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  I mean, obviously, I love working with individual entrepreneurs and and speaking
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  around the world and around the country and all that kind of stuff.
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  But at the end of the day, you know, you never wanna have somebody tell you that you don't
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  have the credentials to come here or that you don't have the ability to work here or or or
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  teach these young minds.
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  And so but the other thing too is I always wanted to get my MBA and I didn't do it because
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  of my fear of of math and statistics.
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  And so I I guess I need to roll back the story a little bit.
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  I When I first went to college, I was actually double major in in business and communications.
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  And I basically led you know, quantitative methods and econ, you know, and, you know,
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  calculus 1 and calculus 2 were classes that I, you know, almost failed, had to take twice, you
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  know, prayed for a d kind of thing.
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  And and after that, I I dropped my double major in business, which you know, in hindsight now
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  that I've run a business for 20 years that probably wasn't that smart, I probably should
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  have pushed through it.
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  But when it was hard, and it was really hard because I wasn't a strong math student coming
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  out of high school.
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  So I didn't do well on the on the math portion of the of the SATs.
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  Obviously, I did great in the verbal, but not so much the math.
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  And so after I went to college and sort of, like, got washed out of the business school
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  because I just couldn't hack the quantitative classes.
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  I kinda wrote off business school is something that I would never be able to do.
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  And that I now know that that's pretty ridiculous because first of all, I'm in
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  business school now.
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  I've been in the program, gosh, over a year.
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  And I've got a 9, excuse me, a 3 point 97, grade point average.
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  I have, like, literally been crushing it in graduate school, and I wish I had had the
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  courage to do it much sooner.
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  But, you know, sometimes when you fear things, you can make them into this big bad boogie man.
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  Like, like, you can't grow.
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  Like, you can't learn something that that is hard.
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  And so for me, I have been in graduate school.
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  I'm in the executive MBA program.
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  Fortunately, once you've been out in industry 10 to 15 years, You can do an executive MBA.
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  It's still an MBA, though.
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  I mean, it's a ton of work.
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  Do not get it twisted, but I definitely think that I built almost a, like, a math anxiety, if
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  you will, about graduate school.
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  And and I decide to do it honestly just to prove something to myself as much as proving
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  something to anyone else.
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  And for me, I really I'm so glad that I pushed myself at this point in my life and my career
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  to get a degree because I I am attending University.
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  I am a Drexel dragon.
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  And what I will tell you is my classmates are amazing.
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  I have learned so much about corporate business.
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  You know, obviously, I am quite a thesaurus of information about small business, but you know,
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  big business is is different, you know, learning about supply chain, learning about,
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  you know, financial statements and breaking apart 10 ks and you know, learning about
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  marketing strategy from the number side of it, those are things that those are skills that I
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  didn't have.
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  And so now armed with the information that I know about small business and the information
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  that I'm learning about big business especially because, you know, my company, Quintessa's
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  group, I actually am a marketing consulting firm for fortune 500 companies.
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  And so now the more I know about those businesses, the more effective I can be with
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  helping them develop marketing strategies that are gonna be effective for them to target small
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  business customers.
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  And so It's very interesting to sort of, like, be in this place where I'm learning.
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  I'm reading I'm watching videos.
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  I'm reading Harvard and MIT cases, and I'm loving it.
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  I love school and I can't believe I waited this long to do it.
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  You know, what an incredible disservice I did to myself for waiting.
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  And and I, you know, and so I wanna just encourage all of you out here.
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  If there is something that you have turned into the big bad wolf in your life.
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  Reconceter that.
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  Because, really, it might not be what you think it is.
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  You know, I and I really think that sometimes our fears are dangerous because first of all,
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  anybody can learn anything.
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  And once you've been out here in the world and had some experience, it's even easier to learn
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  things because you have a track record of learning things.
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  You know, if a business owner, we learn how to do things every day, things we've never done
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  before, negotiate with banks, you know, negotiate leases, you know, all kinds of
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  things.
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  Hire people, train people.
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  There's things that we learn all the time and and and and do well at it.
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  So if you've had the opportunity to do that, then seek ways that you can do more.
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  Seek ways that you can take on more.
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  I mean, it's it's a lot being a single mom, running a business, having a business that
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  makes me travel 30% of the time.
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  Yeah.
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  Graduate school is a is an amazing thing to kinda lay on top of all of that.
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  But what I will tell you is that I am so grateful for the journey and to have the
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  opportunity to be in a cohort with, you know, 15, 16 other successful business people.
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  There's only 2 of us in the class that are entrepreneurs.
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  Everyone else is you know, an executive or a senior person in their business organization.
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  And I have learned so much from my colleagues, let alone from my professors.
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  And so what I will tell you is don't ever be afraid to put yourself in a situation where you
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  have to grow.
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  Don't ever be afraid to sharpen your own knife.
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  I think that you will always be better for it.
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  Are you tired of struggling in your business, not taking a paycheck, dreading dealing with
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  your business in the morning?
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  Are you regret even starting your business in the first place?
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  Well, I know you're tired, and I also remember what that kind of tire is like, but the good
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  news is It's time to stop feeling that way.
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  Stop.
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  I'm Melinda Emerson's small business lady, and my new football fixture business is a 90 day
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  turnaround plan to get back your life and reduce chaos in your business.
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  I've been in business nearly 20 years and let me teach you how to build a physicist that
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  works for you.
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  Grab a copy to death.
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  And for me, I never would have thought that being in graduate school would would change the
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  way I feel about myself, but it does because this was this was hard.
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  This was not an easy thing to do.
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  And I am so blessed for having done it.
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  And I want to encourage all of you.
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  And and I also have to say too, I was inspired to do this by my own mom.
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  I mean, my mom went back to graduate school and got her MBA when she was fifty years old.
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  And she graduated when she was 52.
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  And I was astounded that she did that.
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  And you know, she was really one of my true inspirations for why I was just like, wow.
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  You know, I'm the last person in my family to go to graduate school.
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  Everyone else has either been to law school or business school.
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  And I'm the last one, and it took me 25 years to to decide.
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  To go back to school.
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  And and my family's really proud of me, and and I had no idea that, for example, my mom always
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  wanted me to go to business school.
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  She never said anything.
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  She never put any pressure on me.
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  So when I announced that I was gonna apply to go to graduate school, she was like, Awesome.
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  This is great.
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  And I really thought she was gonna poo poo the idea.
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  I was almost scared to tell her.
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  So, you know, that's just one of those things that Again, you never know why you're put in a
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  position that you're put in, but you can't let fear be the reason why you don't do anything
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  because fear is not real.
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  Fear many times is in your head.
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  Right?
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  I mean, you certainly would have never had me believe that going to graduate school, I would
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  have, you know, always 1 a minus, a year and a half into the program.
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  I never would have thought such a thing.
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  So for me, I'm just grateful for everything that is happening, everything that we're doing
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  because I just know that it's leading me to be a better small biz lady for you.
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  Everything I learned is sharpening my knife so that I can understand both sides of a deal what
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  a corporate might think.
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  And and certainly, I know what small business owners thinking and what we struggle with and
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  what kinds of supports that we need.
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  But, again, I just wanna tell you all is that I was afraid.
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  I thought I would not do well or that I would fail out of MBA school.
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  That's why I never did it because I thought, you know, being a poor math student in college
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  and undergrad, you know, I have 3 ds on my transcript from undergrad, calculus 1, calculus
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  2, and statistics.
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  I hey.
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  I got a statistics class in graduate school.
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  And so I can't you can't live your life afraid.
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  You just have to do your best and know that if you do your best, if you concentrate, if you
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  ask for extra help, if you set yourself up for says.
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  I mean, now, listen.
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  I gotta be honest with you guys.
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  My my statistics class is coming up.
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  I've been on the Khan Academy.
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  Retaching myself, you know, basically algebra too because that is what, you know, the
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  fundamentals of, statistics are.
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  And so it's okay to to to get tutors, to get help, to talk to people about a weakness you
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  have and put people around you that you need to help you be successful.
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  That's what we do in business too.
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  Right?
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  You're not supposed to be the smartest one at everything.
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  You're supposed to hire people that that are have strengths in your weaknesses so that you
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  can build your business and build an amazing team around yourself.
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  What's the same thing in graduate school that, you know, you do a lot of group projects and
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  things like that.
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  And so somebody in your team is a math whiz.
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  But guess what?
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  There's been plenty of things that we've had to do in graduate school that required marketing
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  skills that required writing skills that required presentation skills.
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  And so my classmates have leaned on and dependent on me in those situations because
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  that is my superpower.
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  Right?
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  You know?
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  So again, I think that just because you have a weakness in one area, it doesn't have to be a
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  weakness for your whole life.
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  You can turn it into a strength.
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  But if you walk around, afraid to even, you know, step on that area of your life, you know,
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  it because it's a landmine for you you'll never know what you're really capable of.
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  And that's the thing that I can honestly tell you.
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  I now know truly that I'm capable of anything because it has been hard to juggle my schedule
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  with this being a graduate school It has been hard.
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  Some of these classes have been really, really hard.
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  But I tell you, I have enjoyed reading.
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  I've enjoyed learning.
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  I've enjoyed watching the movies and videos and and reading the cases and writing up our
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  synopsis.
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  I mean, all these things have been terrific.
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  So what I will just say, and and I will I will close with this, is that you can't let fear
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  stop you from doing anything.
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  And that is really my bottom line.
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  One day, I'm gonna be a college professor.
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  They're gonna call me professor Emerson, because I decided to finally go back to school
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  and get my masters so that I could teach on a college level the wonderful things that I
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  already teach all of you on my blog and in my online courses.
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  So if I had to give you an action point for the week, it would be this fear is dangerous.
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  It can stop you from reaching your destiny if you let it.
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  So seek out more opportunities because you will have no idea what investing in your education
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  and sharpening your knife can help you do.
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  For me, you can't imagine how many opportunities have opened up for me because I'm
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  earning my MBA.
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  So with that, I am Melinda Harrison, the small biz lady, and you have been listening to the
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  small biz chat podcast.
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  See you next time.
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  Thank you for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
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  For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
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  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday.