Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP.71: How to Know What Stage of Entrepreneurship You’re ACTUALLY In (and How to Grow Out of It)| The Ambitious Podcast

Transcript

EP.71: How to Know What Stage of Entrepreneurship You’re ACTUALLY In (and How to Grow Out of It)| The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

• 0:00
  You are out of touch, you think you are hot shit and because of
• 0:04
  that you've lost the essence of why you were successful in the
• 0:06
  1st place. What kind of entrepreneur are
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  you? Maybe I'm actually not cut out
• 0:11
  to do this. I had to learn that it wasn't
• 0:13
  about hustle, it was about being smart.
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  It was about delegating. It was about actually letting go
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  and letting other people step in.
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  So many people when they scale their business have such an
• 0:21
  identity of being a doer that they don't know how to become a
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  quote UN quote CEO. No matter how many hours I sat
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  at my laptop, the business would not grow outside that capacity
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  because at the end of the day, it's a broken way to grow a
• 0:32
  business. These stages are not something
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  for you to say. How fast can I get through them?
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  Because they're part of the evolution and the programming
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  that will build you to be the entrepreneur you are today.
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  You want to get to the 10K months or 30K months.
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  It's a very Instagram business type of categorization of
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  people, right? That's not really how business
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  works. No one cares about that in the
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  regular business world. Hello and welcome back to the
• 0:55
  Ambitious Podcast. I am so excited to have you here
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  and especially for today's topic, to be honest, because as
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  somebody who works day in, day out with entrepreneurs, and I've
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  helped entrepreneurs at every stage, at the stage of
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  innovation, when they have just the original big idea and
• 1:11
  they're wanting to get started. They're wanting to start a
• 1:13
  business, start a company. And I've also got the people in
• 1:15
  the building phase when you're trying to get that solid
• 1:18
  foundation to create consistency within the business.
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  We can look at the scaling stage when you're trying to, you know,
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  really start to widen the impact and increase the volume of the
• 1:29
  business is bringing in. And then we've got that ultimate
• 1:32
  stage, which is that kind of era where you're really making this
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  something that is so much bigger than yourself.
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  It's not about the offer, it's not about the platform anymore.
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  It's not about the team. It's really about, you know,
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  something so much bigger, which is like the legacy of it all.
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  And so today what I want to do is break down for you the
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  different stages of entrepreneur identities that I have seen with
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  all of the different types of clients that I have worked with.
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  And what I want you to think of this as is almost like if you
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  think about karate, right? There's that the main
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  destination, the main goal we're all going for is to become a
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  black belt. And so the same kind of idea is
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  what I want you to think about today.
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  The goal of today is to help you to identify which stage of
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  entrepreneur are you really at. And this is something that I
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  want you to think about as an opportunity to better understand
• 2:23
  yourself in the context of your business.
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  Because for me, this model is very inspiring because it helps
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  me to say, OK, if I'm at the current stage I am now, what's
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  the next thing I have to do to get closer to a black belt,
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  closer to a black belt? And I'm constantly looking at
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  what are the skills I need? What's the mindset I need?
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  What's the tools that I need? I'm looking to say how do I
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  level up in my ranking, if you will, of the the type of person
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  individual that I need to be to have the business that I want to
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  be the person, the entrepreneur to run the company that I'm
• 2:56
  looking to build. And so today is not going to be
• 2:58
  about the stage of the business, meaning, you know, the revenue
• 3:01
  markers and what to focus on at each stage.
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  And like we have done that and we have an episode that does
• 3:06
  cover that. So if that is something that
• 3:08
  you're here for and you're looking for, let I want to let
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  you know that we do have a strategy episode that is
• 3:13
  designed to outline the different stages of business and
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  what to focus on in each stage. But today is about you.
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  It's about you as the entrepreneur.
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  It's about you as the individual and understanding what kind of
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  entrepreneur are you? Are you a baby entrepreneur?
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  Are you are you a little embryo? Are you a little embryo
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  entrepreneur? Or are you somebody who you know
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  is starting to learn to walk? Or are you someone who's running
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  sprints? We want to start to know which
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  stage are you falling into? And I want you to know what all
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  the stages of entrepreneurs meaning the individuals are so
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  that you can actually start to say, what do I want to set my
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  eyes on next of the skills to have, the mindsets to have, and
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  the next level progression I'm going to focus on to really step
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  into that next level of growth. Because a great quote that I
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  heard passed on to me from a mentor was the fact that you
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  don't have the business you want because you haven't become the
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  person to run it. And that quote, you haven't got
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  the business you want because you haven't become the person to
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  run it yet. That quote landed for me because
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  that allowed me to really see and understand that the only
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  reason my business was not expanding or going to the next
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  level or really tapping into to this new season that I wanted
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  for myself was because I wasn't tapping into that.
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  I wasn't somebody who was stepping into a new level.
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  So of course, my business wasn't stepping into a new level.
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  So today, why don't we figure out what the levels are and also
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  give you an understanding of which level maybe are you at
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  right now and give you an understanding of what's the
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  level you're going to go for in the next 6 to 12 months.
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  What's the thing that you're going to focus on to really step
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  into that next level belt that you're going to get as you get
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  to the next season of your journey as an entrepreneur?
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  So we're going to talk about in each of these levels, there's
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  five of them. We're going to be talking about
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  in each one the primary fears that this individual has, the
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  core needs that you have in each one of these stages.
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  What are behaviors that you typically have within these
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  stages? We're going to talk about also
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  common traps that will keep you stuck within this stage.
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  And most importantly, what are typically the things that need
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  to occur or need to happen in order to help you to progress to
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  the next stage from wherever it is that you are right now?
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  So we're going to dive right into it.
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  As I said, there's five different stages.
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  The first stage we're going to be going into is the dreamer.
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  And I want you to think of this as a little duckling.
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  As I said, maybe maybe in your mind it's an embryo, right?
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  Like this is the the little duckling entrepreneur.
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  And it's when you have those things you say to yourself of
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  like, maybe I could do this, maybe I could build a business,
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  Maybe I, I, I could be an entrepreneur.
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  Like this could be an offer, right?
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  Like this could be a business, this could be an offer.
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  Or I feel like I want to do this, but I, I feel like I have
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  no idea where to start, right? So we see this stage of like the
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  mindset of almost curiosity and contemplation, which is really
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  obvious within the dreamer, which is the stage 1.
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  And usually this is timeline wise, just to give you context,
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  usually most people can be in the dreamer type stage of being
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  an entrepreneur for up to two years.
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  Usually it's like the first couple weeks of being an
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  entrepreneur sometimes lasts as long as two years.
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  And again, this is with a timeline.
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  I don't want you to get super fixated on that because we know
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  that every single business and entrepreneur's journey is
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  different. All of us are going through a
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  different journey, a different season, and we have different
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  opportunities that are presented to us.
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  And so because of that, this is not like, Oh, well, Kate, I feel
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  like these symptoms or these signs really resonate with me.
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  And I've been in business three years.
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  Oh my gosh, there's something wrong with me.
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  No, this is an opportunity for you to just really look at the
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  signs that resonate with you, but don't get fixated
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  specifically on the timeline. So the dreamer again, is the
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  person who has that contemplation.
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  They have that curiosity of like, can I do this?
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  Can I build this business? Can I, can I really make this a
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  thing? Like, can I really make this
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  happen? And your identity when you're
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  that dreamer is you're somebody who's kind of a curious
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  observer. You feel like you're an outsider
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  to entrepreneurship still. You feel like you don't really
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  self identify as an entrepreneur.
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  You probably still quite significantly hear or talk about
• 7:38
  your 9:00 to 5:00 or your role. And I want to honestly share a
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  story around this because I was working with my coach at the
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  time when I had started my business and was growing and
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  scaling it. And I had actually hit seven
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  figures in total revenue within 18 months of building my
• 7:54
  business. And I remember getting on a call
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  with him and I said something along the lines of, yeah, you
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  know, I'm just a server who got lucky.
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  And the thing that I want to share about that is I was
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  hitting A7 figure mark in total revenue that I had generated
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  since like within 18 months starting the business, we hit
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  seven figures in revenue. And I was at this place on a
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  call though, with my coach telling him that I was a server
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  who got lucky. This was a sign that my mindset
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  was not that of an entrepreneur. And I remember he called me out
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  for it. And he was like, I don't want to
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  hear you mentioning anything about your server stuff in the
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  basis of our calls because what he was trying to do is to shift
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  me out of this identity of who I was self identifying to be.
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  There was a good portion of me that was like this being a
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  server was who I was and I had to let that part of me go.
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  Again, talking about progression through stages, I had to let
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  parts of me go to be able to Createspace for the new stage
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  that I want to step into. Some people also, you know, will
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  have language around this, which is like, Oh yeah, like I have
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  like a side hustle or I have like a side project that I do.
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  They don't give the thing that they're working on credit or
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  really make it in the spotlight. It's kind of a side note or a
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  side dish to what's going on in their actual life.
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  So they don't really call themselves entrepreneurs.
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  If anything, they're like, oh, I'm an aspiring entrepreneur or
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  I'm aspiring business owner. I want to be a business owner.
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  So there's this idea of this division between who you are
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  today versus the person that is the entrepreneur identity you'd
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  like to become. There's a space between those
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  things. Now obviously within this,
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  there's also very low confidence at this stage, right?
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  So we often really avoid calling ourselves a business owner.
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  You'll also see with the dreamer, they're so easily
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  shaken by judgment of other people or negative feedback.
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  And you'll find that, for example, you know, and we see a
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  lot with people in the earlier stages of business, you'll go
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  to, you know, put out an offer or you'll go to put out, you
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  know, social media content and it doesn't do well.
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  And that's not to you. Just like, oh, OK, they didn't
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  like it. You can't kind of let that shrug
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  off of you. It's something that you
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  internalize so deeply to be like, they don't want it.
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  They don't want the offer, they don't want me.
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  We start to go into this spiral of what this quote UN quote,
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  negative feedback or rejection means about us or our business,
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  and we start to spiral into all these side stories of what that
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  could represent. And the most significant thing
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  I'd say is that there's often a very deep need for permission
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  and external validation when they want to do something.
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  And you'll see that, you know, I often talk about kind of having
• 10:36
  like a, a board of advisors, like basically having a, a unit
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  or a group of people that are really the people that guide you
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  and the people that help you to make decisions in your life and
• 10:45
  business. But the thing that's difficult
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  when you're at the earlier stages of business, you don't
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  have an entrepreneur board of advisors.
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  You have your mom and your sister and your brother and your
• 10:57
  best friend. And maybe you know someone in
• 11:00
  your family who's been a guiding light for you and you're
• 11:03
  referencing them for your decisions you're making.
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  So what ends up happening is you're like, hey, like I should
• 11:09
  do this, right? Like I should do this, I should
• 11:10
  do this. Or does this sound like a good
• 11:12
  plan? Or do you think it's going to
• 11:13
  work? Or is that smart investment?
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  You're constantly looking for validation because you don't
• 11:18
  trust yourself. And also that not trusting
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  yourself entirely makes sense because you don't have evidence
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  yet to do it. I was the same way.
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  The amount of endless conversations that I had with
• 11:29
  family members to be like, do you think this is a good idea?
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  What do you think I should do? Like, is this good?
• 11:33
  And even with my partner at the time, him and I had so many
• 11:36
  conversations about what do you think about this?
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  What do you think about that? And it was because I didn't at
• 11:40
  the time have any evidence to say that I was making a, a
• 11:43
  educated or smart decision. I was leaning on my community
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  and my people around me because they didn't have any information
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  to know if this was quote UN quote right or wrong.
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  So because of that, the mindset pieces, the primary fears that
• 11:56
  come up are, you know, what if I try and I fail publicly?
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  Like what if I start this business and it doesn't work?
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  Or what if I you know, most people when they're really early
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  on in business will be like, you know, but what if I go live and
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  no one shows up? Or what if I post this real but
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  nobody engages? Or what if I start this new
• 12:16
  account and people, you know, make fun of me?
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  Or on the other side, there's also this, this fear or this
• 12:24
  imposter syndrome around maybe I'm actually not cut out to do
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  this. And I had this too, when I, you
• 12:30
  know, started a fitness coaching business.
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  I was somebody who just at the time had been working out a lot.
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  And I was OK. Like, I want to start a business
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  and I want to share with the everyday person.
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  We're not talking about becoming an athlete by any means.
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  I was just sharing with the everyday person basically how to
• 12:44
  get fit and to lose weight. And I thought, you know, there's
• 12:47
  all these elite trainers out there.
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  There's like bikini competition coaches.
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  Like, who the heck am I to come in here and say, hey, you know,
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  we're going to help you, the everyday woman to be able to get
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  fit without having to have a crazy routine.
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  Like, who am I to be the person who does that?
• 13:02
  And so there's this fear of like, am I even good at this?
• 13:06
  And this honestly, big fear of judgement, judgement of old
• 13:10
  peers, judgement of friends, judgement of family, it really
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  depends on in your circle who's the most, I guess I would say
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  influential to you. But we see for anyone who's at
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  the dreamer stage, they really are super scared about the
• 13:23
  feedback and the judgement of other people.
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  And So what you need at this stage is you need encouragement
• 13:29
  from someone who believes in you.
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  I, I'm a firm believer and I talk about this a lot.
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  My partner at the time was such a massive support to me in my
• 13:37
  business, like was a huge support to me in my business.
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  I probably, to be honest, would not have this business if I
• 13:44
  didn't have him in my corner. And that was because when I had
• 13:47
  so much doubt that I could so much doubt that I could charge
• 13:50
  something, that I could close somebody, that I could launch a
• 13:53
  certain offer that could show up a certain way.
• 13:55
  It didn't matter what it was. He was like, go, go, go, go.
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  Like he was really in my corner to be an encouragement and not
• 14:02
  necessarily that he, you know, was somebody who knew a lot
• 14:05
  about about business. He was not somebody who was an
• 14:07
  entrepreneur or, or knew anything about the business
• 14:09
  space. But that's not what I was
• 14:11
  relying on him for. I was relying on him for
• 14:12
  encouragement really. And that's what he did.
• 14:14
  He encouraged me and was very much a cheerleader for me in my
• 14:17
  business and along the way. And so we need people around us.
• 14:22
  We need an ecosystem of people who maybe don't understand
• 14:24
  entrepreneurship, but they understand us and they
• 14:27
  understand and believe in us and our potential and what we can
• 14:30
  become. And most importantly, we need
• 14:33
  clarity on where to start. We need to know what we need to
• 14:35
  do, what to focus on, and we need a place that we can start
• 14:39
  to kind of, you know, turn the wheels.
• 14:42
  That is a low risk way to experiment.
• 14:45
  So again, even for me, I was not somebody who when I was from the
• 14:50
  fitness business could go and start, for example, like a
• 14:54
  supplement company. There's a lot of barrier to
• 14:56
  entry. So what we need is we need
• 14:58
  something that will allow you to get your feet wet as an
• 15:00
  entrepreneur without necessarily having a lot of barrier to entry
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  or a lot of risk associated with doing so.
• 15:07
  The thing is, at this stage, we're consuming a lot of
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  content, right? The amount of podcasts, YouTube
• 15:11
  channels, books, like I was just non-stop consuming.
• 15:15
  That was because I was trying to just like truly absorb as much
• 15:17
  information as humanly possible. I also rooted deeply at the
• 15:22
  dreamer stage into vision. I tried to really outline, you
• 15:25
  know, what is the focus, brainstorming ideas like.
• 15:28
  I was very much constantly in this like creative bucket of
• 15:31
  looking at all the different things that could be to kind of
• 15:34
  play out with different situations.
• 15:36
  I followed a lot, a lot of other people online who became my
• 15:42
  inspiration on how I could show up for myself.
• 15:45
  One of the core podcast, truthfully, that was part of the
• 15:46
  reason and against support and encouragement while I was
• 15:49
  growing my business was the Gary Vee podcast.
• 15:51
  Gary Vee's podcast was something that was decently mindset based
• 15:55
  and it was very obviously he talks a lot about strategy in
• 15:58
  general, but it was very mindset based.
• 15:59
  And I found that, you know, his encouragement of just like just
• 16:02
  go, do it 321 go and like really simplifying the execution was
• 16:06
  something that I needed. And the thing that I will say is
• 16:10
  you need an ecosystem. You need to have a good vision
• 16:12
  and good ideas of where you want to go.
• 16:15
  You need to also follow others online that can inspire you but
• 16:19
  don't necessarily make you feel worse or disconnected from
• 16:22
  yourself. And the thing that I will say at
• 16:25
  the stage that could be the reason that you stay here is you
• 16:30
  get analysis paralysis. You are so over analyzing, like,
• 16:33
  is this good? Is that good?
• 16:34
  Is this, you know, right? Is this wrong?
• 16:36
  And we're so in the nuts and bolts and the weeds of the
• 16:38
  business of all these ideas that we really don't do anything
• 16:41
  because we're constantly just an analysis.
• 16:43
  And you know, I see people who are like, I just need one more
• 16:45
  offer, one more freebie or one more rebrand or one more X to be
• 16:49
  the thing that helps them. And so they get stuck in this
• 16:52
  cycle of really having constantly meeting something
• 16:56
  before they do. There's a lot of comparison at
• 17:00
  this stage, which is like, I'm a beginner, but for some reason,
• 17:03
  I'm comparing my success and my results, the person who's been
• 17:05
  doing this for six years. And there's also a lot of
• 17:07
  perfectionism, which is the fact of like, if it doesn't look like
• 17:10
  ABC and D, I'm not doing it. And so the messy action becomes
• 17:15
  a deterrent for us doing or taking action on anything in
• 17:19
  this bucket. So the question becomes if we
• 17:21
  are this person and if we've gone through this.
• 17:23
  And if you're someone who's a seasoned entrepreneur, you're
• 17:25
  probably listening to this and thinking, Oh my gosh, I remember
• 17:28
  this stage all too well. Even for me, as I say this, I'm
• 17:30
  reminiscing on this stage because again, all of us go
• 17:33
  through these, but the way we move through this is we need to
• 17:38
  get momentum, which means that we need to get our idea out to
• 17:43
  someone else. We need to get that big idea
• 17:45
  released. We need to start to step into
• 17:47
  and vocalize the kind of person and entrepreneur that we want to
• 17:50
  be and start to use those titles to self identify.
• 17:53
  We need to get something launched.
• 17:55
  It's like 321, go get something out to your audience, getting
• 17:58
  something released to the world. And the reason that we want to
• 18:01
  do that is we need that. Yes, we need that, you know, the
• 18:04
  moment of confirmation of proof of concept.
• 18:08
  I remember I had a sales call when I was in the earlier stages
• 18:10
  of my business and the sales call was someone that I was my
• 18:15
  first basically sales call for my business ever.
• 18:17
  And I remember I pitched a price of around $9000 and this was my
• 18:20
  first client ever within my business.
• 18:22
  And I remember she was like, yeah, OK, sounds great.
• 18:24
  If you could just send over the payment linking contract, that
• 18:26
  sounds good. I'm like, what?
• 18:29
  What'd you say? And it was like when she said
• 18:31
  yes, it was an effortless yes. It wasn't like an objection yes.
• 18:35
  And not that either 1 is better or wrong.
• 18:37
  I'm just saying it made it even even more empowering for me when
• 18:40
  she said yes, that was the that was like a moment of unlock.
• 18:43
  It was like a light bulb went off.
• 18:44
  And I was like, I have proof of concept.
• 18:46
  I have proof of concept that when I market this and I promote
• 18:49
  X and I invite someone to a call and then I do the call, they say
• 18:52
  yes. Like I, they want this.
• 18:54
  Like it was like this idea of wait a second, like I want more
• 18:56
  proof of concepts. So then I was so motivated that
• 18:59
  I was like another one, another one.
• 19:00
  And before I knew it, I was growing my business and having
• 19:03
  consistent sales come in. So I, I really just needed that
• 19:05
  initial light at the end of the tunnel that I, I was on to
• 19:08
  something that allowed me to create momentum into the next
• 19:11
  stage. So stage 1 is the dreamer, OK,
• 19:16
  But after that we go into stage 2, which is the explorer.
• 19:19
  And the explorer is typically gonna be something that we can
• 19:22
  progress through anywhere between six months in our our
• 19:25
  journey as an entrepreneur up to about two, 2 1/2 years.
• 19:28
  And it's this mindset of I'm really excited, but like, what
• 19:33
  am I doing? Like you, you, you have a little
• 19:35
  bit more validity of your idea, but you kind of are in disbelief
• 19:39
  of yourself. You're like, am I, am I freaking
• 19:41
  doing this? Like, am I gonna become an
• 19:42
  entrepreneur? Like am I building a business?
• 19:45
  Like you kind of are in disbelief of what's happening.
• 19:48
  And you often times are caught between 2 worlds.
• 19:51
  So you're caught between the day job and the identity that you
• 19:53
  have there with this now business that you're building.
• 19:57
  And you, you know, might do things like I'm a, I'm a new
• 20:01
  entrepreneur. I'm a quote UN quote freelancer
• 20:03
  or like you kind of don't love to necessarily label yourself as
• 20:08
  an entrepreneur or a business owner and.
• 20:11
  You are stepping more into the identity of an entrepreneur, but
• 20:13
  still a little bit fragile because you find that you go
• 20:17
  back into this mindset of I'm not a business owner when things
• 20:19
  get resistant or where things feel difficult.
• 20:21
  And so I will tell you there's a story when I was in the earlier
• 20:24
  stages of my business, when I was the explorer in the earlier
• 20:27
  stages of my business and I was stepping into OK, like I've got
• 20:30
  something here, I've got some sales coming in.
• 20:32
  At the time, I was still part time waiting tables.
• 20:34
  I hadn't quit my job yet. And I remember I had somebody
• 20:38
  who had hired me within my business.
• 20:41
  I worked at the airport at a celebrity chef restaurant.
• 20:44
  And I remember she sat in my section.
• 20:48
  I can't remember if I told the story on the podcast before, but
• 20:50
  she sat in my section. I thought, Oh my God, I have to
• 20:54
  serve my client that I'm literally serving in my
• 20:57
  business. And it's not like I was hiding
• 20:59
  the facts. Like people knew that I was
• 21:00
  still working part time. It's not that it was the fact
• 21:03
  that I was like in that moment, I had this physical collision of
• 21:06
  the two worlds. And I'm like, it was like the
• 21:08
  universe or, you know, God, whatever, you know, feels right
• 21:11
  for you was giving me this aha moment of like, choose, choose
• 21:17
  who you are, like choose what you're going to be.
• 21:19
  Are you going to stay here and do this or you going to lean in
• 21:22
  and build a business? And that was a very pivotal
• 21:25
  moment for me because I, you know, Long story short, had
• 21:28
  someone else wait on that table because I did, I just didn't
• 21:31
  feel comfortable to do what I felt like uncomfortable.
• 21:33
  And I was really having this complex because like, Oh my
• 21:35
  gosh, like, who am I? What am I doing?
• 21:37
  And like all of these, you know, spirals started to happen, but
• 21:40
  it was actually the invitation that caused me to lean in.
• 21:42
  It was the invitation that led me to be like, I'm done and I'm
• 21:45
  not coming back. And so you're growing in your
• 21:47
  business, but it's still very fragile, your identity as an
• 21:50
  entrepreneur. And often we see this because we
• 21:53
  have like these highs when we're winning, but then if we have a
• 21:56
  little bit of a bad launch or we have a little bit of a
• 21:59
  resistance sale, we kind of have a low.
• 22:02
  We have this like, you know, kind of post situation flop
• 22:05
  feeling where we feel really disengaged because we're like,
• 22:10
  oh, see, this is evidence that maybe it's not working or it's
• 22:12
  not going to work out. And we still are very heavily
• 22:16
  influenced by feedback that we get.
• 22:18
  And also I see within the Explorer stage, people are also
• 22:21
  very heavily influenced by lack of feedback, meaning you're
• 22:24
  really impacted by not getting any response just as much as you
• 22:28
  are by getting a response. Meaning if you put out a post on
• 22:31
  social media and it doesn't do well, meaning the fact that
• 22:35
  like, you know, people are not liking it or going through it,
• 22:38
  that's lack of feedback. There's no engagement, which you
• 22:40
  internalize to be see, there's no positive feedback, which you
• 22:43
  naturally put into the bucket of bad feedback.
• 22:46
  There's also, you know, when there's the evidence of, hey,
• 22:50
  this is actually like we have, we have evidence it's not doing
• 22:52
  well. And then we have there's no
• 22:53
  evidence which we assume to mean something's not doing well.
• 22:56
  So what we see is, you know, these thoughts of not wanting to
• 23:01
  embarrass yourself, for example, going to a launch and being
• 23:04
  worried about will anybody buy? And I don't want to kind of be
• 23:06
  embarrassed that I promote this or do this and nobody moves
• 23:09
  where I worry that people, for example, won't take me
• 23:11
  seriously. I worry that what if I mess up
• 23:14
  within what I'm doing and everyone watches it, meaning I
• 23:18
  do this new rebrand or I do this new offer, but no one buys and
• 23:20
  everyone on my social media or audience is going to see this
• 23:23
  again. Maybe even those people that I
• 23:25
  mentioned that you're worried about the judgement of will come
• 23:27
  back up for you again. So what we need in the explorer
• 23:30
  stage is we need a supportive community.
• 23:32
  We need not just like one person to get you going, but we need to
• 23:35
  start building this networking ecosystem around us of other
• 23:38
  entrepreneurs. OK, So at the beginning we had
• 23:41
  that person who was not an entrepreneur, but kind of was
• 23:44
  like our our cheerleader on the side to get us revved up and
• 23:46
  going. And now we're at the stage of
• 23:49
  readiness where we're like, we really do need that entrepreneur
• 23:51
  and not, you know, business owner community.
• 23:53
  Like we need that community of people who really do understand
• 23:57
  us, what we're going through and what we're trying to do.
• 23:59
  And more importantly, we need that reassurance.
• 24:03
  And which is why the entrepreneur side is really
• 24:04
  important of that community. We need that reassurance that
• 24:07
  failure is normal, right? So when you go to someone in
• 24:10
  your ecosystem and you fail as an entrepreneur, for the average
• 24:14
  person, they might be not sure whether you failing is truly OK,
• 24:17
  great. That's a sign of, you know, you
• 24:19
  shouldn't be doing this versus an entrepreneur would say, yeah,
• 24:22
  that happens all the time. Like this is just what happens.
• 24:24
  Like this is how it goes, right? There is a different perspective
• 24:29
  and a different response typically from someone who's an
• 24:31
  entrepreneur versus someone who's not when it comes to the
• 24:35
  perception and the way that we understand failure and what it
• 24:37
  means. And so when we're in the stage
• 24:39
  of the explorer, what we're doing is we're launching small
• 24:41
  offers, we're testing our market, We're, you know, posting
• 24:44
  on social media now a little bit more regularly.
• 24:46
  We're often saying yes to things, but often with the
• 24:49
  mindset of kind of like seeing what sticks, meaning we're not
• 24:52
  fully convinced that we know exactly what to do and why we're
• 24:54
  doing it, but we're doing things kind of still a little bit out
• 24:57
  of curiosity. But obviously we do have more
• 24:59
  strategy than the the first time, which is when we were just
• 25:02
  throwing spaghetti at the wall trying to just do anything.
• 25:05
  And the thing I will say the explorer stage is that I see is
• 25:08
  a very common behavior is that people work very messy and
• 25:13
  there's not really consistent hours necessarily yet being put
• 25:16
  into the business. So, you know, even for me, I
• 25:18
  remember in the early stages of being an entrepreneur, I quit my
• 25:20
  job at this point, I didn't really have a routine.
• 25:23
  Like obviously when we think about leaving a nine to five, we
• 25:25
  don't think about OK, great. Well, I left my 9:00 to 5:00.
• 25:27
  Let's get up 9 and work till 5 like we originally are sold this
• 25:30
  big dream and and this idea of financial freedom, time freedom,
• 25:34
  location freedom. So I would just kind of go about
• 25:37
  my day like it was the weekend and you know, every day Monday
• 25:40
  to Friday and I would just work the work in between.
• 25:42
  I remember I was watching Netflix one day in the middle of
• 25:46
  the day at like 1:30 and I thought, what am I doing?
• 25:49
  Like it? It was kind of just this, this
• 25:52
  aha moment that yes, I left a nine to five type job, but I now
• 25:57
  was in this new era of being a business owner.
• 26:00
  And I was like, this is not going to build itself if I'm
• 26:02
  working inconsistently. Meaning it's not that you're not
• 26:05
  working on the business, but like you have no structure, you
• 26:07
  have no routine, you have no rhythm to how you run and
• 26:11
  operate the business. And so because of that, you're
• 26:13
  not really in this mode of yeah, consistency just yet.
• 26:17
  And so we also see at the stage that there is a lot of, you
• 26:22
  know, common traps that happen. So there's a lot, and I mean a
• 26:26
  lot in the stage of again, like 6 months to 2 1/2 years, a lot
• 26:30
  of shiny object syndrome of like, well, so and so is doing
• 26:32
  this. And I saw someone offer this and
• 26:34
  I saw that offer come out and I wonder if I should sell that.
• 26:37
  There's a lot of curiosity about maybe I should be doing
• 26:41
  something else because someone else is doing it.
• 26:44
  There's also what I see the most, which is so it's it's own.
• 26:48
  Our podcast, to be honest, is constant rebranding.
• 26:52
  My goodness, the amount of people at this stage who rebrand
• 26:56
  3-4, whatever times. The thing I will say that's long
• 27:01
  and short of it is that it is not a rebrand.
• 27:04
  If you're doing it every six months, that's not a rebrand.
• 27:07
  That's just lack of clarity, right?
• 27:09
  Rebrands are not happening every six months.
• 27:12
  So at this stage, we see people are like, I'm rebranding, I'm
• 27:15
  rebranding, I'm rebranding. And really what it is at the
• 27:17
  core of it is there's lack of clarity.
• 27:20
  And as they get clarity, they're like change, change, change,
• 27:22
  change. And listen, it's not that the
• 27:24
  change is bad. The thing I would just give is
• 27:26
  advice to if you feel you're at the stage is do not label it as
• 27:29
  a rebrand. Just basically execute the
• 27:32
  change and don't add more attention to it.
• 27:35
  The other thing that I also see that is often something that
• 27:38
  keeps people in this, it's kind of trap of the stage is under
• 27:41
  charging and people pleasing. Just doing whatever people want
• 27:45
  in the pursuit of generating a sale, doing whatever clients
• 27:48
  want in the pursuit of just like whatever keeps them happy.
• 27:50
  I'll do that. You don't really have boundaries
• 27:52
  established yet because you don't feel confident around what
• 27:55
  they are and also why you're enforcing them.
• 27:58
  And there's also under charging, which is like you're probably in
• 28:02
  the stage where you're doing a lot of work for what you
• 28:05
  probably feel when you're left alone with yourself is not
• 28:08
  nearly enough money for the level of work that you're doing.
• 28:10
  And so you're under charging because you don't really
• 28:12
  necessarily see your level of confidence or your value yet as
• 28:15
  an entrepreneur. And so what's going to help you
• 28:19
  at this stage to keep progressing is like you have
• 28:21
  your first paying client or you have your successful launch,
• 28:24
  like you have this momentum when it comes to sales.
• 28:26
  And again, that proof of concept, you start to realize
• 28:29
  that your audience is actually starting to resonate with you.
• 28:32
  So instead of you just feeling like you're posting as the ether
• 28:35
  and you're getting it on social media, you're probably at the
• 28:38
  stage now where you're starting to see some momentum.
• 28:41
  And you're like, OK, I think people are really actually
• 28:43
  landing with this messaging or they're really landing with, you
• 28:47
  know, this style of communication through my
• 28:49
  socials. You're getting more and more
• 28:51
  clear of like, who's the person I'm helping?
• 28:53
  What's the niche that I'm into? What's the offer?
• 28:55
  That makes sense because you at this point against 6 to 2 1/2,
• 28:59
  you're at this place where you have done a lot of trial and
• 29:03
  error. So because of that, you're
• 29:04
  starting to get more and more clear because you're executing
• 29:06
  more and more The dreamer. We hadn't really executed
• 29:10
  anything yet. We're very much in ideation
• 29:11
  stage. So we don't have anything to
• 29:13
  help us get clarity because we haven't done anything really
• 29:16
  yet. OK, so I want to take a quick
• 29:18
  little brief interruption from today's episode to let you know
• 29:21
  about something really exciting. And I want to 1st preface, there
• 29:23
  is nothing here that I have to sell you.
• 29:25
  This is about something that is entirely free that I think would
• 29:28
  be a massive support for you if you are someone who's loving all
• 29:32
  things Ambitious podcast. So we have created an absolutely
• 29:35
  incredible community that is called the Ambitious Network.
• 29:39
  This is really a place where coaching and masterminds meet
• 29:41
  high level networking of other women who were just like you.
• 29:45
  So a little bit of what you can anticipate, this is a place for
• 29:47
  you to grow, to connect, and ultimately to get the support
• 29:50
  that you need to elevate your business.
• 29:52
  And so some of the things you can anticipate inside #1 live
• 29:55
  Hot Seat Coaching. This is literally live coaching
• 29:57
  in the way that I would do inside of our masterminds, our
• 30:00
  different offers only inside of this community, entirely free.
• 30:03
  You'll also get the opportunity to get access to exclusive
• 30:06
  giveaways that are not available anywhere else.
• 30:08
  So these are things like giveaways of different books and
• 30:11
  resources that I'm obsessed with that have really helped me in my
• 30:14
  journey of business, but also things on a larger scale, like
• 30:17
  some of which have been six months of private coaching type
• 30:21
  of giveaways. So all of this to be said,
• 30:23
  massive, massive amount of resources being given inside and
• 30:26
  also trainings and resources, tools of frameworks and
• 30:30
  downloads and worksheets and master classes that are going to
• 30:33
  be things that will really help to take you and your business to
• 30:35
  the next level. Now, it's also not just about
• 30:37
  me. I have an incredible network and
• 30:39
  a community of other entrepreneurs who also want to
• 30:42
  give back to you if you've loved their interviews and their
• 30:45
  discussions on the Ambitious podcast.
• 30:46
  So we have guests that are also providing resources in the
• 30:49
  community that will only be available inside the ambitious
• 30:52
  network. But there's also the networking
• 30:54
  aspect. And this is a place for you to
• 30:56
  not Only Connect with other women about what's going on in
• 30:58
  your business, what's currently working or not working in
• 31:01
  today's current market. It's a place to share wins, but
• 31:04
  it's also a place to connect with me and get my feedback and
• 31:07
  support for you and your business.
• 31:09
  Now all of that to be said, this is a, as I said, mastermind
• 31:13
  meets networking. And I really have created this
• 31:15
  as a community that I want to be something you've never gotten
• 31:19
  anywhere else. It's not this low ticket
• 31:21
  membership that you feel like you're paying for.
• 31:23
  You know, this graveyard of resources that the person has
• 31:26
  they don't know what to do with. And it's also not that Facebook
• 31:28
  group that you're inside of that you feel like you get tons of
• 31:30
  notifications, but you don't really want anything that's
• 31:32
  inside of it. It all feels surface level.
• 31:34
  We want to give you the ability to have mastermind meets high
• 31:38
  level networking all in one place.
• 31:40
  And the ambitious network is where you're going to find that.
• 31:42
  So how you can get inside? If you want to go to the show
• 31:45
  notes beneath, you can click a link to join join us inside the
• 31:47
  ambitious network. And if you also want to connect
• 31:50
  with me on Instagram, I'm also happy to chat with you about it.
• 31:52
  So if you DM me the word ambitious, we'll be sure to chat
• 31:55
  a little bit more about the network for you and give you the
• 31:57
  link to get inside. So all of that to be said, I
• 32:00
  don't want to take any more time away from today's episode with
• 32:02
  so without further ado, let's get back into the show.
• 32:05
  So once we go from stage 2, the explorer, stage 3 as an
• 32:08
  entrepreneur is the builder and the builder is something we
• 32:11
  usually can see anywhere between, you know, the starting
• 32:13
  point of around, you know, the first year in business or after
• 32:16
  your first year in business up to 3:00-ish four years.
• 32:19
  And this is where we see people who are like, this is my job,
• 32:23
  this is what I do, this is my work.
• 32:25
  It's what I meant to do. They start to ask questions of
• 32:27
  how do I build this business without burning out?
• 32:30
  You really want to ask yourself questions like, how do I, you
• 32:33
  know, make this business or make what I'm doing more sustainable?
• 32:36
  You're feeling, and you can even just hear the language more
• 32:39
  solid about what you're doing, right?
• 32:41
  So again, there's this, this building type of mindset, the
• 32:44
  builder, you fully at this point are owning the title of being an
• 32:47
  entrepreneur. You really are fully owning the
• 32:50
  title that I am an entrepreneur, I am a business owner.
• 32:53
  You may even be getting help and hiring help outsourcing your
• 32:57
  planning. That's also a sign that I see,
• 32:58
  which is a very clear indicator to me is people who plan versus
• 33:02
  people who are very reactive. When someone's like, you know,
• 33:04
  what do I do this week or tomorrow versus hey, I'm
• 33:07
  thinking next month about doing blank.
• 33:09
  Can you help me with ABC and D? That's very different because
• 33:13
  there's this future focused thinking, not this constant
• 33:16
  reactive thinking. And you often will always talk
• 33:20
  about your business business at the stage with pride and with
• 33:25
  confidence and with ownership. Like you're, you're, you're
• 33:28
  proud to be an entrepreneur, you're proud to be a business
• 33:31
  owner within this bucket. And so your confidence is
• 33:35
  getting stronger and you finally now have some data and you have
• 33:39
  some experience to say what's going to work and what's not
• 33:42
  going to work and why. And even with this, you're still
• 33:46
  testing, you're launching new things, you're executing new
• 33:48
  ideas. But there's still even in this
• 33:51
  momentum, this stage and this mindset of fear, which is can I
• 33:59
  sustain this business or will I be able to keep up with demand?
• 34:05
  Or what if I outgrow my niche or my model?
• 34:08
  And you know, I also had this belief at the stage I was
• 34:13
  somebody who really I had a lot of momentum that was happening
• 34:17
  within the business and I had all of our different programs
• 34:19
  were starting to fill up and, you know, private coaching was
• 34:21
  starting to fill up. And I remember I had this moment
• 34:23
  where I'm like, Oh my God, like this, like this is very obvious
• 34:25
  that this business is doing is going in this upward direction.
• 34:29
  And I had this like, can I do this moment?
• 34:32
  Is this sustainable? Does this mean I have to change
• 34:34
  things in order to make it sustainable?
• 34:36
  Is this really a scalable business?
• 34:38
  Can I maintain this level of management and capacity to
• 34:42
  continue to grow the business to where I want it to go?
• 34:44
  What if I outgrow my niche, right?
• 34:46
  So like what if I outgrow my model?
• 34:48
  That mindset was something I also navigated, which was like,
• 34:52
  if I want to grow this business and let's just say I double the
• 34:54
  amount of clients I get tomorrow, how do I, how do I
• 34:59
  grow this model? How do I grow this niche?
• 35:01
  Like where is this going? And I started to have to look at
• 35:04
  all these alternative ways that the business could continue to
• 35:07
  grow as we progressed in scaling because it was like, how does
• 35:11
  the business need to evolve? Those questions and
• 35:13
  conversations started to come up.
• 35:15
  And so then it kind of went to the drawing board of, OK, how do
• 35:17
  we really build a sustainable business model.
• 35:21
  And for me, this is really where I poured a lot of effort into my
• 35:24
  core offerings because I started to look at, OK, well, I don't
• 35:27
  want to be launching something new every other week.
• 35:29
  I want to really build something that's sustainable.
• 35:31
  And our offers have been around for a very long time.
• 35:34
  We've had VIP days for years and years now.
• 35:36
  We've had Accelerator Mastermind, which is our six
• 35:38
  month masterrine helping people to scale.
• 35:41
  We've had that for years and years now.
• 35:43
  I've had private mentorship for years now.
• 35:45
  Like I'm not the kind of business coach and I'm not, you
• 35:47
  know, shaming anybody who does this.
• 35:49
  It's just a different business model.
• 35:50
  I'm not the kind of person who wants to be in new product
• 35:53
  development every single week, right?
• 35:55
  So like Crumble cookies releases a cookie every week.
• 35:58
  I don't want to be in that business.
• 36:00
  I want to be in, you know, if anything, like the Coca-Cola
• 36:04
  business, which is like we're releasing a new type of
• 36:06
  Coca-Cola, like vanilla Coke or cherry coke once a year, right?
• 36:09
  Like it's not some that Max would be the kind of bucket of
• 36:12
  the business I want to be in. And so I thought, OK, that's the
• 36:15
  model I want. I had to look at the support
• 36:17
  system I wanted. I I went through the, you know,
• 36:19
  the season of doing the Co coach model.
• 36:22
  I, you know, stop doing that. And I now just have, you know,
• 36:24
  myself basically in intentional places within our offers as the
• 36:28
  new kind of structure. And I have a support system that
• 36:30
  helps me immensely behind the scenes.
• 36:32
  So you don't see the team that helps my business a lot because
• 36:35
  they're all behind the curtain. But they are truly like through
• 36:38
  and through. The reason that I'm able to do
• 36:39
  anything that I do, even this podcast, like, you know, the
• 36:42
  production that the guests, everything, like none of this is
• 36:44
  just me. I sit down and I film, but
• 36:47
  there's such a incredible team that helps me behind the scenes.
• 36:50
  And you know, at this stage I also need a time to create a
• 36:53
  capacity to really think strategically about the
• 36:55
  business. And so that meant, OK, well, are
• 36:58
  we going to maybe for you, it's looking at are you going to
• 37:01
  build Evergreen offers? Are you going to be doing a
• 37:02
  launch style offer? Are you doing high ticket?
• 37:05
  Are you doing digital products? Do you need to automate
• 37:07
  something? Do you need to start to delegate
• 37:09
  things? Do you need to refine your brand
• 37:11
  messaging? Do you need to start investing,
• 37:13
  for example, into design of your business and brand or web
• 37:16
  development? You know, something I also
• 37:18
  recommend at the stage is like people getting much more
• 37:20
  comfortable with their reviewing of their financials in their
• 37:25
  business, reviewing income, setting financial targets,
• 37:28
  setting sales targets. And so at this stage, you'll see
• 37:31
  obviously a big jump right between the explorer and the
• 37:34
  builder. The explorer is somebody who is
• 37:37
  again, still in that teasing and testing aspect.
• 37:40
  They're kind of, you know, still getting data.
• 37:42
  They're they're growing their experience.
• 37:44
  When we're at this builder phase, we've got such a level of
• 37:47
  confidence because of all that trial and error that we can
• 37:49
  really press go. We can press go on the brand.
• 37:52
  You can press go on messaging, you can press go on offer
• 37:54
  development. And I think, you know, the big
• 37:56
  thing with the builder, to be honest, that is that the
• 37:59
  disconnect or the common resistance point is most people
• 38:04
  when you're in the building phase of things like the offers,
• 38:07
  the branding, the marketing, the systems, the team, the thing
• 38:10
  that really keeps people here is that they believe that they just
• 38:13
  have to hustle harder. And I myself have had the same
• 38:19
  mindset. Like I was like, how, how do I
• 38:22
  build this business? Put in more hours, like keep
• 38:24
  working, keep working. Like was constantly this idea of
• 38:27
  more hours, more hours. And no matter how many hours I
• 38:30
  sat at my laptop, the business would not grow outside the
• 38:32
  capacity because the end of the day, it's a broken way to grow a
• 38:35
  business. The idea of putting in more
• 38:36
  hours in your business is a broken model because there's
• 38:39
  capped hours in a day. So it's actually about learning
• 38:42
  to leverage time. And So what I, I had to learn to
• 38:46
  help myself progress to the next stage, which is the leader,
• 38:49
  which we'll get into in a second.
• 38:50
  I had to learn that it wasn't about hustle.
• 38:53
  It was about being smart. It was about delegating.
• 38:56
  It was about actually letting go and letting other people step
• 38:59
  in. And at the stage of the builder,
• 39:02
  we're also, because of this work, work, work, we're avoiding
• 39:05
  rest. We don't see rest as
• 39:08
  leverageable yet we don't see rest as something that we have
• 39:11
  time for. And because of that, we burn
• 39:14
  out. We're, we're still usually when
• 39:17
  we're in the building fees, like think about literally someone
• 39:19
  building something, actively building something.
• 39:21
  You're not the guy on the, the site of a project who's the
• 39:25
  project manager who's overseeing it, yet you're literally the
• 39:28
  person who's laying the brick, right?
• 39:29
  Like you're the person who's in there making it happen when
• 39:32
  you're the builder. And the thing that ends up
• 39:34
  happening is we get stuck in this identity, which is the
• 39:38
  biggest piece to me. You get stuck in this identity
• 39:41
  of being the builder. And so you're used to laying the
• 39:44
  bricks. So the idea of, hey, put the
• 39:46
  brick down, you're going to manage the site now is like,
• 39:49
  whoa, that's not, this is not what I'm used to.
• 39:52
  I've been laying bricks for the last, you know, X amount of
• 39:54
  years. So you feel sometimes like you
• 39:57
  don't have the training you need.
• 39:58
  You feel like you need to get more clear on like all the parts
• 40:01
  of the business and really being an operator and a strategist
• 40:05
  versus the person who's the doer or the executor.
• 40:08
  And I would say the thing that helps you to progress to that
• 40:12
  next stage of the leader, which we'll get into, is that you need
• 40:16
  to get out of the weeds. You have to be able to really
• 40:20
  get support for someone else to lay the brick because it's all
• 40:23
  nice. To say OK, great, well I'm going
• 40:25
  to step into this leadership role I'm going to manage the
• 40:27
  site, but if you don't have anybody laying the brick, you're
• 40:29
  just not building anything, you're just overseeing it then
• 40:31
  and you have no execution. So it's not about just really
• 40:33
  like stopping execution, it's about having someone else who
• 40:37
  does the execution and then you overseeing the entire process
• 40:40
  production and basically the entire business.
• 40:43
  So it's stepping into this new identity and therefore it's
• 40:47
  accepting a new role within your business.
• 40:49
  And this is a very, I'm going to be honest, this is the biggest
• 40:52
  sticking point for most people because so many people when they
• 40:54
  scale their business have such an identity of being a doer that
• 40:57
  they don't know how to become a quote UN quote CEO.
• 41:01
  Like when we say like we help people to step into their CEO,
• 41:04
  like to step into the CEO seat or, you know, pull up that seat
• 41:06
  for them. The reason we talk about that is
• 41:09
  because so many people are actually the reason why their
• 41:11
  business is stuck because they have such an identity and such
• 41:14
  a, a rhythm to always being the doer that they stay here
• 41:16
  forever. Like they just don't progress.
• 41:19
  And So what we do is we bring in support, we help you with
• 41:22
  adjusting your identity to really accept the identity of
• 41:25
  the fact that you can lead this business and you can be the
• 41:28
  visionary for it. We are looking and focused on
• 41:30
  creating monthly recurring revenue for you to give you a
• 41:33
  baseline to create some safety, consistency and sustainability.
• 41:37
  And we're also, most importantly, creating routines
• 41:40
  as a CEO and we're creating boundaries.
• 41:42
  We're trying to really kind of create this little ecosystem
• 41:45
  around you, this little protective layer of where you
• 41:47
  need to be, why you need to be there, and where you're most
• 41:50
  leverageable. It's really about this era, like
• 41:55
  if I'm going to say of all the stages, the builder and getting
• 41:58
  out of the builder and stepping into the leader type of stage is
• 42:02
  where you scale because you can stay as a builder for a very
• 42:06
  long time if you don't actively work to get out of it.
• 42:08
  And so this is really the difference between, in my
• 42:10
  opinion, where you're building a high paid job, which again,
• 42:15
  there's nothing wrong with that. You can have a very high paying
• 42:19
  job within your business and there's nothing wrong with that.
• 42:23
  It's just a different type of business.
• 42:25
  It's kind of like saying you can make, you know, 7 figures as a
• 42:28
  freelancer. Nothing wrong with that, it's
• 42:29
  just a different type of business.
• 42:31
  Whereas if you want to, for example, be the CEO of a company
• 42:34
  and you want to build something that was bigger than yourself,
• 42:37
  the leader stage is necessary. You have to progress, you have
• 42:39
  to get hire within the organization, meaning you have
• 42:43
  to step back from things and pull yourself up.
• 42:45
  It's not about pulling yourself out.
• 42:46
  I always explain this to people. It's not about pulling yourself
• 42:48
  out, meaning I'm going to remove you from your business.
• 42:50
  It's about pulling you up, meaning you're you're in the
• 42:53
  you're in it with your team. You're not leaving them and
• 42:55
  being like, see ya build a business.
• 42:57
  You're saying, how can I be more leverageable and being in
• 43:00
  intentional places, not just being in it because I've always
• 43:03
  been in it. So that shifts us to stage 4,
• 43:05
  which is the leader. And usually we see the leader
• 43:07
  come into, you know, timeline around anywhere between two to
• 43:12
  four years in business. OK, So you'll hear people with
• 43:15
  things like I'm building something bigger than me or how
• 43:18
  do I lead people and stay aligned?
• 43:20
  And like, this is a real company.
• 43:22
  This is this is building a true company, a true business.
• 43:26
  You have the identity of being ACEO.
• 43:28
  You're a visionary. You see yourself as a founder.
• 43:31
  You mentor potentially even peers or your audience or people
• 43:34
  who come to you have this ability to mentor and pass along
• 43:37
  guidance and wisdom to other people.
• 43:39
  You're probably managing a small team, maybe even and having some
• 43:41
  agencies involved in your business.
• 43:43
  And to be honest, your confidence is high, right?
• 43:46
  Like it, it can be tested by certain responsibilities that
• 43:50
  you have or it could be tested by different leadership
• 43:52
  challenges that you have. But the thing that really comes
• 43:55
  up at this stage is like you are confident.
• 43:58
  The thing that really will test your confidence is just
• 44:01
  something that is abrupt, that comes up that kind of challenges
• 44:03
  what you've always known. Now, the fears of this, and I so
• 44:08
  deeply resonate with this. The fears of this are what if I
• 44:11
  lose control or quality as I scale?
• 44:14
  How do I stay true to my values as I continue to grow this
• 44:17
  business? What if I'm not a good leader?
• 44:19
  And so I myself, I will say this stage was very interesting for
• 44:26
  me because it was really about looking at, you know, I knew how
• 44:29
  to do things myself, but I didn't really know how to lead
• 44:32
  people. I didn't really know how to
• 44:33
  inspire people or manage people. It was not something that I
• 44:35
  would say I, I, you know, ever knew how to do.
• 44:38
  So because of that, stepping into this identity or this, you
• 44:42
  know, perspective of like, I'm leading a group of people was
• 44:44
  like, whoa, this is a lot for this is a lot for me to kind of
• 44:49
  learn and wrap my head around. I thought, am I good at this?
• 44:51
  Am I doing it right? Are they happy?
• 44:53
  Are they enjoying it? The values as I grow was also a
• 44:56
  huge one. I've talked about this on social
• 44:58
  media. There's a lot of people that I
• 45:00
  know who are peers of mine, meaning in the sense of same
• 45:02
  same stage of business or equivalent to me in business,
• 45:05
  who have just completely crappy ethics and morals within their
• 45:09
  business. And so I was like, you know,
• 45:12
  we're seeing such a high volume of that way of operating.
• 45:14
  I thought to myself, OK, well, I want to stay true to my values
• 45:17
  in business. I don't want anything to do with
• 45:18
  that. So because of that, I had to
• 45:20
  really say, you know, how do I want to grow and how do I want
• 45:23
  to scale and how do I make sure our values and what we believe
• 45:26
  to be true at the center in the core of everything.
• 45:28
  I got super, you know, focused as well on, you know, quality
• 45:32
  control and looking at making sure that I never want scale to
• 45:37
  Trump quality or to Trump experience.
• 45:39
  And like many of us kind of test this.
• 45:41
  Like when we used to go to Starbucks back in the day, they
• 45:42
  had like, you know, fireplaces and like, Tom, when you walked
• 45:47
  up like New Year order and it was just like, it was like kind
• 45:50
  of walking home, like it just felt, it felt very cozy.
• 45:52
  It felt very welcoming. It felt very, you know, Yeah,
• 45:55
  just familiar now, you know, Starbucks is the equivalent of a
• 45:59
  McDonald's because they've gone so rapid in scaling and have
• 46:02
  lost and basically have removed some of the values of what
• 46:05
  caused them to be that place that they're now.
• 46:09
  So mass production coffee. They've lost the the essence of
• 46:12
  why we oftentimes enjoy the atmosphere.
• 46:15
  So yes, we still go because brand that's kind of if anything
• 46:18
  leveraged now more than the experience itself.
• 46:20
  But their quality control has absolutely diminished as they've
• 46:22
  scaled. Now when you are somebody who is
• 46:26
  that leader, you need a clear vision and you need team
• 46:28
  alignment. You need the right players in
• 46:30
  the right places and you need a clear vision of what it is you
• 46:33
  guys want to do. You need to be creating time and
• 46:36
  space to to tap into that vision, to be able to innovate,
• 46:39
  to be able to get creative with new ideas.
• 46:41
  And I think more than anything, you know, the team piece here is
• 46:45
  really, really important because like I will say, obviously we,
• 46:48
  we've had some people within our team who've come and who've gone
• 46:51
  and like the core unit that we have right now, they're just
• 46:54
  like NBA players. That's just how I, that's how I
• 46:57
  quote it. I, I just, I have such amazing
• 46:59
  people around me at this moment in my business.
• 47:02
  I'm not looking to hire. We don't need to hire currently
• 47:05
  for what we've got going on, at least as I record this, we
• 47:07
  don't. And every single person on the
• 47:10
  team is such a valuable player, like every single person is
• 47:12
  someone who who fills something within the business that is
• 47:15
  necessary for us to be able to do what we're doing.
• 47:18
  And they're all such amazing women and they're part of why
• 47:21
  it's working the way it is. We've had team members in the
• 47:23
  past that that has not been the case.
• 47:25
  And it was only once we started to really get super, super
• 47:28
  intentional about who's on the team, why they're here, what
• 47:31
  they produce, what they add. Also culture wise to the team.
• 47:34
  All of that is something that I kind of consider when I think
• 47:37
  about where are we going and how we're going to scale.
• 47:39
  And so really at the stage when we're a leader, we're looking to
• 47:42
  hire for values. We want to create more capacity
• 47:44
  for ourselves. We're stepping out of these
• 47:47
  day-to-day tasks, meaning we're probably not going to be in the
• 47:49
  doing of the day-to-day things as much anymore.
• 47:52
  We're focused on building brand. We're focused on vision
• 47:55
  planning, leading team meetings and like really inspiring the
• 47:58
  team and getting them clear on how they can grow their
• 48:00
  individual departments. Probably going to be seeing some
• 48:03
  raising of pricing as well, expanding of your offer suite,
• 48:06
  very familiar there as well. But the thing that will keep
• 48:10
  people or or they'll struggle with at the stage is
• 48:13
  micromanaging out of fear of truly delegating.
• 48:15
  And this was something that I struggled with.
• 48:17
  You know, we had an intensive actually a while, a little while
• 48:19
  ago and it was really only until that intensive, I would say that
• 48:22
  I let go. I got that intensive.
• 48:23
  I let go of the reins and I was like here like go and I kind of,
• 48:27
  I had delegated, but I had delegated tasks.
• 48:30
  I hadn't really delegated responsibility for a very long
• 48:32
  time. And what I mean by that is like,
• 48:34
  people were helping me to do a lot of things, but I wasn't
• 48:37
  really trusting them to do it. And so meaning like if I needed
• 48:40
  something built, I was like, this is exactly how I want it
• 48:43
  built, can you go do that? And it's like, yeah, anyone can
• 48:45
  follow a recipe, but that's not really delegating.
• 48:47
  That's just taskmaster. And then you're saying like, OK,
• 48:50
  can you go do this? You go do this.
• 48:52
  So now the muscle that I try to flex as much as possible is to
• 48:56
  really delegate the responsibility.
• 48:57
  So I will ask people, what do you think we should do?
• 49:00
  What do you think we should do with our system or what do you
• 49:02
  think or recommend when it comes to this process?
• 49:05
  What do you recommend when it comes to the podcast?
• 49:07
  What do you think we should do with topics or social media
• 49:09
  marketing for it? Like there's people now that are
• 49:12
  associated with the different departments that I'm more asking
• 49:15
  them what they think about their department.
• 49:18
  Then I'm saying, hey, go do this, go do this, go do this
• 49:20
  because it is theirs to own, like it truly is theirs.
• 49:23
  And I want them to be excited about the thing that they're
• 49:25
  working on that they get to innovate and not that they feel
• 49:28
  like they're having to be a robot who fulfills actions and
• 49:31
  has, you know, no, I no space to have ideas or innovation.
• 49:35
  And so I will say the innovation and creating that space and
• 49:38
  again, getting out of this idea of micromanaging and all of that
• 49:43
  is something that is a really important thing to help you to
• 49:45
  progress. And you also at this stage when
• 49:47
  you're that leader, you we have to also be very careful to not
• 49:51
  over commit because sometimes we at this stage are so rapid
• 49:55
  expansion of growth and visibility and brand that we can
• 49:59
  just like really overextend ourselves.
• 50:01
  And because of that, we are so focused on grow and visibility
• 50:05
  and bigger that we actually have like the cost of that is rest.
• 50:09
  The cost of that is ourselves. And so that's also something
• 50:14
  that's really important is to to not be so in this pursuit during
• 50:17
  this of speed, speed, speed, speed, speed that you crush
• 50:20
  yourself in the process. And the most important, I would
• 50:23
  say disconnects that most people experience in this stage is you
• 50:27
  lose touch with your audience, your product.
• 50:29
  If I could put this candidly, you think you are God's gift to
• 50:33
  earth as a business owner and you just, you like so many
• 50:38
  brands that I see online are out of touch.
• 50:41
  You are out of touch. You think you are hot shit.
• 50:45
  And because of that, you've lost the essence of why you were
• 50:48
  successful in the 1st place. Like your audience, you're not
• 50:51
  up here and they're down here or like your products, you're like,
• 50:55
  it's good enough, right? Like that's fine.
• 50:57
  Like it's like they should be happy to get XYZ for what I'm
• 51:00
  charging for this. Like there's this ego that leaks
• 51:03
  into the business and this happens at the stage because
• 51:06
  people get this belief that they've got proof of concept,
• 51:12
  they've got experience, they've got wins, they've got momentum,
• 51:15
  they've got history, they've got all this.
• 51:17
  Like, you know who I am? If I ever hear someone say to
• 51:21
  me, do you know who I am? It's a bye bye type moment.
• 51:27
  I don't care who you are because the end of the day, what I care
• 51:31
  about is that people are feeling surged in your audience that
• 51:33
  your offer feels like it's getting results for people that
• 51:35
  you're in like you're in it with people.
• 51:38
  If you say, do you know who I am?
• 51:40
  Meaning you should respect me because of ego, status and label
• 51:44
  or history. What that means to me is that
• 51:48
  you believe that you're something special.
• 51:52
  And so because of that, it's leaking into your business.
• 51:55
  It leaks into your team management, it leaks into your
• 51:59
  clients, it leaks into your offers, it leaks into your
• 52:02
  marketing. And so something I see is people
• 52:04
  at the leader stage, they lose touch with Earth, they lose
• 52:10
  touch with the basis of of what makes the business so
• 52:14
  successful. And because of that, they lose
• 52:16
  essence with why it would work in the first place.
• 52:19
  So to move forward, you're at the leader stage, focused on
• 52:22
  building a a culture, not just a company.
• 52:24
  You're leaning on team, you're trusting the process.
• 52:27
  And you're thinking in the vision of where we're gonna go
• 52:29
  in the next three years, not in the next three months or the
• 52:31
  next three weeks. We're thinking about what are we
• 52:33
  developing this year? What are we focusing on?
• 52:35
  What are we focusing on next year?
• 52:36
  What do we wanna take it? What do we see for the team?
• 52:39
  Like you're thinking about vision now the last one, stage 5
• 52:43
  is the legacy maker. And this is typically for people
• 52:45
  who've been in business for 10 plus years.
• 52:46
  And I'm going to go through this quickly because most, most of
• 52:49
  you who are listening to this are not going to fall into this
• 52:50
  bucket. But I want to make sure that
• 52:52
  you're aware of it. Anyways, this is and you'll see
• 52:54
  it's probably in other brands that you consume who are bigger
• 52:57
  brands online. How do I leave this industry
• 52:59
  better than I found it? Who am I going to lift up as I
• 53:02
  rise this business? How do I make sure that my work
• 53:05
  lives beyond me? So you are someone who's a
• 53:07
  thought leader, you're a mentor, you're probably an investor.
• 53:10
  You're creating a a larger movement, like there's something
• 53:13
  bigger than you happening. Your business runs entirely
• 53:16
  without you involved day-to-day. You're focused on legacy, impact
• 53:20
  and influence within your business.
• 53:22
  Your confidence is deeply rooted within your purpose, not your
• 53:26
  performance. OK.
• 53:28
  That's the biggest distinction. People who are at this stage of
• 53:30
  time plus years in business, they're so deep in their purpose
• 53:33
  of what they're making. It's not just about the
• 53:35
  performance of the the day-to-day or even the annual
• 53:37
  metrics of the business any longer.
• 53:40
  The fears they have at the legacy stage is having me the
• 53:43
  impact that I want to what happens to my work if I was to
• 53:47
  step back? Have I stayed aligned with my
• 53:49
  purpose as I've built this? What they focus on is deeper
• 53:53
  fulfillment and meaning, legacy, vision, building out succession
• 53:58
  plans for their business, creating space for themselves of
• 54:01
  of reflection and contribution and to innovation.
• 54:04
  And they're in the next era. They're in the era of teaching
• 54:08
  and speaking and writing books and investments into people and
• 54:13
  causes and other businesses, building systems that outlive
• 54:17
  them, mentoring even the next generation of entrepreneurs.
• 54:21
  But the thing that they struggle with is the isolation at the
• 54:24
  top, feeling like they're losing relevance within their market or
• 54:28
  within their ecosystem and forgetting the personal joys
• 54:32
  that were in the pursuit, like the personal activation of the
• 54:37
  pursuit of impact. So that's the legacy maker,
• 54:40
  which is the person who's been, you know, doing this business
• 54:43
  for 10 plus years. Now.
• 54:45
  I know in a question, 'cause we posted a little bit of a tease
• 54:48
  of actually today's topic on social media and someone said to
• 54:51
  me, what, Kate, what stage do you think you're at?
• 54:53
  And to be honest, I, I would probably say that again, because
• 54:57
  these are multiple years within each of these categories, I
• 55:01
  probably say that right now I'm the leader, which is again,
• 55:03
  remember the person who's building a company, trying to
• 55:06
  build more vision, building out of more team building out of
• 55:09
  like some starting the stages of building something much bigger
• 55:13
  than yourself. And I would say I'm at that
• 55:15
  stage because really right now I'm focused on brand building
• 55:19
  and I'm focused on team those to me, if I was going to think
• 55:21
  about the two things, like I really want to help to empower
• 55:25
  anyone that's working with us to be able to get whatever it is
• 55:29
  that they need to step more and more and more into their role
• 55:32
  and what the strategy is that they're building in their area.
• 55:35
  And then I also want to build a brand bigger.
• 55:38
  You know, even for me with this podcast, it, this is not a, you
• 55:41
  know, most people say, like, you know, your podcast, how does it
• 55:43
  convert? And I'm like, listen, this is
• 55:45
  not about conversion. Like this podcast is about me
• 55:49
  helping you. It's about you having a space to
• 55:51
  come chat with me every week. You know, every week we do a
• 55:54
  solo episode on Thursdays and every other week in addition to
• 55:57
  that, you'll see a guest episode on Tuesdays.
• 56:00
  So this is not for me. This is because I, I want to
• 56:05
  connect again. We talked about audience, we
• 56:06
  talked about community. I want to connect with you.
• 56:08
  And what I realized was, again, I started this podcast just over
• 56:12
  a year ago and I was wanting to, to have these conversations with
• 56:17
  you every week, but I didn't have a forum to do that.
• 56:20
  I was like, I can't say what I want to say to her in 30
• 56:23
  seconds. And a real.
• 56:24
  So like, yes, I still do the reels, I still do the Tik Toks,
• 56:27
  I still do do the thing. But I think that the difference
• 56:30
  is I, I knew that if I really wanted to create a brand that
• 56:34
  was able to help people to really understand who I was and
• 56:36
  the value that I had to bring and also how I could help for
• 56:40
  you and for where you're at right now, that was not going to
• 56:42
  happen in 60 seconds. So I knew the podcast was an
• 56:45
  initiative around that. Our, our content and our
• 56:48
  branding and our brand media is, is an initiative around that.
• 56:52
  Our website was an initiative around that.
• 56:54
  Like there's a lot of things that were meant to basically
• 56:56
  create an ecosystem of support and also the understanding of
• 57:01
  who we were and what we stood for.
• 57:03
  So I would say definitely for me, I'm in the leader bucket.
• 57:07
  Obviously, you know, I've been in business probably now I
• 57:11
  started toward the end of 2018 and as I record this is 2025,
• 57:15
  right? So we've been in this, we've
• 57:16
  been in this for a minute now, but I haven't been in it for,
• 57:19
  for a decade. And I think, you know, for me,
• 57:21
  I, I recognize that things that are going to be successful take
• 57:26
  mastery. And This is why I wanted to
• 57:29
  cover this also today because I think it's important for us to
• 57:31
  recognize that it's not just like, how do I become the leader
• 57:35
  as fast as possible? It's not about speed.
• 57:37
  OK. So I know so much of business
• 57:39
  and scaling is like, you know, sales faster, marketing faster,
• 57:42
  like everything's about speed, speed, speed.
• 57:44
  There is so much wisdom in each of these stages.
• 57:47
  Like, I would not wish to do it any differently.
• 57:50
  I learned a lot being the dreamer and being the person who
• 57:54
  had the big dream but no plan. I learned a lot being the
• 57:57
  explorer. I learned a lot being the
• 57:59
  builder. Like these stages are not
• 58:01
  something for you to say. How fast can I get through them?
• 58:03
  Because they're part of the evolution and the programming,
• 58:08
  frankly, of all the data and experience you're going to get
• 58:11
  that will build you to be the entrepreneur you are today.
• 58:14
  So for me, I wouldn't rush any of those earlier stages because
• 58:17
  they're part of what was needed to help me to be this business
• 58:20
  owner. So I want to cover these today
• 58:23
  for you because I think sometimes, you know, it can be
• 58:26
  really easy to, you know, quantify our stage of a business
• 58:30
  owner or where we're at. So like you're like, am I legit?
• 58:33
  Am I, you know, am I, am I scaling?
• 58:35
  Am I legit? Am I, you know, successful?
• 58:37
  Am I, you know, at, at the stage of quote UN quote scaling?
• 58:41
  And I can tell you from working with so many entrepreneurs, it's
• 58:44
  just not about revenue. Because I'll tell you, I have
• 58:47
  had people who make a lot of money who their mindset is that
• 58:51
  of a builder, right? It's like they can make
• 58:52
  $2,000,000 a year, but they're in the builder type of
• 58:55
  perspective and the builder level of problems.
• 58:57
  Revenue is not always the correlation of the level of
• 59:01
  experience or development that you are as an entrepreneur.
• 59:05
  So what's difficult for me is as a business coach, when I see
• 59:08
  myself, obviously I see this and I, you know, I come across it
• 59:11
  and I consume it on my, my feed When it comes up about, you
• 59:13
  know, you want to get to this stage or 10K months or 30K
• 59:16
  months. It's a very Instagram business
• 59:18
  type of, you know, categorization of people, right?
• 59:21
  Like that's not something that is typical in normal business.
• 59:24
  So I wanted to also validate that, that like, if you're
• 59:26
  feeling like you're, you know, a different stage, because so and
• 59:31
  so is classifying you and putting you in a bucket because
• 59:33
  of revenue, That's not really how business works.
• 59:35
  No one cares about that in the regular business world.
• 59:38
  What they care about is the way you think, the problems you
• 59:40
  have, the way that you operate, the goals that you have in front
• 59:43
  of you. And, and the reason I want to
• 59:45
  cover this is I my goal for anyone like yourself who's
• 59:48
  listening to this is that I want to have ambitious be a place
• 59:53
  where you feel like you can understand.
• 59:54
  Yes, OK, sure, we'll talk about marketing and how that can
• 59:57
  translate to Instagram and all that.
• 59:58
  But we're not here to build a business that is content and
• 1:00:03
  viral reels and whatever. You're listening to this because
• 1:00:05
  you actually truly believe to your core that you have the
• 1:00:07
  ability to build a very successful business, to build a
• 1:00:10
  company, to build a brand, to build a mission, to build a
• 1:00:14
  team, to build something really significant and incredible and
• 1:00:17
  impactful and influential. Within your category or your
• 1:00:22
  market. That's why you're here.
• 1:00:24
  So let's get out of this idea of like, I am scaling if I make X
• 1:00:27
  money or I am scaling if I hit this revenue and instead say,
• 1:00:30
  OK, like let's identify today what type of stage were you?
• 1:00:33
  And if you want to share it with me, by the way, I would love
• 1:00:35
  this if you slid into my DMS. You're like Kate, I listened to
• 1:00:38
  the episode. I'm a leader.
• 1:00:39
  I would love to just hear it and chat about it with you.
• 1:00:41
  It would mean the world to me to just hear kind of which one you
• 1:00:43
  feel that you resonate with. And I think it's important
• 1:00:46
  because this allows us to step into something bigger than
• 1:00:48
  ourselves. It allows us to be able to see
• 1:00:51
  where we are right now, where does we want to go?
• 1:00:53
  And now that we know what is needed to be at that level, what
• 1:00:56
  needs to be happening in US and in our business, we have the
• 1:00:59
  opportunity to kind of lead toward that potential.
• 1:01:01
  So I, I hope that today was helpful for you.
• 1:01:03
  As I said, I always love when you guys reach out to me.
• 1:01:06
  So shoot me Adm message me, let me know obviously what kind of
• 1:01:09
  came up for you, what you feel landed today.
• 1:01:11
  I would love to hear from you. And then as always, as a side
• 1:01:13
  note, I do have a quick ask if it's something that you feel
• 1:01:16
  that you have capacity to do right now.
• 1:01:17
  It would mean the world to me if you would follow our show,
• 1:01:20
  whether you're on Spotify, Apple, if you want to subscribe
• 1:01:24
  on YouTube, if you could leave a rating for us.
• 1:01:26
  All of that really, really does help the podcast.
• 1:01:28
  It helps ambitious. It helps us to be able to get
• 1:01:31
  this content in this material in front of other women just like
• 1:01:33
  yourself who need it. And so it would mean the world
• 1:01:35
  to me as well if you would take 2 seconds before hopping on with
• 1:01:38
  the rest of your day to to do that just to help us to be able
• 1:01:41
  to widen our message and widen the impact for women just like
• 1:01:43
  you who have not yet found the Ambitious podcast.
• 1:01:46
  So with all that being said, I hope have an amazing rest of
• 1:01:48
  your day and I will see you on the next episode.
• 1:01:50
  And, as always, stay ambitious.