From Start-Up to Success: Celebrating 10 Years in Business and 400 Articles

What does a psychology and family therapy graduate know about starting her own business? Nothing. And that was my beginning. In this article, I’m humbly walking through my meandering, flawed, fabulous and still unfolding path of becoming an accidental entrepreneur to one where, ten years later, I have the profound (and still some days surprising) honour of serving thousands of people every year. I welcome you to consider if any advice resonates with you in work, life, and entrepreneurship. If you’ve ever thought, “How would I start my own business?” or “Is running my own small business right for me?” something here might provide some clarity for you. But you don’t need to be in or on the path to entrepreneurship. I hope there’s something here for everyone.?

Most importantly, let me start by saying THANK YOU for the honour of serving you these last ten years. Whether you just “met” me through a connection last week, or we’ve known each other for years (decades, even in the case of the incredible supporters that moved with me from my employed career into my business chapter), I honour and value you. You make my world bigger, richer, and more exciting every day. I am a lifelong learner, a diehard people lover, curious and creative; none of that would be possible without you.?

I decided to share 10 insights from my ten years in business, but you know me, “extra” as I am. Here’s 12. Buckle down, refill the coffee, and maybe grab a snack. We’re going deep. Enjoy.

How I Became an Accidental Entrepreneur

Ten years ago, our family faced the biggest crisis of our lifetime. If you’ve been in my audience, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. For our purposes today, I am not going to dig into that, and instead, tell you, humbly, that when I gave five months’ notice from the senior team job that was both my identity and a solid income, I faced the daunting tasks of rebuilding my career with the most demanding boss I’d ever work for…myself.?

I had no business plan, no core “book of business,” and no crystal clarity of my business’ “why” (as Simon Sinek would suggest was nonnegotiable). I didn’t even have a name. Nonetheless, I put up my shingle (metaphorically…I was in my basement working from a credenza we bought in a thrift shop for $90).?

Sometimes, people, after hearing about our family crisis and why I didn’t give it a second thought to walk away from my role, use the word “brave.” When you are on a mission to save someone you love most, brave about your career doesn’t even enter the picture. The stakes were too high NOT to leave.?

It took little courage to start from zero when I had no expectations or clearly defined “goals” (for the first time in my life). We carved back our lifestyle with the precision and firm hand of a sculptor, so if I couldn’t even (again, for the first time in my life) contribute to the family income, it wouldn’t break us.

Ironically, my first business decision was, “Don’t need to make money.” I kept it lean and stayed hungry (metaphorically…I ate a lot of carbs).?Due to our extreme lifestyle change, things quickly got on track at home, leaving me with a 20-year runway of working for myself. This is where the lessons unfold, my friends.??

1. Lean on Your Raving Fans

• Make a 100 list—instructors, former colleagues, past bosses, friends, family, neighbours, etc. This is your “Raving Fans List.”
• Tell your raving fans you’re available. Some will need your expertise or know someone who does. It might not be overnight, but slowly and surely, folks will reach out because you’ve proven yourself in the past.
• Keep track of the folks you reach out to and those interested in working together. Don’t lose track of “leads” (who reach back out to you), and make it your responsibility to follow up with them.?

2. Befriend Social Media

• Pick one form of social media that will be your business booster. Which one aligns with what you do? For many professionals, it’s LinkedIn, so polish that profile.
• Ensure you’re connected with your raving fans. Send invites, and respond with an update (gently…no hard sales, friends!)
• Build your LinkedIn connections. You get 50 free connections; why not build a network of people? Make your connection network bigger.
• Post something of value every day on LinkedIn (or whatever platform works for your biz). Share a model, infographic, article, video, and bonus point if you write that article. Serve the world, and some of those folks will begin to follow you and become your raving fans.

3. It’s About Them and Not You

• Adopt the mantra: Serve first. It’s not about you, it’s about them.
• People invest in expertise, not ego. Just add value if that is what the client needs. Share your knowledge and experience if they ask for it.
• Don’t sell when you’re serving. If you’ve been hired to do a job – in my case speaking – don’t also be selling. Remember that clients have invested in your expertise. More work will come your way by being excellent.?

You have to care about people before you can expect them to care about you.

4. Add Value Through Thought Leadership

• Write regularly. Share your insights daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or any consistent frequency so that you keep deepening your insights in your expertise and sharing them. (BTW, this tip was also shared in a great book by Adam Grant in his book “Hidden Potential.”)
• Create a newsletter. We have a LinkedIn newsletter and a weekly blog where we share articles every week. We’ve written a weekly article for 8 years (and our lovely Mallory now writes some); here we are at number 400. Trust me, work comes from sharing, relationships form through serving, and your confidence builds the more you articulate your words in, well, words!
• Don’t “write” your articles with AI. That’s cheating, but perhaps not how you think I mean. It’s robbing you of the opportunity to deepen your understanding of your expertise, how it solves problems your clients are discussing, and conceptualizing a new way of thinking about old problems.?

5. Become an Expert and Pick Your Niche

• Click on the image to download your copy of 100+ Ways to Retain & Recognize Your Staff
• Balance advice from others. Some may not see your niche’s relevance. Folks said to me: “No one would hire recognition. It’s a ‘nice to have” and not a ‘need to have.’” With data, experience, and relevance to the workforce today, I had to prove why it was essential, and now I hear, “I wish I were as clear in my niche as you.”?
• Explain the solution using “you,” not “me.” Make it about their situation. Study them. Listen to them. Ensure the solution is about them. Just like there isn’t one size of pants on the rack, don’t treat your clients’ needs as a one-size-fits-all.

Success isn’t an accident.

6. Know Your Worth and Stand For Your Value

• Experts who write, study, and create models and powerful, innovative ways to solve problems deserve to be compensated for their expertise. Be an expert, not a generalist.
• It is much easier and more rewarding to stay on top of your field when you know a lot about a little rather than a little about a lot.
• Don’t work for free. Stand for your worth. You’re not a volunteer. If your client isn’t working for free, don’t work for free for them.

7. Keep the Scarcity Thinking At Bay

• Assume the pie is big enough for all. If the client or opportunity doesn’t fit your expertise, style, industry, and so on, who is it suitable for? Your introduction today might lead to a greater likelihood it will be reciprocated, and it ensures your client is served best.
• Scarcity is everywhere when you see it, and so is abundance. As soon as you go into scarcity mode, create something: articles, a product, a list of clients to reach out to. Getting into action distracts you and gives you the domain hit from accomplishments.
• Give ideas freely. Create resources, tools, and insights you can give generously and abundantly. Let the world utilize your insights, and they’ll feel more confident to invest in your expertise when they need to go deeper.

Progress is excellence disguised as ordinary.?

8. You Need a Team, Likely Before You Feel Ready

• Grow your team before you’re ready. To grow, you need support. Even if you start with contract or part-time support, you must start somewhere.
• Invest in people who do things better, faster and more efficiently than you.
• This one is controversial: hire a tax accountant or lawyer to incorporate your business from the start. If you’re in it for the long haul, you will stand taller in your company because you’ve decided it will grow into something that needs a corporate structure.

Strive to never be the smartest person in the room. Surround yourself with people who will challenge you.

9. Only Work with People Who Believe in Your Vision

• Hire slow and fire fast. Do your best to bring on great people, but if you cannot rely on them to deliver quality and consistently to you, your customers, and their colleagues, you must let them succeed elsewhere.
• Surround yourself with perseverant people. You can get through a lot if people are willing to endure the struggle and uncertainty as long as they have curiosity and perseverance.
• Be inspired by your team. If they live the business’s aspirations, you’ll learn from them, and they’ll be able to shine with new responsibilities and innovations.

10. Prioritize Staying Mentally and Emotionally Well

• Invest in yourself. If you would advocate for it in a corporate job, advocate for it in your business. You are worth spending money on.
• Have faith in your qualifications up to now. If you want to do another certification or education, ask yourself if it’s from a place of self-doubt or growth. If it’s doubt, it will likely still be there post qualification, and it might even grow.
• Take time off. If you must take a vacation to overcome burnout, it’s too late. (I have to relearn this every single year!) Creative and motivated people cannot operate effectively with cognitive, emotional, and social depletion.?

Perfection is ego posing as performance.?

11. Become Allergic to Perfection

• ?Share ideas while they’re still baking. Don’t let an idea, model, concept, or framework be before you let an idea crash with reality. Sharing it in progress allows it to keep baking.
• Let go. Let your people try new things, experiment with better ways of doing things, and guide you on how they see their role. There are a few things that cannot be course-corrected.
• Fail forward. Try more things than you know will work. See your business like a science lab. Make ethical, informed tests, and see what results.?
• Strive for failure. You will have way more success if the goal is to prove yourself wrong than to guarantee a home run.

12. Remember Who It’s All For

• Consider what your family needs, too. It’s easy to get bogged down in work, chase the next book of business, and achieve the current work’s deliverables. But what’s it all for if your family gets the worst of you?
• Keep that reason for being visually and mentally at the top of your mind. I’ve put up pictures of my kids when they were younger in my office because I’ve been forgetting this as I’ve been growing. If you feel lost, “What is it all for?” then maybe it’s time to review, recreate, or remember why you started the business in the first place. It might need a refresh, and that’s okay. Missions evolve.
• Write your legacy statement. Picture yourself in the future, having sold or closed the business and being thrilled with how it all went. What would you be celebrating at the end of your career? Now, reverse engineer any gaps and lean into what is aligned.

Let me finish by saying this: You Are Already Greatness.?

If folks don’t get you, it’s okay; 100 people behind them do.?If you believe that the work you do is needed in the world, not because you would like it to, but because you know it must be utilized to solve real problems causing people distress, frustration, dissatisfaction, discord, and other negative “d’s,” then lean into it. Keep going.

Haters don’t get to hold your ideas prisoner.?

Discipline yourself to create and study metrics to prove your success is growing; you don’t have a boss to assure you that you’re on the right track or challenge you if you’re not. You have to run a business lean without support like IT (heck, you can’t even have water cooler conversations because who has time to replace the jug, let alone budget dollars for it?!) But YOU know the work matters. Keep going.?

Lean Into Failure

Don’t rob the world of it because you’re scared you’ll get it wrong. You will. Hopefully, a lot. Learn from it. Let it excite you to do something different, bolder, creative, or even take some giant steps back. But don’t stop. Keep going.

Success isn’t a straight line, and it’s not a trophy.?

Success is meaning. It’s impact. It’s transformation. Those things are not a straight line, and gosh, would your journey as an entrepreneur be tedious if it were?

Thank you again for your loyalty in reading, commenting, sharing, and letting me serve you. We at Greatness Magnified exist to invigorate companies to see their people as exceptional and, together, create a scrumptious, thriving culture where everyone belongs. If that’s you, we’d be happy to help.

You Are Already Greatness, friends. Go for greatness, and keep going.

For more about leaning into failure, take a bite of these yummy articles:

• Failing Forward: How Your Culture’s Failure Resiliency Impacts Recruitment, Innovation, and Even Your Own Effectiveness
• Imagine if failing were actually a good thing…
• The Benefit of Failure in Your Career or Business

Disclaimer/Humble Brag Moment: 100% of this content was human-generated (by us folks here at Greatness Magnified). We are committed to authorship integrity and will inform you what percent, if any, is AI-generated.