 Recently, I had dinner with two close friends who, like me, are female entrepreneurs. Each of us is at a different stage of our business journey. One has a consulting business that’s been thriving for almost 10 years. She and her partners have scaled it to the point where they have predictable revenue, a small team, and are now contemplating their exit strategy. The other friend is in the early stages of building a co-working space. As we talked, I was struck by the stark contrast in how each friend viewed herself. The first friend clearly sees herself as a seasoned entrepreneur. She understands her place in the world, and every action she takes is aligned with building and scaling her business. The second friend, however, viewed herself as unemployed, despite the fact that her co-working space is generating enough revenue to pay employees and allow her to take a small draw for herself. Her rationale for considering herself unemployed? She wasn’t yet replacing her previous full-time salary. This conversation highlighted a common issue among entrepreneurs: the mental traps we set for ourselves. We often minimize our own successes, compare ourselves unfavorably to others, and fail to recognize the value we’re creating. We perceive ourselves as unemployed because we're only accountable to ourselves, even when there’s tangible evidence that our businesses are gaining momentum. Overcoming these mental barriers is crucial for personal and business growth. Here are five steps to help you shift your mindset and embrace your entrepreneurial journey. 1. Acknowledge Your Progress
2. Reframe Your Narrative
3. Set Personal Benchmarks
4. Seek External Input
5. Invest in Your Business
Taking Control of Your Mindset is Essential The mental traps we set for ourselves as entrepreneurs can be our biggest obstacles. By acknowledging your progress, reframing your narrative, setting personal benchmarks, seeking external validation, and investing in your business, you can break free from these barriers. Once you start viewing your business as a legitimate, valuable endeavor, you’ll find that your mindset—and your results—transform in powerful ways. In my own experience, treating my business with the seriousness it deserved led to significant growth. I quadrupled my client base, forged new partnerships, and created a more predictable pipeline. The key wasn’t just in my actions but in how I viewed myself as an entrepreneur—and that shift made all the difference.
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 As an entrepreneur, you know that strategic planning is crucial for your business. However, many people overlook the impact of their personal goals, professional goals, values, and priorities on their business's growth and scalability. Based on my experience working with startups and entrepreneurs in various industries, a clearly articulated personal strategic plan is the number one thing missing from the entrepreneurial journey, even though personal factors implicitly and explicitly drive a founder's decision-making. Knowing what you want for your personal life will affect how you scale your business and define success. Here are two reasons why: Not all entrepreneurs want to create a large company Contrary to popular belief, not all founders aspire to grow their business into a billion-dollar company. Many entrepreneurs want to build a business that allows them to lead a comfortable life. The definition of a comfortable life varies for each person, and these founders are clear that their personal goals are what they're optimizing for. For instance, some entrepreneurs don't want to manage people, so the scale of their business is limited to what they can handle alone. Others are willing to manage people but desire work-life balance to have time for themselves, their children, and/or aging parents. As a result, the scale of their business will be limited based on the time they can dedicate to it each week and their delegation skills. Not all entrepreneurs want to accept outside capital to grow their business For most businesses, a time comes when the founder must decide whether to take the company to the next level. This often involves deciding whether to fund growth organically or raise funds through debt or external investment. This decision will be influenced by the business owner's long-term goals and priorities and impacted by their values. For example:
By understanding one's personal goals, professional goals, values, and priorities, one can clearly articulate to themselves and others how and why they've made the decision not to scale. It also helps them recognize when they've achieved success based on their own definition of success. If you or someone you know would like help defining your personal strategic plan, please don't hesitate to reach out!  Jennifer Coolidge was honored this past weekend by Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club as their Woman of the Year. It got me thinking about the acceptance speech she gave several weeks back when on January 10, 2023, she won a Golden Globe award for best supporting actress for her role in The White Lotus. Coolidge is an incredibly prolific actor and I loved her in Legally Blonde, Best in Show, The Watcher among her many roles. After her honest and raw acceptance speech, Jennifer became a household name. If you didn't know her name before, you probably do now. In her acceptance speech, Coolidge displayed several essential contributors to success and happiness. Here are three lessons we can all learn from her: Lead with gratitude and be specific when giving thanks. From the moment she stepped up to the microphone, Coolidge lead with gratitude. She was grateful to be in the room with all the attendees, the Hollywood Foreign Press association, and for the people who supported her along the way. Many awardees have a list of people they are grateful to but Coolidge took it a step further. Not only did she name people who helped her, she gave specific examples of what they did and the positive effect it had. In the case of Mike White, the creator of The White Lotus, the list was so specific and personal it brought tears to his eyes. "...if you don’t know Mike White, this is what you should know: He is worried about the world, he’s worried about people, he’s worried about friends of his that aren’t doing well, he’s always worried about people, you’re worried about animals, and he really is one of the greatest people ..." It was clear that Coolidge saw Mike White, who he was at his core and what he wanted to share with the world. There isn't a person in this world who doesn't want to be appreciated and seen. Experiment with following this wonderful example. Lead with gratitude. Make your words specific so the recipient understands that they are seen and that their actions have impact and are appreciated. What can you do today to show someone your gratitude? Accept yourself, wherever you are in life. Coolidge talked openly and honestly about the disappointment she faced. Her words were so relatable: "I just want you all to know that I had such big dreams and expectations as a younger person, but what happened is they get sort of fizzled by life and whatever. I thought I was going to be Queen of Monaco even though someone else did it. But I had these giant ideas. And then you get older and, oh, shit’s going to happen." Anyone over the age of 40 can relate to those words, especially the part about “…oh, shit’s going to happen.” We all start out with the world in front of us, so many open doors to walk through. However, the path we are on has twists and turns and can sometimes feel like a game of chutes and ladders. We're on top of our game and then forces outside of our control intervene: an illness strikes, a family member needs care, a relationship ends, layoffs happen. As we get older and look back, we realize that life doesn't always cooperate with the dreams we had when we were 20, and yet for many it still works out just fine. Coolidge didn't become the Queen of Monaco, but has become a prolific and well-known actor. She has a cult following and is immediately recognizable by generations of fans. Life doesn't always turn out the way we hoped, and that's okay. What can you do today to accept where you are in life rather than focus on where you think you should be? Focus on your successes and see the good in the place you've landed. Nurture your relationships. Opportunities (small and large) come from people you know. "I didn’t know anybody, and it just was sort of this thing that wasn’t going anywhere. Then there were these people who would give me these cute little jobs and it would just be enough to get to the next one." We're all where we are because someone believed in us and opened a door. For Coolidge it was people like Reese Witherspoon offering her what Coolidge referred to as “cute little jobs." They may seem small and trivial, but those “cute little jobs” add up and, like raindrops filling a rain barrel, they can result in a full and rewarding life. What can you do today to build your network and nurture your relationships?  A few years ago, I was feeling stuck. I was in a job that was what I always thought was my dream job, but I still wasn’t happy. I was in a condo that, after 14 years, no longer brought me joy or met my needs. I was putting work ahead of my health, to the point where I had several stress related medical issues that were mild enough that they weren’t going to kill me, but resulted in two surgeries within a three month period. Long story short, I needed a change but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.
The more I talked about this with friends, family and colleagues, the more I realized that this “stuck” feeling was the rule, not the exception. Very few people I knew were feeling like they were living their best lives, either personally or professionally. Everyone I talked to was feeling like life was just happening to them, that they were no longer in control. That feeling is what psychologists call an external locus of control. Having an external locus of control means that you feel external forces are driving your life. This perceived lack of control increases your levels of stress, anxiety and depression. Long story short, an external locus of control was chipping away at my day to day happiness. It was also affecting my physical health. I was stressed out, not exercising and eating comfort foods to make myself feel better. These unhealthy lifestyle habits, if continued, would have put me on the path to metabolic disease, which is one of leading causes of death. Something had to be done. I needed to take back my life. I started small by doing a Marie Kondo overhaul of my condo. (Yes, I Kondo’d my condo!) The process went something like this: I’d pick up a pair of shoes and ask if it brought me joy. Sometimes the answer was “Yes!” and the shoes went back on the shelf. For most of the shoes, the answer was “No, you give me knee pain” or “You make my ankle hurt” or “You give me blisters.” Those shoes went in the donate bag. As I went through this process, I began asking this question to everything in my life. Did my job bring me joy? No. I started looking for other opportunities. Did my house bring me joy? No, I started looking into how feasible it would be to find a larger place that met my current needs. You get the idea. Pretty soon, I was taking action. I found a new role in the same organization, and a new single family home six houses away. These may seem like small changes, but they were a sign of something much bigger. I was no longer stuck in one place. I was moving. And once I started moving it was easier to keep going. The momentum was great, but my actions weren’t well planned. I wasn’t being strategic. I was moving forward toward an undefined future. As I result, I still felt unsettled. Then I had an “Aha!” moment. I realized that I was really strategic professionally, but wasn’t applying the same rigor to my life. I decided to shift my approach. I started documenting both my personal and professional goals. Over time I started mapping my values and priorities onto my goals as a way to help decide what I needed to focus on in the near, mid and long terms. Once I did that, making decisions was a lot easier, my actions were more aligned with my goals and I was acting with intention. It took trial, error and leveraging my professional training in business and as a licensed therapist for me to land on a framework that was intuitive, easy and effective. I saw great results and immediately started integrating this framework into my coaching practice so my clients could benefit as well. The results have been staggering. Each of the people I’ve worked with have reported increases in their happiness and feelings of ownership of their lives. They’ve gotten promotions and salary increases without asking for them, and even bigger ones when they did ask! We do an assessment and goal setting in January that set the intention for the year. We assess progress periodically and compare year over year changes. I like to call this process a “personal strategic plan” and I believe everyone should have one. Do you need help? Reach out to see if a coaching relationship would be a good fit. Whether you do this on your own, or with support, begin the process and be strategic. Wishing you an intentional New Year! Copyright 2023 Brownstein Consulting, LLC 1/1/2023 1 Comment Here we go! It's scary figuring out how you want to kick off a new blog. There are so many things to consider. Is the name punchy enough? Does the imagery reflect my brand? Will my unique voice come through? It feels a little bit like jumping out of a plane. You're so excited to do it and the anticipation is intense. You get to the door of the plane and it's your turn to jump. All of a sudden your stomach is in your throat. You have a death grip on the doorframe and everything in your body is telling you to STOP!!!! Writing this first blog post feels a bit like that. Every time I think about hitting the "Publish" button, everything in my body tells me to STOP!!!
With skydiving, there's a moment where you need to make a decision. Do you ride the plane down, or do you jump? In that split second you realize you already made this decision. You understood the risks and still got on the plane. If you don't jump you miss out. So you let go of the plane and are out the door. Suddenly everything is peaceful, like time has slowed down. The color of the sky is vivid and blue and your perspective on the world is totally changed. There is beauty in this moment that you'd never have experienced if you hadn't let go of your fear and jumped. So here I am, letting go of my fear. Rather than get stuck in analysis paralysis, I'm deciding to move forward. To not let perfection get in the way of the good. To realize that if I post something, I have a chance of connecting with an audience, but if I post nothing there is zero chance for connection. I'm hoping that what's important to me will be useful and inspiring to others. I hope to enable people to take control of their lives, to stop feeling like they are playing someone else's game, start defining their own rules, and become better leaders. I want them to be able to apply the tools they use to drive success in their professional lives and leverage them to drive personal success. Here's to jumping! I hope you'll join me in seeing what comes next! |
AuthorHi, I’m Joanna! I'm a health tech executive with training as a clinical social worker and an MBA. My day job is leading customer success and product for a growing start-up focused on leveraging AI/ML to improve outcomes for oncology patients . My passion is coaching. I love to leverage my extensive training and experience in human behavior and business to help my clients define success and achieve it on their own terms! Categories |
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