SUMMARY KEYWORDS
entrepreneur, work, people, entrepreneurship, business, success, helped, talking, researching, question, podcast, bit, partnership, big, life, vicki, day, risk, risk taker, support
00:00
Good morning, partner. Hello, how are you today?
00:04
Just fantastic. But you know, partner, can I just ask a favor? Can you humor me for a bit here? You know, I'm a pretty positive person, right for the most part, positive person. But I really just need to have a gripe today.
00:36
this is just all about how sometimes your family doesn't have a flippin bleeping clue what you do.
00:50
And I know that it was meant from love and caring, but didn't I get the
01:09
(Laura laughs) Are you still enjoying your work? It's almost like work is in inverted commas. Right? Ooh, Oh, yeah. Yeah. What is that about?
01:34
Laura: Yeah. They think we're like playing in this. Like, it's a game like it's, we're just trying it out still.
And some days it does feel like we're just trying it out and figuring it out. That is true. We will, we will admit that. But I guess it's hard for other people to really understand what you're doing if they've never done it before. Like if they've never been an entrepreneur, I think it's just really hard for them to understand. How did you respond? How did and how did that make you feel?
Vicki:
That's really I think why I'm griping? Because it made me feel pretty shitty. Am I allowed to say that?
02:02
You know, I like to take personal responsibility for things and choose how I react and how I feel about situations and then I did kind of take the minute to think, Am I overreacting to this? What was in that? What was that question even about? Did it just land with me a certain way, but it was never really meant to be anything other than a very caring, interested, curious question. Are you still working a lot of hours and are you still enjoying it? After 14 years, yeah, I guess I'm enjoying it. (Laughter)
02:35
Well I haven't gotten back into the work, you know working for somebody else so it must be alright.
Vicki:
I think the context is everything right? And when you know who asks you those types of questions, a relative and we've had several conversations in the past about getting a real job and
02:57
Oh, that! That just got under my skin, the real job, get a real like, Ah, how is entrepreneurship not a real job? Anyway sorry that's my gripe.
03:08
I'm glad you get it, you understand.
Yeah, I do I do. And that's the power of talking to people who do understand because it's like, Wait, hang on, you're not crazy. This is hurtful. This does get under your skin when somebody just sort of asks what seems like an innocent question, but it is frustrating, because it's like, hang on, how do people, I guess I'm unsure of this, like how do people not realise that entrepreneurship is a real job because everybody works for an entrepreneur, in some way, shape, or form? Because every business ever created was started by an entrepreneur.
Well, yeah, you're either an entrepreneur or you work for one.
Laura:
Work for one
Vicki:
It's fine. It's an interesting thought process, isn't it? Because it kind of takes you down this track of partly it's generational, that some generations just haven't got their head around the way business is done today. In their world, you traded hours for dollars every single day. Right? But we're now working with knowledge transfer, and coaching and guiding people and perhaps it's the type of work that I'm choosing to do that has this, this relative bamboozled. So in fairness I'm trying to kind of place it in a way that says, really, maybe it's just that the world of work is changing so much, that people don't quite understand how people make money these days.
Laura:
Yeah, because I don't think you'd question somebody who opened up a shop that sold lawn mowers, right. You wouldn't question them. If you saw them selling lawn mowers every day, like, oh, there's a shop. It's been open. It's been open five years. They're selling lawn mowers all the time. You see their posters or their ads or whatever, and you're like, Okay, that's a successful business.
05:00
It's a visual success, you can you can really see it, it's tangible, right. Whereas when you're in a service-based industry, which is sort of what we are, and who the majority of people we work with are in service based industries, it's a whole lot harder to see their success, because often success is quiet. And very few people really open up about how successful they are. We don't share our income spreadsheets. And we, you know, people, people don't know, right? So if you don't know, you can think, oh, no, maybe they're just playing around, you know, they have clients, do they?
Are they doing OK? Can they cover their costs? Because there's this fear thing, right? And there's nothing we talk about is mindset and scarcity and abundance and, you know, a lot of my world have that scarcity mindset. Oh, sure. So it's like, oh, well, she's not talking about it so I hope she's doing okay.
Yeah. And it's funny, those same people, I often feel like, because I have that to my circle, those same people, I often feel like, I want to be careful about how much of my success I talk about, because I don't know how they are going to react to that. So I don't want to brag, you know, in quotes, like, I don't want to brag about my success and my big wins, because that might make the conversation uncomfortable, too. So and, and also, it's very real that entrepreneurship is a roller coaster, sometimes you're riding high and the clients are coming in, and the money's coming in, and everything is booming and then there's other times when you're like, Whoa, boy, am I paying bills this month, because it's tight.
It can be a struggle and I think especially in the beginning stages of launch from a shop, that roller coaster can be steep, you can be way up high and way down low and, and when you don't know month to month what that's going to look like it's hard to plan for the difficult times and a pandemic hits, and everything's out the window, right
Down and roundabout. And you definitely don't want to get braggalicious about it, when you're on the high because you full know that that roller coaster is coming down and then there might be a time when you need to spot a loan on something.
That's true, it's true. And, and part of that is like that, you got to be able to be okay with that as an entrepreneur and expect that and then it gets a little bit easier when it's not like oh, fear, when it starts rolling down the hill, right? You can't have that fear, just be like, Okay, I know, the next up, rise is coming, I've just got to work towards it, maybe I've got to put a little bit more in my marketing, maybe I've got to reach out to some past clients, and you just you know what you need to do and you just gotta take action. And when you get to that mindset, then you know, you're going to be okay. And you've just kind of got to ride out some of the tough times. That's kind of normal. And that I think is the part that freaks out the people who aren't in entrepreneurship the most, for you, right when they love you and they fear for you. It's they're used to a steady income, they know they're making X amount of money every single month and that they can budget their life based on that money that's coming in every month. And the reality is, is entrepreneurship is not like that. It's not like that at all. And that fear of taking risks is what stops a lot of people from becoming an entrepreneur, because that risk takings just not in their blood. And I'll admit, I'm not a big risk taker. I've never been a huge risk taker, I'm not even a person that likes roller coasters. I don't like the big risk and being an entrepreneur was definitely a big learning curve for me and had the highs and lows.
Vicki:
And you had a lot of of support too didn't you? Your family is a bit different in that regard.
Laura:
That's where I've been very blessed.
Vicki: I'm a little bit jealy of that one!
Laura:
Yeah, I know. I know. I am very blessed in that regard. Like my mother is an entrepreneur has been for a lot of years and she's in financial services. So that was super helpful too because she was able to give me a lot of good financial advice in the beginning and in the years since. So that was very helpful. My sister is also an entrepreneur. My father, my stepfather was an entrepreneur as well, for a good part of his life, the later part of his career, he sort of went into his own businesses. And so I've been sort of surrounded just in my family unit with a lot of people that have embraced entrepreneurship and made some of the mistakes and had some of the successes and were able to kind of give me some good advice and kind of support me when I decided to take on entrepreneurship full time.
Which if you go back and listen to my episode, you realise it wasn't like I planned for it and I was going to be it for one or two business classes in university. That's a regret, I should have done more business classes, but I've had to learn the hard knocks a little bit which is fine. But it definitely having that support made the transition a lot easier and it's made the years since easier, although they still question when I tell them the big risks I take and the things that I do and the stuff I invest in and the plans that I have. They kinda look at me a little wide eyed like are you sure? (Laughter)
10:01
The staff that you have... Oh you took on a full time staff member, you what? Exactly. Definitely got that reaction, Oh!
Vicki:
Yeah I just had like the deer in headlights when I was talking about it and then I kind of ran out of things to say because there wasn't really a conversation happening!
10:19
(Laughter) 100%, they're like you did, you did, ah what now? But reinvesting in your business is something that you have to embrace as an entrepreneur and that's a risk you have to take at some point, like, are you going to scale? And how do you scale? You cannot scale alone in entrepreneurship. We only have so many hours in the day. Oh, one of my favorite things is when somebody says Well Beyonce has the same number of days, some number of hours in the day as you. Yeah but Beyonce also has a chef, a personal trainer, a nanny, it's it's not the same, you cannot compare, that's apples and oranges.
Vicki:
She's built a good team around her. She's a smart business lady.
Laura:
That's it a team. Exactly. It's business. And even if it's her life, it's also her business, you have to look at it like that, you know, and you have to get support. None of us can do any of this life on our own. We are not meant to be solitary creatures doing everything on our own and reaching mass levels of success. We just can't. I'm a single mom, I get it.
Vicki:
That's why staying connected is so important.
Laura:
And I look at our partnership in this business as being what's taken us leaps ahead of where I'd be on my own. There's no way I'd be here on my own.
Vicki:
I know because I put all kinds of crazy risky things in front of you and you just have to say yes to them. And then Yep, look what happens. (Laughter)
11:36
Because I do that's the thing. If you're ever looking for a partnership, if you're listening to this and you're thinking about a partnership and who you'd partner with, find the person that you don't fear saying yes to even when they come up with crazy ideas, like you've got to be able to just go yeah, let's try that. And trust them enough to know that it's either going to work out or you're going to pivot into something else, you know.
Vicki:
When you have the same values and you're not willing to let the side down, then you know, you're going to be okay. Because that's why I trust you so much is because I know that it's not an academic thing, it's a heart thing, that we have the same values and it doesn't matter what kind of pickle we might get ourselves into which luckily touch wood hasn't happened, if it was to ever happen I trust that both of us have the wherewithal or chutzpah and the let's just get through this together vibe, and we'll survive it and you know what, anything's better together.
12:34
Laura:
It's so true. It's so, so so so true. That's why I value you as a partner and us as a team because we say yes to crazy things, we go for it, you push me so far out of my comfort zone, it's not even believable. If you told me three years ago, before Two Four One was created, that I'd be doing a podcast, I'd have laughed at you. I'd be like, what's a podcast? Why would I be doing a podcast? Why would I want to do a podcast? Who would listen to me in a podcast? What do I have to say, you know, my imposter monster was leaning hard on my shoulders, I did not have the self-belief and the trust and the thing that I have now, because I just start taking crazy risks. We did a radio show together.
Vicki: That was so much fun.
13:23
Vicki: Shout out to IBGR, International Business Growth Radio network.
Laura:
For real, they helped us get good at this, you know, and feel confident doing this and wanting to do this, because we realised how much we loved it. It was hard. It was challenging. We had to really time things very carefully.
Vicki:
Deadlines are wonderful things by the way!
13:48
Laura:
Oh yeah I'm a big fan of deadlines. If it wasn't for deadlines, I get nothing done. Nothing.
But seriously, like absolutely that helped us doing that radio show helped us, I think progress really far in business because we spent a lot of time researching which I loved. Researching, I think I've talked about that before, but like you know, the value of learning is so important to us and researching really helps me get case studies and stats and facts about marketing and everything that we do. I think that helped me gain a lot more knowledge in this industry, which also helped me get over feeling like that imposter syndrome thing like who am I it's like, okay, now I have this information, I can share this information. Even though it didn't originate from me it was stuff that I found, but I was able to put together in a way that I could explain it better kind of helped me realise, oh, wow, I really do know what I'm talking about.
Vicki:
I think you already knew a lot of the stuff. What you were researching was the little factoids and some quotes and some stats. We love our stats and in the radio show we used to always, and in our earlier podcasts we'd always have a section where we'd include some stats about the topic we were talking about. In the earlier podcasts, Level-Up Your Marketing with Vicki and Laura it was very much more teaching moments.
And so we wanted to be able to put our fingers on some really good examples of what we were talking about. But the point is you already knew everything that you were researching. Yes, you were just getting the way it's applied and offering opportunities to, to kind of understand it in a different way through an example or a story.
Laura:
Yeah and I think I didn't know that I knew it. That was what was an awakening for me. Like, I really didn't know that I knew it, I didn't have the confidence that I knew it well enough to explain it to somebody else or teaching it to somebody else and by doing it, and going through the process of preparing for every show that we did, and doing the research and stuff, I had a lot of awakenings in that, oh, okay, I actually do know this and my confidence grew every time I'm doing it. And I think that is such an important part of being a resilient entrepreneur, is doing, taking the action over and over and over again, even when it feels uncomfortable, you don't feel like you quite know what you're doing and you will make a few mistakes along the way, failure is just part of it all, we're gonna have conversations on just failure. Like all the failures, that's just part of it, you've just got to accept that that is part of it, of any success, failure is a part of any success. So it's just about the keep going, keep doing, keep taking action, because in doing it, your confidence grows, things become easier, things start to move faster, business starts to become more successful, it's just a natural progression. But if you never take action, if you never do it if you just keep thinking and researching and learning and reading lots of books and listening to all the podcasts, but if you never take action on any of the things you are learning, you will never ever get ahead. You just stay stuck.
16:56
Vicki:
You'll live with the regret. Now that's another subject - regrets! Not that I have a lot of regrets because I choose to live without them. But I think you know, that's something that we need to talk about is that unfulfilled potential, that's been a driver. And I think that's a really cool thing that a lot of people probably relate to. I think we'll do a whole episode on the imposter monster. Yeah, there's, there's a bit more to unpack in that one.
Laura:
There's a lot to unpack in that and I think it's very common. We've talked to so many entrepreneurs over the last few years, and all different stages of business and that comes up a lot and in lots of different ways. They might say, I feel like I have impostor syndrome, they might just say, I don't feel quite confident in this or, or it just comes up in, no I don't want to put my face in front of the camera, I don't want to put pictures of me on my social media, I don't want to do a live or host a webinar or, and that's how it sort of comes out. And I think I don't know, maybe because we have all these things and we're telling people that we're an entrepreneur, and we're doing this business, and they kind of see that confidence shaken a little bit that that's maybe why they question you about the work. And are you sure you want to do this? And are you really going to take that leap? Are you really going to turn your side hustle into a full-time business because what if it fails? And, and a lot of it, I think, you know, just going back to what we were saying in the beginning, and it's just I think people who love us worry for us probably even more than we worry for ourselves. Yeah, you know, and that's not a bad thing, and we probably could do better at explaining to them. Yes, this type of stuff and having this type of conversation. Maybe just hey, hearing this podcast helps somebody's parent understand why their kid is doing this crazy thing. And by being an entrepreneur, I think and talking about entrepreneurship you shine the light for others and when you talk about the trials and tribulations, the success, the difficulty, all of it, and share it and be open and vulnerable about it with your friends, your family publicly, like in this sort of format or any which way, I think it helps somebody else take that leap, take the risk, go for it, and make a difference in the world and make the impact that they want to make in the world. I have kids, my kids both are entrepreneurial mindset. My son is an entrepreneur.
Vicki: They are amazing!
19:15
And I love that I am able to not just like give them some advice, but also just go like, hey, go for it. Go for it, kid, you want to do this, go for it. You want to build a website for your art business, go for it. Here's what I know and then give him the space to explore to learn to figure it out himself.
Vicki: And Laura every time I'm on the gram, I'm seeing @flowbynico reels popping up at me as like, this kid needs to do our social media.
Laura:
(Laughter) He's doing Instagram better than his mom, I love it. I love it. I'm so excited by it like he's getting it and you know, he's researching the trending sounds and following. Here's a key tip for everybody, follow the people that inspire you follow the people that are doing it just a little bit better than you are, a little bit ahead of you in business, follow them, see what they're doing. I'm not saying copy them but get inspired by them because that's how we follow others, that's, they're shining a light so that you can pick it up and run with it. And then just do it your way, put your own spin on it, and then get out there and shine your light for others so that they can follow you too. It's like a big open cave, it's really dark and you know, we're still we're trying to find our way through it, we're just still discovering it all but if somebody ahead of you has a bit of a light that you can follow, then you can shine yours back for somebody else. We're all leading each other through to some success and I love that. And yeah, I love my son, @flowbynico on Instagram and Tiktok and what else, he's on fanbase now and he's got a website in the works. So stay tuned, I'll probably announce when the website is live. And he sells acrylic flow paintings and these amazing Christmas ornaments that I just think are so incredibly beautiful. In fact, there's a Christmas tree in my living room. It's July, there's a Christmas tree in my living room right now.
Vicki:
Christmas in July, by the way, that's a thing over here so you're doing it in both hemispheres.
Laura: I love it. We're always on the same wavelength partner. Always, I think Vicki and I have lived a parallel life for so long that we've just our paths have just connected, it's insane, because we've just, so many of the experiences we have had in life have just been the same, which I think makes this partnership so special, that we can share so much of the same thing, which I think has led to us having the same values now in business, which is beautiful. So find that person, find that twin flame, I love that saying in a relationship you look for your twin flame, I think partnerships are the same, friendships are the same, all of that, just find that person that you can connect with and help you grow, which is it. That's it, you know, we can't choose our family but we can certainly choose the people we surround ourselves with, the community that we want to be part of that helps us to grow in business and in life. It's beautiful.
Vicki:
And then we become family don't we? It feels like it.
Laura:
Yeah, totally. Totally, totally, totally and it's a different level of support, and a different level of understanding. It's good thing.
Vicki:
Well thank you for my therapy session partner!
(Laughter)
Hope it helped! Good stuff. Good stuff
22:14
Vicki:
Well leave it here and yeah, catch you next time around. So as we say, have a good day partner.
Laura:
Have a good night.
22:27
So thanks for joining us on resilient entrepreneurs. We are Laura and Vicki from Two Four One. We love supporting entrepreneurs especially with mindset marketing and motivation, which is why we've built an incredible community of business founders who meet weekly in the Level-Up League. If you'd like to know more about it, look us up at www.twofouronebranding.com.
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00Transcribed by https://otter.ai
