Hi, and thanks for being part of this community of Resilient Entrepreneurs.
Today's conversation is with Leigh Burgess, and it's about untapped potential, collaboration, and solving problems for good. Leigh is a regular contributor to Forbes and Entrepreneur, and her podcast is the Bold Lounge Podcast. She was honoured as one of Success Magazine's 125 Leaders Making a Difference, and she's currently nominated for Success 50 Women of Influence. Wow. After 20 years in healthcare and in business, Leigh went on to build her own Bold Industries Group, BIG, B-I-G, get it? Tackling big challenges that when solved, make the world a better place. Leigh may share her trademarked Bold Performance Formula with us today.
We are Resilient Entrepreneurs, your go-to podcast for global business brilliance, weâre Vicki and Laura, your co-hosts and the duo behind Two Four One Branding dedicated to empowering new entrepreneurs like you. Today, Leigh is here to share invaluable insights, but before we dive in, a quick ask, hit that Subscribe button, join our growing community. Together, we're making waves in the entrepreneurial world and a huge thank you to each of you for helping us pass the 10,000 downloads mark. Leigh, a very warm welcome. Great to have you here.
Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you very much and congratulations on 10K, that's awesome.
Thank you, we appreciate that. So Leigh, tell us your backstory. What kind of kid were you? Were you very entrepreneurial when you were growing up?
I actually was. I grew up in rural East Coast Pennsylvania, so kind of country bumpkin-ish but not even knowing it. Our family didn't have a lot, but I didn't know that either, the way that we grew up. My first job was mowing lawns and I think that's where I figured out I was a little entrepreneurial - I would charge different rates for the grade or how difficult the lawn was, and I would also do âon demandâ so that if you wanted it faster, there was a premium service for getting it done sooner than later. I didn't have a lot of tools. When I started off I actually didn't even have the little trimmers, we didn't have a weedeater back then, we just didn't have a lot of money. I used scissors, so I think, yeah, they were really good scissors and I wore gloves. I mean, I learned really fast, like how you get blisters and things like that! I was 13 when I started mowing lawn so I guess I had a little entrepreneur in me then, but I think as I went into college I really never thought about being an entrepreneur.
That is so entrepreneurial having all the different services and you were right there on the money, different service levels and then interesting that entrepreneurialism didn't really factor in as a career for you, and this is a conversation that Laura and I have between ourselves and with guests is what is that bridge and how can we bring that closer to the forefront so kids are seeing this as a viable career.
Yeah, I bet it's better now. I think mine probably was just there's a convention of you go to school, you go to high school, you graduate, you go to college, you get your degrees and you get a job. That was I think also the expectation of my parents and I never fought it or thought that wasn't the right thing to do or at any point say I'm going to do X or Y. I was on the eight-year plan for my undergrad. You hear some people say, oh, I did five years or six years, mine was eight because in the middle of it, and this might've been the entrepreneur coming out, right? I took multiple years off and I did a whole bunch of different jobs. One of my jobs was, I travelled with Better Homes and Gardens. I don't know if you remember this, it kind of ages me, but they used to do these tours in the shopping malls and you would be able to try out the different products and things like that. I was Mott's apple juice, so I would hand out Mott's apple juice and help people hopefully like it and want to buy it. And so anyway, that's what I did one summer. I just travelled all over the US and did that and I did some other odd jobs and things like that. At any one time I usually had at least two jobs. So I was doing multiple things on my own doing my own thing, because when I said I wasn't going to stay in school, my parents said they couldn't support that from a financial perspective and I said I understood. So from that perspective, I think I just really wanted to do a good job and to also be able to do my own thing as well.
Yeah, we definitely understand that. And I love the journey, right? I love understanding entrepreneurs' journey because I think it really helps new entrepreneurs or people who are just thinking about it or at whatever stage they're in, but to understand that everyone's journey is so unique and so different and it's not one straight line to success.
Yeah, it's really a zigzag. And then I didn't think I was being an entrepreneur, I just thought I was taking my time, doing my thing, hadn't really found what I wanted to be or how I wanted to be in the world. I mean, you're in your twenties, that's the whole point I think, to figure it out and even in your forties, I think I was figuring it out!
I decided at 48 to quit my job without having a job. That was my big swing of bold and it really came about because I was burnt out. I had to choose me, right? So I did that, and when I did that, I was like, wow, I could be anything I want to be. So I went back to when I was 13, oh, I can be anything, I can have any business I want. What do I want to do? But I was having that feeling at 48. So it was a full circle moment of, okay, anything's possible, which it always had been, but I don't think I realised it as much until I made that decision for myself, for me that was a bold decision.
And tell us what was the next thing that happened? What came after the decision? You decided you were burnt out, then what? Because I think a lot of people are there, or very close to there and on that teetering point.
Yeah, it's like the, oh, bleep, if you could bleep out a word, or moment. And what I mean by that is, okay, I did it. Now I'm really, I'm in, I am going to move forward. So for me being bold isn't being fearless. There's scary moments, there's moments of the unknown, but it's really moving through it, stepping forward, going for it and learning. Everything's not going to be a success. So what next for me though particularly because of the burnout was I needed to heal. I needed to reset, recalibrate because I had gone so far with my mental, my emotional, my physical health that I had back-burnered all of that and I really needed to equilibrate but what was interesting while I was doing that, getting my own coach, getting reset, I started building the business. I gave my notice at the same time I filed the papers with the state and so what was really cool was my last day of work was the fourth and I got my âyouâre incorporatedâ papers on the sixth. So literally I was starting to really be creative and felt this sense of just freedom, although scary freedom at times, but it was this sense of freedom. So it was that close of my last day to incorporation, so I really felt this just sense of creativity and being able to build and think about things that I hadn't felt before.
Yeah. So how do you help people now? Tell us a bit about your business now, how you help.
Yeah, so I started off my business model was really to think about how could I help people and work with people that I want to work with. Because not everybody's your people, not everybody's a fit for what you do. So I created a consulting model called the D90. The D is designed and the 90 is 90 days to put the consulting model on its head. In my particular industry, healthcare consultants come in and they stay a while and they usually do an incredible job, but you don't usually have the bench strength to keep it going or the funds to keep them there. So it becomes like it was great while it lasted, but it doesn't usually last sometimes when they come in. So I wanted to ask people to radically prioritise and really do it in strategic sprints. So that D90 is what I started with in the consulting model and it really took off. I started with a list of 15 people I knew and just started talking to people and those 15 people, not one of those, were my first contract. They were just the beginning of the process of getting there and it took me about four months to get my first client and I had my own trepidation in there of, am I doing the right thing? Because I did have a runway. It was five months long and I didn't get my first client until the last week of the fourth month. So I had to really be all in on what I call Plan A. You really need to have confidence in yourself, don't doubt yourself, don't start interviewing in other places, which I had at the very beginning of it. So I really had to recalibrate myself to be in on Plan A. From there I added coaching, I added something called the Bold Retreat, and that was really two years later. So I really started with a base of consulting and then I thought, okay, this would be nice to bring women particularly together and talk about mindset, strategy and wellness all in one all-inclusive event. All you have to do is show up and we have it in these gorgeous places and spaces and that was just something that I thought I would like, so let's see if someone else would like it. So we've had five of those and they have all sold out and theyâre in incredible locations and we have a wait list. And then I created the Bold Table as well and that was around networking. I'm I guess an ambivert, I prefer to be in small spaces though, meaning smaller groups, deeper conversations versus the go around the room with 2000 people. I can do it, but my preference is really powering up in smaller groups. So I created this different type of networking event for women thatâs 40 women and we've done eight of those as well and they've all sold out and that has a waiting list. And then finally coming into this year, I wanted to get all bold under one roof, because there's a lot of it. The Bold Lounge Podcast, all of the things that we do for mindset and things like that and get it into one, which was our Bold Leaders Collective, so I created a membership in year four, as well as wrote the book, which will come out later this year. So it really started, I thought in a thoughtful way, making sure that I knew what I was doing, not trying to do everything all at once. I have done a lot, when you even just talk about that for four years, that's a lot to do in four years. Just thinking very thoughtfully about how we did it when we launched, what I learned, because you learn something with each one.
Wow, Leigh, that really is bold and I love that the name of your company is Big Bold Industries Group. Why are big ideas and big solutions important to you?
Well, I think a big idea really can come from a lot of places and it doesn't have to be the size. I think when we think of small or big, we think, oh, it might not have an impact or it might not have this. For me, a big idea could be something simple and in the sense like it's a small change or something that we need to do, but actually, the impact is big. So I think a big idea is something that we do that actually impacts us or impacts those that we serve in a big way. So if you think about a big idea, it might be we don't use plastic bottles, we all use recyclable water containers. That's a very simple idea in the sense of that but as you can see, that big idea is still one we're struggling with as an example but if we would all do it, it would have great, great, great impact for us.
Yeah, I feel you on that and Vicki and I love working with entrepreneurs that are all about impact because that's super important to us too and you can make your impact just in your small niche. Like it doesn't have to be change the whole world and that's what a lot of people get stuck on, I think. Yeah. How do you make your ripple?
Yeah. I think when I first started off I had 80 followers primarily because I never really did a lot with social media or put myself out there because it's pretty vulnerable and it's kind of a judgy zone every now and then, at least it can feel like that. And so I think what I really learned is your story can be that ripple.Your failures, your steps forward, steps back, you just sharing that becomes something for someone else to go, âWow, she tried it. It didn't work like she wanted but look at her nowâ, because every idea I've had, they're not all good.
That's true!
They're not all successful or maybe they're successful but they don't bring me joy or they're not really like wow, I don't really enjoy doing that or I'm good at it but I don't want to fall back into that. Because that's some of my trip ups in the corporate world where I was really good at things, but I wasn't sure they were as joyful as they were when I first started doing them. So now that I have this choice, I really try to be more intentional about the things I start and you learn a lot when you fail at something. Especially as an entrepreneur, because the impact of it can be 10 X of what it might've been in the corporate world.
And definitely more personally impacting to you and your business.
Right.
What is your view of failure and the failure mindset?
What's my view of it? I think overarchingly, I live in a growth mindset world. So I think that's one of the things my framework is; Believe, Own, Learn, Design, and the Learn is really all about a growth mindset, knowing that when you get to a place of where something doesn't work, it doesn't mean it's the end all be all. It just means it didn't work. I've always, I think out of all the letters of my framework, that's the one I think I did really well and didn't have a lot to add on when I was going through my own process of healing because that's when I actually created the framework. Where I had to spend more time was in the Believe zone and the Own zone. So I think when we think about our beliefs, they can either be helping us or harming us and we might not know where they came from, or we might know and we might've put it away. So I think for me, I had to unpack some shadows and really had negative self-talk and perfectionism, and even as an entrepreneur, I had never felt imposter syndrome until I was an entrepreneur. I never felt it in the corporate world, but as soon as I became an entrepreneur, I felt it. And so working through a lot of those. And then Ownership for me was I was owning way too much things that weren't my responsibility. So really in the framework, we talk about what should you own and what should you not, and are you celebrating the things that you should? And then the L is learn and the D is design and design is really once you get through it, you're now creating and you're aligning with your passion and purpose and designing the life you were meant to live.
Yeah, I like that. So if someone is where you were and feeling that and you could give them some advice or some action to take to help them move through the process of getting out of burnout and into healing. What are some actions people can start taking that you'd recommend? Maybe something that really helped you.
Yeah, For me I always felt like I had to do it by myself. Like it was a solo act and B.O.L.D is not a solo act. I think having whether it's a friend or a family member or a coach or a mentor or someone, a therapist, knowing that you don't have to go it alone would be my best advice because I think for a very, very long time I had this mindset of if I ask for help, it means Iâve failed, if I don't just get it done and get it done fast I've failed. So I had this loop going on that was âI needed to do it by myself, I needed to be strong and not show a lot of weaknessâ. That's just not anything that is Okay. It's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to not succeed at everything. It's okay to ask for help. And so for me, that would be my advice is don't go it alone, being bold doesn't mean you have to do it solo.
That's such a great point. And I think we can even take it the next step and embrace it and look for opportunities to ask for help and look for opportunities to stumble and the more we lean into that, I think this is part of your Own and Learn, that combination of let's lean into this, the messy stuff and see what comes out of it.
Yeah, cause life is messy. Sometimes I really just get frustrated with what we see on social media for ourselves, for our children, for the younger generation. It just comes across like everything can happen overnight. Success has a hack, if there's a shortcut to this and a shortcut to that and I'm all for efficiency and agility trust me, but there's not enough authenticity when it comes to some of the things that we see. Because it isn't great every day as an entrepreneur. It's hard on certain days. I've shed a tear here and there of frustration. It doesn't mean that everything's butterflies and rainbows, but for me, what it means is, I have the highest level of freedom to succeed and fail - that's at my fingertips. And to me, that's a responsibility but it also is very freeing for me in the sense of what it means I can do, what I can accomplish.
I think that's it right there and nutshell exactly what entrepreneurship is. You know that the highs, the lows, the challenges, but one of my favourite sayings is âIt's all on you and it's all on you.â Talking about impact, you impact your own life so tremendously, but there's no ceiling. That's the beautiful part, you're not just working for the next raise or the next promotion or the next thing for somebody else, you can be as wild and creative as free as you want to be to create anything, build anything.
Yeah, that is such a good point because I think in the corporate world and I'm not dissing the corporate world, I was in it, loved it, I did a lot, I learned a lot, but it was âOkay take these five steps and you can do this, take these next five steps and you can get a promotion or be up for one, take these next steps and if someone above you resigns, leaves, then you can be promotedâ, like it was very much you were in a holding pattern each time you got to excel. And in my career, I was a chief, a C-suite in my early forties. So it was like, okay, what's next? And it wasn't like I was expecting a raise or promotion every year, but I wanted to work towards the next goal, the next milestone and I did that really quickly. And I got to a place where there wasn't a what's next. And I think that's when it started getting uncomfortable, for me in the sense of accomplishment and what I could do and what I could have as an impact? Probably in my mid-40s and then I burned out by 48, so it was those three years probably I was just in this place of not knowing what was happening, but it's probably where my closest entrepreneur was really wanting to come out.
So Leigh, what in your mind is your greatest achievement in business to date?
In life, it's my daughter. In business, I think from the perspective of that is that not many women, 1) are founders, so for the particulars of that. I think the milestones that I hit in the first four years, so six and seven figures of being able to create sales and opportunities and offerings that is very unheard of. I remember my coach telling me only 2% of the women founders do what I did in my first year, but I don't lead with that. But I think I have to remember that it is a success story and I want to share it just so that people realise that it's possible.
But what was interesting is I didn't go into it saying I was going to make X amount of dollars, and I think that really was the difference. I went into this going, I just want to make what I made so that we can go on vacation and I can have a car and we can stay in our house. It was just, I want to make what I made and it wasn't a million dollars. So I think from that perspective, because I didn't have that as the goal, I honestly think things happened more readily or faster because of that. So it proved to me that I could do it and that felt really, really good to know that I did it and can continue to do that and take care of my family and do the things that we do to live the life we want to live.
I think that's confidence. It's the experience of something happening to give you that knowledge that it's possible. And I think we often lack that confidence when we're starting out at the beginning when you first launched, I bet you never could have seen where you've gotten to now, or even had that confidence, right?
I was making mistakes left and right. I had my offering as low as $99 an hour at one point for consulting, which is for consultants that's really cheap, especially with someone with 25 years of experience, but I was like, Oh, the first person said no so I must be too high, so let me swing so far to the left that it's now too low. Of course that person said yes, but it was not the best engagement for me because I felt devalued for the majority of it and they felt like, I don't know, it wasn't the most, it was not the best experience. So yeah, I failed left and right when I was starting off, but you start to gain that confidence that you said. That's one of the myths I write about in the book; I think there's a myth that boldness means you're confident all the time and that doesn't, it does not equate. You have confidence that you're gaining, but it doesn't mean you're just confident and like, I'm so going to do this and no matter what, it's going to be great. Like sometimes you're just like, wow, I hope it works and you hit send.
Such an experiment, itâs such a joy. And yeah, talking about experimenting, you've launched a number of services in the four years. Tell us about your launch experience and what would you say is a winning formula?
Well, I've definitely honed that in. My team will tell you that I've gotten better at it but there are times that I've probably, well not probably, I've done it in a way that creates too much pressure - meaning doing too much at one time. So for example, my last launch, not my book, but the collective, so creating the membership, which was a pretty big launch, we were doing the redo of our website at the same time we were launching the collective. And both of those are heavy lifts on your team. So I think for me the winning formula would be to not overlap things whether one feels like oh that's just our day-to-day, we're going to the next level of our website, it's still a project. It's still a big deal and especially if you have people overlapping I mean I have a smaller team, a team of five. So doing those types of things can really pressurise your team, so that was learning I had. For me, the formula is really make sure that you're thoughtful, that you're not just doing it because you think it's X, Y, or Z. I didn't launch a community to obviously be the main revenue producer or anything like that. I launched it because I wanted to get all my offerings under one roof. I wanted to create a space for the community, for the women leaders in it, and I wanted to be able to have them, be able to connect with one another and do events specifically with them and have them be able to come together. So you have ideas, but it has never been that I'm doing this because it's going to make me a lot of money. I'm not writing a book because I want to make a lot of money around the book. Now, am I saying money's not important? That's not what I'm saying, but I'm just saying it's not the end goal when I'm launching something. Sometimes early on, I think people do things or they launch too many things because they want to make revenue, obviously it's important, but they want to do it in a way I think that's they think it's going to be fast and I think that can be not a good formula to have.
Yeah. Let's talk about community for a minute, because you just mentioned it. And I think we don't understand, I don't know, maybe people do understand the value of community, but I think as an entrepreneur, especially the solo entrepreneur, you're starting something out, you're building something and you're doing it all by yourself and you feel very lonely, and we know that is an issue and a reason a lot of entrepreneurs quit. They're on their own, they don't know what they're doing, they're making mistakes, they don't have support, maybe their family doesn't get what they're doing. So let's just talk about the value of community and why was building a community important to you and what do people get out of that community?
So I think for me what I started to do in 2022 with my first event which was the Bold Retreat that I tried and my first event took three months to sell. I had to do a lot of different things but what happened from that was a curated group of women coming together, so 15 women coming together for the retreat and what I noticed in that first retreat was the community that they created, that I created this space and I say they create the magic and it's the connection. It's the getting to know you, it's the, âOh, you have a dog and two kidsâ, âOh, you like to cook. What's your favourite dish?â I think at times we become either our title or our profession or where we went to school or X, Y, or Z, and what it started to turn on a light in my head was it's looking at someone in a whole 360 degree fashion human being of who they are. For me it was how do I do more of that? Because what we did together was in my first offering we stayed together for the whole year. So we went to the retreat, I did group coaching for the whole year with that group, and so they were together all year in coaching and with me and some of them did individual coaching with me and so our relationships deepened and I was like how do I do more of that? And so that's where we started doing the Bold Tables and then members from the retreat would come to the Bold Table, they would fly in. Most of the people who come to the Bold Table actually fly in from all over the country, no matter where I have it and we have it in different places and they come together. So I was like, okay, how do I do more of that? So it was, as you can see, this, how do I create more connection and community and places and spaces for them to do it? And that's really after four years getting to that point, multiple retreats, multiple bold tables, coaching and doing the things I was doing. It was like, okay, I think we have a really special place. We have a hundred members. So since August, late August of last year to now through February, I got a hundred members and I stopped. So I purposely closed at a hundred because I wanted to grow thoughtfully, I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing, I want to make sure that they're getting the value out of everything that we do and it is the primary point of being part of the Bold Leaders Collective is connecting in a 360 degree way. I'm in there every day asking a survey and it could be like a leadership survey. It could be, what are you reading? It could be, do you put your Christmas tree up before Thanksgiving or after Thanksgiving? I mean, there are really strong feelings about this. It's a totality of who we are, share your wins, which is so interesting. It's one of the hardest things to get out of this group is like brag, brag about yourself. So it's a great space to bring in speakers and have a place in this space for them to connect, and we're coming up on, we're doing an event in New York in just a couple of weeks, it's called the Bold Summit, and we're doing a Bold Table on the other side of it. And again, it's just creating that space in person, so it's a virtual, in person type of moment for our community to come together and just creating that space for them has really been my goal.
Why is creating connections important to you, Leigh? What's underneath that?
Probably because I think the most of my career, I don't think I had it. I think it was lacking. I've always felt I've had personal connection with my parents and with my siblings and with my husband and with my daughter, I've always felt that's very strong, but I think I felt very lonely as a female leader in a very competitive corporate world and not because anybody did anything wrong or anybody wronged me. I mean, certainly everything wasn't perfect but I don't think I ever felt accepted, I guess is the right word, because when in the corporate setting they don't want to see all of you all the time. Itâs hard to âhow do I turn on my authenticity but still like make sure I understand the politics and history of the organisation and not talk too much and not be..â, it's just a lot of roles. So I think it wore me out a bit and then therefore what happens when I get in that space is I just recess, like I'm not going to a lot of networking, I don't really want to put myself out there. I'll do my job and do it really well, but I'm not really into anything else. So I think partially I felt alone because I wanted to be alone, and the other part of it is I'm not sure I felt welcomed, so I think for me, and no one's ever asked me that question so I think it's a really good question, I probably wanted to create a space that I never had. Where it was okay to be me, to fail, to brag about myself and by brag, I mean say, hey, I did this, I wrote this article, I published this, I spoke here. That's the kind of bragging I'm talking about, I made bread and it didn't fall. I went to that exercise class, doing those things are all wins. So I think for me, I just wanted to create a space that I wish I had. They say that about writing your book - that you write what you want to read, that you need to read. So I probably created a space that I probably needed most of my career.
And celebrating the wins is so important, like even those small wins, the small steps, little things that get you along, the 10,000 downloads on a podcast, that's a big win. You know, let's celebrate it. Let's get excited about it and celebrate it and as women, I don't think we're good at that. Are we taught to be humble? Is it just an expectation culturally? I'm not sure exactly, probably very individual in that way, but there definitely is a humility. And as an entrepreneur who has to promote themselves, you kind of got to get out of that a little bit, right? So you have to be bold, you have to show up on social media, you have to promote your business and yourself and your retreats or whatever you have going on in your business and that can be really hard for people.
Yeah, and people can be jealous. I think when you start to gain confidence or do some of the things that make you uncomfortable, but maybe no one knows it makes you uncomfortable, like most people say, I can't believe you're even thinking you're an introvert. I'm like, well, I think I am. But I think what's interesting is that might irritate other people, whether they had a move they wanted to make and now you're irritating them because you've made it and you're showing up and they wish they had, so therefore something negative is said or something isn't positive for them, I think that's really hard. At least that was hard for me when I first started. I thought everyone would be happy for me. I thought everyone would be âWow that's a cool idea, yeah go for itâ, and people were just like, âWhat did you do?â, âWhy did you leave?â, âWhat are you doing?â, âWhat's it called?â and I just really quickly had to shift gears and go, okay, you're not in my inner circle, maybe not for now or maybe not for ever, but you're going to move out to the outer edges and I'm going to really hone into the people who belong to the inner centre of hearing my ideas and knowing what I'm doing. I think that's really important too, because when you first set out, I just wanted to tell everybody my ideas. I'm in Target checking out, âYeah, I'm an entrepreneur and I'm thinking about this or thatâ, I was talking it up, but you might want to make sure people deserve to hear what you have to say. Because for me, I just thought everybody would be happy for me, but they weren't.
Yeah, that can come as a surprise. Have you had to let anybody go in your life because of it?
I don't think I let anybody go, I think I just moved out a ring and then once I'm up and going then maybe there's a little bit more conversation. For me, the thing I had to let go are the people who wanted to live in the past, where the only thing they had in common was the strife, âthat's so challengingâ or âcan you believe X did that and Y did thatâ. Those people definitely are no longer in my life because the only thing we had in common was a challenge and they didn't really, I don't think wanted to get out of it. They wanted to have that as something that they perseverated on and stayed in and I was over it. I'm moving on, I think you learn from the past, but I don't think you need to, I don't want to live there.
When you just even said that I felt my stomach heat up. Just that very, that whole, it's a community of people that stay there because they maybe don't think they have the courage to do the things that you're doing, or that someone else is doing and maybe they've given up on a dream and they've really resigned themselves to not leaning into that dream anymore. And so they do everything they can to create that comfortable space so that it's okay for them, but it's not okay for us. When we're in that space, we just have to have separation in a kind and loving way and just think if that's where you want to be, go for it, self-acceptance, make your decision and be okay with your decision but then there's no room for them to try and bring others down. It brings to mind the saying, you know the Marianne Williamson, âPlaying small to make others feel better is not our role, our role is to shine our light as bright as we can, and in doing so, it gives them permission to do the sameâ, should they choose, and if they don't choose, cool or good on you.
Yeah. It's easier said than done at times. And I think, especially when you're first starting as an entrepreneur, it's harder. It's not that I've gotten thick skin because you can see it on my sweater, my heart is on my sleeve on purpose because that's how I live, but I think it doesn't sting as long or as deep as it does when you first start out. You're human, so I think you're going to feel some things every now and then. But I think you also realise and you're able to identify like, âOh, this actually brought up something in them, this has nothing to do with me.â I don't own it and I think I'm way better at that, that's a skill I wish I would have had in the corporate world that I really didn't gain until I became an entrepreneur. I used to think it was all personal, it was about me, it was about something that I did wrong or could do better, X, Y, or Z. And now that I look back, I can look at a lot of those situations and go, âIt had nothing to do with me at all but I took it personal and therefore it led to this or that or thisâ. So I think that's one thing that as an entrepreneur, I've gotten better at as well is just to be able to know when to take something in and when to totally just let it fly by. I don't need to take that all.
And it's all experience, isn't it? We don't know about these things until we experience something that makes us go deeper inside and really work out what's going on. Is it me? Is it them? And entrepreneurism certainly gives us plenty of those opportunities.
Yeah, we get a lot of practice in that area.
I say it's the best personal development course you'll ever go on, it's the experience of being an entrepreneur because you don't realise how deep you've got to go and how many things you've got to figure out and how many things you've got to learn about yourself when you're going through it. Because it's not just your business.
It's therapy. I just wish I would have done it sooner. I don't want to erase the past or erase my experiences or those types of things, but maybe if I could have just done it sooner with all the experience I had, I would be ahead. I think that's the other thing - I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, when I'm supposed to be there, how I'm supposed to be there, and I'm learning lots of things still. So I think that's the one thing that I just remind myself that I'm not behind, I'm exactly where I'm meant to be, and something I always say to people I coach and my clients is, âWhat's meant for you will not miss youâ, and that's not my quote that someone else's, but it is so true. So I chase a lot less now than I did in the beginning and also when I was in the corporate world. I don't do that. I look back now and I can see where maybe I was chasing things in year one, whether it be a client or an idea or funding or something like that but I've settled into it's going to work out, it just is going to work out. And then on certain days you're like, âOoh, I don't know if it's going to work outâ, but yes, it is. And I think you get better and better at that with the experiences you have too.
100%. So we've talked a lot about resilient type things, but not specifically the word resilience. So of course we're Resilient Entrepreneurs, so we must talk about that. So what in your opinion is the thing that makes someone resilient? What do they need to have?
If you would ask me what resilience means to me, it's a combination of obviously the âget knocked down, get back upâ, which might be some of the things you've heard before, but for me, resilience also comes from a vulnerability of knowing that it's okay to fail and it's okay to get back up and it's okay to talk about your failures. And I go back to what I've learned and we talked about earlier, resilience is knowing that success is a cycle and you're not always going to be able to say everything I did, I knocked it out of the park. And so I think for me, when it comes to being resilient, it's just knowing that it's going back to what I just said, it's going to be okay, we're going to learn from it, we're going to keep moving forward, and there's a new day, as long as you wake up in the morning it's already a good day. So I think being thankful and being able to understand that, is a really a big piece of being resilient.
That's a great answer. Thank you Leigh. This is such a wonderful conversation, it really is. And we would very much like to flip things around for a moment and put ourselves in the hot seat. You can ask us a question. It's something we've started doing on this podcast and it seems to be a bit of fun. So what's your question for Laura and I?
Yeah, definitely. So one of the things I always like to ask people is what is your definition of bold? And then the second question, just to follow that up when you share your definition is when you define it for yourself, when's a memorable moment of boldness for you?
Laura's saying I go first.
All right, Laura's going first. What does bold mean to you, Laura?
Oh, I get to go first. Okay. I think bold is doing the thing that scares you and doing it anyway, no matter what. And when something does scare you and you have that nervousness, that nervous energy, that feeling in the pit of your stomach, the âwhy did I say yes to this thing?â And when you're doing it anyway, that is bold because that is the thing that you most need to do. I really believe that. I said that to somebody today, âOh, I'm so nervous about this speechâ, that's because you care about it. You wouldn't be nervous about the thing if you didn't care about it. Youâd just be, whatever this is something I have to do. So when you accept nervousness as just a feeling of I care about this thing and it's important to me, I feel like that is what makes it possible for you to just leap in and do the thing. For me, my personal moment was, it's a series of moments, but it was becoming an entrepreneur that was definitely a really bold leap for me. I fell into entrepreneurship, I've talked about this in the past where I was made redundant when I was pregnant with my daughter, but I had a safety net then as I had a partner and I had a house and I had some things. But the real, real most memorable time for me is when I left all of that and became a single mom on my own as an entrepreneur and I had to figure it all out on my own and I just did it. I remember packing the furniture in the truck and I just moved. Within two hours, I went from one house to another and settled myself and it was the most empowering, most incredible thing that I've ever done. I still look back and go, wow, like that was something and I've never looked back and I've only grown from there and it's only given me more confidence. So that was my big defining moment, was that packing that truck and just moving.
Iâm seeing the closing of the door, when you flip that big lock thing over, which is sometimes I can't get it right, but that's what I'm envisioning you doing.
It's that slam of, it's done, we're moving. It's that symbol of moving. Yeah, really, really is powerful.
Yeah, a very bold move. Well, thank you for sharing that.
Yeah, thank you for sharing your story. That's a tough one to follow.
How about you, Vicki? What's bold mean to you?
To me, actually these days, I would probably have answered this very differently years ago, but these days to me, bold means true self-acceptance, really being okay with what I want, a little bit like we were just talking about, not worrying about what other people are going to say or think, just truly accept where I am and what I want, and then going for it. That's bold.
For me the bold part is the accepting that what I want is great. That's what I want, because Laura knows we've been on this journey for several years now and my bugbear has always been untapped potential, untapped potential, I feel like I'm living 80% of my life and I want to live 100%. I carry on about it, ridiculous. And yet my example of boldness is just in the last year was really accepting what it is that my heart wants and leaning into it and going for it. And that so starting up a side business that complements what we do, Laura and I do, so beautifully.
You accepted that you're actually already successful, that there isn't another when you talk about untapped potential, your definition of yourself and how you see yourself needed to change, which is a bold move. Especially for women, I'm not saying it's not hard for men, but from my lived experience, it's sometimes hard not to say, shouldn't I be doing more? Shouldn't I be doing the next level? And to say no, I'm actually rocking it because I'm happy, I find joy, I have space for what I want in my life and it may not be on somebody's chart of success, but in my world and my definition, that success. So congratulations on that, because I think that's hard to learn and it's hard to do and it's absolutely a bold move.
Yes, thank you. That means the world just to hear you say that, Leigh, because sometimes we have the imposter syndrome too, and we have âDoes anybody care? Anybody out there even listening.â We don't know but you just gotta keep taking bold steps.
10 thousand, hello! Somebody's listening. Thank you, everyone out there listening and thank you. Thank you, Leigh for joining us today. This has been an incredible conversation.
I absolutely love what you do so much and helping people become bold and taking those big bold steps in their life. To take the risk, to do the thing, to just take the action, to be yourself, self-acceptance, Vicki, I mean, that's incredible. And I think that's what we all should be striving for because we're all out here doing our thing, figuring it out and it's incredible. There's no limits, and when you're an entrepreneur, you're not alone. Look, there's communities, Leigh has a community for you. She's got a book coming out, super excited for you for that. Please keep us in the loop when that's published and we'll share it with our community too. And yeah, just keep doing great, big, bold things, Leigh, because we need more like you out there helping the rest of us get there too. So thank you so much for today.
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
