← Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
986: 10 Lessons from 10 Years in Business Every Entrepreneur Should Hear
00:49:56
If you’ve ever Googled how to grow my business, lessons from entrepreneurs, or how to avoid burnout as a small business owner, this episode is your roadmap.
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I honestly think it helps the most when you're much younger, but knowing it now does give me so much comfort. There is no such thing as a right decision and a wrong decision. Especially in business. They're all just decisions. Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host Abigail Pumphrey and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way. One that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Settle in. It's time to talk strategy.
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The Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University helps you go from I know the way to I've arrived with our top 10 ranked online MBA. Gain skills you can learn today and apply tomorrow. Get ready to go from make it happen to made it happen and keep striving. Visit strayer.edu Jack WelchMBA to learn more. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Chevin as many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street north in Arlington, Virginia.
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Okay, quick question. When was the last time your bookkeeping made you smile? Yeah, I didn't think so. That's why FreshBooks is giving you 70% off your first three months. Yep, I said 7 0. Here's the catch. It is a super limited time deal. So if you've been waiting for a sign to finally ditch the spreadsheets and get back to doing more of what you love, this is it. Go grab 70% off for three whole months right now@bossproject.com freshbooks that's 70% off@bossproject.com freshbooks don't wait because missing out on this one is going to hurt more than tax season. It is so surreal to be recording this episode. I can't even quite comprehend how it's been an entire decade. March 1st of this year will mark 10 years that I've been in business and what is now bossproject.com was the day that that launched March 1st was the day I declared I was going into business. It was when I started producing content regularly. It was. It's when I started reaching out to some of the people that became my first clients and a lot has changed and a lot about my life is incredibly different and I've learned so much along the way. Running an online business at times can feel a little bit lonely and these are the things I really wish someone would have stopped and told me and encouraged me with because they're powerful, not just in the work I do, but but also in how I show up in my day to day life. These are lessons that don't just dictate the trajectory of my business, but they provide a piece of calm, some direction, and sometimes the exact thing I need to remember when I'm having a hard day. I really hope you take the time to listen to these intently and when you need a reminder that you come back and you listen again. Now, if one in particular sticks out to you, I would love to hear from you. Go send me a message over on Instagram. You can find my profile by going first to Boss Project Bigale says is linked there. Send me a message, let me know you listened to this episode and let me know which lesson really made a difference for you. Lesson number one, you are actually capable of doing far more than you set out to do in the beginning. Let that sink in. I think we all have big dreams, we all have big aspirations, we all have things that we really want to accomplish. And there was something that inspired you to start, something that got you going, something that you wanted to help with, an impact. You wanted to make people, you wanted to make a difference in their lives. And I can almost guarantee that your dreams aren't big enough. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period of time, but dramatically underestimate what we can do in a lifetime. Just this last week I had a team member that counted up all the things we did last year. And just in the last year we produced 12 new programs like full fledged online courses. We relaunched four things that already existed and we developed 95 new templates inside the co op community, inside our membership. And add on top of that that we switched halfway through the year to a four day work week and we're already generous with our time off. We essentially did that in the equivalent of 10 months. I think if you had asked me 10 years ago, I had no idea I was going to make a course, let alone build hundreds of products and touch the lives of tens of thousands of small business owners. I want you to pause and really take some time to think about what you want and you don't have to have it all figured out. You're not going to have it all figured out. You're not going to know every step you need to take. You're not going to know every person you need to know. You're not going to have all the tools or the resources to day. But you can put yourself on a trajectory for greatness. And I don't want anyone to belittle what you're capable of. If someone is slowing you down, if someone is telling you no. We'll get to that. Lesson number two. Now, I wish I personally had learned this lesson a decade ago and not so much right now, because this would have helped when I was much younger. I honestly think it helps the most when you're much younger. But knowing it now does give me so much comfort. There is no such thing as a right decision and a wrong decision, especially in business. They're all just decisions. Now obviously there's ethical decisions and just decisions and things that benefit other people and things that hurt or harm other people. But that's not what we're talking about. More often than not, you're already living within your values. You're already showing up in a way that's alignment with the kind of person you want to be. But choosing one direction is just a choice. And it doesn't mean your life is going to be ruined if you make the wrong thing, if you go the wrong way or. Because really, is it even the wrong way? Or did you just learn something? Did you just realize it wasn't what you thought it was going to be? Trust that you have the power and the strength to change course at any time and try again or do it differently or use a different strategy. This is a pretty vulnerable thing to share, but I think to really showcase just how impactful this lesson is, I think it's warranted to tell you the part of my life that this impacted the most. Some of you may not know that my husband and I have struggled with infertility for eight plus years now. Very early on in that journey, I got incredibly sick following a car accident. I had a traumatic brain injury. I was on so many medications that would have made pregnancy incredibly unsafe. But we never prevented it. We never stopped it from happening. And then it just kept not happening. I'm the kind of person that always imagined being a mother. I always thought that that would be the kind of path I would go down, that my purpose in life was to raise someone right, to instill my wisdom on a child. And when that kept not happening, it felt like I was making some sort of wrong decision. Even though it was so far out of my control. And I think at some point I reconciled with this thought that I may never be a mother. And trust me, I know all of my options. I've explored all of my options. I've been down so many roads with this and kept so much of it private while building a business very publicly. But we're talking in the last few months, I felt like I had to make a decision related to this. I'm not going to get into it because I'm not ready to talk about it, but I just kept feeling like I was supposed to decide and I had to decide. And I do think there was an element of truth to that. I did have to decide. It was a decision to make. But the reason I had so much pressure on myself is because I had made up in my head that there was a right and a wrong decision. This is also another direction. I didn't think this was going to go, but, I mean, this was like a reckoning for me. This was a really big deal. So I spent some time exploring this idea with my therapist. I was not okay, and she just wanted me to sit with it, and I didn't like that. And I am a spiritual person. I am a religious person. I have a relationship with God. And whether you do or not, I make no judgment. All are welcome here. Literally all of you are safe. This is a safe place. And I saw this video that, like, actually changed my life in the matter of 30 seconds. And. And this guy was talking about God and he said, God has many plans for you. And I was like, yeah, duh. Like, I've heard this a million times. I. I grew up going to a Christian school. Like, I was raised in the church. Of course God has plans for me. Sometimes to the point where I felt like God was some sort of controller that. That had it all figured out and I was destined to only go one direction. And he paused and he. He said something to the effect of, God gave you free will. He knows you're going to make decisions in your life, but he doesn't have your life all figured out. He has many plans for you. And I swear to you, this, like, calmness went over my entire body. And I was like, he has many plans for me. This isn't a right or wrong decision. This is a decision. I had explored this thought before, but it wasn't until that moment, literally less than two months ago, that that really settled in as truth for me. So the next major milestone, regardless if it's incredibly personal or related to your Business, I really want you to stop. And remember that you have to trust your intuition. You have to make a choice, but you can always go back. There is very few permanent decisions that you can make. Obviously there are some, but especially in business, nearly everything you could do is reversible. So don't put so much weight on any single one decision. The businesses that tend to be more successful make more decisions more quickly. It's not that they always make the right one. They will pivot, they will make new decisions, but they act. So don't get caught up in the decision making. Lesson number three, people are going to offer you advice even if you do not ask for it. More often than not, they're speaking from a very personal place. People who are scared might not want you to take chances. People who are unhappy might want you to be miserable with them. Now, most people mean well, but take every opinion, regardless of where it's coming from, regardless of how much you love or respect the person saying it, take it with a grain of salt. You don't need universal validation for everything you're doing. At the end of the day, nobody, not a single soul on this planet has your life. Only you do. You're the only one who has to live it. Only you. I think one area that's helped with this is realizing you should only take advice from the kind of people that are living life the way you want to be living life. If they're making decisions that are out of alignment ethically for you, then you probably don't want to take advice from that person if they're absolutely miserable. And you can tell you probably don't want to take advice from that person. But sometimes it's not obvious, sometimes it is so well intentioned. I've paid tens of thousands of dollars to coaches over the years, all of which went into the relationship with me with a plan to support me and my business and to support the trajectory of where I was going. And all came in with their own biases, their own personal experiences, their own things that caught them up, their own mistakes. And all of that influenced how they coached me. Some people that coached me, I felt like really led me in the direction I wanted to go. And others broke me down. And it's not to say that some of those people were bad people, not at all. They just have a different life than I want, and that's okay. Lesson number four, your gifts are the things that often feel the most effortless. And it's incredibly easy to undervalue them when they come so naturally. I think most people do a really good job of ignoring what they're good at because it feels so obvious, it feels so easy. And I promise you, it's not for other people. There are things you are clearly gifted at that other people struggle with every single day. Your business doesn't have to be full of things that are constantly challenging you. There are things that get to be easy because you are excellent at them. I think a lot of people ignore their gifts because they think it has to be hard. And it can be. And I'm not saying it won't have challenges. But the more you spend time digging into the things that are effortless, the easier it all becomes. Lesson number five, Focus on sharpening your strengths instead of improving your weaknesses. Since last fall, I've been taking a leadership class, which has been really interesting. I've taken a lot of classes over the years to expand my skills, and I went into this opportunity less focused on learning how to be a better leader and more focused on what does the next chapter of my life look like and using this as a discernment opportunity. But we recently went through a training that I think really reminded me of what's important. And specifically we were using Strength Finder as a tool. For those of you who are unfamiliar, it is a personality type quiz, not exactly the same as like Enneagram or Myers Briggs. This tends to be more focused on your leadership styles, but there's 34, I believe, specific qualities that you can have as a leader. And there is a timed test developed by Gallup, who spent decades developing this. And it will come out on the other end with your strengths in order of these 34 different qualities, what my strengths are are less important in this actual story. I have taken this test a couple of times. Once when I was still in corporate. I took it again in 2021. And we use it as part of onboarding. So anytime we hire a new employee after they're hired, we don't use it as a hiring tool. We only use it as a tool to assess how to best support a team member. So after someone is hired, we have them take Strength Finder. It is incredibly helpful for you to understand as a manager how to best support someone. Nonetheless, I have done all of that work independently. I have never had someone lead a strength finder like class or kind of background info. And I learned so much. But the thing that really stood out to me in that was we did this exercise. And the exercise is so simple. All we did was write the phrase, I use my strengths every day. Three times. But we did it two different ways. The first time we did it, we wrote it with our non dominant hand. And then the second time we did it, we did it with our dominant hand. It's super simple. You could absolutely do this too. So I did it. And I don't remember the last time I tried to write anything with my non dominant hand. I use my left hand for all sorts of things, but writing is definitely not one of them. I have thought of myself as ambidextrous, but clearly I am not. And I think that's probably gotten worse over the years rather than better. Nonetheless, it does not matter. What did matter is that it took me almost two minutes to write that phrase three times. It took me less than 15 seconds to write it with my dominant hand. And if you think of that as an illustration for focusing on improving your weaknesses, could you one day wake up and eventually have those weaknesses be as strong as where you're dominant? Maybe, maybe if you really worked on it every single day and you were super dedicated, maybe, maybe someday. But trying to go, what is that, almost 10 times faster. I think for the average person it's really only two times. But I was like struggling with my left hand and it just really was a reflection of when you use your strengths, you're powerful, but when you're focused on improving your weaknesses, all it's doing is making you feel sorry for yourself and you're so distracted. Like when I was using my non dominant hand, I was the only thing I could focus on was how bad I was. At this point, I was not aware of anyone else in the room. I couldn't focus on anything else. All I could see was my flaws. When we switched, I was competitive, I was excited, I enjoyed the process. It went quickly. I was able to stay aware of my surroundings while all of it was happening. And I was excited to be one of the first to finish. But on the weak side, I was one of the last to finish. And I thought it was so interesting how opposite it was. Like you'd think you'd be one of the first to finish both times. Nope, definitely not. Well, in this class she specifically talked about this traditional way of management. And it's probably the way most of your parents, or maybe if you've been doing this as long as I have, maybe the early part of your career, how other people managed you in the workplace. But if you had like a review and you sat down with a manager, that review would be focused on all the ways you needed to improve and be better. It wouldn't touch on all of the things you had been excellent at, all of the ways in which you had improved the organization. It would have been focused on you improving the things that your employer potentially sees as flaws. And with the development of this study, there has been a really big shift, especially in larger corporations, to change the way in which people are managed, specifically leaning into strengths. Because with these strengths, it's not to say that any one person can't do the same job as someone else. Now, I'm sure there's some things you couldn't do. Like, I'm never going to be a nuclear engineer who understands how to code models. Like, I'm never going to be that person. But there are plenty of jobs I could do besides this one and do decently well at what your strengths tell you is how you're going to do the job, not what job you're going to do. And so the way I look at this in business is in the same way that people tell you how you should do something, or give you advice for how to build, or give you advice for how to show up, or give you advice for what to do in this situation or that situation, they're almost always telling you how they would do it based on their strengths, based on what works for them. And sometimes if that person is a lot like you, that can work. But sometimes it is in direct conflict with what you are good at and how you best show up. And so, for example, in the online world, I have felt this pull to show up and in other ways that I just have not. I started a YouTube channel years and years ago. I would say more than half the videos on my YouTube channel I didn't even create. They were guests or other employees. They weren't me. Now, there are plenty of videos that I did, but I always felt like long form video content was a weakness of mine. Now, whether that's true or not could be argued. But the more I sit with it, it's not that I can't do video. It's not that I don't know how to talk in that environment. It's not that I couldn't figure out how to do the script or do the editing or do any of it. But it does not come naturally to me. You sit me in front of a microphone, I could talk for hours. You put me in front of slides to teach my students a concept. I got this. But seeing myself on video, all I see is how many years I hurt. The average person is unlikely to notice, but one side of my face is weaker than the other after my brain injury. So especially when I'm tired, my smile is crooked. I sometimes talk out of one side of my mouth over the other. My eyes will twitch if I have a migraine. One of my eyes is squintier than the other one and it makes me incredibly self conscious. So, so self conscious. And I don't have to build a business where I'm self conscious. I could, but that would be like writing with my non dominant hand. I can do what I'm great at and I can do it well. And sometimes that's having a really honest conversation like on this podcast. But I also think a huge gift of mine is writing. And who's to say that you can't have the same things occur by doing it in a different way? It's not to say that you'll never try. It's not to say that you won't eventually work on developing that skill. It's not to say never. Never say never. That should have been its own lesson. Never say never. But the more space and time I've given myself to realize that I should be leaning into my strengths. I should lean into the things that are feeling the most effortless. Not only has my business performed better when I do that, but I like my job better. And if you're bothering to run a business, your job doesn't have to be something you love every single day. It is still sometimes work, but you should like it more times than not. You shouldn't be dreading waking up every day. If you are, something needs to change. Want to learn exactly step by step how to get paid to generate leads in your business. I'm ready to give you the exact steps that help me generate tens of thousands of qualified leads and millions in low ticket digital product sales. I I won't just show you what I did, but teach you how you can do it too. I'm talking not just how to create low ticket digital products, but also showing you how to use them strategically to generate leads for your other existing or future offers. I'm sharing it all@bossproject.com jumpstart including exactly how I made $8,033 and generated 277 leads my very first month selling digital products. Find out more@bossproject.com jumpstart so you're about.
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To make a trade based on a.
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Friend'S text, but which you do you listen to is it we could buy a house in Tulum, get optioning those options. We could lose everything. Or let's do a little research, get your head in the trade and make.
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Learn more at WhatsApp.com lesson number six being in business. For most people, you will at some point encounter an incredibly hard season. Whether that's because the business itself is hard or your life is hard and you have competing priorities, it's going to make you feel vulnerable and you might even be tempted to walk away. But the thing I come back to and the thing that once it clicked, I realized that there was so much more opportunity is that ultimately, even though they say 9 out of 10 businesses fail, yada yada, there's really only two ways a business can fail. Only two. You either run out of cash or you give up. And even when you run out of cash, if you don't give up, sometimes you can overcome that barrier because cash is just a resource that's replenishable. Not saying it's not going to be hard. Not saying you're not going to have a bad day. But I have had seasons in this business that, whether it was the business or my life that were incredibly challenging. Both ways. But I just keep reminding myself to not give up. Because this business has afforded me far more than just the cash it's generated. The community I've built, the impact I've made, the life I get to live, the lifestyle I have, how I can travel, the amount of flexibility I have. I could just decide I'm not working today and that's my choice. There is nothing else I could do that would compare. And it's hard because there's so much out there. I have been tempted many times to go work for someone else, not because I necessarily wanted this to go away, but because I thought it sounded interesting or fun or exciting or different. And the more I realized that I could just pick, pivot and make the business more interesting or fun or exciting, I realized that the things I wanted was just making the grass greener on the other side when really I had full control. And when you work for someone else, you don't. You give up that control. So if you never give up, this can support you for the rest of your career. Lesson number seven. Getting feedback can feel like a personal attack. But if someone felt safe enough to share, it's up to you to determine what's simply coming from where they're at and the things they're experiencing and what they have going on versus an opportunity for you to slow down, to grow, to change, to adapt, to make different choices. I have grown so much as a person over the last 10 years. There was so much of my life that was brought up to believe a certain way or to act a certain way or to be a certain kind of person. And I had to unlearn a lot. And it made me scared. There was so many times that I just wanted to stay the way I was because it felt safer. But there have been people that have showed up in my life that have taught me to grow. And then of course there's, there's the smaller things that are just opportunities to improve your curriculum or improve your content or how you shop or better answer someone's question. But sometimes these things are really big. Like really big. And you have to make a really big choice. I remember a couple of years ago, I was approached by a non binary member of my community and they asked me why I felt the need to gender everything. And I really had to pause because for a lot of years, if you've been around long enough, you know that this business was originally started to help women in business. And I could have held onto that, but it was part of our past, but it's not part of our future. And a number of years ago, whether you realized it or not, I stopped saying that this was for women in business. I made my language more inclusive. I prominently display that I take the safety of my community clear very seriously. If I pitch my community, I have a whole section in my webinar that talks about why safety of my community is so important. And we, we take this so seriously. And has there been people since I made that change that disagreed with my choices? Yeah, I've got some really nasty emails about why did you need to include this and da da da da. For that exact reason. The people that weed themselves out are not safe in my community. I don't want anyone in my community to be hurt in this current environment politically is heartbreaking. People I love will be hurt. So I don't know what's going on in your life or the way you were raised or the things you were taught. But I just want you to know that you can learn, that you can grow, that you can change, you can be challenged. And if it feels personal, you need to really look in the mirror. I'm not perfect at this. There are so many things that I'm sure I could do better at that I could be more loud about. For the most part, I keep politics and religion out of the things I do and say. Not because I don't have an opinion, but because I want my community to feel like they can be themselves, but when by simply existing, their life is threatened. I'm not going to shut up now. I realize that's super deep, but I still mean it when I'm talking about feedback for things that are far less important because that can still feel personal. When you perform a one on one service or you deliver a course or a program and someone says they didn't like their experience, it can hurt you figuring out ways to take that information in and sift through what is simply someone's opinion versus an opportunity for you to improve the experience for everyone. Lesson number eight. Two things can be true at once. It's a phrase that I have to come back to. It is something that I have to reconcile because feelings and emotions are not binary. They're not simply negative or positive. So much so that I think you could say that you feel sad. And on some occasions you might mean that you're grieving a loss and you're upset. And other times you could be sad because you're nostalgic and grateful and thankful. But sad is used both ways regardless of how specific you want to be. You also are a complex person that has and experiences multiple emotions. And two things can be true at once. Five things can be true at once. I had a friend call me last night. She said, how are you? Well, besides all this other stuff. And when she said that, I knew exactly what she meant because she knows how upset I am by all this other stuff over here. But she wanted to know the other stuff and she was specific about it. And so I was able to share from that place. But a lot of times when someone comes at me and they say, how are You. I don't know what to say. One, because society makes it out to say that you're supposed to always just be fine when sometimes you're not. And sometimes you can have competing things going on. And both are still true. And you can feel one more in a moment than another, but they're still both happening. So if you've struggled with it and you're like, this is so exciting, and I'm so proud of myself for this XYZ thing, but how can I feel that way when this other part of my life, I'm grieving and sad and upset and all the other things that come with that, both can be true. Just because you're grieving doesn't mean you can't experience happiness or joy or pride. You get to be complicated. And what an incredible gift it is that other people can be complicated right next to you. And you get to share experiences, and you get to support each other through those experiences, and you get to understand that that other person is just as complicated as you are. That leadership class I mentioned earlier in this episode, I've made a new friend, which hasn't happened in a while, but I set out this year to make new friends, and I've been. I've been doing pretty good at it. His name is Philip, and we go to this class every two weeks, and we learn about leadership. We usually don't sit together, but the first week, maybe not the first week. Very early on in this class, someone suggested that we go to a bar down the hill after class and that we would do that every time and anyone was welcome. And there was no rules about it. You. You did or didn't have to participate. It didn't matter. You could show up sometimes or not at all. And I don't really drink, basically, ever. I also don't care if other people drink. No judgment, but. But I did join the class to get to know people, so I decided to go nonetheless. The first couple times that happened, Philip and I ended up sitting across from each other, and two hours down the road, we'd still be the only ones. Like, we would have talked the whole time to just each other, despite there being 10 or 15 people at the table. Well, last time I saw him, he was just so kind, and he slowed down. And we'd been talking about all the things, like how him and his partner had recently got engaged and, you know, they're renovating their house and this, that, and the other thing. And I had shared other stories and gone on all these different directions, and he stopped Me, and he's like, you know, over these last few months, I've been really learning who you are. And if you had asked me, even just two hours ago who I thought you were, I would have talked about how driven you are and how much of a big deal you. You are in your business, and you do all these incredible things. And he's, like, just sitting here, I realize how much more nuanced you are and how much more complicated you are in, like, this beautiful way. And it was one of the kindest things anyone had ever told me. But it also illustrated to me how often we look at everyone else and assume in the same way that we judge ourselves for thinking we could only feel one thing, we look around, and we also assume other people have these very simple lives, and they don't. Everyone's life is just as complicated as yours. Everyone has stories that they tell and stories that they keep to themselves and experiences that are their own and experiences they live out loud. And I've been doing this a long time. 10 years is a long time. And I spent a lot of those years really not holding back. Like, I was sharing deeply personal things. I was sharing my life. I was sharing the things I was doing on a daily basis. When stories came out on Instagram, you would have known. Every time I went to the grocery store, every event that I went to, every fun thing I did, every. Every friend I ran across. And then it started to feel too vulnerable because there was these people that I didn't know at all. Like, I had no relationship with them. I didn't know their name. I didn't know if they had a business or not. I didn't know where in the world they were. But they were walking around with all this knowledge about the nuances of my life, and it gave me some pause that I want to keep some things to myself. And it's been an interesting journey because I think I pulled back really hard and basically made it all about business for a long time. I am doing my best to figure out how to let you guys in and give you some access so you can see me as a human that has a real life just like you, while also being mindful that some things are deeply personal and they deserve to stay that way. All of that to say, you are beautifully complicated, you are beautifully nuanced, and you need to allow yourself the complexity instead of trying to boil yourself down to one feeling or one emotion or one way to be or one way to show up. Lesson number nine. No one will celebrate you unless you Celebrate you. I need to say it again. No one will celebrate you unless you celebrate you. Do you think anyone is going to throw a party for me? Being in business for 10 years? Does anyone else even know the date? I'm not sure my own spouse knows the date. He may know the year, he may know the season. I don't think he could tell you the date. Slow down. Pay attention to your accomplishments. Share them with the world. Be loud about it. We were told as children, most of us millennials. I realize we have people from other generations who listen to the podcast, but this is specifically how I know the majority of millennials were raised. We were told not to brag, don't brag. But that's not helping you anymore. As a kid, I think looking back, it was our parents attempt to make those less fortunate feel less different, that we were all a little more the same and that we were supposed to be humble and inclusive, which I think all grounded in good things. All grounded in good things. But you're an adult and you run a business. The only time you are bragging is when you're trying to make someone else smaller. If you're trying to harm someone or make someone weaker or make someone feel bad about themselves, then, yeah, you shouldn't do that. That's shitty. But if you're proud of yourself, if you want to inspire other people, if you hit a milestone and you are so excited, don't hold back. Don't shut up about it. I cried on the Internet when we hit 40,000 students. My team would know when that happened and they were excited. But no one, not a single person on this planet, was as proud or as grateful or as humbled by that experience than me. And I could have just let it slip by. I let 5,000 slip by and 10,000 slip by and 20 and 25 and so on and so forth. I didn't celebrate so many accomplishments. And I watched other people, I watched them celebrate. And I'd look back and I'd say, people are so proud of them. No, they may have people that love them, that are supporting them in celebrating, but they're proud of themselves. They threw the party, they put their life together. Now, it's not to say that there aren't some life accomplishments that other people will surprise and delight you with. Sure. Milestone birthdays, a baby shower, wedding shower, all those things. Anniversary party, maybe. But in business, no one's going to know unless you say it. No one is going to know unless you say it. So say it loudly. Say it with all the Enthusiasm that you feel. Do not be afraid. I promise you, your enthusiasm and excitement and grit and excitement, like all of that is so attractive. People want to be around people that are excited about their life. And man, I've had some seasons where I was not excited about my life and I was throwing a pity party and no wonder no one wanted to be near me. Okay, I think I've hit that nail in hard enough for you. Lesson number 10 and an exciting one to end on. Maybe exciting is the wrong word. An important one to end on. Working online is only as lonely as you make it. You can build real friendships regardless of where you live in the world. Of course, proximity helps. When we went to school every day or we were in college and we had roommates, obviously that proximity helped simmer us together, make us more like each other, make us spend time together. But when you're online, that doesn't happen unless you make it happen. If you want to be friends with someone, be friends with someone. Compliment them, say hi, ask them how they're doing. If you would stop in a grocery store if you ran into that person, why are you not stopping and commenting on the things they're sharing? That's how you build relationships. And I know this. I learned this lesson very early on in business. This is not necessarily a new lesson for me, but I forget. I wait for someone to like me or to want me or to spend time with me when that other person is probably doing the same thing. And I know, I know, I know, I know, I know we all want to be pursued. We're really, as much as I say, we're complicated. We all just want to be loved. We all want to be cared for. We all want people to notice. But everyone is so busy. They all got their own life going on and they all have their own distractions and work is just a part of it. I used to think some of those relationships that I developed were not the same as in person, that they couldn't possibly have the same depth. And I've experienced quite the opposite. Many of my online friends are closer, know more about me and how I really think and feel, are more supportive. And probably more than anything else, understand my life in a way that no one else can because they also work online and they work for themselves and they run their own businesses. It doesn't have to be lonely. You can make friends and I want to give you an invitation so that you have an environment that you can develop these relationships in. And as a reminder, it's only. You're only going to get out of it what you put into it. So with that, if you're not currently a member of the Co op, I would love for you to join. This is a membership I built for online businesses. This is a community I want to continue to foster. I want people to develop deep and lasting relationships with each other. Now the Co Op is full of more resources than I possibly have time to cover, but it's also a place for you to come together. It's a place for you to be deeply honest with what's going on. It doesn't have to be all good news all the time. You can share the hard stuff. You're safe in that environment and you're going to be supported. So if you want to find out more about what it's about and what's included and all the things, you can find out more@creative templateshop.com membership there's so much in store now. You better be celebrating with me. 10 freaking years in business is a big deal and it would be so easy to just let it be another day. But I'm going to be celebrating for more than a day. This is more than a day kind of celebration. Ten years is a big milestone and I've been saying it like it's a decade, probably for the last six months but we are actually approaching the date it is actually going to happen. And so if I'm celebrating for the next six weeks, get used to it because we're going to have so much fun. I can't wait to share all the things that are coming. P.S. if you've gotten this far, obviously we're like BFFs. I have such a big secret. I can't wait to tell you. And it's definitely gonna all things going the way they're supposed to. It's supposed to come out near the 10 year anniversary, hopefully a few days before. So here's to 10. Here's to 10 powerful life changing lessons. I hope you've enjoyed and thank you so much for being a part of this community. Your love, your support, your feedback, the way you've helped me grow. I wouldn't be here without you. Thank you. Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs to hear it and post on social media. You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me at Abigail says and ossproject so we can share it. Okay second favor to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from bossproject. I'd love if you'd join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.com signup to make sure I have all your contact details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me if you'd leave a rating and review. It not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring on quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.