Ep 007: 7 Lessons on Bravery, Vision and Building a Business That Feels Like You

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Welcome to The Shannon Acheson Show, real business talk for real life.  I’m Shannon, creative business coach, digital product lover, and your strategy sidekick.  I’ve built a business that fits my life, and now I help other women do the same.  No hustle, no fluff, just smart, honest conversations about building a business that works for you.  Let’s dive in.

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Okay, here’s the deal. After every guest episode, I like to pause for a sec to pull out the good stuff.  The moments that made me nod, scribble notes, or rethink something I thought I believed.  There’s always something they say that sticks with me. A tip, a mindset shift, a smarter way to do something.  And I don’t want these conversations to just sound good. I want them to help you build a business that actually fits your life.

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And I figure if I needed to hear it, maybe you did too. So this episode, it’s just that, the gold, the stuff you can actually use. Short, punchy, and straight to the point,  so you can take what you need and run with it. The other day,  I had the honor of sitting down with my friend, Wendy Batten. We have known each other for years.

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You know, in the funny world of online blogging, we went to a conference together and  there was a group for this  sort of a Facebook group for this conference where you could meet other people who were going. And Wendy and I and a couple of other people decided that  we sort of wanted to arrive in style at the hotel.  And so we combined rented a limo to take us from the airport to the hotel instead of taking the, you know, Atlanta shuttle.

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And so that was how we met  and we have talked off and on for years  and I’m so proud of her and what she’s done for her business. And so in this episode, I’m sort of going to share seven lessons on bravery, vision and building a business that feels like you  that I pulled out of the interview with Wendy. So  the first thing that I want to share out of these seven tips is to sort of do it scared.

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conference that Wendy and I went to,  she shared in our interview that she literally only had two blog posts done at that time. You know, she says she had no business being there  with other people who had been blogging and were already making  money. You know, but her entire journey in her business  from that point started because she said yes to that conference before she felt ready. You know, that one brave shaky step sort of set everything in motion.

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And so you don’t need full confidence to begin.  You just need a little bit of courage and a little bit of bravery to do it even if you’re scared. So that means if you’re gonna start a business, if you’re gonna pivot, if you’re gonna create a new product, whatever it is,  do it anyways, even if you’re feeling a little bit scared. The second thing I took out of my interview with Wendy is you don’t need the whole map. You don’t need the whole picture.  She did not see, you know, from that, you know,

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blog conference, she did not see that she would create, know, she opened a store after that. She created an amazing, amazing coaching business for retail  shop owners. She worked with many big paint brands  to help launch them, to help train. She didn’t see that, obviously, going to the blog conference.  None of us do. None of us can see the whole picture. But every little step revealed the next.

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Kind of like when you’re building a puzzle without the box.  Good metaphor, bad metaphor, but like you don’t know what the whole picture looks like. You can only put one piece together at a time, but only if you keep going. The third thing that I was sort of reminded of  by my interview with Wendy was to learn your niche inside and out. So Wendy didn’t just dabble, she invested in learning the ins and outs of her people.

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That’s sort of where the real success come from. Know your niche. Study the world of people that you want to serve.  It pays  off. Number four was to dream bigger and dream again. So Wendy calls it vision storming her life. I’m assuming kind of like brainstorming, but vision storming.  What do you really want it to look like? What do you want to do, be  and have? What  if it could be even bigger than that?

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So why not you? Why not now? Give yourself permission to play bigger. I heard the other day that when you are dreaming, that when you’re dreaming these big visions, to just suspend the idea that these visions also have to be based in your reality right now. If you are at a place where you can’t possibly imagine something being bigger or better in reality, you can just put that aside and just

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picture the dream, dream bigger, and then dream again, and then take the next step that needs to happen. The fifth thing from my interview with Wendy was every pivot comes with a bit of a price or a trade-off.  Shifting directions isn’t always clean or easy. When I say pivot,  even in my own head, I sort of picture this, okay, putting my feet on the ground and twisting, like pivoting.

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It’s clean, it’s neat and tidy, and you go from one direction to another.  The thing is, that pivoting is often just downright messy.  There can be grief in letting go of what was. Wendy talked about, you know, when her and her husband decided to move to their little cottage by the sea,  they sold their dream house. Like it was their family house. She loved that house.  I know for a fact she sometimes still misses that house. The thing is, is that the life that they’re living now,

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is better than what it could have been  and more in line with what they want than it could have been if they’d held onto that house.  So sometimes, you know,  that pivot can feel really hard and really, really messy.  If you’ve always done something in your business  one certain way, but things change and you need to do it another way,  know, bloggers, a little bit, I’m talking to you. Like we had it good for a long time and some of us still do. Some things are still ticking along as they were.

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The thing is, though, is that some things, a lot of things have shifted. You know,  Google has made changes. AI has come about. Like, there  are so many more people in the blogging.  And I’m not just talking blogging, blogging, like influencer market, market space. Like, there have been so many changes over the years.  And so that pivot when you need to realize you need to go,  this isn’t working the way it used to.  I need to do this now, whatever that looks like for you, whether that’s

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products or services or something else. That can be really hard and it can be really hard to let go of,  you know, the wish for things to be the way they used to be. And there can be true and  genuine grief  over what has to change. And that’s OK. The pivoting does come with a bit of a trade off. That’s just how it is. The sixth thing that I sort of pulled out of my interview with Wendy was

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How you invest shows what you value.  is very clear, coaching totally changed her business,  but it only worked because she saw it as an investment, not an expense. And when I say coaching, I mean her coaching, like she got coaching, she hired a coach,  she took courses, she has mentors.  So she looked at those as an investment, not an expense. Your time and money speak for you and  are they saying,

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what you want them to. Are you investing in growing yourself? Are you investing in professional development? Are you investing in the things that are needed to grow? Yes, that can be difficult if money is tight. I totally, 100 % get that. However, where you invest your time and money does show up later on in yourself, in your person, and in your business.

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And finally, the seventh thing that I pulled out of my interview with Wendy is debrief the flops.  Some people call these postmortems.  Wendy and I didn’t like that sort of term.  We prefer to call it more like a debrief.  So when something doesn’t work, a new product that you launched flops,  a collaboration doesn’t work out,  a software that you bought for your business, anything, whatever it is, when something doesn’t work, don’t just shove that aside.

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That will sort of niggle at you in the back of your brain.  Sit with that sort of quote unquote failure. Feel that disappointment. Grieve that something didn’t work. Acknowledge those feelings.  know,  feelings are very real and just pushing them aside doesn’t help anything. The flip side of that is don’t wallow in that forever. Don’t  keep that front of mind all the time. Feel the disappointment, then take what you can from it and move forward.  What was the lesson that you learned?

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What won’t you do again? What will you do different next time? So feel those emotions, but then let them go and see  how you can grow from that experience. Those are the seven things I learned  from my interview with Wendy. Do it scared. You don’t need the whole picture all at once. Learn your niche inside and out. Dream bigger and then dream again.  Every pivot comes with a price. How you invest your time and your money shows what you value and debrief the flops.

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Those are key points and great takeaways for your business. Okay, that’s it for today. Just a few takeaways to tuck in your back pocket or to try out this week.  If one of them hit home, I’d love to hear. Email, DM me, or leave a review.  And if you haven’t listened to the full interview yet, go back and hit play. It’s totally worth a listen.

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That’s it for today on the Shannon Acheson Show. If you found this helpful, follow the show and share it with a friend.  And hey, if you’re not sure what kind of business actually fits your life,  take the free quiz at ShannonAcheson.com.  It’ll point you in the right direction.  Thanks for listening. Talk again soon.