I’ve often commented how challenging it has been starting a business without an entrepreneurial background. I have also learned how easy it is to find others who are on the same journey. As I have sought out advice, training, support and wisdom, I have been amazed to discover how many entrepreneurs I have around me. Some of these entrepreneurs are friends from home, others from college, others still from previous jobs and some are even former students of mine. Some have entered the world of fitness or coaching or consulting or lawyering. There seems to be as much nuance to the businesses being run as there are people running them. At the same time, there is great crossover and similarity when it comes to running a successful business, not the least of which involves the use of strong leadership skills. In order to be successful, entrepreneurs must be decisive, thoughtful, organized, focused, strategic and dedicated. And that is just the beginning. Whether or not they choose to employ others, they are leaders just the same.
In an attempt to gather some of the advice, wisdom and lessons learned, I reached out to the entrepreneurs in my life to ask them what they wanted to share regarding the importance of leadership in their respective businesses. Below you will find the responses I received. May their wisdom and experience further highlight the important role leadership plays and how you can use your leadership skills to do whatever it is you hope to do.
Natalie Bayersdorfer, Master Trainer, STRONG by Zumba® (bootcamp)
natalie.bayersdorfer@zumbamail.com
www.facebook.com/SBZNatBayersdorfer
www.instagram.com/thecalzonenatalie.sbzmt
I travel around New England, licensing and empowering Fitness Professionals to teach STRONG by Zumba® a HIIT Style BootCamp Class.
How you are growing as a leader: Some of the most important lessons in life and leadership are the ones that challenge you most. I have a grown most as a leader based on trials and adversity. I have learned how I didn’t want to lead, how I did not want to be perceived and how I can most effectively start the ripple I intend to in my profession. If everything had always ‘worked out’ those lessons would be obsolete.
How/why you made the decision to take leadership of your life and start your own business: I also own a boutique fitness experience – The Calorie Zone or Cal-Zone for short. I wanted to have my own business because I realized in my own fitness journey that wellness and health have far less to do with physicality than we think. It is an emotional and mental struggle. Learning to live a healthy lifestyle, doing things you couldn’t imagine yourself doing and developing coping skills for maintaining health when life throws you curveballs are the founding grounds for success. Often we look for the quick fix instead of getting to the root and garnering skills for longevity of health.
Tips/advice/words of wisdom for others wanting to take the leadership/entrepreneurship journey: You will never regret trying as every experience holds lessons if not success. It is your mindset that will make the success happen!
Alison Dahl, Iron Maidens Fitness
615-484-6880, alison@ironmaidensfit.com
www.instagram.com/iron_maidens_fitness
www.facebook.com/AlisonDahlCoaching
Iron Maidens Fitness is a bootcamp for women in Norfolk, VA. We are on a mission to create connection, inspire hope and change lives by making women healthier, stronger and more confident.
Personal leadership style: I love building teams and making people a part of the process. People want a greater purpose in this life. I try to identify that in the people I meet and see where they can fit in and perhaps even take a leadership role themselves. I also believe that you need to be willing to do everything yourself. It doesn’t mean you do everything yourself, but you need to be willing to get your hands dirty. No one wants to follow a dictator.
How you are growing as a leader: The two biggest ways I’m growing right now is through experience and podcasts like Entreleadership, Build Your Tribe and the Shameless Mom Academy. I’m constantly using podcasts to gain nuggets of knowledge and inspiration while I’m driving and folding laundry. In fact, podcasts are what gave me the inspiration and confidence to start my own business. It’s amazing what you can glean from these shows for free! I also work with a business/life coach. There are bad leaders, great leaders and everything in between, but no business is successful without a great leader at the helm. Investing in yourself is one of the best decisions you can make for your business.
The most important leadership skills you use: Taking personal responsibility for every fail in your business is critical. And likewise, giving your team credit for success is a must. I have some helpers, but no official employees yet. Yet I still very much consider myself the leader of both a team and an organization. When my clients or team members have wins, they earn all the credit. It’s never because of me – it’s because of their hard work. I truly believe that, by the way – it’s not a line I feed to myself. And when someone fails, I look to see where I could have stopped it. Being a new entrepreneur, there’s a lot of that right now. I’m always examining things and identifying what I could have done differently as a leader to make an experience better. I look at everything as an opportunity for growth.
How/why you made the decision to take leadership of your life and start your own business: I had been teaching group fitness classes prior to getting my certification as a personal trainer. Working for another organization was a great way to get my feet wet, but wasn’t sustainable in terms of replacing the income I was making when I left my job in communications at Dell. I wanted to get into one on one training, but with my youngest still in half-day pre-school, I didn’t have the hours to commit to a big box gym and, quite frankly, felt I was worth more. So I took matters into my own hands and started a bootcamp in my backyard last summer. I immediately loved being the creative force behind my own programming, marketing, branding and customer retention. As a side-hustle, it was incredibly important to me to run my business on my terms. Having full autonomy to make my own hours and lead the way I want to is crucial for me.
Tips/advice/words of wisdom for others wanting to take the leadership/entrepreneurship journey: My biggest growth spurts have come from getting uncomfortable and trying new things. You can’t be an over-thinker in this world. You just have to trust your gut and dive in. In May I ran a six-week weight-loss challenge. I could have easily talked myself out of it. The timing wasn’t ideal (I was going to Italy for 2 weeks in the middle of the challenge), I had a lot on my plate, and I wasn’t prepared to run Facebook ads for it, as was part of my initial plan. But I saw a need from my clients for nutritional guidance in addition to the workouts. So, even though I wasn’t totally prepared, I went for it. I didn’t care so much about bringing in incremental revenue, although that was nice. What I gained from it was a deeper understanding of my clients. It connected me with them in ways we hadn’t connected before. It also helped me develop systems to make future challenges more efficient. And it gave me social proof that will help others connect and make the choice to all-in when I do it again.
Ashley Johnson, Ashley Johnson Coaching
My passion and purpose is to help you find yours!
Personal leadership style: I lead with empathy and authenticity. I find this creates meaningful connection which makes leadership easy and natural.
How you are growing as a leader: I’m learning that good leaders make hard choices, and I’m learning to be bold to make tough choices and have tough conversations as soon as I know I need to.
The most important leadership skills you use: It’s important to lead by example – if I can take a small risk to pave the way for others, I will.
How/why you made the decision to take leadership of your life and start your own business: I knew starting small was the way to go and that I would never know if I could do it until I tried. I work a full-time job and am a mom, so I wouldn’t have a perfect time to launch for a while. I’m loving spending time in my business as life permits, and building steadily.
Tips/advice/words of wisdom for others wanting to take the leadership/entrepreneurship journey: I think we all too often wait until we’re “ready” to step out towards our deepest desires. I’m finding that some readiness can only be gained by doing, so step out and give it a shot! You have all you need to take a step, and you’ll gain the rest as you go.
Shontia Lowe, Resumetiquette Consulting
www.facebook.com/ResumetiquetteConsulting
Resumetiquette Consulting specializes in tailored, individualized, and quality writing services. Though expansive, our focus is on creating, editing, building, rebuilding, and revamping Cover Letters and Resumes for Entry, Mid, and Executive/Senior level professionals- we do the grunt work, pay strategic attention to the details, and represent your best professional self on paper, so you don’t have to.
Your personal leadership style: A combination of Collaborative, Cross-Cultural, Coaching, and Strategic Leadership
How you are growing as a leader: As a leader, I am becoming more self-aware of my strengths and areas of growth. I am also becoming more grounded, perceptive, and empathetic, which in turn is making me more cognizant of the needs of my colleagues both personally and professionally, with the overarching goal of ensuring that their best professional self is fostered and integrated into our work through collaborative efforts.
The most important leadership skills you use: Observation, attention to detail, organization, critical and strategic thinking, listening, compromise, constructive feedback (mutual), empathy, passion and compassion
*A keen sense of purpose and joy in doing the work
*Others saw and repeatedly confirmed the skills I already knew that I had, and continuously encouraged me to formalize and monetize it
*Writing and putting the pieces of a document(s) together, bringing it to life, is my strength- I am good at and enjoy doing it
*Results are being produced, professional lives are being advanced, I am doing purposeful and meaningful work that makes a financial, professional, and personal difference
Tips/advice/words of wisdom for others wanting to take the leadership/entrepreneurship journey:
* Identify your niche, what you’re good at and/or enjoy doing, and hone in on how it can be useful and of value to others (marketable)
* Don’t feel like you’re ready or prepared? Think you will fail or you won’t be able to sustain it? After starting this informally in 2016, I can unreservedly say- do it anyway- you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Kavita Mittapalli, Ph.D., CEO, MN Associates, Inc.
www.linkedIn/in/KavitaMittapalli
Using data to effectively communicate evaluation findings to a wide audience to make an impact.
Personal leadership style: Lead by example. I have learned that hard work and good work ethics go a long way. I try to follow these principles every day to the extent possible.
How you are growing as a leader: Listening to my team members, learning to better communicate with them and our business clients to help meet their needs. Program evaluation, just like any service-oriented profession, is about people and relationships. Understanding the needs of the people and building good relationships with them always come before anything else.
The most important leadership skills you use: Listening, Communicating, Building and cultivating relationships.
How/why you made the decision to take leadership of your life and start your own business: I opened MNA when I was a grad student pursuing my Ph.D. at George Mason University in 2004. It was by sheer happenstance. I was a one-person shop for quite some time before I hired our first team member in early 2014. We are now five-people strong and are working in 16 states. We have just completed 175 evaluation reports and continue to look for ways to grow and collaborate with other individuals and organizations.
Tips/advice/words of wisdom for others wanting to take the leadership/entrepreneurship journey: Our work is not always about making money and strategizing our next move. It’s much more than that. It’s about building and cultivating relationships with all the team members and clients.
One must have patience with your team members and clients who have different personalities. Trying to understand what exactly the client needs and how you/r team can deliver can be tricky sometimes. In our field, having access to data in a timely fashion is critical to deliver the reports. Hence, developing a data collection and analyses plan from the get go and making the client understand how critical it is to respect the timelines is crucial. There is no substitute to experience, either.
Ayisha Thompson, Creative Director of Envision Creative A.R.T
443- 461-4772
https://www.envisioncreativeart.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ayishaenvisions
https://www.instagram.com/envision_a.r.t
Our mission is to support small businesses and entrepreneurs by applying the art of design to create captivating brand identities and marketing messages that are strategically aligned with their business goals and target audience.
Personal leadership style: To motivate and empower; I lead by encouraging others to step into their possibilities.
How you are growing as a leader: As I continue on this journey, make mistakes, and build connections with those who’ve already achieved success, I take all the lessons and stories and apply them to make better decisions as a business owner . A big part of being a leader is being transparent but supportive always being willing to pay it forward to the next woman who too is on the journey.
The most important leadership skills you use: Motivation- for myself and others
How/why you made the decision to take leadership of your life and start your own business: My need for independence and flexibility is what fueled my decision to take the leap of faith and start my own business. After seeing a co-worker die from a heart attack and being completely forgotten after ten years of services, I realized I needed to spend time with those who valued me the most, my loved ones. I also realized that to spend that time, I would need the flexibility to create those memories, and I did not want to have to ask for someone else’s permission to enjoy life to the fullest.
Tips/advice/words of wisdom for others wanting to take the leadership/entrepreneurship journey: Surround yourself with positive, like-minded individual in various stages of entrepreneurship.
*Those who are on the same level as you, so you can share mistakes and support each other when feeling discouraged
*Those who’ve already achieved success – so you can learn, seek mentorship, and gain knowledge from their experiences
*Those who are the future leaders, so you return the favor and support the next person in their journey.
Sara Voyard, SV Elite Coaching
305-914-6599, www.svelitecoaching.com
www.facebook.com/svelitecoaching
www.instagram.com/svelitecoaching
www.twitter.com/svelitecoaching
As the Founder & CEO of SV Elite Coaching, Sara creates an empowering and motivational space where people can drill down to who they REALLY are and what they REALLY want out of life. Sara’s mission is to empower her clients to let their authentic selves shine so they can enjoy the lives they deserve and have always dreamt of.
Personal leadership style: I’m a motivating and inspiring leader that helps others realize their fullest potential so they can use their talents and strengths to soar to new heights.
How you are growing as a leader: Every day I learn the value of saying “No”. I have seen firsthand where saying “No”, even to possibly lucrative and appealing offers, has saved me from long term headaches. Learning when to say “No” not only protects me, but also the overall “health” of my business.
The most important leadership skills you use: Clear & concise communication, motivation, positivity, and commitment.
How/why you made the decision to take leadership of your life and start your own business: I knew that I had much more to give to and receive from this world. I felt the need to use my talents to help make communities and families better, as they are ultimately the backbone of society. Not to mention that the satisfaction I receive from doing this fills me in a way that is priceless.
Tips/advice/words of wisdom for others wanting to take the leadership/entrepreneurship journey: Don’t try to do it all at once. Success takes time and time is precious. If you take your time to do things right, you will likely make less mistakes that you’ll be forced to deal with on the backend. More importantly, never forget that success is always associated with hard work!
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