Episode 166: The Entrepreneurial Journey: Finding Your Inner Leader
Have you heard the story of how I fumbled my way through entrepreneurship? Well, now you can.
Tune into this story-time episode to hear how I learned, tested, and navigated everything to do with my entrepreneurial journey...except trusting (and subsequently leading) myself.
This is a beautiful, intimate, behind the scenes share of what it was really like to build what you now see.
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Website whitedove-gannon.com
Episode Transcript:
(00:04):
Welcome back FEM Nation. Gosh, it's been a minute since I've been active on the podcast. In fact, my last episode was in February, 2022. As of this recording, we are looking at October of 2022, and it's time, it's time to come back. As you'll notice, I did not bring this episode back, this recording back with an intro and there won't be an outro to it. I'm gonna pull all the way back, strip it down, talk about what's real, what's absolutely in front of us, whether we can see it, whether we don't see it, what it looks like to build a business, but not how to build a business. There's plenty of information out there on how to build a business. Me dive into more of being you by sharing, being me. Most of you know my story. If you haven't, this'll be some new news for you.
(01:19):
I've been a serial entrepreneur for most of my adult life. No intentions of being an entrepreneur prior to really just kind of landing in it back in 1998, I believe. Yeah, right around there long time ago, right? Seems like it feels like it, but at the same time, I'm still me, so it doesn't really feel like it. Not really sure how to explain that. But I've had multiple businesses. One business that my husband and I created together was a multi seven figure construction business in the early two thousands. It ran for about 13 years. I can't really take credit for starting that one or really being the driver of that one. I did what I needed to do, learn the corporate ropes inside and out. Made great money, obviously really good money for the time. As we were growing our family building a business, and we were high on life at that point.
(02:20):
We were successful. We were doing the, the thing, right? The dream. We were living the dream. We had a beautiful house. We bought toys, you know, big toys, fun toys, adult toys that you could go camping or boating or take a vacation, any of those things. All of those things. We, we did 'em, but we didn't do 'em lavishly because even then lavish was not really a thing. But we had that business for about 13 ish years. Prior to that, my husband was a partner in his first business, and that's really where we started that one. But when we started Communications Underground, our construction company, it was very niche. It was not a traditional construction company. Although we were in the realm of underground utilities, it was something that was somewhat unheard of. So it was hard to explain. There's a through line with that.
(03:20):
Fast forward a little bit. I started in the early two thousands because I had the time and the bandwidth. My creativity was knocking out the door. I didn't even know what to call it. I didn't see myself as an entrepreneur, but I opened a kid's consignment clothing store originally that was intended to be an online eBay business. That's exactly how I was going to do a very, very, very early 2000, I think 2000, 2001 is when I started that business. So I started buying lots of clothes, like not a lot of clothes, but lots of clothes for this business. And I started having tons of, of inventory piled up and my husband asked me, he was like, Why don't you just open a store? You can still do the online portion of it even if you open a store. So of course then my entrepreneurial mind kicked in.
(04:13):
Yeah, I can do that. The thing that I recognized over my entrepreneurial journey as I segue for just a moment from that story is that no one ever really told me I couldn't do something when I was growing up. So I come at this entrepreneurial space, understanding that I had a tremendous amount of privilege of not working against myself in seeing the creative possibility out there. I understand that that is something that I know a lot of people suffer with or they suffer through or they have to work on. I was never told that I couldn't do something. It was always more of, This sounds cool. I think I'll give it a try, figure out how to do it, whether it's finances or something to learn or how, however that looks. I I never really had to think that it was impossible. I just did it and learned it, winging it along the way.
(05:11):
That business was not financially sound by any means. It cost me. I think the learning lesson was a $20,000 loss because we ended up moving, unbeknownst when we started, when I started that business, that store we moved about eight months later out of the city. And so it didn't make any sense to continue with that business. I did try though, but it was about a an hour commute each way. And I just found myself not opening this store as often and not being there. And that doesn't do very well with customers, right? If you, if they come by when you should be open and there's no consistency of you being there or you're not there when you should be there, we all know in hindsight that that's probably not going to be a real steady flow of customers because they don't know if you're gonna be there.
(06:05):
So they stopped trying from there, continued with the construction business, and of course I was still doing the construction business, you know, my duties, all the administrative, all of the corporate aspects of it, learning the accounting world, diving into the financial wealth and health of the, the corporation itself as I had that little store. So my heart wasn't a hundred percent in the consignment store. It was more of can I do this? Sure. let me learn how to do this. Okay, sounds intriguing. And about a year in, it was finally where we closed it, you know, a couple months after we moved. That being said, it didn't stop there. We moved our construction business to Kansas for about four and a half years, and I had no desire to start a business. However, we moved onto 160 acres and my, my sustainable living soul just wanted to utilize every possibility in the 160 acres.
(07:18):
And we sure did. We, did. I, I'll dive into that a little bit here in a minute. But that was out of just a desire to do something with what I had in the moment while raising my kids. At that point, I think we, we had we had a new baby on the way, our fourth in Kansas, and then subsequently in that period of time, we had our fifth as well. Yes, we have five kids, for those of you who don't know that. But it was not me thinking, I'm going to go into this to make an impact on anyone's life or to build a business for myself. I read a book by joelson called Pastured Poultry Prophets, and there was someone in the county that we lived in in Kansas that was doing this. And once again, my mind was like, I can do this.
(08:17):
Let's figure it out. What does it look like? What do I need to know? How do I dive in? And just went for no plan. I have a, a running history of no plan. It's a blessing and a curse at the same time. However, it never stopped me from trying to put what I was creating or what I was doing in a square box and saying, It has to be this and it has to happen at this period of time, or it needs to produce this kind of income. Because I was privileged to not have to be the sole breadwinner, the sole income provider for the household. We had the construction company, We had income coming in. Were we living as fruitful as the early stage of the business, the construction business when we moved out to Kansas? No. In fact, we thought we were going to shut it down.
(09:10):
We actually thought that we were going out there completely reset, starting all over. The construction business was on its tail end in here where we were in Colorado, and we thought we were just moving everything out there to shut it down. Oddly, the construction business continued, but it did not need me anymore. We were no longer operating as a corporation in the, the managerial aspect of it. It was much more of just doing a job would come in, a prospect would ask for a bid, we would schedule it in, and then my husband would get the job done. That's how it worked. So I had the freedom, I had the time freedom, I had the not so much the income freedom at that point. I had to bootstrap pretty creatively. But I did, and it's such a humble beginning. I will dive into the farm itself in a, in a later episode, but it was such a humble beginning.
(10:14):
We lived in absolutely humble accommodations. I mean, we lived, it was small guys. It was two bedroom, one bath, completely run down. I will say run down cuz I literally think it was old, old, old farmhouse. And we had four children, and myself and my husband. And then of course, during that time, we, we had number five. It was not ideal. It was weird. It was different. And I look back often and contemplate pieces of that time timeframe. But that particular business, it did become a business. It did produce income, It did, it was sustaining itself and feeding my family as well. But we were generating a small amount of income. It took about three years to get, you know, really, really in depth to where it was turning a profit to some degree, tiny, but it was still turning a profit.
(11:20):
And we could have scaled it, but staying there was not an option. Again, that whole story and that whole beginning of kind of the, you know, the, I'd say the last 15 years, it's about when it was when we came back when we were in Kansas and then came back. But in the last 15 years, that was the beginning of this transition. But from there to continue with my entrepreneurial journey, from there, we moved back to Colorado, shut everything down the farm. We liquidated everything, auctioned it all off sold our livestock, sold all of the construction business equipment. Literally started all over, back in Colorado. I briefly was employed. That wasn't going to work because my children were my first priority. And it just was not intended to be that way. It was not intended to work that way. I was missing out on their world.
(12:21):
And my mama heart called me. They called me deeply and I, I was conflicted with that. So generated income for a little bit to help us get off and running while my husband was also working. But we were entry level, we were entrepreneurial in the days when making good money, was, was there for a good portion of it, but college education wasn't necessary. I don't think it's necessary at this point in the world that we live in today. But that's, again, another topic for another time. But we worked and I decided I was going to creatively figure out how to be able to be with my children, to expand my knowledge, to get us out of that rut, that timeframe, those concerns in the moment, right? We were barely, barely, barely making it. I mean, scraping to make it. We were probably a hair away from bankruptcy, and that would've been the second time that we were staring down the possibility of bankruptcy.
(13:23):
But I'll be darned, I was not gonna go down that road. I did not want to go down that road. I would figure it out. We would figure it out. And we did. We did. But my entrepreneurial journey has not been all peaches and roses and, and rainbows in beautiful times. It's not my business ventures were not intended to be business ventures. They were a way to make money aside from the construction business that that was a bonafide business. But my business ventures up until that point were just to generate income, doing something I love to do, figuring it out, making money along the way. So yes, I was entrepreneurial. Did I recognize it as such? Not really. Not really at all. But once we came back to Colorado, after working myself, it just became such a conflict between raising my children and what, where, who I wanted to be as a mother, how I wanted to show up in their life as a mom.
(14:28):
I started college classes at the local community college here. Great school, hands down, no complaints. I did online. I did evening classes when my husband was home from work. I made it work. I made it work somehow. And inside of that timeline, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had grand visions of maybe being a veterinarian or I don't know. I even stumbled down the road of law enforcement at that point in time too, about became about, became an officer, my husband, when them, I know I'm segueing off of this, but it just blip in my mind that I even did that too. Passed all the tests for a program that the local police department had at this point in time. Mind you, this was back in literally 2000, oh, 2007, about 2007, 2008. And I was one of only two out of the class of 15 that passed all the way through.
(15:41):
And we were literally getting ready to, to start training. And my husband just looked at me, he's like, How far are you gonna go down this rabbit hole? And I said, Oh, I don't know. I can, I'd love to be a detective or I'd love to, you know, help people. I, I just, I wanna serve. I wanna do something. And he was like, You realize that you have five children and a husband here, and you work yourself up from the ground up inside of, of a career like that. He's like, I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to sleep at night with you being out there. That was fair, absolutely fair. And I'm grateful to this day that he said something because part of the curse side of not ever being told you can't do something is a situation like that where it was not going to be beneficial for my family.
(16:31):
It was not going to be what, what I was envisioning. It just was not. And and so I put that program on hold, I thank them, and they understood that family comes first. So I was grateful for that moment. But anyway, coming back to the college side of it, I chose to go into accounting because I had done that with the construction business, and that made logical sense to my brain. So in the accounting world, I recognized in the classes, I don't want to be in an accounting firm. But at the same time, I had this little boutique bookkeeping business. I started popping up with clients as I was networking in this community and started to know other predominantly women entrepreneurs, women solopreneurs that just weren't keeping an eye on that part of their business. So in doing that, I just allowed that one to grow.
(17:26):
I allowed that business to come to me instead of me going after it. I allow it to, to flourish. It was the first business coach I had to try to be realistic about this business. Everything else had just been, let's wing it and see how it goes. This one, okay, let's, let's do this the right way. Let's be proactive about building a business. Let's determine what that looks like. And so it did. And that bookkeeping accounting business really was a launchpad for a lot of things. But I let it be organic. I let it grow on its own. I didn't try to chase a creative aspect. I, I chose to be a business owner instead of just a creative. And that's a con a conflict to be honest with you, because I love the creative world. I love to dive into things and figure out what makes them tick and find gaps and provide solutions.
(18:25):
My creative side is tremendously active. The analytical side, which is what I learned so much in my, my college years in accounting as well as growing this bookkeeping business, is that there's a logical aspect to it, an analytical aspect to building a business as well. So could I help someone in a creative space grow and scale their business? Yeah, I could, but that's not my love either. And so fast forward from there. I moved into creating an opportunity inside of the digital space for accountants that was going to help business owners who were not local, who were in the more in the digital space, service based industries, digital space. Because in 2017, that was just up and coming. And as I did that, I fell in love with the digital world. I fell in love with the creative, finding something in this creative aspect that really, really, really hit home for me. And from there, from 2017 on I real
(19:39):
From 2017 on, that in and of itself has been just a massive journey. And then of course, hit 2020, right? Right. When I was starting to feel like I had my footing, I had invested, I had dove deeply into this world and this digital business space, this online business space before people even understood it was a thing before it was mainstream, before 2020 took it and just, just skyrocketed it in front of everyone. In fact, I remember, I remember in 2020 as the pandemic was shutting everything down that people were like, Oh, what is Zoom? And I was like, Whoa, I can't, people don't even know what Zoom is. This is crazy interesting fascinating. This, the world has been alive for a while, but it really propelled it into mainstream entrepreneurship. And so I continue to grow. I continue to learn. I wrote my book, finally got my book out, never promoted it. There's that creative side of, again, that did the thing, but just didn't follow through with it because the story that was meant to be told, or the impact that was meant to be made was done. It was, it was already living and breathing. I didn't need, it didn't, it didn't need me anymore.
(21:04):
And so once I settled into that world, once I invested, oh gosh, probably a couple hundred thousand at this point, getting to know the inside, the outside, all of the pieces that are necessary to really take a business to the next level to really scale. I had all the analytics, I had all the, the logical aspects of it. I understood how to no longer let my creativity rule the scenario, but to be a true business owner, to know what needs to be done to make decisions as a business owner instead of just a creative, to be able to turn it into a multi six-figure business. I understood what that looked like, but I wanted to spend time inside the industry. I wanted to spend as much as I could to learn. I wanted to pay to be a part of whatever training that I would come up with.
(22:09):
And I just didn't know, what does it look like on the back end? I wanted to hack people's systems that were 2, 3, 4 steps ahead of me. I wanted to dive into the marketing aspect of it. What does that really mean? And how do you actually do it? Marketing without all the bro side of it. That was a big deal for a couple years that, that flashy marketing, that that really highlighting a lavish lifestyle. Look at me. Look what I get to do and look at the lifestyle I get to lead. That didn't intrigue me. I didn't learn from any, anybody in that realm because I just, it wasn't my jam. But what really was, is to understand when I came across somebody of authority in the industry for whatever topic I needed to learn on, I wanted to get to know what it looked like in their world.
(23:03):
What did it look like as far as how they're teaching it? What did it look like as far as the pieces that made me gravitate towards them? Say, I would like to learn from that person. I would like to hear from that person. How does this particular person that stands with integrity do this? And then learn from them, Learn what I needed to learn, and also find out what I needed to learn that I didn't know I needed to learn. And then continue my journey. The final, final coach that I paid for, I paid a tremendous amount of money in my estimation. And I'm not gonna drop numbers because I don't want anyone to ever feel like if they're not spending this kind of money investing in themselves, that they're less than, they're not. Because what I, what ultimately, what I want to convey to you in this particular episode is that none of that matters today.
(24:04):
Now it matters in who I am. It matters in how I've gotten to this point. It matters mostly in how I lead myself. Those numbers, those metrics, that data, that investment. If you spend a tremendous amount of money on a coach, it means you're gonna get better service. Not necessarily, Although I have to say that the person that I did work with was fantastic, and her system was still to this day, one of the best I've ever seen. But you know why? She knows who she is. She figured it out. And that's the biggest shift that I think anyone in the entrepreneurial space, predominantly the online entrepreneurial space, online business space, which most all of us should be in at this point, but mostly because you're going to have to know who you are. You cannot, cannot lead others if you first can't lead yourself. And that is going to be something I want you to dive into. I've just shared my entrepreneurial journey with you, where I've come from and what I've learned. And this Fem Nation podcast, fem standing for Female entrepreneur movement, We are so ready to go out and make an impact and change the world. We can feel it internally. We can learn all the tactical pieces. We can learn from so many great people out there at this point.
(25:51):
But what needs to change, what needs to have attention is that you become solid with who you are. You lead you first because your family's going to be affected by that. Your clients are going to be affected by that. Your audience is going to be affected by that. Your content, what you create, how you deliver transformation, all of it will be affected by you knowing who you are. And so as you're navigating this world, as you're this, this entrepreneurial space that we find ourselves in, now as you are navigating that, keep a finger on the pulse of diving into you as well. If you're spending money to learn the tactical aspects of building a business, also pocket some of that money to put towards your own personal growth, your own leadership skills, because that is the one thing that I, if I had anything to go back on, instead of taking the time to become extremely certain of who I am, if I would've been able to dive into my blind spots first, then I wouldn't have probably needed to chase so many tactics to learn out there in order to do it.
(27:15):
Now I can look at content, I can look at someone's marketing. I can take someone's course or learn from a particular coach or dive into the back end of an industry or even working with clients. I can do that now and see and differentiate the two. But only because I got myself solid first, only because I knew who I was as a leader. And it started back at the farm. It truly did. That's where in reflection of writing that book, I had to sit down and think, what is a lesson I'm learning? Because that farm was not a success story. My consignment kids' clothing store was not a success story. There are so many pieces of my entrepreneurial journey that wasn't even intended to be an entrepreneurial journey, that were not success stories. And what I was not focusing on is understanding who I was in the journey of all, of putting all the pieces together. I was not looking at that. I didn't know who I was. I could be absolutely at one point about a halfway point. I could be solid and certain in front of people, but behind that solid and certain facade, I didn't know. I couldn't pinpoint it. In fact, I had an influencer at one point in time when I had an intensive with this person. Say, You have a powerful presence.
(28:48):
Okay, what in the heck does that mean? Because I don't feel powerful. I feel like I've got a more of a, I can do it because I put one foot in front of the other attitude. But what does powerful presence mean? Does it mean I'm supposed to go, you know, build momentum speaking to a a gazillion people, ah, crossed my mind? Does it mean that I'm gonna impact thousands of lives? I, I don't know. You know, I thought about that too. I was like, Does that, is that what that means? Is that what I'm supposed to do? Hmm. Does it mean that the change that I'm bringing to the world in my courses or my my creative endeavors is going to be some magic catalyst? I don't know. I didn't know what that meant. What does powerful mean? Powerful presence? I didn't know then.
(29:47):
I didn't know then. But I can tell you now that I understand in retrospect, that was, I think five years ago. I understand it in retrospect what this person meant. I understand, because inside then it rang a bell. It was like, Yeah, yeah, I get it. But then I kept searching for what part of it was I needing to now live up to, Because it did, it kind of, it kind of knocked me for a minute because then I started chasing what that was supposed to mean. And I never sat back and allowed me to be me and figure that out. Not for the longest time, but in the last year or so, I'd say in 2021, as I was working with the most, I paid for a coach for a program. Fantastic, by the way. No, I will not share the information at this moment.
(30:41):
Can't say what I'll do in the future. I may. But she was fantastic. And I love her dearly. Love her, love her, love her as as a business woman and a coach for that matter. But I took 2021, invested in heavily in myself, dove into finally bringing it all to together. Everything I've known, everything I've learned, everything I've created, everything I've wanted to do, bring it all into one. I did that, but it wasn't was, it was only about, I'd say about two degrees off, but it was off just a little bit. So in 2022, beautiful opportunity to step even further back and pause. I'm blessed to be able to say that financially I didn't need to be in the entrepreneurial space, but I created that door, you know, opened that door, created that space to be able to complete, keep backing up completely, step outta the entrepreneurial space.
(31:51):
All my stuff is still alive. My website is consolidated into one. I put content out consistently still. I don't have a call to action because I intentionally did not have a call to action. And the podcast stopped for that time being because I needed to step even further back. And I will tell you guys behind the content that I put out on my social media behind all of the, the growth and perception that I've got all my shit together. I may say that word every now and then. That was a struggle. It was a harder struggle than I even realized or that I even to cross the bridge of when I wrote the book in hindsight of the farm. And what I learned as a leader on the farm, and what I want you to take away from this episode for you is that there is a side, a big element of who you are that plays a role in how you make decisions for your business.
(33:06):
And I'm going to remind you that as you are investing in yourself, no matter what level, what dollar figure, what, what coach, what program, what piece that you're learning, no matter what that is, make sure that you are simultaneously working on you as a leader. Check in with who you are as a leader, because the rest of that stuff out there is gonna ebb and flow and come and go. Our world now, since 2020, is so rapidly evolving and there are some great people that have come into play in this timeframe. There are great people that bring some amazing tactical, technical, analytical, logical pieces to building a business. But none of that matters if you don't continue to get to know who you are as a leader. And you will never ultimately perfect that, that is an evolving learning opportunity. But get solid in that learning opportunity. Get solid in who you are and get solid on challenging your own beliefs, your own thoughts, your own reasons. Because as often as you can look at those and as often as you can stare down what comes up for you, the quicker you will move forward. And it's all about moving forward.
(34:36):
I am so excited to be with you guys. I am so excited to be back with this. It's taken a hot minute. It's taken a lot of disconnecting and a tremendous, oh my goodness, this is a story for another day, but a tremendous learning curve that I dealt with over the summer as far as leadership goes. But ultimately when I dive into that story, I'll just give you a little glimpse. It, it was what I knew. No, let me say that different. It is what I instinctively could feel was something that I needed to learn, but I couldn't pinpoint what it was. And so the situation, the opportunity, the moment in time for that learning for me, I knew it was near and coming and something I was going to need to go through, but I didn't know what it was gonna look like. And boy did it kick me in the butt.
(35:31):
I'll share that later. It's good though. It's all good. But for now, if this has even given you a glimpse of hope, a moment of opportunity to think to to pursue, to write notes that come to mind as you're listening to a little bit of my journey, if this has resonated with you at all, I would love if you shared it with your friends. I would love if you wrote down and shared with me one part that really resonated with you, really was a shifting perspective in the moment. I love to have dialogue. I love to know who my listeners are. I will always respond to you. I will always be available for you because I know that intentional connectivity is where we find ourselves in this entrepreneurial space in time. That is where we are right now, and that's where I love to live, because there's nothing more important than finding like-minded people and co-learning from them and being a part of their world, getting to know who they are. And that's me, a part of yours. I wanna know who you are. So if you wouldn't mind, that's the greatest gift that you could give me, is to share this, share my podcast, share the F Nation world with your world. We have a lot of cool things coming guys. And until next time, let's pull the old closing back in. Keep moving forward.