Daring to Be Different: Bold Strategies for Business Owners

Free Agent Podcast with Franchise Guru Meg Schmitz

Hello, free agents. It’s me, Meg. I am back today to give you an update on image studios and some activity that I’ve had over the last week that was particularly meaningful for me and I thought it was worthwhile to pass along to you. Over the weekend, I flew to Virginia at the invitation of my mentee. I participate in a program where I navigate the world of entrepreneurial behavior activity with military members who are exiting the military into civilian life.

And they are looking for a mentor to help them navigate their way through not only the change of getting out of the military into civilian life, but also then creating a business and doing that successfully. The name of the summit that Nina Copeland invited me to is the I Am B.O.L.D Women’s Empowerment Summit. We are embracing change with courage. There are a couple of acronyms that particularly resonated with me coming out of this, and I’m telling you this because I need to reveal some of my own sensitivity, my own questions, lack of confidence, concern, panic. I’m a business owner.

If you think that I’m cool as a cucumber and don’t get affected by the head trash in my own head about what’s going on. And, you know, let me tell you, I’ve got plenty of head trash. So the timing to go to this particular summit was very very good for me. Nina defines B.O.L.D as believe, optimize, liberate, and dare to be different. 

So believing in yourself, that’s something that you believe in yourself and that’s why you’re in business.

But sometimes that. That dedication to yourself gets a little bit squirrely. Don’t ever lose focus. You have to believe in yourself. But that also means surrounding yourself with other people who believe in you as well.

Optimize, learn to delegate. Learn to surround yourself with people who are equally strong, smart, or stronger or smarter, more experienced, and optimize your time so that you’re focusing on what really matters in business. I’ve learned that, particularly over the last few years, that I needed to get rid of some of the board positions and volunteer opportunities that I was dedicating my time and effort to. But it really wasn’t as rewarding as the time I was spending that took away from my business. That’s the important thing.

What you, what you do personally should be done personally, but not at the expense of your business. And I realized that I was giving too much of my time away. So good word from Nina is optimize. 

Another one is liberate. And you have to liberate your thoughts and your feelings and get Untethered from the things that drag you down.

Liberate yourself and you will find an abundance. Also, last word D is for dare. Dare to be different. I heard a lot over the weekend of the word imposter. And if that’s a word that lives in your vocabulary or something that you’re fearful of, I would like to ask you to get rid of the word imposter.

I would challenge that. All of us are in a learning curve. All of us were born not knowing how to ride a bike. All of us were born not knowing how to type on a keyboard. We’re all on a learning curve.

And so give yourself the opportunity to dare to be different by embracing who you are. Those differences, for example, with Nina. Nina has been in the military for 20 years, serving our country in the army, just like my grandfather over here. That toughness as a woman of color, as a woman of color in the army, at her rank, believe me, she has faced ageism, sexism, and a whole lot worse than that. She can take those 20 years of her army experience and translate that directly into her coaching and consulting business.

So dare to be different and really play up those differences. It’s what I do quite a bit as I am in the recruiting phase of image studios, trying to differentiate my studios from any other opportunity that a beauty professional would have. So I’m very clear with myself that I know why I am a better choice for most professionals to work with based on my experience. No one else has the same experience that I have. So bold, believe, optimize, liberate and dare.

Another acronym that came out of Nina’s summit over the weekend is badass. I love badass. I love badass women. Badass women are not necessarily aggressive. Badass women are.

Here we go again. Bold, audacious, determined, ambitious, spiritual, and strong willed. Every day. I am a badass. And I want you to be as well, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner whether you’re an entrepreneur or a franchise owner, however it is that you ended up in business. Whether you bought a business, it was a family business and you grew up in it, and now you’re taking over, you really have to carry that boldness and that badassness with you every day because there are going to be surprises. There are going to be pivots, there are going to be curveballs, there are going to be roadblocks, there are going to be those surprise moments that you never saw coming. And that leads me to another really informative interview that I had last week that was for the free agent, my podcast. I hope many of you are participating in those episodes and getting value out of them.

I interviewed, again, a gentleman by the name of Michael Reader. He is a CPA, and it’s just such a great resource. You got questions, questions about taxes and how business ownership is going to impact your personal situation, how it is that you’re going to realize profitability as a business owner and then translate that into paying less in taxes. That’s one of the things I really rely on Mike to help to explain to the people that I refer to him. As we were doing the podcast interview last week, he was asking me about my Image Studios experience.

And as somebody who’s owned so many businesses in the past, surely this must be like a piece of cake, no big deal. And it’s actually the opposite. It is a big deal, and it’s not a piece of cake. There have been some pretty significant challenges that have popped up, particularly in construction, which seemed to be going along swimmingly for such a long time until it got to installing door frames and sliding doors and cabinetry, the lighting, HVAC, plumbing, the flooring. We’ve had significant challenges with everything, every one of those trades.

I was talking to an entrepreneur recently who’s fairly new, and she said, you know, Meg, this. This is really getting me down. Every day there are new challenges, and I’m putting out fires every day. I just get to the point where, like, it’s the third fire of the day, I just gotta quit. I gotta walk away.

I like, when does it end? And so that took me back to something that Mike and I were talking about. And Mike had said, you know, Meg, what I’ve recognized in you as well as other people, is that all those decades of experience builds toughness. Experience builds toughness. And I had to agree with him that while there are all these challenges with Image Studios and getting the construction finally finished, getting those guys out, getting my new tenants moved in, allowing them to perform their services and generate their own income, Every day, I got to shake it off.

Every day. There are a myriad of questions that are coming that you would think after so many years of experience, I would be able to just blow it off and handle it with grace. And no, no. Every day is hard. So from me to you, those of you who think she’s got it, she doesn’t have a bad day, she’s going to figure it all out.

I will say that I am going to figure it all out. But another analogy that I’m going to draw is thanks to my Son and daughter in law. I am now a grandmother. And that happened just the other day on Friday, actually, while I was at Nina Copeland’s conference. It was all the way in Virginia when I found out that the two of the youngsters were running off to the hospital in order to have the baby.

The analogy to business ownership is like Eric and Lauren, as new parents, every day with a brand new baby is fraught with peril. It is, when does the baby stop crying, when does the baby eat more? When does the baby need another diaper change? When does the baby need another bath? When does the baby, when does the baby, baby, baby.

And you realize that after a while you say, well, what about the baby sleeping? When do I sleep? When do I get to eat? And so that’s what business ownership is like, is like being a brand new parent. For those first six months, its gonna surprise you.

There are going to be things that you never saw coming, but that’s only because you’ve never done it before or only because you’ve never operated this business before. After about six months, then you start to say, hey, you know, I’m getting the hang of this, let’s do it again. And that’s why people end up having more than one child. Some people give up at that point. Some people recognize their limitations and say, okay, one is enough.

One is all I can handle and that’ll be enough. I don’t know where I’m going to end up with Image Studios and how many locations ultimately I will open. My plan was to open three to six. I’m still in the throes of unit number one and all the challenges that I just didn’t anticipate that there would be so many all at once. But the reality is I am bold.

I am a badass. I’ve been a parent, I survived. I’ve been a business owner multiple times over. I really shouldn’t be surprised, I really shouldn’t be shocked that these challenges keep me up in the middle of the night. That’s when I have my worst thinking.

That’s when I get the worst head trash and I start to awfulize everything. That’s my mother’s word. It’s crooked thinking that you have in the middle of the night. Things are going to hell in a handbasket. I’m going to lose everything, blah, blah, blah.

Fill in the blank with whatever the head trash is. My worst time is usually between 3 and 4 in the morning. And by the time I wake up, which is usually 6, I get up. And I’m excited about the day, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. I have learned, as Mike Reader said, that experience creates toughness, but it also has allowed me to wake up and say joy, fun, and yes.

And if you know me, those three words are the pillar. Pillars of how I approach every day. I must find joy. I must find yes, I must find fun. Because if I can’t have joy, fun, and yes, then it’s no.

Something’s got to change or I need to get rid of it. If it’s a coat in my closet, I’m giving away a lot of clothes right now. It’s a change of seasons. I took a couple of jackets out of the closet because we’re getting cooler weather and put them on, and I thought, this isn’t fitting me right.

It’s not joyful. It’s not fun. It’s not yes. So it’s no.

So I get up every day and I think about those three words, and that’s how I run my business and my life so that I can be fulfilled. Looking for abundance. I’m looking for abundance. I seek opportunities to grow. I cannot any day ever look at scarcity and say, this is never going to work.

There aren’t enough people. We’re never going to make any money. Every day I’m looking for that opportunity to try a little harder, work a different angle, go a different direction, run at a different pace. Sometimes it’s slower, by the way.

It’s not always faster, as I learned in Nina’s conference over the weekend. Sometimes you just need to sit in the stillness and listen. And if you’re godly, you may be listening for God to talk to you, to speak to you, to show you, to guide you, to navigate you. Have trust, have faith, not only in powers greater than you, but have it in yourself as well. And give yourself the grace to make mistakes and have bad days.

But know that if you’re a parent and you’re a business owner, that baby is yours. You can’t give it away. So get up every day, find your joy, fun, and yes, be a badass. Be B.O.L.D and go. Go forward and make it work.

That’s what I’m going to do, and I hope you’ll do the same. So run for it, Free Agents. We’re all in this competition together. We’re all going to make it work. So I’ll see you in the next episode of the Free Agent.