With stats swirling in my head this week about 90% of startups fail and 54% of business owners never create a budget for their business and even the fact that the US alone has over 29M self-declared entrepreneurs or business owners, I keep thinking how we can turn these stats around and help more of the folks entering and staying in self-employment be more successful.
I started as a business coach in 2015 while I was still working a corporate day job and running a pop up shop company with events on the weekends focusing on made local, arts and design companies. I was obsessed with the idea that if we can provide a strong local foundation for made local businesses, they could then expand to a global audience.
Working with the vendors at my events, I quickly saw how unprepared business owners were with pricing. product mix, scaling and bringing on support. So I decided to invest in some coaching certifications and set to work helping small business owners thrive.
I was never into the whole charging $10K for a few sessions in order to get the prestige of high-ticket sales. I was more invested in how business owners could be supported while still keeping money in their business to expand, grow and scale with ease.
I never understood the whole “bropreneur” and “boss babe” rhetoric around “Get the money for a coach any way you can, and the sales in your business will magically show up after”
The business coaching industry quickly sunk into a weird MLM saga where coaches just coached other coaches to be business coaches. I saw so many amazing ideas for a sweet profitable business dissolve into the fantasy of becoming a rich business coach.
Meanwhile we had industries across so many niches struggling to get support from their municipal, state or province or federal governments — from anything on market positioning to taxes.
It seemed like we were missing that accessible niche for support. And with mental health stats showing a decline in available support for business owners and entrepreneurs, I wanted to provide an alternative.
