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Finding Your Why = Super Important!

Finding your why is a journey that we all must go on.  Whether it’s your reason for getting healthy, your reason for going back to school, your reason for being/or staying married or your reason for starting and running your own business. Today I’m going to talk about the latter.

Starting and running your own business is no joke.

It takes a lot of time and commitment and lots of fails to get it right. If you don’t have a really strong why, and I mean rock solid, behind it then it’s likely you won’t reach your goals.

I finally found my why but it was something I struggled with for a very long time. I’m very fortunate to have a husband that makes good money and there is no pressure on me to provide financially for my family.

So, I work because I can’t imagine my life without it.  I have so many ideas and I can’t shut my brain off.  It’s just how I’m wired. Seriously, I can see monetizing potential in almost everything.

It’s almost a curse because I have to work really hard to stay focused and not try everything.

My first business started because I knew I could do it.  I was already doing it for a large company and it seemed like the easiest thing.

I was working for a large assisted living memory care community as their director of marketing for my community.

So when the company sold to a REIT and they brought in an administrator that was solely focused on the bottom line instead of the wellbeing of their very vulnerable residents, I knew I couldn’t represent them any longer.

My why was gone.

I didn’t feel like I was helping preserve dignity or a strong quality of life anymore.

At first, I didn’t know what to do because prior to the sell, I worked for the gold standard in memory care and I couldn’t see myself selling for all of the companies I had sold against.

Plus, I had just had my first baby and was torn about the work/mommy life.  I wanted to work and be around my little guy.

I knew I had to choose a different option.

There are these agencies that help find prospects for senior living communities.

They consult the family and give them options of senior living communities that fit their needs and if the family moves their loved one in then they get a referral fee. Kinda like being an affiliate for all of the different communities.

Some are nationwide and some are small mom and pop local. So one day this woman came in and wanted me to sign a referral agreement with her one-person agency.

She had no experience in the industry but she did have personal experience with her mother going through this whole process and she had a terrible sales pitch and marketing strategy.

Well, this woman changed my life.

I wish I could remember her name so that I could thank her properly.

After she left, without a signed contract, a light bulb went off in my head and realized that I was already doing the same thing she does but I was doing it for my company.

You see, I worked for the most expensive memory care around and I would spend 90% of my time finding other options for people that couldn’t afford us.

Not to mention, I had access to all of the contracts we had and knew exactly what I loved and hated about all of the other agencies.

I was in a unique position because I had the behind the scenes inside knowledge and the personal experience with my grandparent.

That personal experience is what led me into the senior healthcare in the first place. So I went to town. I knew I could make a successful business out of becoming my own one person senior advising agency. And I did.

I started my biz in January and found out I was pregnant with my second baby boy in February.

Talk about stress and hormone craziness.  And this was no easy pregnancy. Thankfully, I didn’t have any complications just lots of uncomfortableness, food aversions, sleep issues and lots of nausea and indigestion.

So working on a new biz was kinda hard. It was a little rocky out of the gate but luckily I started this before the market became supersaturated like it is today.

It was only me and 2 other local agencies competing against one very large national agency and I had loads of personal connections since I was now marketing to people that had been my peers. I quickly got a bunch of signed contracts and started getting phone calls. And this was working for a while.

But I started to realize that I had created a business that I wasn’t in love with. Let me tell you why.

I’m a very empathetic person, like seriously, I internalize and feel the pain and grief that others are going through. This was a good quality to have for the business I started because I could connect deeply with the families that I helped.

But at the same time, I was fried.

Getting a call at 5 pm from a crying daughter that just learned that her mom can’t live at home anymore and needs care with a screaming toddler and baby in the background is draining, to say the least.

I had a nanny but the kids knew I was there and I swear they could sense every time a new client was calling and they took it as a signal to have a nuclear meltdown.

Add to that the fact that a lot of the calls I took were families that didn’t have enough funds to go to the nice places and when I would have the Medicaid conversation their heart would break and so would mine.

This biz I created was so unfulfilling.  Going through all of the emotional stuff and not really being able to help most of the families that I spoke to really started wearing on me.

I got to the point that I would cringe when the phone would ring.  I stopped marketing and networking and my leads started to fade.

Then I found out I was pregnant with my third little guy and motivation went out the window.

I didn’t want to throw away all of the hard work I had poured into my biz even though I felt like it was sucking the life out of me.

So I started to look for ways to automate things and take my business online instead of having to hustle every day.

That’s when I totally immersed myself into learning everything about the online biz world. I found B-school, Amy Porterfield, Pat Flynn and Michael Hyatt.

Then, I went through B-school with Amy Porterfield, went to her mastermind weekend and even joined a mastermind that was formed at Amy’ event.

I poured thousands hours and dollars into professional and personal development.

I knew I could make my biz life easier and more successful and I thought I could fall back in love with my biz.

During this same time I also had the idea for Mommy’s Home Office and since I was living a Paleo life I also had the idea of a Whole 30 accountability program.

So I bought some domains and sat on them like Mommy’s Home Office, 30 Day Paleo, and Our Paleo Family. I won’t list all of the other domains I’ve purchased, there’s way too many.

Like I said a million ideas. At that point, I was being started to be pulled away from my senior living biz but I still had one foot in because in my mind quitting that biz meant I failed.

After leaving Amy’s event I wanted to have two businesses but I was no place to do that.  I have nothing against having two or more businesses but get your first one on solid footing before you start your next.

For a good year and a half, I flip-flopped back and forth between my senior living biz and Mommy’s Home Office and a short affair with 30 Day Paleo.

30 Day Paleo definitely could have worked by I let my mindset kill that idea.

Let me explain, I felt like hypocrite everytime I ate something that wasn’t 100% Whole 30 or Paleo and I got to the point that I was purposely rebelling against all things healthy because of it.

Blame it on my uber rebellious nature but it really shouldn’t have been that way.

During this same time in my senior living biz, I automated everything I could and offloaded all of my clients to a colleague that pays me a percentage of the referral fee if they move in.

And I wanted to focus on Mommy’s Home Office. So my poor mastermind group stuck with me for two years through all of the ups and downs and mind changes.

I would start something or implement something and then as soon as it started to get hard I bailed.

Finally, one of my mastermind friends pointed this out and asked me why I even keep working.  She spelled it out.

She said Nichole you have 2 chronic diseases that exacerbate with stress (I have Hashimoto’s Autoimmune Thyroid disease and Polycystic Ovarian disease), you don’t work for the money, you could literally stop today and just take care of yourself and your kiddos, so tell me right now WHY do you work?

I started to say so that my kids can see a woman that works and follows through and all the other BS I had been telling myself over the past 6 years.

At that moment I realized that the reason I had such a hard time sticking to things when it got tough was because I didn’t have a strong enough why.

I started to meditate on my why and journal on my why but I wasn’t coming up with something that I knew would kick me in the ass when the going got tough.

Finally, we were at a friends house for dinner and another couple was there.

They had adopted a little boy from China and because I mentioned that we had been considering adopting our fourth child she pounced. She was being super pushy about and even started sending me pictures of kids that needed homes.

I’m sure she thought she was being helpful but it was the opposite. My husband was not really into it and very much on the fence about adoption and I was trying to sway him to my side.

But after this very pushy overbearing women started bombarding us with all of this.

He decided he was out. He said that although it has always been in my heart it just wasn’t in his.

And I totally understand his decision.  But that left me with a heavy heart and I was saddened by the child that I wouldn’t be able to help.

It was hard for me at that point because at this same time my cousin had just opened her home and life to adopt her husband’s three nephews that were in foster care.

He had been adopted when he was young but his sister hadn’t and she was ultimately the product of a broken system.

When he realized that she had three children in foster care they took them in so they wouldn’t be separated.

So I started sending her everything I could to help and my heart was sad for the child that I wasn’t helping.

One morning, I had woken up about 20 minutes before the kids (like I try to do every day) and I was setting my intentions for the day, meditating and having my coffee when it finally hit me.

I knew what I had to do.

Ok so that long drawn out story to get to this point. So listen up.

Instead of helping one child by adopting them into my family, I would fund an entire orphanage and maybe even start my own right here in the US.

Being born in the US gives kids a leg up on the rest of the world but even so many kids fall through the cracks. I want to change that.  I want to start by sponsoring a local orphanage.

Purchasing all of their school supplies, healthy food, clothing and Christmas gifts.

Then I want to bring in mindset coaches, motivational speakers, technical training and pay for their education so that they can reach their fullest potential.

I want to help change the stories they tell themselves and give them positive examples so that they can know that it is possible even for them too.

That’s my WHY and I am determined to make millions of dollars.

Not for me but for these kids. Every morning I get up and say this phrase to myself three times (it’s a quote from Florence Scovel Shinn).

“Everything that is mine though divine right comes to me in perfect order today.”

And then imagine all of the children I will help. I visualize what their life will look like with the help I can provide.

I daydream about all of the programs I set up for them. This little ritual gets me going…so gone are the days of questioning why I’m doing all of this and does it really matter.

Every day that I don’t show up is one more day that I’m not helping these kids. I want to encourage you to dig deep and really figure out WHY you want to build or grow your business.

Yours will probably look totally different than mine.  It can be whatever you want it to be but it needs to be rock solid.

Once you find your why nothing will stop you.

Whew, that was a heavy topic and I hope you find value in it.

I hope you have a fabulous rest of your week and I’ll catch you in the next episode.

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