24. Meghan Walker: Learning to Fail Forward and Grow
EPISODE 24
This week’s guest, Dr. Meghan Walker, a successful naturopath and business strategist, shares her unique insights on the challenges faced by "reluctant entrepreneurs," those who find themselves in business not by choice but through a calling to make a difference. We promise you'll gain a deeper understanding of overcoming mindset hurdles and the vital shift from professional expertise to entrepreneurial savvy.
Catch the Conversation
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Dr. Meghan Walker ND(inac), HBSc. Entrepologist, Speaker, Entrepreneur. Author Meghan Walker is a former naturopathic doctor, health expert, entrepreneur and health systems innovator. Meghan is a sought-after speaker, having spoken on media outlets and stages around the world on subjects related to health innovation, entrepreneurship, women’s health and leadership.
Dr. Meghan Walker is a naturopathic doctor and Entrepologist (On-tre-pol-uh-gist), focusing on the health optimization of entrepreneurs and game changers. As an entrepreneur, Meghan started and sold her first business while in University and is now the Co-Founder and CEO of Health Hives and the Chief Cheerleader of Clinician Business Labs – a platform to assist clinicians scale and amplify their businesses and impact.
Meghan is the host of the IMPACT Podcast featuring guests such as Dr. Alan Christianson, Joy McCarthy and Dr. Vincent Pedre. Meghan is an award winning speaker, having spoken on international stages such as Mindshare Collaborative and the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians and through multiple media outlets such as Forbes, Canada AM, Elle Magazine and Global Morning. Meghan speaks on topics related to women’s performance medicine, brain health and entrepreneurship, healthcare innovation and leadership. Meghan is the host and producer of the annual entrepreneurship conference Impact LIVEs and most importantly, the bedtime story reader to her three young girls.
You can connect with Meghan by email at meghan@entrepologylabs.com
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Julie and Meghan discuss...
(00:00:04) Empowering Women in Entrepreneurship(00:08:20) Learning From Imperfect Action in Entrepreneurship
(00:14:39) Lessons in Entrepreneurial Balance and Growth
(00:24:51) Embracing Failure for Growth
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Julie Host
00:04
Welcome to Figure Eight, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, ulie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur and a growth and leadership coach who co-founded, grew and exited an eight-figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book Big, gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going.
01:03
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Figure 8 Podcast. I'm your host, Julie Ellis, and today I am extremely happy to be talking with Dr. Meghan Walker. Meghan is a naturopath by trade. However, she now today has founded multiple companies and she helps a lot of women grow bigger businesses, women who are working as clinicians in all kinds of different medical fields and really need to figure out how to grow their business and how to make it into everything they want it to be. She also speaks here and there and she's been on TV a number of times, so she has lots of different pieces to what she does, but right now, as the co-founder and CEO of Health Hives and the chief cheerleader of Clinician Business Labs, those are her sort of main entrepreneurial ventures at the moment. Welcome, Meghan.
Meghan Guest
02:02
Hi, thanks so much for having me.
Julie Host
02:05
Thank you, I'm so glad you were able to join me today. Well, I am looking forward to this conversation. I'm looking forward to it too because I think that you know, thinking about growing businesses is obviously something I'm very interested in, and I know, when we were talking, just your work in helping other women grow businesses, who are very skilled and talented but may not be entrepreneurial, is a really important place in the ecosystem.
Meghan Guest
02:33
Yeah, you know it's funny because I think there's just so many. There's so many people who have a big vision of how they want to contribute, and I think this is going to be happening more and more. The vehicle in which that contribution can happen is becoming so frequently entrepreneurship. But we it is like the one thing we're not taught in school, and if we were fortunate enough to have the conversations when we were younger at home or grew up in a house where entrepreneurship was like part of the vernacular and part of the experience, then you know all the power to you. You have a massive advantage.
03:04
But for most people, that wasn't what they they saw growing up and so, uh, I often joke that my audience are reluctant entrepreneurs. It is not. They are not entrepreneurs by choice. Uh, they are entrepreneurs because it is the only vehicle in which they can have the contribution that they want. So it's a really interesting. It's an interesting take and version of entrepreneurship, maybe a little bit different than you know. Those individuals out there who are like I want to grow my business, I'm excited to grow my business. These individuals are like darn you for telling me I need to have a business in order to have the impact I want to have right.
Julie Host
03:38
And it's super interesting because you are talking about highly talented people, very, very bright people, who are highly qualified to deliver the work that they're doing and yet they struggle to fit into the entrepreneurship mold, if there is such a thing.
Meghan Guest
03:56
Yeah, and you know it really underscores that. I think that the skills required to succeed in entrepreneurship are not necessarily the skills that we are going to learn to be successful in other, in other areas of our lives. And, to be honest, I think that's one of the things that my audience finds particularly frustrating is they're like listen, I went to school for 800 years and wrote 4,000 board exams and I am so ridiculously qualified, and then this person over here went and did a weekend course on something and now calls themselves an expert and throws all their entrepreneurial skills out and I can't catch up. And so there's this real reckoning that has to happen around the relationship between their credentials and their, their capacity in the realm of entrepreneurship. And it's it's challenging and I think maybe more so, maybe a generalization, for for women, we move into this cycle and whirlwind of self-doubt when we are highly competent, skilled and educated in column A and we feel like complete imposters in column B. And I can teach extremely intelligent people the tactics and strategies to run a business. They can grasp those concepts really quickly. But what I actually find is really hard is that I now have to overcome a huge mindset deficit that these highly competent people are facing because they've actually never been challenged like this before. It's always, it's always been a little bit easy for them, and so they step into that arena and I go, like what do you mean?
05:20
This isn't simple, but but entrepreneurship is, I think, a unique set of skills. It's a different way of thinking about a complex problem. It requires that we view the problem from and with an element of risk and we assess our own risk tolerance. So there's it's. I just find it the most fascinating and enjoyable game. I feel like I'm literally in a real life game. Every day I step into sort of the entrepreneurial ring, and it took a while for me, like I'm literally in a real life game. Every day I step into sort of the entrepreneurial ring, um, and it took a while for me. Like I kind of looked around and I went, oh, like this isn't, people don't like this game, like this isn't a fun game for everybody. Um, and so that you know, that is a part where I really have to. I have to slow down and spend time and and you know the mindset piece and the reconciliation that's required for so many members of my audience as they step into an entirely new arena of challenge.
Julie Host
06:14
It's so interesting we I was speaking with one of my co-founders and we were doing a presentation together and we talked about how, in our early days of entrepreneurship, we had no shame and we feel like that was really part of what helped us to be successful, as we, you know, got our business off the ground and started growing it. And it's kind of interesting because that kind of behavior doesn't necessarily fit with somebody who you know their achievement has been tied to. You know a more academic and credentialing kind of kind of path.
Meghan Guest
06:53
That part has been fascinating for me to kind of watch too, and I I talk about this really openly with my audience and I say to them listen, the, the things that have made you successful up until this point in life, which is really succeeding in the realm of academia, where as close as you can get to perfection, the better, and that's the standard that everyone is looking for, all the skills that got you to that point are actually going to need to be dismantled for this other game that we're playing over here. And I got into this I'm going to say heated debate, but we'll just say like it was a charged conversation with my mom. We were on a mother-daughter trip to Italy and we were sitting there and she, out of left field, she's like Meghan, can I tell you something? And I was like sure it was like one of the we're sitting in the Piazza drinking prosecco and she's like I just I got to get something off my chest. And I was like sure she's like I can't stand it when you have spelling mistakes in your Instagram posts. I was like, oh, okay, I thought we were going somewhere else, but we're going to, we're going to do this. And she's like it, just like, how are you not spending more time reading and proofreading your Instagram? And I actually took back control of my Instagram. It's a hundred percent me and my spelling mistakes.
08:03
And I said honestly, like I just I don't, actually I don't care that much, like I just want to say something and put it out there and I, I'm, I'm fine with 90% great, and half the time I don't have my glasses on, I can't see the words anyways, and I'm just I just hit like publish. Anyway, we had this whole debate and I said, listen, like I want you to understand her background. She was a school teacher and a principal. And I said you taught a cohort of individuals how to be successful in the context of school. And I said, if I had my entrepreneurial women waiting for perfection before they ever hit publish, they wouldn't even have a business, let alone be able to grow it. That they wouldn't even have a business, let alone be able to grow it. So my whole, my whole business is getting people to take imperfect action over and over again and then fighting the patterns that are where they're winning and not waiting until things are perfect. We just I don't think we have, I don't think we have time for that, and as we grow and as we have more systems and as we have more people, we can elevate that standard in certain areas and contexts.
09:07
But this, how we reconcile our relationship with perfection, is a huge part of what we are needing to do. And I agree with you, like on this whole idea of you know, early on in the journey, you know we had no shame, we tried stuff, we called people, they rejected us, we did whatever. We're like. Well, I guess this is the phase of life where we get, uh, we get rejected and it's almost like, as we get deeper into the journey, this self-awareness of of all these different pieces start to attract more meaning. Um, and I you know, I too was like that, I was more things.
09:36
I was way less concerned about how I was perceived early on in my, in my journey, and I feel like I've kind of swung the other way. I think my 40s have been really good for me for that, where I'm like what you think of me is none of my business and I kind of am back in the groove of I'm going to do what I want to do again. But that part's hard. Like that there really is a balance and I think it's great. Life lessons Like.
10:00
I don't think there are lessons you learn in entrepreneurship where, at the end of the day, you go darn, I wish I had never learned how to handle rejection and I wish I had never reconciled my relationship with perfections. I'm like all the things you're going to learn in the arena of entrepreneurship are going to serve you in your own personal growth and development and and all of the above Um, and it's not going to be easy like that. That would just be such an unfair assessment. But gosh, I miss the days where we could just innocently do stuff and not actually really perceive the bigger picture. Right, yeah.
Julie Host
10:34
It does feel like you've got to find, like those antidotes. So you've got perfection and you know, maybe the antidote I know one of my antidotes for it is experimentation. So what's supposed to happen in science with an experiment? They're supposed to fail. So thinking of it as an experiment oh okay, that one failed, let's try it again this way or that way, or tweak it or, you know, move on altogether Helps me to from leaning in too hard to. But it has to be perfect the first time and you know, because you do, you catch yourself and you're like I got to move on this.
Meghan Guest
11:08
Yeah, and you know I've struggled with this a little bit in that the nature of my my initial businesses, like as a naturopathic doctor people came and they paid me for support with their health, but paying me to develop a strategy and how we're going to optimize their health or mitigate their condition didn't actually guarantee that we were going to be successful and I always found that.
11:29
Really I found that really challenging and I found it really challenging to do it in the context of the Canadian medical system because they weren't used to paying anything.
11:38
So it was a big stretch to convince people to actually pay out of pocket and when they did, there was kind of this expectation well, I paid you, now you're going to fix the problem, and so you know, I was confronted with that piece really early and I don't have a perfect solution for it, even now where I'm working with individuals to help them strategize around their business and really specifically, I think of myself as a strategist, not as a coach, and in fact I don't even think I'm a great business coach.
12:01
I enjoy the strategy side of things, but same thing, I have to catch myself and manage the expectations of my clients. If you invest in the work that we're doing to help support your clinic or your growth. You need to be very aware that this is not going to guarantee you're going to get the out like paying me $10,000 isn't going to deliver you a million dollar business on the other side. We're just going to lay the strategy and you're going to get to do the work, and it's we're going to do an experiment that probably will get us closer to an outcome, but I love the use of that word because it's still an experiment. That's the nature of entrepreneurship.
Julie Host
12:39
And I'm curious now you know you talk about how you really aren't a business coach, but you're a strategist and you're also, at this point, a serial entrepreneur, because I know not only were you a naturopath but you sold your first business way back when you were in university, and so that's. You know. You've been through the cycle on a number of occasions before you got to being in that strategist role to help others. And what's your journey been like? What are your kind of key learnings from your own experience?
Meghan Guest
13:06
Oh gosh, there are. So there are. I wrote a whole book on this, on all my key, all my key learnings and, frankly, all the places I kind of fell down and where I had to get back up and what the tripping had. Uh, the tripping had in common the easiest businesses I've ever had. Just serve people's needs and that's like a no need. And then I paired the no need with an audience that wanted access to that and that sounds so simple and so fundamental. But I think my first business is still my favorite business. It's still the easiest business I ever had.
13:39
And I was um 15 years old and uh was fired from the summer job that I had and I was made very clear to me in no uncertain terms that you would not be sitting on the dock all summer long, like you need to find a job. And I I just remember like clear as day saying I'm going to find a way to be able to sit on the dock and satisfy your need for me to be working at the same time. Just give me a hot second to figure that out. So I sat there and I looked at the lake and I watched people go back and forth between the islands and I went. I bet people on the islands would like their cottages clean too, and so I made this little pamphlet and I got in my little tin boat and I drove out to the cottages and I put them in those like plastic sheets and then put a rock on top and left them on people's docks and I I declared that I had a cleaning service, because that, to me, was one service where I could just, I could just announced my, my candidacy for the job and and I'd get fired if I wasn't good at it. There was no regulation, there was no anyway. Within two weeks I had a full roster of clients and by the end of that summer I had more people asking me if I would clean for the next summer. I hired 11 of my friends and I sat there smugly through summer.
14:43
Number two, and I looked at my dad and I was like, look at me sitting on the dock while all my team is out cleaning and cleaning cottages. But that was, that was a real like core memory for me, not being a smug teenager, but really going. One I don't think I can ever work for anybody else, ever again. And two, if you have a service that that helps people and you align the service that helps people with people who can afford to pay for what you're doing. I feel like that's sometimes the elephant in the room. Uh, when we've got, you know, people who want to help and build a business, that that's helpful, we don't talk about who's going to actually pay for that. Um, and it was a no, it was a no brainer and frankly, I made more money cleaning cottages in summer than I did in my first three years after graduating from medical school. So it was, it was a great little. It was a great little business with very low risk, but I was willing to get my hands dirty and and um and do the work, and so you know that was a big piece.
15:37
For me is like really being able to see that lens. Do I have a service or do I have a product that is actually going to solve a meaningful problem and do I have a a sufficiently large audience of people who can pay for it? Where the numbers actually work, it's litmus test number one, litmus test number two for me. And a second big learning is it is not difficult to build a business, in particular, service-based business, where you are willing to sell your soul to make it work. And what I mean by that is if you're going to work 18 hours a day and never come up for air, and you know, shift your prices and put yourself out, that you can. You can fill your calendar, you can hustle your way to a full calendar, and then you're stuck. You're stuck servicing the clients. You're stuck with a full calendar. You realize you're actually capped out on what you can earn. You are an employee, you're like an employee of one. You work for yourself and you don't have any of the freedom that you thought you were, you were going to look for.
16:34
And so that was the second piece is I realized that when I build something, I have to build it in the context of balancing an equation, and the equation is always like what two things do I want to have be true at the same time? And so when I sold my first clinic and I was going to open what I called in my head a micro practice meaning I was going to take my my high end clients who are all high achievers down in the core and I was going to work out of an office like a co-working space and I was only going to see patients for two days a week. And the challenge to myself was how do I work with these patients for two days a week? Because I wanted to start some other companies but double what I was earning working five days a week owning my own clinic. Those were the two sides of the equation. I want to earn this and I only want to be working that, what has to be true in order for this equation to balance.
17:21
And so I went about looking at, like, how I wanted to design it, how I wanted to design my programs, how I had to position my pricing, who I had to go after. So these two things could be, could be true. And you know, those are the. Those are the two big lessons for me, build something people want and will pay for. And then, number two, don't build something that doesn't satisfy this lifestyle equation. Decide what needs to be true beforehand, or you're going to really quickly be trapped.
Julie Host
17:49
Because I've never thought of it this way, but it's so true that you can fill your calendar with underpriced work and basically it is almost like working for somebody else. It isn't really why people, I think, dream of becoming an entrepreneur and want to go and start businesses, and so taking that transition over to the equation makes a lot of sense.
Meghan Guest
18:13
Yeah, it was a big. It was a big lesson for me, because I was burning out and I had little kids and I was like, oh my gosh, I did this to myself Like I had. I had no one to blame for that, but at the same point, it's not like I had mentorship around that idea. It's not like someone said to me here's the framework on how to think about your business, or you're quickly going to run into that, that trap. I was like I'm just going to work really, really hard and we'll see what happens, which is, you know, an approach, and I'm sure we've both. We've both been there. Um, but that was a hard. That was a hard lesson to learn.
Julie Host
18:44
And was that some of what inspired you to do what you're doing now? Sort of the lack of help that you saw in the landscape as you were trying to grow your own business?
Meghan Guest
18:53
Yeah, I call this my accidental business. So this was. I did not have a vision for wanting to do this. This wasn't one like when I'm sailing off in the sunset, I want to help other other you know, younger practitioners or newer practitioners set up their their businesses. Not that it's not meaningful work, but it wasn't. That wasn't the vision.
19:10
What was the vision and what I was very clear on is that I had this core belief and and I still do that when people have their health, they can change the world, and so I was very interested in how do we put these systems of medicine that were having such incredible impact on people's lives into more people's hands what has to be true so more people can access these systems of medicine? This is the problem that I was always trying to solve, and it's the problem I'm still trying to solve and I'm evolving with, and so one of the things I realized, even within our own clinic we had 11 people in our team is that the business side of how they develop their business was actually a real challenge for a lot of them, and so we started mentoring our own team on how to develop their business. It was a little bit easier for us. I grew up in an entrepreneurial house, but also I had skin in the game and so that's, you know, that's one of the fastest ways to grow your business is for you to have to. And so we were just mentoring the individuals in our clinic and they were doing well and we took that for granted. We assumed that was happening everywhere.
20:10
And I had more and more friends and colleagues who would reach out and say, Meghan, like how are you guys doing this? And so I literally just started with the first Thursday of every month I'm going to run a zoom call at 7 PM. Anyone can come, it's totally free, and we're just going to jam out on what's going on in your business and see if we can solve the problem. Like it was so unsophisticated and it was not with an intention of, you know, feeding a list, it was, there was no strategy in this whatsoever, it was literally I just couldn't do any more. May I pick your brain lunches? So we just were like, come to zoom.
20:42
And so we did. We started doing that, and then everyone had the same 10 problems. Like if you solve these 10 things in order, you won't have this big catastrophic situation. And so it kind of formed the foundation of our first program. And then we realized as a whole, we just we just kept building and writing programming to solve the problem, um, at scale. And I was okay doing it and said no to other things because I really quickly realized that when practitioners were building strong, sustainable businesses, we were reaching more people with these incredible systems of medicine. We were having practitioners who weren't burning out, we were having practitioners who could contribute to the household income of their family, and so I was like, oh, this checks the box of it working in alignment with how I want to contribute. And so we just kind of kept. We kind of kept growing from there.
Julie Host
21:30
Which is interesting because it's it's sort of like you had a goal to you know, improve outcomes for people and have more people know about these modalities of medicine and those kinds of things, but you probably haven't gotten there the way you thought you might have when you imagined this as a goal.
Meghan Guest
21:51
Not at all and I started. I started a software company way back in the day. I was sort of brought into something some people were visioning out and we were. We were really trying to create this incredibly sophisticated directory system to help find these credentialed practitioners.
22:05
It remains a bone of contention for me the number of people who, who, who do not have any training and put themselves out there as having training. To me, this is a really uh, it's, it's just a dangerous, it's a dangerous situation and it does um, the system of medicine I study is significant disservice. And so we're like how do we, how do we create this directory that is, people who are credentialed, who are insured, who have been to school, who have written board exams, etc. Anyways, total, miserable failure, um, for a variety of of reasons. Um, but it also checked the box of okay, this is a way of being able to get that information out, uh, quickly. It's a way for us to be able to disseminate and distribute the medicine. And now there's you know there's so many different ways we can do that at scale. For me, really, it's about now having the discipline to like be very clear on what my skill set is and how I want to deploy that for the next iteration. So there's a few things in the works on that. That's exciting.
Julie Host
23:02
Yeah, but I think that's part of is part of owning a business is that you know you have to keep on rolling, yeah yeah and, I think, static and don't like everything doesn't happen.
Meghan Guest
23:14
The second you kind of remove this, it it all has to work all the time and you're like we're gonna, we're gonna try this, but also we're gonna understand when we're gonna back out, like when we're going to understand, when we're going to back out, like when we're going to call it, that's that's super, that's super valuable, like we can still, but let's just go for it. It's that expectation piece that I think is really um, is really important, that we manage that component. It's not a reflection of you or your skill, or there's there's lots of there's lots of factors that go into whether or not something is going to be successful.
23:51
I have this friend in the States and he has big online business and he was sharing with us that I'm at a mastermind. He's very well known in the industry and he was talking about this absolutely catastrophic launch that they had. He's like we teach launches and we had this absolutely catastrophic launch. It was set up to be like our best ever. We had overextended ourselves on ads, we had more affiliates than we ever had, we had more opt-ins. We had like every metric leading up to this launch suggested this was going to be the most Epic thing we'd ever done. So we kept putting more and more money into the leads. We were like we were.
24:16
We were so excited we're going to kill it.
24:18
We're going to kill it. It's going to be the best, and the to 70% of your sales can come in the last 24 hours, which is a wild thing. But, um, and what happened for him was his cart closed on the same day that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in election round one.
Julie Host
24:39
And so 70% was a no, all eyeballs were on him.
Meghan Guest
24:43
None, none whatsoever, and the cart closed. He was like it was, it was horrible, it's catastrophic. And I remember, I remember him talking about that one. I always make sure I check the calendar now when we plan a launch so that there is no massive known news events. There are no US elections, there are no holidays. We're like totally in the clear Um. But two there's, there's black swan events that you, you just don't see, uh, you don't see coming, and so you know it's okay to fail, like I think that's at the. At the end of the day, it is okay to fail and it doesn't mean all the work you did over here was for naught. I think I'm at the stage of life where, like things happen and I actually can see the silver lining and the disappointment and it can all be in the same package. Um, but it was. It was great to hear them having that story and also just this reminder you got to. You got to just lay it all on the on the table. You can't control everything.
Julie Host
25:35
Yeah, yeah, and I think those are some really great takeaways from having a failure is that really nothing is in isolation, no success or no or any failure. They're not isolated incidents. They're always in the bigger context of who we are, what we learn, how we go out into the world, and I think that you can let a failure drive you off the path if you're not careful. So figuring out how to kind of rest a little and then come back from it is important.
Meghan Guest
26:08
And how you debrief on a failure is, I think, really critical too, and that, I think, is just maturing in life, probably, and also in business. I mean, if you're failing the same way 10 times in a row, we need to stop and we need to evaluate what the heck is going on here. Unless you have super deep pockets and you're just you could just keep me busy, but, um, you know how we, how we debrief and how we like pull the lessons from these things. I think is really uh, is really critical and it's interesting.
26:36
Now, as a parent, I spend a lot of time when there's when there's failures or things didn't work out, I'm like this is amazing. So let's like what happened here. This isn't even you know. I've watched my daughter play soccer and she plays high level soccer. When their coach goes nuts, when they lose a game, I'm I'm going bananas on the other side of the team or the other side of the field Cause I'm like this ah, this is such an opportunity to debrief with them while emotions are high around what went wrong, not to berate them, cause they're not going to risk, they're not going to take risk again, but to like, really like you what happened, you, what happened, like let's, let's not forget. So I, just I have a real soft spot in my heart for for learning from failure, because I'm good at it the failing part.
Julie Host
27:18
It is interesting. It's interesting too, though it makes me think about, like at Mabel's Labels, we had a really strong process around autopsy after every launch that we did for anything, and because even when it went really well, it was never perfect. And so, you know, doing that evaluation of, oh, you know, until you sit as a group, as a project team, and write it all down, what went well, we'd even better if, and then we take our lessons learned and you know, suddenly you're like, oh, five times in a row the same thing went wrong at lunch. You know, if we could find a way to fix that, everything would be so much easier and less stressful for everybody. And and so it is interesting, I think, to have those reflection points and really examine without blame and without you know that you know so-and-so dropped the ball, like. I don't think it's about that. It's more about, like, how, what's happening in communication? Where's the breakdown? What's happening in our systems? Where's the breakdown? Why are we struggling in the same way over and over again?
Meghan Guest
28:24
I think we're past the phase of life. I'm past the phase of life where I'm like who, who's getting in trouble for this? Like I, we don't have a culture for that at work. I'm all again like in my forties. I'm like I don't, I don't get it, I don't get in trouble anymore. Like I don't, that is not. But I think we're still conditioned around that Right, we're like, we're conditioned neurologically to make sure that the blame doesn't, doesn't fall on us and it.
28:47
It took me a long time as a business owner to be able to debrief or autopsy effectively on the backside of any kind of launch, because I felt like I put my whole soul into it. I'm like I got nothing left to hear the feedback. I don't have cause. I still hadn't transitioned to it being feedback. I was still like, oh, the, the blame. I have no room for blame. I did my best. I don't want to hear it. And so there was. You know, at least for me there was a real evolution. Like I had to, I had work to do, to be in a place where I was open and then eager to get the post-event feedback so that we could get even better the next time.
29:25
And I think we forget once we've moved along at least, I sometimes forget. I have to remind myself, actually, how much of your soul goes into your businesses. At first, it is your reputation, it is your money. It feels like it is everything, and so I'm also really I'm empathetic and understanding when people are in a place where they're not great at getting feedback.
29:49
I think that's actually part of the journey and you know, with my background in health and my audience was primarily entrepreneurs when I was in, I was in practice, I recognize that and I was like okay, we need to treat that, we need to like, we need to treat your adrenals, we need to, we need to support your system. You need more time and space and breaks so that you'll grow faster when you can get the feedback. You'll grow faster when your health is on point. That's where the mental health, the physical health, all these pieces come together to actually make you a stronger entrepreneur. But don't kid yourself, there is work in this process. There is personal development work in the process and if you don't like, the sooner you realize that and really look into that, the faster your business is going to grow no matter what.
Julie Host
30:37
It's true. It's true, and I've always believed, that leadership is never static, that it's always a work in progress and it really fits with with. Yeah, who are we as people, mentally, physically, as leaders, and how do we just keep getting better? How do we work on ourselves in a, in a thoughtful way?
Meghan Guest
30:59
yeah, and intentional yeah exactly absolutely good.
Julie Host
31:05
Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a really great conversation and I wish you all the best with growing your businesses, and I look forward to following your journey, thank you, Julie.
Meghan Guest
31:14
This was great All right.
Julie Host
31:16
Take care, my dear. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you won't miss any episodes. Figure Eight isn't just a podcast. It's a way of seeing the big, gorgeous goals of women entrepreneurs coming to life. If you're interested in learning more, you can find my book Big, gorgeous Goals on Amazon, anywhere you might live. For more about my growth and leadership training programs, visit www.juliellis.ca to see how we might work together. Read my blog or sign up to get your free diagnostic. Are you ready for growth? Once again, that's www.julieellis.ca. When we work together, we all win. See you again soon for another episode of Figure 8.