From Expert to Leader: Navigating Small Business Success with Laura Watson

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Laura Watson
• 3:00 Having a Plan and Working Your Plan
• 8:43 Leading vs Lagging Indicators
• 15:06 Gratitude and Acknowledging Wins
• 22:26 Resources and Ways to Connect
• 24:00 Final Tip: Don't Do It Alone

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

to. Hello there, everyone, and welcome back to the latest episode of overcome yourself, the podcast. As you know, my name is nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with laura, um. So, laura, go ahead and introduce yourself. Love your glasses, um, who you are and who you help okay, well, thanks very much, nicole.

Speaker 2: 0:22

It's a pleasure to be here today. As you shared, my name is Laura Watson. My company is Venture Coaching International. I'm based, actually, in the great white north of Calgary, alberta. So although the calendar says it's spring, outside, I'm still staring at snow, so that's just the way it goes here.

Speaker 2: 0:43

But I am a leadership and business coach for small business owners and C-level executives, and I work with owners and executives across North America, actually so across the US and Canada, and I've been doing so for over 20 years now because I just absolutely love the work that I get to do. So what I help people do really is I help them take their life, their business, their leadership to the next level, whatever that looks like for them. So, whether they're a small business owner, a solopreneur who needs to manage their time more effectively, deal with overwhelm, organize themselves so they can create more work-life balance, manage their mental and emotional mastery better, so that they're not on these roller coaster rides all the time, I do that kind of work all the way through to leaders with small teams who are often subject matter experts, like engineers, architects, accountants, who know their field really well and decided to start a business and have a team, and now they're leading a small organization where leadership requires a new set of skills than their professional skills. And so where I come in and support there is, with business planning again, time and organization, but also we'll add on more communication stuff how to delegate more effectively, how to communicate more effectively. Often I find the owners, when they get frustrated and overwhelmed, they get very reactive and their communication skills aren't always the best, and then they get frustrated, thinking that people just don't get it, when in fact the issue lies with themselves.

Speaker 2: 2:40

So I help to summarize it I help, you know, small business owners and executives be a better version of themselves, you know, personally and professionally, because although I'm in the boardroom working with them by day, they go home at night and they've got relationships at home to deal with with their spouse, with their kids, their own health that they're dealing with. So I'm really a whole person coach, you know, focused on business and leadership, but also able to support at home, because I, before coaching, I have a counseling background. So hopefully I do a lot of things and help in a lot of ways, hopefully. That summarizes it a nice little neat package. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense and I know, I know you mentioned you have a lot of ways. Hopefully that summarizes it a nice little neat package.

Speaker 1: 3:24

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense and I know I know you mentioned you have a lot of resources available and so I would like to know, like, what are some tips that you have? You mentioned like the, the, the expert. They're an expert in their field and they're branching out and they're like I want to do my own thing. Can you give us some of like, maybe like where they trip up and what tips you have to help them really not stumble so much in the beginning so they can get right to the good stuff?

Speaker 2: 3:54

Absolutely. You know what this is going to sound cliche, and I find a lot of people resist it. But have a plan and work your plan Right. I just no matter what the size of business or how many years they've been in business, whether startup or a mature business for example, I have an engineer here in Calgary who just celebrated his 15th anniversary of the business. I find so many owners don't have a plan and if they have a plan, it's something they have in their head. They've never documented it. And even if they have documented it whether it's virtual or on paper it's maybe some thoughts or some intentions that they put down one day or maybe at New Year's as part of the resolution thinking, and they're not keeping that plan alive throughout the year and really working their plan.

Speaker 2: 4:49

So I find where people struggle is, first of all, a lack of clarity about what they want. So there has to be clarity about what first of all, and then we have to flush out that clarity as far as when and how. So what that looks like is you have to reverse engineer your business. You have to think about foundational aspects like your core values and your vision, your mission, who you serve as a target audience, what's most important to you, what makes you unique from your competition? Because everybody's going to have competition of some sort and there's a special sauce or a uniqueness that people bring to the table that they need to be clear about first so that they can communicate that to the marketplace. So those are foundational pieces of having a business plan. And then a plan involves where do you want to be in 10 years from now? Where do you want to be three to five years from now? Where do you want to be one year from now? That's the reverse engineering part.

Speaker 2: 5:57

And then, once we've got clarity about where we want to be a year from now. So, for example, I'm working on plans right now with my clients that we created the 1st of January and we're at the end right now. We're at April 1, we're at the end of Q1. So I'm reviewing those plans with everybody talking about okay, here's what we decided we wanted for the year, here's what we decided we wanted for the Q1. Now, where are we at in our progress? What have we achieved? What maybe is still in progress? And now, based on our goals for the year, what are we going to focus on in Q2?

Speaker 2: 6:32

So we have to take that annual plan and break it down into quarterly bites, because we can't work on everything all at once. And once we have it down into quarterly bites, then we still are clear about what we want to achieve for the quarter, but we may not have clarity yet on how we're going to achieve it or when in the quarter. So that's where I take my clients through the next step of the process, which is now that we're clear on what we want to accomplish for the quarter. That's when I create a scorecard with people and that's when it really gets nitty gritty, where we take the individual goals for the quarter and we take one or two action steps that we can work on each week in the quarter so that we know how we're going to achieve those goals. And then once we have the actions so goal number one might have one action this week and that's all we have to do.

Speaker 2: 7:30

But again, we've taken it down into a sizable bite one action, and then when, when in the week, is that action going to actually take place? Because that's again another place where people stumble is, if they're not, they might be clear what they probably haven't figured out how which is the action, and then they have not put it in their calendar decide okay, I'm setting aside two hours on tuesday to take this action. So we really have this how the actions that we're taking, and when we're taking them, to keep that plan alive and actionable throughout the year. So that's what I mean when I say have a plan and work your plan. That's what it looks like.

Speaker 1: 8:25

I love that. I love that so much. Now I want you to talk to me about when we're setting goals, because you know we talk a lot about setting goals, but then we don't talk about how to make that happen. So I want you to talk to me about the difference between setting a goal of getting a client versus setting a goal of making five calls a day, for example. But do you see the difference in the, the action that I can take, versus what comes out of the other end? So can you talk to me a little bit about that difference?

Speaker 2: 8:59

Well, yeah, so having a new client, that's called a lay, that's a goal for sure. I want one new client, or five new clients, whatever that is, and that's really a lagging, what we call a lagging indicator of our success, which is important. We, you know, we want that client. But the leading indicator is actually more powerful because it's the leading indicator. It's, those are, the actions that lead to getting the client. So the leading and the goal might be, or the action is I'm making five phone calls a week to prospects or to my network for referrals, or to previous clients that I've had to see if they are still in need of service of some kind, or what have you. So the leading indicator is actually what we can control, because we can't control the lagging indicator. We can't control that we're actually going to land those five new clients, but what we can control is the actions that will lead to getting those five new clients, which is the phone calls, for example.

Speaker 2: 10:03

So, absolutely, once we're clear on the goal, how are we going to do that? I'm going to make the phone calls. When am I going to do that? Monday morning, I'm setting aside an hour of time to reach out to my network and make those calls, and so sometimes those actions are a habit that we create and they're just something that we do every week. Sometimes those actions are going to be one-offs. It really depends on what the goal is. But that's how I distinguish between sort of goal and action, leading indicators versus lagging indicators. So I hope that answers your question.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Yes, yes, it does, and I think it's just so important to remind ourselves to focus on what we can control right, and I that happens to me with a lot of my clients, like with posting. You're the, your job is to keep posting right, Like you have to keep creating content. You have to make sure that it's good content, obviously, that it's speaking to your clients. You're not just throwing spaghetti at a wall, but focus on the posting of the content and then, we can't focus on.

Speaker 1: 11:11

Oh my God, that post didn't get me a client. Well, that's not exactly how it works, right? It's not one for one. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2: 11:19

Yeah absolutely no. Yeah, it's the habit and the consistency that leads to the result. The habit we can control. We can take those actions on a daily or weekly basis, whatever that cadence is going to be, and we can't control the outcome. But we can control the leading indicator going into the outcome and unfortunately, I find that so many people get impatient and give up too quickly. Yeah, I think our phones and our social media have really turned us into an instant everything society and if we don't get that result right away, then we give up and we jump to another tactic that and then we don't stick with that one either. So, really, where people get success is choosing a strategy and an approach that fits for them.

Speaker 2: 12:09

Not everybody wants to do written posts. I have done a little bit of that for a while and I found you know what I really don't enjoy that Podcasting I love because I get to meet great people like yourself, I get to be in an interactive conversation, I get to share value. So I found something that fits for me, that I enjoy doing, and when I enjoy doing it, I'm having fun and I'm more likely to do more of it. So I think that's an important criteria as well, as there's lots of different ways we can get our value and our content out there, we do need to find a tactic and a strategy that fits for us and feels good for us, because then it's going to be also easier to stick with it and be consistent.

Speaker 1: 12:56

Yeah, I love that, and my coach always likes to remind us that the strategies, the frameworks that are out there, they work right. Like if you wanna go high ticket, that works. If you wanna go low ticket, that works. If you wanna go mid ticket, that works. If you wanna do cold DMs, that works. If you wanna post, that works. But you have to do something. Pick one of those things affiliate marketing, whatever it is but you have to pick it, get in your lane and then stay in it.

Speaker 1: 13:25

They're not going to work if you're trying to do them all at the same time, right?

Speaker 2: 13:30

So yeah, we'll spread ourselves too thin, yes, right, and when we spread ourselves too thin, we don't get any depth, we don't get leverage from that approach.

Speaker 1: 13:39

you know, and to your point, we I find people jump lanes too soon yes yes I agree, and and that's one of the things that you learn in the trenches, right um, and and and the the compounded result when you do create a habit, right, if that's part of the goal and you're doing something like that of doing something consistently every week, like making sure you're getting on a podcast every week, I totally agree with you. Podcasting makes creating the content easier because you want to do it, you're having fun, you're getting to meet new people, you're having exactly what you said, you're having new conversations, and then you can pull quotes and you're like wow, I love that. I said that, like I wouldn't have even like written that down, but like it came out and I can quote myself, um, so, but you also mentioned that part of this process that you help your clients with the mindset and it's really like a very holistic approach, right, because it's really hard to come, you know, to compartmentalize like leadership.

Speaker 2: 14:44

Leadership's a big umbrella, encompasses a lot of things.

Speaker 1: 14:47

Yes, right, and when you become a better leader in one area, that hopefully is going to reflect in the other areas. So I want to know, in this mindset, in this whole process, what part does gratitude play, you know, in what you do with your clients and helping them?

Speaker 2: 15:03

Oh, that's a unexpected question, but a great question. Yeah, gratitude is super important, and and so are, and I'm going to combine gratitude with acknowledging our wins. Yes, right, because gratitude and appreciation, absolutely, and the wins and the progress we're making, and it's super important. This is something that I learned about actually years ago from a gentleman named David Rock, who also is a leadership expert, who also is a leadership expert, and what he talked about is that when we acknowledge our wins and our gratitude, it actually rewires our brain. And when we're in business, as you know, we can be so focused on the problems, what's not working, what do we got to fix, what do we got to do next, and that the list is long and we can get so focused on what's not working and what needs fixing that we can go in a downward mental and emotional spiral around all those things. And whether we're a soulpreneur and it's affecting our own mental and emotional capacity, or whether we're leading a team and we're getting grouchy and cranky and with our team members, which isn't a good way to show up, it's really, really important that we not just there's always going to be challenges, and I'm not saying that we're going to put on rose colored glasses and not address the challenges Absolutely. But before we address the challenges, we have to acknowledge our wins and we have to acknowledge what we're grateful for so that we can open up the creativity centers in our brain. We can give ourselves a moment to acknowledge yes, here's what's working. And in fact I'll show you.

Speaker 2: 16:55

I have a little wins jar, and this is something I have my clients do. I'm obviously doing it for myself and I collect my wins whenever I'm like, hey, there's something here I'm grateful for or something I've accomplished, write it on a little piece of paper, I stick it in my wins jar and then every quarter or every six months, I empty the jar and I read all my wins so that I can be reminded of the accomplishments I've made. So this is a great little way to do that. I also start my coaching sessions every week with my clients about what are the wins this week, what progress have you made? Because they're always coming to a session oh, I got to work on this. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that. But before we get to that, let's talk about what you have accomplished. Where are what are you grateful for? Because when it shifts our emotions. It shifts our headspace, opens up our capacity to be able to take on the challenges.

Speaker 1: 17:54

I love that and I think it's so important that you differentiate, because there is just the act of practicing gratitude, without it even having to be a win. We can do that. That's a whole separate thing, right, because gratitude is more about being right. And so we are being grateful and, like I love what you said about, you know, in challenges, when things are coming up, I feel big emotions. One of the ways that I can redirect myself is like, okay, let's stop and reframe. What am I grateful for right now? This situation sucks. I don't like this at all. This is terrible, but what can I be grateful for right now? So, cause I've got to keep moving, especially for ND people, we get stuck in this paralysis and this executive dysfunction and in situations, there are situations where we don't have time for that.

Speaker 1: 18:52

Can't get under the rock, and so that's been super helpful for me. And then, at the end of the day, as a separate, totally separate thing, don't get lost the rock, and so that's been super helpful for me. And then, at the end of the day, as a separate, totally separate thing, don't get lost in the winds right, because it's about more than just the winds. But it's also important that we acknowledge them, and I love that you have your jar, because it's also we are so good at forgetting.

Speaker 1: 19:14

Yes, all the good things you know, like we totally you know, just writing it down and then I'll be writing down well, what are some things that I did this month? I'll look through my planner. I'll be like, oh my gosh, I was so excited about this and it's been two weeks and I already forgot about it. Like I thought this was already like way in the past. And the other thing I thought of when you were talking was we're so good at moving the goalpost. We're like I want to get one client and then you get the client. You're like, yeah, but I didn't get five.

Speaker 1: 19:45

We're like wait a second, the goal was one. You got one. Why are you mad that you didn't get this goal, that you we didn't even talk about until you had already set it up? Like you can't even enjoy the one, so it's so important for us to really stop absolutely it.

Speaker 2: 20:04

The stopping grounds us. You know we're just flying at a mile a minute. Uh, you know, whether we're a parent, whether a business owner, leader, and it's just we can just be caught up in that whirlwind. And so, yeah, taking a moment of gratitude grounds us, settles us, and it actually affects us mentally. And with and with the grounding, then we can, we will be able to think more clearly and problem solve more effectively.

Speaker 1: 20:38

I love that. I love that so much. So tell me a little bit about because, like I had mentioned the beginning of this episode, you had talked about some resources that you have available, so can you tell us a little bit about those and how we can stay in touch with you.

Speaker 2: 20:55

Oh, absolutely yes, I'm a bit of a tool lady.

Speaker 2: 20:58

Love it, and, you know, one of the things that I really love helping clients do is bridge theory to practice. You know, the theory is great. We have to know what to do, but if we can't put it into practice, then we're not going to get the value out of it, and so I've been. So that's a real passion of mine is helping people to bridge that, and one of the ways I do that is by offering free resources.

Speaker 2: 21:26

So my website is venturecoachingca, because I'm in Canada and right there in Venture Coaching, in addition to having an opportunity to reach out to me for a free coaching session if someone wishes, there is a free tab. Free tab has a number of free downloads. They are e-books that cover a number of leadership topics. So, whether you're wanting to write that business plan and reverse engineer your business, like I talked about earlier, I have an e-book there that addresses that. I've got e-books that talk about how to give feedback effectively, communicate effectively, manage your time effectively, manage your motions, so all those things that fall under that big leadership umbrella. I've got a number of free downloads that people are welcome to take advantage of so that they can actually put these things into practice and reap the benefits.

Speaker 1: 22:21

Yay, that is amazing. And tell us how can we stay in touch with you, laura? Like social media. Can we follow you?

Speaker 2: 22:28

Yeah, of course, linkedin. I'm there Usually posting some sort of resource or tip or trick that's going to help with business development or leadership development. I'm on Facebook under Laura Watson as well. That tends to be a little more personal side, but people are welcome to follow me there. Youtube, venture Coaching I've got a number of other podcasts that I've done and I've done, like I said, a number of these podcasts and so other topics that I've talked about with other podcasters like yourself. I have those on my website. So really, if people want to stay in touch, the best place to go is my website, venturecoachingca. They can get the free tools, they can check out the other podcasts and then, if they want to have a conversation with me which I'm always happy to do they can reach out directly me, which I'm always happy to do.

Speaker 1: 23:23

they can reach out directly. Awesome. Thank you so much for that. Now, as we're signing off, we like to sign off with your biggest tip. So what is the biggest tip that you have for the audience? They're working on overcoming themselves, they're stepping out as this expert that they're in, but they're in a whole new arena where they get to show off this expertise. So what's the biggest tip you have for those, for those new?

Speaker 2: 23:45

entrepreneurs. I think my biggest tip is get help. Yeah, don't do this alone. It's it's too big, it's too much.

Speaker 2: 23:57

Whether the help looks like reading a book, getting free resources like my own resources joining a mastermind group, a network of some kind, or having a coach, there's just so much involved with building and growing a business, no matter what level you're at, and so don't think you have to do it alone. People yes, they're an expert in their area. They probably have lots of value to bring to the table. But when we take on running and growing a business, there's a whole new set of skills that need to be embraced and mastered, and we just it'll go too slow if we try to do it by ourselves. So get help. Think about where you're strong and pursue what you're strong. Be clear about where you're not so strong and where some of the challenges lie, and get some help to address those challenges. Barter services if you have to Do whatever it takes to get some help to address those challenges. Barter services if you have to Do whatever it takes to get some help, because with help, you're going to move forward faster.

Speaker 1: 25:08

I love that and I think it's so important what you mentioned that you don't have to go all in in the beginning. Go with the lower cost resources. Reach out to experts who have low cost resources or even free resources, or hit up the thrift store and grab yourself some books or go to the library Library.

Speaker 1: 25:31

Yes, exactly, and in my book I talk about how that is an inexpensive way to get to spend time with your mentors, really learn from them, get to hear, like their inside stories and really right, you're spending time with them and you don't have to pay thousands of dollars to learn what they're teaching. But it does take you taking the action of going and getting the book and implementing it, what it is that they're talking about.

Speaker 2: 25:57

Absolutely Reading the book a great first step. Absolutely, that's the theory, and then you got to put it into practice, and so, whether you create a system or a process for yourself, or you talk to someone else who can help you, it's going to be the practice of whatever theory they're learning about or skill that they are adopting that will make all the difference.

Speaker 1: 26:24

Yeah, and that's that's how you learn to ask the right questions, because when you're just starting, you don't know, so you don't even know what the right questions are to be asking.

Speaker 2: 26:33

Absolutely no. There's blind spots out there and often we don't know what we don't know. So, again, books, resources whether they're podcasts, eBooks, whatever YouTube videos yeah, there's going to be blind spots, that's inevitable, and there's going to be things that we can't know everything that's impossible. But the knowledge is out there and we've got this incredible thing called Google and AI now where we can ask questions and discover and learn what we don't know.

Speaker 1: 27:05

I love that. Yeah, that changes everything, doesn't it? And it's just getting started. Oh my gosh, this has been absolutely wonderful. Laura, thank you so much for joining us today and thank you guys for joining us. We'll see hear you guys next time, on the next episode of Overcoming Self-Depth Podcast. Bye, bye for now.