Welcome back to dentistry support the podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Beth Herman. Today, we're going to talk shop on something very personal, very real. The fears and challenges of starting and running a business. This isn't just another go do it. Pep talk.
I want to take this. A little more real raw. Bring you to where I've been.
My goal in this episode. It's to give you an eye into my mind where I've been. How I've learned to be mentally strong. I've learned to grow in my emotional intelligence, create barriers around my heart and my mind that I know. Are hard but necessary. How I've learned to cultivate relationships differently. How I've learned. To take a step back and evaluate things as I go. Because our needs as humans change the way our minds work, the way we want to grow as individuals.
The way we want to. Make our world around us better.
I'm going to share some of my experiences and what this ongoing learning process has been for me. Of being the best leader I can be for my team. And my companies. Let's get started.
First, let's talk about fear. Fear is often the biggest barrier to starting something new. Especially a business or deciding that you want to enter leadership. You hear it all the time on social media. Uh, people saying you're afraid of something. Just stop and go do it. But what are these fears and how do you just stop and go do it? They're not just imaginary monsters under the bed. They're very real and very valid. One of the biggest fears people face. Is the fear of not having enough money. This fear is very real. And very paralyzing. I have had many conversations with people who just want me to understand their financial perspective, their financial situation, and maybe they think, I don't understand their financial situation. The first thing I want to say before I even get too deep into this episode. Is that money will always come and money will always go and then it will come back again and then it will leave. And it will come back again. So wherever you are right now, don't get too comfortable. Because it's about to change. That is the most consistent thing. That I can tell you in life. There have been times when I have not even had 10 cents or my bank account has been in the negative.
And then there have also been times when I've had an abundance and I've been able to share very generously with the world around me. There are large ranges of where you will be in life. And you're not always going to stay the same and you're not always going to grow as fast as you want to. But there's one thing that's constant here. And that's change. Change will always happen.
The fear of not having money. When I first started my businesses, the thought of financial instability was overwhelming to say the very least. What if I couldn't pay my bills? What if I couldn't support my family. How would I ever start a business? Without having a job right now. How could I mathematically do that?
Without a paycheck. How am I going to start another company? If I just don't have the money, I just don't have the money. But the reality is it's not always about the money to start a business. I know that you may be listening to this and maybe you don't own a business and you're thinking, well, that's something that people who have money say, that's not true. Because many people have started businesses with nothing. And they're thriving today.
You have to start somewhere. Ideas, cost nothing. You can still start right.
I'll tell you that I understand these questions. Keep you up at night. These questions, they just live rent free in your mind. Even now years into owning my businesses. The fear isn't completely gone away.
I'm not sharing with you these fears or my perspective on these fears, because I don't have these fears anymore.
Every month for me in business, it feels like a new month. Every month, I have to continue to generate either the same income so that the expenses I have continued to be met. Or I have to generate new revenue. If I've lost in business. You see, there's no business. In any existence of businesses that only goes up that only grows in revenue that never experiences a loss. If you're in small business and you've experienced a loss of any kind. You might be feeling really defeated because of that, you might be feeling like, oh my goodness, I lost business this month.
That means my business is bad. Absolutely not. Every business will lose clients and every business will gain in revenue. Those things are certainties. Now. You're not going to make every customer or client happy. You're not going to make the perfect decisions as a business owner. I have not done any of this perfectly. But I've had to learn that with the good and the growth comes challenges and learning. The fears you have about starting a business, starting in leadership, deciding to take the plunge to do those, they don't go away just because you own a company. They don't leave, but how you choose to build your mental strength? The barriers that your mind and body require around you to continue to move forward.
The circle you surround yourself with. Change. The way that you are able to get through those fears, they change the way you are able to receive information and make the very best decision with that information.
Here's the thing. At the end of the day. Choosing and leadership choosing in business, deciding you want to do something. Means you're also deciding that navigating the waters of uncertainty and fears is, something that's par for the course. It's just part of what the journey looks like.
You learn to plan, you learn to save, you learn to invest. You learn to trust that you've built a strong foundation that can withstand. Tough patches. Most importantly, you learn to keep going. Even when things are hard. You also learned that even if you know, something really stressful as coming up. That once you deal with that stressful thing, you're going to come out on the other side. Feeling amazing because you overcame. You're going to learn that rock bottom means that you fell. A really far distance. But you made it out alive. There's a different perspective here.
There there's a difference in. Fearing the unknown, knowing that you can get through it, that you will keep going through the fear.
Another fear is a fear of not being able to manage the team or the business that you're in charge of. Managing a business or a team or a company is no small feat. It's not just about making money. A lot of people think that's what management leadership. Owning a businesses. It's about the money. It's not always about the money.
It's about managing people, processes, expectations.
Every day, there are what feels like a million expectations of me. And my personal life. And my business life with friends, with family. With customers, clients. There there's a million different expectations.
Fear of failure in this aspect is huge. The responsibility on each of our shoulders is magnificent.
You see when you have relationships with people. And your busy. Or you've got a lot to work on or a lot of tasks on your sheet of paper at the beginning of every day. And you don't spend enough time. On one person or two people or your family or your friends, or this area of business or a new area of business or micromanaging someone. People always feel left out.
They might feel like they're taking on the whole load or your family thinks that you're neglecting them or your friends think you don't make time for them. Or you just have opinions of you in many different areas. I've had them all. I've had all different types of people have many different opinions of me. But one thing I'll tell you is that if you just spent. All of your time worrying about all of the different opinions. That people have a few. And all of the different expectations that people have of you.
You're never going to move forward and grow as an individual or a business owner as a leader. You've got to quiet the noise in the room around you. You have to learn that while all of these fears. I might be very real in your world. You might have a fear of money right now. You might not have enough revenue to make payroll.
You might not have enough money in the bank to pay the bills. You might not have enough time to go with your best friend to your bowling league, or you might not have enough time to go. To a birthday party. There's a million different scenarios of things that you might not be enough of. You might not have all of the expectations met.
Here's some advice that you may not be looking for right now. And that's perfectly okay. But you need to hear it. If you just spent time on all of the expectations. That seemingly people have of you. You'll never move forward. You'll never be able to accomplish what you were meant to achieve. So for me. I like to take a step back when I realized my world around me is just way too clouded. There's too much going on. There's too much chaos. There's too many expectations.
There's too many people that need me all at one time. And I am only one person. You are only one person.
I try to slow down a little bit. Slowing down means that I don't pick up the phone and make phone calls that I know I will spend way too much time on. I delegate a few more tasks. I don't plan activities for myself that I know expectations won't be met. Or I will be so much more mentally drained that I won't spend the time I need to spend. To get the things done that I need to get done. And ultimately I will just be stressed out that I didn't get the things done.
I need to get done. I don't go to the store because instead. Ordering groceries means that I'll have a few more minutes of time for myself.
I choose to close my laptop at a certain time, because I know it's really important for me to not always have my face in front of a screen. I watch a movie with my husband. I listened to an audio book. I choose silence over the TV being on. I trust and lean into the team. That I've created that I specifically hired to work with me and my companies. I let them know the expectations I have or the stresses that I'm currently in the middle of. So they can be in charge of what they were hired to be in charge of. I choose to make choices, to reduce my own mental strain.
This allows me to relieve myself of the stress and anxiety of meeting every measurable metric that comes my way.
You might be thinking. Well, you're just overwhelming yourself with tasks or you don't need to be so great or accomplish so much or do so many things. Maybe you shouldn't be working so hard on your business or yourself, or trying to improve in so many areas. I'm not telling you, you need to have unrealistic expectations of your life. But I am telling you that if you have dreams of things that you want to accomplish, it's perfectly okay for you to set your mind on those and be successful in them and choose to remove the things in your life that consume unnecessary moments of your own time. It's perfectly.
Okay. I am allowing myself that. And I'm telling you right now to allow yourself that.
You see, there's a lot of things that are going to go on in your world, around you that are going to distract you from being able to start the business.
Start the leadership program become a manager. I go to school, whatever it is that you want to do, there's going to be so many distractions. You're never going to meet everyone's expectations. You're never going to have the perfect business. And this isn't a Debbie downer podcast episode. It's just real raw information that you need to know.
I still have days where I wonder if I'm doing enough for my team. Am I meeting their needs. Am I being the best leader that I can be? It's a constant learning process. Every day is going to bring new challenges and new opportunities to grow. Leadership isn't about having all the answers. It's about being willing to learn and grow alongside your team. It's about showing up even on the tough days and doing your best.
Even if everyone around you doesn't see that it's your best. It only matters that, you know, you gave your very best. You're not always going to say the right things. You're going to have to confront team members. About their performance. You're going to have to ask for lists to be completed and tasks to be followed up on and activities to be done because you know, what has to get done as the leader, as the owner, as whoever it is. You're going to have to be in those places where you will be challenged, where you will have to. Appear to have failed people because you need them to grow.
Sometimes you're going to let people down. You won't get back to someone as quickly as they'd like. You're going to follow up one too many times. Your team's going to thank you or annoying. Uh, your friends or your family might think you're letting them down, but really you're just trying your very best.
And it's okay to be in that space. I'm giving you that permission.
Time management is another big fear. How do you find the time to start a business while working another job? Taking care of your family or maintaining some semblance of a personal life. It's a juggling act and there's no perfect balance. When I started dentistry support, there were so many sleepless nights. The longest days, the moments of doubt. I remember working literally 22 hours a day. And some people think there's no way you only slept two hours.
There's no way. Yeah. I would sleep for a couple of hours, take a shower. And I remember sitting at the table and our house in California. My hair was wet.
My husband would make us something to eat. He would be in the office doing whatever I needed him to do so that we could grow the business. My daughter was helping with social media and our online marketing. She was 14 years old.
When we very first registered the company in 2014. She was just a little girl. But man, she would have the iPad out and she would be doing marketing for me , sending out emails, following up with clients. My husband, he was managing our ads.
It was a family affair. It was stressful. There was so much anxiety that went along with how we were going to actually run this business.
I had to learn to prioritize. To delegate. That it's okay to ask for help.
And I know you've probably heard those three things many times on social media, reading a blog, listening to a YouTube video. I'm going to say it again. For emphasis. And then I'm going to talk about it for a few minutes. I had to learn to delegate. First of all, people think that that's just a really great way to say, take a little bit off of your shoulders, learn to give it away.
But the problem sometimes with delegating is that you get people that get angry when you follow up that you delegated to. You have team members who are irritated, that they're being asked a question about something you asked them to do. You're asking them because you want to make sure they did it right.
Well, then I had to learn to implement processes so that I didn't have to micromanage tasks that I delegated. Then I would go down. A rabbit hole of creating checklists and end of day recaps and task lists and deadlines for things. We would have meetings about those things. Delegating is something everyone needs to do, but if you're going to delegate, set good expectations for what is it going to look like? When I follow up with you, Hey, I need you to do this task. But I am going to follow up with you .
If you don't like follow up, this might not be the best job for you. If you don't like that, I'm going to ask you about something or I'm going to have feedback on something. This might not be the greatest job for you. Learn your team members and understand how to communicate with them when you delegate. Because delegating sounds very good, but sometimes delegating can go wrong.
I had to learn.
It's okay. To ask for help. Certainly is okay to ask for help. But watch out. Because sometimes you'll ask for help and people will be okay with it at the beginning. But then if they see you make more money or your business is more profitable, they're going to want another piece of that pie, right? So when you learn to ask for help, choose wisely, who you ask for help because everybody gets sick of helping.
This is the encouragement that as you learn to plan and prepare as a leader, You need to learn to plan and prepare for who you're going to have on your team. I have some of the most incredible team members. Women and men that have been working with me for 10 years. Fantastic individuals have I always had fantastic individuals.
No. Have I had to literally create classes and courses that my team would take to learn about themselves, their own mental health, who they are as individuals and how to appropriately respond. Yeah, I have, because everybody comes from a different walk of life. They haven't all grown up with a household or education that taught them how to communicate with people.
You are going to not only have the challenge of starting. Uh, business or being a leader, but when you have those big responsibilities with big things on your shoulders, you also have to be a person who's willing to train others up and help build their mental toughness. Their IQ on an emotional level, their ability to communicate well tasks that need to be done. There are a million different influencers out there.
Right. But a handful of them talk a lot about the corporate experience, the corporate environment. It's funny to watch some of these that come through my feet. I, I see them just like you do. Something that I've learned is that all of our situations are just not too different. We all experience this same kind of scenarios. My mission and my goal and owning and running my companies. Is that I change those things. I don't waste time on a million meetings every week. What I do spend a time on that I feel like is a great investment. Is managing my team too good expectations. Teaching them how to operate as a leader and vesting in their education with my company. So they can effectively communicate and we can grow together. It's not just about the money.
See, when you are a leader or a manager or a business owner, there's so much more that comes into it.
I want to talk about another fear. Judgment. When you run a business or you lead people, people will judge you. They'll judge your decisions, your performance. And sometimes even your character. This can be especially hard when you're trying your very best. I've had people judge me for not getting back to them quickly enough. Or for not being as available as I once was. It's really hard. But I've had to learn to let go of the need to please everyone. My focus is on my team.
It's on my business, it's on my future. It's on my goals and I'm never going to stop creating those. And you shouldn't either. It doesn't matter what the whole world thinks about you. It matters. What you think about you? Hit matters, how successful you want to be and the energy that you're going to give that. Your priorities change when you run a business, when you lead a team and that's okay. What's important is to stay true to your values, your mission, the path that you are on.
Running a business and being a leader.
It's not all the sunshine and rainbows that people talk about. There are bad days. There are days when you do feel like giving up. But there's also beauty in it. There's beauty and building something from the ground up. In seeing your hard work, pay off and leading a team that believes in your vision. It's important to love your business. It's important to love your team. It's important to love your people and to do your very best every day. It is always a journey of continuous learning and growth.
Another aspect that often gets overlooked is how employees view the financial stability of the business. Many employees expect a paycheck every two weeks, simply because they've completed their tasks while this is a reasonable expectation. It is extremely important to train your team, to have an entrepreneurial mindset. They need to understand that the tasks they perform should directly contribute to generating revenue. The business, isn't an endless pit of money. Just because the business runs doesn't mean there is an unlimited supply of cash. Every task.
Every project, every client interaction needs to be aligned with the goal of bringing in revenue. That might sound ridiculous. The one thing that is very important for you to start understanding. As a leader right now, even if you are not a business owner, But you are a leader in any capacity. Is that you will have entrepreneurs. And then you will have worker bees.
When you are running an organization and choosing leadership. The goal is to take everyone who is a worker bee and teach them to have an entrepreneurial mindset. So they understand every task they do is not just checking off a list. It's a task that has purpose. It's a task that generates revenue and creates a sustaining business.
That is a very hard concept to get everyone to understand.
Oftentimes employees start working for you and they do so because they need to make money. They might even say things to you, like. I need a paycheck. You can't change my wage cause I need a paycheck. I have seen many scenarios along the same line. Which I understand everyone needs a paycheck. I need a paycheck too.
But, like I said, in the beginning of this episode, As a business. Every month is a new month. You're not guaranteed business for the next month. Every month we have to continue generating. So teaching your team their role is so important that if they don't do their job, the proper way. The business can't sustain. The implementation of checklists recap, reporting, following up delegation meetings, these things all happen. Because as a leader, you need to make sure that there's clarity and what's been assigned. If there are changes to an assignment or a task. It's not because you wanted to be rude it's because the business has to sustain we're changing the mindset. Of those.
We lead to understand that their duties, their activities that they're asked to do. Are done to grow the business, not just because we wanted to hand out. Meaningless tasks all day.
As we wrap up, I want to give you a few quotes that resonated with me.
The only way to do great work is to love what you do. Steve jobs said that. Winston Churchill said success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. And last Zig Ziglar says you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Every day in business and leadership is a new opportunity to learn, to grow and to make a difference. Embracing the journey is the start. You're going to have highs. You're going to have lows. at the end of the day, it's the growth, the change, the transformation. What you end at that matters. Along the way. You're not going to make everybody super happy with you.
One certainty I have in my life that took me a very long time to understand. Is the entire world will not be happy with me all at one time.
If you're a people pleaser. You know what I mean when I say that feels crippling. Because it does. I want to please everyone. But I have had to learn that that is not within my capacity. Hi, I'm not ever going to be the best friend. The best mom. The best wife, the best sister, the best aunt. I'm never going to be the best of all of those all at the same time. And you know what, it's not my responsibility to strive for that. I can't do that. I'm never going to achieve that kind of perfection.
I hope you found today's talk on the fears and challenges of leading helpful. You're not alone in what you're doing. We all have fears. We all have bad days. But it's our passion and dedication that keep us going.
R that's good moment for today is all about perseverance. That's what I've been talking about.
This whole episode. No matter how hard things get. Remember why you keep starting, why you keep pushing forward? Don't lose sight of what your dreams are. Money will always come and money will always go. Clients and customers will leave and then clients and customers will come back.
There is never been a business in existence that has ever done it all. Perfect and never lost a client or had a bad experience. Just because you lose one patient, one client, $1 of business last month versus this month, it doesn't mean that you're failing at everything. You are strong, you are courageous and you will make it through it.
Thank you for tuning in to dentistry, support the podcast.
If you enjoy today's episode. Please subscribe and leave a review for us. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram. And in the show notes, there is a little bit of information on some other areas you can follow us at. If you'd like to be a guest on the show. I surely love to have you. We have a request form you can fill out and then we'll schedule a call to chat with you about what that looks like.
If you're looking for a mentor, you can head to my website details for that are also in the show notes. And if at any time you're listening to this podcast and you feel like I'm talking way too fast, just know that other people in my life have been telling me that for years. And you can also check the speed settings wherever you listen to your podcasts. And slow down my voice or on the contrary, you can speed it up. And sometimes I sound a little bit funny like that, either way, that's a couple of tips for you. If you have feedback or topics that you'd love for us to chat with, you can send me an email I'd love to hear from you.
You can also text me that link is also in the show notes. Thank you so much. And until next time, keep striving, keep leading and creating those generational leaders that we all desire to have the future of our businesses. And success depends on it. I'll catch you on the next episode.
