Veronica Guguian and Jillian Vorce chat about the three lessons learned from their time owning and growing businesses over the years.
Welcome to episode 3 of Creative Conversation: Conversations with Veronica and Jillian.
Veronica's Lessons Learned:
Jillian's Lessons Learned:
People & Resource Mentions In This Episode:
About Veronica Guguian
- Website: https://spinideas.nl
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-guguian
About Jillian Vorce
- Website: https://thejilliangroup.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianvorce
Credits
- Music Composed by BeeLa Music
- Voiceover by Amanda Balagur
You. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode three of creative collaboration conversations with Veronica and Jillian. And as always, I'm Veronica, and I'm here with Jillian. Hello, Jillian.
Hi there. Happy Tuesday, Wednesday, happy Wednesday, or whatever day it is. So today we're going to chat about three lessons learned from our time owning businesses and growing businesses over the years. I'm very interested to hear your lessons learned, but before we dig into that check-ins, what's new with you? What's going on? What has happened this last stretch of days, hours since we last chatted? Any new tools? Discoveries? Any fun facts? Anything? Give us the inside scoop on something. What's new in Veronica land?
As you know, I'm quite an impulsive person, so I think it will be a small rant this time because while we're trying to and of course, you know what I'm going to chat about. But while we're trying to record this episode, we did have some technical issues and so what's the word I'm looking for? Classical technical issues. We all have them.
So cliche, right?
So frustrating. So Zoom, whatever you're doing, make our life easier, please. I know we need to switch accounts and figure out what is happening.
I will say I like how on Google Meet if you want to blur your background, it blurs. It's like it's a more subtle blur. So you look kind of normal, but when you use the blur, the background in zoom, it makes you look like the Terminator. It's like a strange kind of a look. So this is not to, like, throw stones at Zoom, but I look like I have no ears unless I don't have my air pods in it. It looks strange. But this is not like, let's throw stones at Zoom. It's just no, it's not. Technical difficulty?
Yeah, technical difficulty, please.
Cool.
So I just demonstrated the blur. I do use it quite a bit, but now this is my rent of the week because it just happened. I do feel a little frustrated about it, but now that I said it's out, I'm going to give space for something else. How about please do tell me you don't have a rent as well.
I don't really have a rant. I don't really have a rant. What do I have to share today? So I guess I'm going to go with the very vanilla approach of sharing a fun fact. Although our last episode, my fun fact, maybe in hindsight, wasn't really actually a fun fact. This one might be. Maybe it's not either. Oh, actually, I'm going to switch it up. I'm going to share an actual fun fact. All right. I just thought of a better one. Okay. So I once had an amazing opportunity to sing on stage with my favorite musician, Natalie Merchant.
Wow.
I'm not sure if you know her. Yeah, really incredible. It was like, God, 20 years ago or more, and it was a really kind of out-of-body experience. I was backstage with her bass players kids, and she called us out, and so I brought the kids out on stage, and next thing I know, the kids were next to me, and then they ran off stage to be with their mother, and she was there. And so were, like, side by side singing These Are the Days. It was like, this was so long ago. This is like pre-social media, pre-cell phone days. So for years, my wife and I have been scouring the Internet trying to see if is there any video proof of this. So far we haven't found any, but this was probably 2000, the Lilith Fair in Boston, Massachusetts.
If anyone is listening, do you have you were there?
Yeah, exactly.
Make sure you send it to Jillian.
Yeah, that one just came to me at this moment. These are the days. So that's my little fun fact. It has zero to do with business, but it's a core memory for me. So now you get to know about.
It and that makes it better. I forgot about my rent.
Right. Oh, boy. All right, so we're going to talk about three main, your biggest lessons learned, like three insights that you have gained over the years. What do you have?
I always find it hard, like why did we choose this topic? Because honestly, I know when I'm interviewed or asked this, I have a moment when I just stop and I think this is why it's good to talk about it because I don't think there are just three lessons. I think there are more. But the main three things that you need to that actually impacted everything that I do. And it kind of relates a little bit with the previous episode that we did about networking. Because one of the biggest lessons is actually just to surround yourself. Just be curious. Actually, be curious and surround yourself with people curiosity. You never know what will lead you or who you're going to meet by being curious and chatting with people or technology that you're going to do or like the story you just shared.
You have no idea what you are in the backstage and then you see right. Being curious. I think that even if don't get me wrong, it's very important to have a direction in your business. But being curious will enable you to maybe bring something new or innovate or adapt or do different things. And I think it's very important to do that. And that also connects with networking, with meeting people.
Can I ask a quick question about that for a moment? It occurs to me that this topic of probably not the greatest time to ask this question, but it is just occurred to me.
Are three lessons learned the same as three things I wish I had known when I was starting? Are those two different topics or are they different?
Actually?
Yeah. Okay.
Maybe there will be a couple of things that will match the curiosity. I think it's more a feature that I have and it's something that I believe, if you know me, I'm always going to do that. If you attended my online networking with speed, you're always going to hear me saying that. I wouldn't say I'm doing it. So it's not something that I wish I would have done, I think because I did it helped me grow my business and help me get where I.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Okay, maybe what will be another one that I wish, and that is also a lesson, is to be very careful with whom you're associating. So in terms of strategic partnerships, that's something very important you need in order to grow your business. And I'm pretty sure you're going to have a story very close to that, but it's a lesson that actually you do need to I'm going to be very screwed up sometimes because if you don't, you're not never going to learn. And I'm not a big fan of I always had difficulties with this - fail fast and you need to fail in order to succeed. I'm not really keen on how it's said because a lot of people take it literally. It's okay, I need to fail. I just need to fail to move forward.
Sometimes they forget to learn the lesson while doing that. I don't think the failing should be of course you're going to fail. That's a given. But you shouldn't go into any activity or business or opportunity or whatever with the idea it's okay to fail or I'm going to fail. Because you're going to attract it in one way.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
It's a very fine line there. It happens. It's not the end of the world and learn from it, but if your mindset is it's okay to fail, maybe you're not going to go that extra mile or you're not going to look for an extra or a different perspective or a different way of doing things because it's okay. The words have a very powerful impact on everything that we are doing. So if you tell yourself that you kind of not yeah, it's like you.
Almost let yourself off the hook too easily.
Exactly.
Yeah, I can see that. That's a really good one. I hadn't thought of that. That's a really good one.
So I strongly believe in the power of words and how they make you feel. And if you start with something negative, that doesn't mean you'll be negative, but your state of mind is slightly different.
Yeah. How about a third?
Oh gosh, actually, I think I have more. So definitely it's important with whom you are partnering because you need to be careful and have strong agreements in place. I was wondering if I should say boundaries or agreements, but it's actually very good when you enter a partnership to really write down what that partnership involves, what are the links? Actually, we did something similar when we started that. What objective are we doing? Do we feel comfortable with and what we don't feel comfortable with actually getting to know each other and developing this project? But I think it's very important because personally, I did enter different partnerships on like, oh, I have a good connection we do in line without really doing a proper background check and failure and I think that's the thing.
Do a proper background check, do your due diligence, make sure you're connecting, and don't be afraid to say no. If it's not connecting another opportunity will come and I think another big lesson is this learn to listen to your gut feeling and if something doesn't feel aligned just say no. I did that also with clients and was the hardest thing. Especially when you are at the beginning and you need the money and you're like am I just saying no to a huge opportunity? But always when you're looking back you'll see it's not like that if it's not clicking and when I say I'm going to say work too hard but that doesn't mean you don't need to work but you need to force it. When you need to force it as a word not to work hard.
When you need to force it then that means something is not clicking. Being either in terms of values you're not in line or maybe your parties are following different goals or something is not clear in the communication or something one of the parties doesn't feel the parties don't feel equally probably if that makes sense.
No, I think that's on point. Those are three really good ones. Yeah, really good lessons learned.
Everything else you'll always just look for a different perspective, do things differently, try different things. I think everyone will going to share that. But what I'm realizing it's that if you with yourself are happy with the decision and the direction then everything will follow. You know what you're saying? A happy house, a happy wife, a happy house I think is the same and the child will be good if the mother is good. Everything comes to the same. If you are in charge and if you feel comfortable and you feel confident and you feel yes that's the way we go as a leader because you as an entrepreneur are the leader. Even if it's a one-man show or a team everything will follow into place afterwards.
That is so on point. I have to just say for a minute wow in thinking about how I was recently interviewed on a podcast to talk about downsizing an agency which is like the least sexy topic out there but that's like I'm all for it very important. Yeah, talk about the things that other people don't want to talk about publicly. So I talked about it and I framed it in such a way that it's authentic to me and it was about making the choice to downsize. there are a couple of reasons I did that, but one of the probably the original reasons is because I started to feel out of alignment with the clients were working with and the deliverables, like what services were providing to them, and just felt like it just wasn't a match.
And just more and more felt like this is really not it. So I went through that firing of client situation. We're just literally telling my largest client at the time I told them actually for quite a while, tried to encourage them to go elsewhere, but finally told.
Them that.
At the end of year the no longer be able to afford me. That no matter how much they would pay, I would charge one dollar more kind of thing instead. And the reason for it is that and it's truly what I believed is because I believe that they needed to reallocate the money they were spending to me to hire somebody to manage their business because I felt and still feel you can't outsource leadership, accountability, and culture. And that's what was happening. So I told them to hire you actually. And they were like what? Really? And I'm like, really? I said I'll even help you interview the candidates. I'll tell you who's the best candidate, I'll help onboard them with everything. And they were like wondering am I going to get eaten if I cross the river here what's happening?
But anyhow it was so much about this and trusting the gut and just knowing and so I followed through on that. And so that was kind of a step on the journey of pivoting my focus to really come back into alignment, which is again part of being deliberate about downsizing. So anyway, that's a really great one. Anyway, don't mean to go off on a tangent about that but thanks for that. Yeah, that's an excellent one.
Actually. I'm curious, would you say this will be one of your three lessons or what are your three lessons?
So my first one is to have a support system. And by that I mean it can be a mastermind, it can be whatever it is, like a group of people in your city or something that you hang with or an online group or some group outside of your own business and ideally outside of your own family or your own home. A place where you can speak candidly and share wins, share struggles, challenges, talk through opportunities, just to talk through all of those things and then also to be uplifted. To go back to my question about whether is this something I wish I'd known or is this kind of a lesson learned? That one checks both boxes because it's definitely something.
In hindsight, looking over my past ten-plus years with this agency, this business, I value that so much that I now have that in place and I recognize how much I wish I had that earlier on. Because frankly, at the time when I started, I did not realize that the growth I was experiencing was really significant. I didn't even know that I was doing a good job. I just thought I was just doing what I do. And I always could see the areas that needed improvement. I never once recognized the good that was happening. So I wish I had that in place earlier on. It's ironic because I had a large network, but I never really shared too much about what I was doing. So I guess it was like an unreciprocated network.
So I was so much more comfortable being available to other people in listening and helping them grow their businesses and.
Lifting them up.
Gave them the opportunity to do the same for me. So anyway.
I realized actually, always at the support group, more informal or formal, there are different versions of that. And you're so right, you do need it. Because let's be honest, life as an entrepreneur is really hard and it's beautiful, but it's hard and you're going to have a lot of down moments. So I'm so happy you mentioned this because you need and it's so important, as you said, to be outside of your organization, because everybody's going to get so caught up in the day-to-day problems that you're not able to see the bigger picture. And you forget what I'm realizing actually is you forget to appreciate and to celebrate the small wins and the big wins. Yes, those are so important. Those are so important to be able to get the energy to move forward.
Absolutely. And it's much easier, I think, for a lot of people, or just I'll speak for myself, it's much easier for me to recognize and to celebrate wins, for you to identify little things and to call them out than it is for me. Because for me, I'm so focused on down the road, I'm focused on all that. I still need to do what wasn't so great, and what I need to improve on. I don't recognize those things. And I love to be able to identify and celebrate those for others, but I also need to allow that.
Look at that. You start doing this. Okay, weekly. What are we celebrating?
Yes, that's a really good one. Let's add that. I think that's something to celebrate. Yeah, I think that's a good one because it's so easy to focus on all the stuff that isn't or hasn't been done yet or we need to do it all.
You're just going, oh, and I need that. So that means I need to do that to achieve it. And we do forget I have a wonderful I don't know if it's mastermind accountability. It's a group of amazing women that are in it every two weeks and we talk about everything and nothing. And I do realize it's so important. They keep on saying, we do need to celebrate. And I'm realizing we are not really celebrating ourselves. The cultural thing or I need to achieve more or I'm not where I want to be that we actually forget to wear.
Yeah, it's so true. I remember when my book came out, it was like a few years back, 2016, my book came out and around that time, and still now, years later, people will say, oh my gosh, that's so amazing. And still, now I feel like, really, it is. I'm grateful, I'm beyond grateful that I had the opportunity to work on that project through relationships and networking and whatnot. That was an incredible opportunity and experience. But I went into a Barnes and Noble back in the day when there were a lot of brick-and-mortar bookstores that we would just go into. And I could walk into the business section or marketing section, and I know many of the authors. So I felt like all these New York Times bestsellers, all of these things.
So it felt like for me to have a book was basic. It felt like my view of it was so skewed. Right. Super biased. So I didn't really celebrate it. I just was very matter-of-fact about it. But I just like, at this moment thinking about you coming out with a book, I'm going to be like, Girl, that's amazing because that's so much work. And like, wow, to have an idea, to take an idea all the way through, like execution, and then launching it, that's like a major undertaking. So it's just a tangible example of exactly this. So I think, yeah, I vote for us to move forward.
You know what? Actually, as Pin, we organized four conferences that I never really properly celebrated after the first one, and even if it was the first time we actually published four books as well, never even went and talked about it. Let's move forward. And it's worth that you don't appreciate. Where are they?
I don't even know about them. I haven't seen them anywhere.
You can find them on the website. Actually. The books are part of the conference, and it's a collection of so what we realized after the conference is it's so much information, you are not able to digest all of it. And we are thinking, yeah, of course, can we actually take advantage of this? We have amazing people with amazing experience. So we decided to take the most, like a summary, if you want, of the sessions and to put them in a book.
That's a great idea. Download like ebooks. I could download whichever physical I do.
I don't have it here at this point. I just moved and all my books are still everywhere. But we do have physical books for the first one as well that we gave at the conference. So we did a lot of things that I kind of take for granted, or if I find, of course, I'm going to do that. But when someone like you said, you have a book about marketing, mine is about something else. It's a collaboration. But you actually have your own book. Maybe we are just too shy or too afraid to be proud of what.
Yeah, I think we need to call each other out on that and make sure we're celebrating something. There's got to be at least one thing that we can celebrate each time. So I definitely think that is not the..rant or fun fact, what are we celebrating, maybe?
Yes, it's a higher value. It's definitely a higher value. So that was my first one, is to kind of have your posse, have your network, have your support, people that challenge you, people that support you both, I think, equally. It's people who challenge us really at least for me, I want people who will challenge my ideas, challenge my thinking, but I also need people who will celebrate as well and lift me up and encourage me and that kind of thing. So that's number one. Number two is very much in the weeds and like a giant pain in the a** thing. But it's so important. Again, I wish I had done a better job of it earlier on, and I still am not excellent at it, but it is to keep track of my own personal time, what am I spending my time on?
So it reminds me this came to mind. It's been an ongoing thing, but I recently had a meeting with a client and there are two co-founders talking about they're in their third year or something. We're talking about how they need to do this because if you don't really know where you're spending your time. First of all, to be able to see, because it feels like everything's important, but to be able to allocate the proper amount of time to actual revenue-generating opportunities as opposed to just hanging out with all of the supporting stuff. Right.
And the other thing that can happen is if you're doing all of these things, you don't know how much time you're spending when the day comes that you can hire somebody or outsource some of those, you don't really have any idea of how to quantify the amount of time it should take. So, I mean, those are just a couple of the reasons. Yeah, but one other thing I'll throw in there, it's really easy for people, for us, I'll just say people rhetorically to feel like, oh, I'm working so much on my business, or let's say for family to be like, oh, you're working so much on your business and what's going on. It's like, but are we working? It's like, where do we draw the line between, oh, we're networking on LinkedIn or something, but for how many hours? Is there any strategy involved?
Is there any data? Are we keeping track of any of this to be able to know? I feel like keeping track of time, and then we'll say just time management is a major one.
And I think it's also important to see because of course you're going to allocate more time in the beginning, or there are specific moments in your business where you have to be more present. But do you need to be there all the time because it becomes a habit and it's very hard to take yourself out of the equation and just say, no, this is not under me? I'm not even micromanaging, I'm not even managing this. I just need to know the results and that's it. And I struggle with this. I have to say it's hard. You drop the line. If anyone has the answer, please let us know.
Yeah, I've started, so I don't know, at some point, I feel like I want to show you what I've worked on for this. I look at how to structure my time and my work week and look at the total number of hours I have available and then all the things that I should be spending my time on. And so for example, one of the things I've always enjoyed doing is to schedule thinking time, which is like literally time to think. And so for me, thinking time is whiteboard time to be able to draw out ideas and connect dots and create things. Just to be able to do that, I need to be able to have that time. But then there's also actual work time. So yeah, making sure all of those things are scheduled and then meetings and everything else.
So trying to be very realistic, but scheduled to make sure things happen. So anyway, I've been working on that for a bit and that I think, relates to my last one, I would say, if you've done the previous ones and this next one is to work on your BHAG first every day. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with the acronym BHAG. I am from Jim Collins. Right? Big hairy audacious goal for anybody who is not aware or familiar to work on that. That golden nugget was shared with me years ago by a gentleman who is an older gentleman who has had an extremely successful career in the corporate world managing a very large portfolio multinational conglomerate and then started a coaching business for executives. And so I was fortunate to have been introduced to him and we became friends.
So he was like my pseudo-coach. And this is one of the things he shared. He told me that in all of his years in business, he said the two most kind of common pitfalls or the two things that most entrepreneurs or just business people have struggled with. Number one, he told me, is to raise my prices. Actually, he said that most people never do that because they are afraid they're going to lose customers and clients. So that was a really interesting one. So I instituted that immediately and had great results. But that's not one of my three things. That was just a little extra piece from this business coach whose name was Henry (not the one who taught me how to drive!).
But the second thing he told me, it also was the kind of advice that I was able to put into motion immediately and also have very obvious results, which is. This scheduling my Bhag first every day because otherwise we get lost in the to-do list. And we're like working on things. And there's a difference between being busy and being productive and actually moving the needle forward on our bigger projects. He said how he taught me to start each day on that first before looking at emails, before going into social, before hitching our brains to anything else, to immediately go to our desk and start working on our big project for a dedicated hour or two or whatever you're able to do. And that's like the idea of working in the business versus on the business.
So that's like working on the big thing first each day to make sure that gets done. And so that's my lesson learned. As far as doing that earlier on, I think I kind of did that earlier on a little bit, especially because I met him earlier on. So that was a really helpful piece. But it's also a takeaway, too, or one of the lessons learned in business.
So those are my three. I like them. And related to the last one of my clients Julie Perkins with WyseMinds. This is exactly what she's doing for female entrepreneurs because it's so easy and I know I'm guilty of that and all of us are guilty of that as a specific point to lose track of. Why are you doing it? What's that big goal that you have? It's so good to actually start with what is important because it's so easy to post in emails and phone calls meetings and everything else. But actually, why did you start your business? How can you love your business again? She says it and I love that. How can you fall in love with your business again? Makes perfect sense.
That's a great way. That's a great closing kind of comment for our episode, I think. How can you fall in love with your business again?
And she says, how to find joy, bring joy back in your business. That's her love. But I do like it better than falling in love, actually.
Yeah, I love that. And I'm pretty excited about giving Julie a nice plug. So this is a plug for Julie Perkins. That wise mind. So we'll have to make her up in the show notes, send her some love.
She can be a great guest speaker.
Actually, we need for sure you're listening.
I'm going to reach out to you.
Get ready. Yeah, excellent. This is really helpful. I really appreciated hearing your three lessons learned. This is a good one, so hopefully other people appreciate them as well. My two takeaways from today are how to fall in love with my business again and to be cognizant of wins or what would constitute a win, so I can have something to share.
To think about that yeah, I think we forget to celebrate. And I think that's the biggest thing that if we celebrate we can actually fall in love with our business because we are happy with what we are doing and we get the energy to do everything else right. I'm realizing what we need to do is what you said, work more in your business versus on the business or in your business. And I think that's very important to make appreciation. And I think I'm so caught up with the day-to-day activities that I forget to take a step back. And I think that would be the biggest learning schedule, and I used to schedule time for that, but I need to go back to the drawing board.
Basically into that whiteboard time. All right, so I think that's a wrap for today.
So thank you all for listening and stay tuned for the next episode. Cheers. Bye.