10 Biggest Bummers as Reported by Female Entrepreneurs | E185

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Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Leadership is Feminine podcast. How are you? Hey, really quick. Have you picked up your Leadership is Feminine swag yet?

I'm such a swag person. I love swag. I just made a bunch of swag for my sage clients that has sage on it. I just. I don't know what that's about. Maybe it's because I just loved it ever since I was even in high school. I loved my letterman's jacket and all the fun things. But regardless, our Leadership is Feminine swag is so fun and so timely in this world that we're living in, this crazy world. I was just talking with my sage clients. We were having a gathering in Sonoma at the Carneros Inn. If you've never been, it's so beautiful. And I was saying that there's a distinction. This podcast, and the way that I like to think about it, is leadership is feminine, not feminine leadership. Right. Feminine leadership defines a version of leadership that's feminine.

So it sort of insinuates that leadership isn't feminine. I am saying leadership is feminine, and I believe that that is true. I believe that the qualities that attract people to follow them and work for them and uplevel for them actually stem from qualities that we often associate as feminine inspiration, motivation, empathy, support, coaching, listening, communication. So that's why, anyway, I'm really proud of it, and I just would love the language of that Leadership is Feminine to reach far and wide. So if you haven't picked up the swag just yet, I would encourage you to get it and go to TheVisionary CEO merch and pick out your favorite one or two things and tell a friend. Okay, so what are we going to talk about? Well, we're going to talk about.

An email that I sent out to my list probably about a month ago, and I had a question in it, which is, what's the biggest bummer that you didn't see coming as a female entrepreneur? And I was inundated with responses. It was such an interesting test. I didn't really quite know what I was doing. I just thought I'd throw it out there, and, holy smokes, I got a lot of answers. And so what we did is we compiled all those answers into themes, into subjects, right? Like, these are the top bummers that female entrepreneurs didn't see coming. And I've been thinking a lot about what to do with it. I mean, I could do a lot of things. I could write a book, which I could frankly do, and I might not about what the bummers are so much. Like, you don't need me to tell you that, but, like, what do you do about it? But what I really know is that every single one of these bummers is responded to and resolved through the work that we offer, through our lead program, our lead lessons program for women that we will be relaunching Live With Me in October. In advance of that, I am going to do five, four, four or five of those bummers over the next five days with you here on the podcast. What does that mean? That means I'm going to tell you what all the bummers are, and then for the next five days on the podcast, I'm going to drop some bonus podcasts. I've only done that once or twice before, and they won't be up for a long time, but they will be up for the duration of when we're trying to recruit new CL for our next lead cohort as a way for you to obviously get some additional support through the podcast and also to really, if you. If you haven't spent a lot of time working with me here, learning with me here, I want you to really get a good sense of what that's like. Because when you come and delete, I think you would find it's very, very similar. Except maybe we get to talk to each other alive and I can actually answer your questions and give you help, you know, live. What a concept. I'm so excited. Okay. But I want you to know that there is nothing on this bummer's list that I don't address in lead, which I think is so great. That work I do directly aligns with the help you need. So here are the 10 biggest bummers that you all identified in the request that I sent out. And I'll go through them and expound upon them a little bit, and then we'll take it from there. So, number one is a general lack of motivation and engagement on the behalf of employees. Employees are often perceived as just working for a paycheck. They're not striving for personal or professional growth. It's difficult to keep employees motivated to show up and care about their work. They lack that grit or proactive behavior in their work. And that has been a pronounced issue that so many of us are experiencing. Right. They do the bare minimum. They check out as soon as they hit their time. They're not engaged in meetings. They don't bring new ideas. Maybe they call in sick. Maybe they're late a lot. You feel like you're constantly trying to pull them, pull them, drag them, instead of them really taking the wheel and driving themselves forward. So how do we address that? Right. And that'll be one of the topics that we're going to address, I'm going to address in one of the next podcast episodes, because each of these is happening for a reason. Each of these has a few potential remedies. Right. And so as the leader of your business, no matter how frustrated you are, no matter how much hiring PTSD you have, because you've had people who just keep coming in the door who are like, you know, and they don't put the effort in, your business is depending on you to move through it. Don't become the person, don't become the employee that you would say is your biggest bummer, the one who lacks motivation and the one who lacks engagement. Don't become so downtrodden with who these people are that you aren't investing, that you aren't motivated, that you are disengaged. Right. Be careful. Be careful of that, because that's a very slippery slope, and that would be so disappointing. I think you would feel quite disappointed in yourself if you realize that your lack of motivation was the one that gets you to the point of not pursuing and going forward. Okay. Number two, differing expectations and standards. So people all come from all walks of life. Right. So managing diverse expectations and behaviors based on different backgrounds, cultures, previous work experience, values. There's an inconsistency with people adhering to your standards, the brand standards, the values of your business. Employees can often not align with your values and your expectations. You believe you've been clear, and somehow the way that they go about their business, it just varies really dramatically. One employee might be amazing at their customer service or the way that they handle something, and the other one seems indifferent and the other one does a terrible job. Maybe you provide really clear instructions and some of your team members just skip 3, 4, and 5 on the step process. No matter what you do, what you've asked for just isn't what you're getting. And so much so that you believe that your expectations are too high. I've heard so many women say that, I guess my expectations are just too high. So we're going to absolutely address that. Third one, emotional and psychological challenges. This one has become so pervasive since COVID Right. There's a lot of emotional stuff that's coming into play at work. Everybody seems to be having different ups and downs. Everybody seems to be having different problems with their people or their marriage or their children or Their ADHD or their trauma induced neurodiversity. Right. Like there's a lot of these things that were words, things, conditions that none of us knew about. And I don't want to sound unsympathetic because I know a lot of us are. I struggle with anxiety, I have struggled with depression, I have had panic attacks. Listen to me. I get it all and more. I have lots more of exposure to that than you may think. But what's happened is there's a lot of us who are running small businesses with 4 people or 12 people or 42 people, and 1 person is integral to the operation of that organization. And when they go down, it's very, very hard. And these challenges are hard to know what to do with. Right. When one of your team members is visibly upset, they may be going through a breakup, they may be going through a crisis, they may be going through a struggle. You want to be compassionate, you want to be sensitive to it, but their mood is really difficult in the business. It casts a shadow over everybody. Work slows down, tensions go up. Emotional state can become the team's emotional state of, you know, one person can have that effect. It's hard to stay focused when all this personal drama is coming on. And also it can really be disruptive because they aren't working as much, they don't come in on time, they leave early, they ask for extra time off. So how do we manage that? We're going to address that in one of my bonus podcasts, for sure. I want to emphasize that we don't get to control other people's behavior. And so the core operating principle that has to run through here is that you cannot change people. Okay? There's only one person that you have control over, and that's you. Right? But you can decide how you want to interact with people and you can make changes from your behavior. But we cannot make people fall in line. We cannot make people not have personal problems. We cannot make people take responsibility for themselves. I know you know that, but we can't do that. And I want to remind you of that if that's true. I cannot force someone to be different. Unless I want to use fear and cruelty as my approach, then what do I do? And what do I do? Number four, you can delegate an important task to an employee, but when the deadline passes, they haven't delivered. And instead of taking responsibility, they blame other people. They blame you, they blame your system, they blame the practice, they blame the client. It's a pattern. There's mistakes. No one seems to take accountability or own up to it, and then the issue gets swept under the rug or you step in and solve it. This is a big gap for so many people. Just this general lack of accountability and ownership. And it is so frustrating when people don't take accountability for a mistake. When there's things that happen that, that are perceived to be roadblocks and employees just don't know how to get around them. They're not reliable. You can't trust that the work will get done. Number five, communication issues. Okay, there's just a lack of general, clear communication, direct communication. People talk around issues, people gossip. One of my mantras in my mind that I always want to share with you all is let's talk to, not about. But there's a lot of people who don't know that. And they talk about. They don't talk to. They talk about people, they don't talk to people. And as a leader, you don't ever want to be that person. You don't want to be the person. You don't want to be a leader who everybody thinks and knows is talking about everybody, but not talking to anybody. Right. The communication breakdowns are, Honestly, I think 80% of the problem. If we can get better at communicating, we can pretty much solve anything. But so many people do not communicate with an intention of either being heard or listening to others. So it's hard when our communication gaps are so broad because then that affects our personal performance. Number six, turnover and retention. Lot of movement, high turnover. Meaning you have to frequently rebuild your team, meaning you have to frequently train people. Employees are moving on. They have a lot of ambitions. They're moving, they're changing locations. It's incredibly disappointing after you've made this huge investment in someone and then they're gone and you didn't even see it coming. And of course, a lot of people are just quiet quitting or they're leaving via text.

Some people are quitting before they even start. I'm going to dig into this one because I think it's a vital one for you to gain your confidence in. As leaders, we have to understand that we are not guaranteed that anybody will stay ever. And so for as long as you keep thinking people are supposed to stay, you're going to go nuts with that. So I want to really remind you that you are not owed people's loyalty and you are not owed people's time, no matter how long they work for you. Number seven came. We kind of put under the header of the management grind. This is the part I think entrepreneurs are the most shocked by, given that your goal, your vision, the work you want to do in the world is so important and you feel like the work you're doing every day is so ridiculous.

You are bogged down in endless admin stuff, paying payroll, organizing people's schedules, handling HR problems. It wasn't supposed to be like this. You started the business to create something meaningful in the world and instead you're drowning in all this day to day operational stuff. I like to say that you feel like you're always spinning plates, but you never actually have a time to, you know, eat a meal. Right. There's a heavy burden of administrative tasks and for a lot of us, it takes a lot of time to do. And one of the bigger issues that's buried in this is an inability to, or a distrust of, of or a fair, a general fear of delegating. But your business gets to a point that you have to learn or you can't grow. If you cannot extend the results of your business through the efforts of others, you cannot grow. And you will. You will just become this hateful admin person who resents the fact that, that her company stole her passion. But really what happened is you probably didn't develop the skills you needed when you needed them to learn how to step out of that part of your business. And that might be harsh feedback, but I know that that's the truth for so many of us.

Number eight, mismatch expectations. So this is when other people think they should be paid $3,500 an hour and you think, and you have hired them for $22 an hour.

I've been here for five minutes. Don't I get a raise? They think they should grow more, they think they should have more responsibility, they think they should get more money. Or you put them in a role that does actually require them to advance and grow and excel and they just stay stagnant. And so we're talking about that there's a mismatch between what you've extended as an invitation and an agreement and a role between what they think that is and what they're willing to do in order to achieve the outcomes that you two have agreed to. Number nine is employee dynamics and drama. A lot of my clients have said to me, I feel like I'm a babysitter or a referee. Right. There's a lot of you that operate businesses that sort of hire maybe a lot of people who are of the same age group, if you will, or maybe they're all virtual, or maybe they're all sitting in a big room together. But regardless, there can be this eruption inside your culture of people who are acting out with one another. They're jealous of each other, they're overly competitive, they don't cooperate, they blame one another. There can be just general drama, like one of them dated the other one or they know someone who knows someone who dated them. And anyway, this whole sort of cocktail and witches brew of ick can brew up in a business, and that comes from a lack of a leadership voice. And so I'm not going to cover that one specifically in my podcast coming up. But it is addressed in lead and it's addressed a lot in lead because it's part of a huge part of the problem that so many of you have. But what I will say at this point in this podcast is this one thing for you to remember. People want a leader to follow. I will not say that means that people want a great leader to follow. People just want to follow the one who is the one who will stand in front and say, I'll be the leader. And sometimes that leader is the most toxic, the most negative, the most bitter person. And on paper, it doesn't make any sense. Why would people want to follow this person? They're not very inspiring, they're not very motivating. Right. But what they are is they're willing to stand in front of. So whoever has the loudest leadership voice in your company is the one who will win. And if it's not you, guess what? It's somebody else. And so if you have a lot of negative stuff going on in your company, you have a source, you have a leader who's driving that. And if you're the negative one, then it's time to change that. If you want to be successful, you know, you can't get there. You'll just keep attracting more negative. If you're negative, but you hate negative, you have a problem and we gotta fix that. That's a little truth telling for this morning when you're listening to this. And the last thing is the environment. It's the world, right? A lot of people are, you know, the economy is terrible, things are really bad in my industry. We're not making as much money as we used to. It's hard to keep people motivated. If I keep thinking I might have to lay people off, there can be a tendency to be very blameful of external factors. And I'm not going to cover this one also in my five this week. But I will tell you, this is also something we talk a lot about in lead and I want to give you just a little snippet here. The more we focus on what we can't control, the less control we have. And sure, since business or trading or commodity or bartering or whatever you want to call it has been on the planet, there have been ebbs and flows, right? There have been times where everybody wanted rice and then nobody really wanted rice for a while they went to potatoes and then everybody wanted cotton and then no, we're not going to use cotton as much as we're going to use silk. Like the ebbs and flows of business is a normal thing. As soon as you start to fall into a mindset as a woman who runs her own business that, that something's terribly gone wrong, you will only find what isn't working. And what I have found in the past when I have clients who say it's really down, business is down, this is a hard time, is yes, maybe the industry that you are in is overall being depressed, but I have also always found that there's still, still, always an industry leader or two still doing well. And so what's important is we get back to what we control and when things aren't where we want them to be, the best place to go is the truth. And as an example, I've used this quite a bit. There are a lot of companies who are coming out of what we're sort of, I've sort of calling the COVID bubble where their business just took off in Covid. No marketing, no selling, just getting the word out and it was enough. But when those companies are really, really, really, really honest with themselves and those clients of mine are really, really, really honest with themselves, they know they haven't been selling, they haven't changed their marketing, they haven't been marketing, they've relied on word of mouth or drive bys or walk ins for the better part of their operation. But that all changes. And if that's the truth, if, if you've never upgraded your products, if you've never changed anything because it's just been working, then you have to tell the truth before you start blaming the economy. Because in the truth is where you'll find your control, your influence, your ability to make a change. And if you have an 18 month sales cycle and you haven't been selling, then you have an 18 month air hole in your pipeline. And that's a hard pill to swallow. But guess what? You can solve it. So buying into and kvetching with other business owners about how terrible the Economy is. Listen, you can do that because people love to feel like they're not the only one. But what I know it doesn't do is it doesn't solve your problem. And if you really want to have a successful business, then get out of that and sit down.

Get your brain thinking about how you will go forward, not what you feel like you're losing. The answer is always in the future. It's never going to be in the past. So, okay, so to recap, lack of motivation and engagement, differing expectations and standards, emotional and psychological challenges that people are facing, a lack of accountability and ownership, communication problems and issues, turnover and retention, administrative management burden, mismatch expectations in a position or functionally the drama and the gossip and the toxic culture that can brew and then also the economic and external factors. Those were the 10 that came up in my biggest bummer email response. And so I'm super excited to post the rest of these podcasts for you. I think they'll be fun to talk about and what I'm going to do in each one is talk about it. Why do we think it's happening? And then what are the options that you have as the leader of your business to solve them? Okay, so they won't be terribly long podcasts, but I'm going to give you what I know are the steps you can take, the tactics you can try to get your solution that you want. All right. And I'm doing all of this this week because I would like very much for you to consider joining me and my team and other women female entrepreneurs who are leading high performing businesses to join the LEAD program. LEAD is replete with perfectly designed digital lessons that will address all of the unique challenges that you face as a woman leading her business. And you'll also have live advisement and coaching calls every week and in it. So that will include you being there as well as so many other successful female entrepreneurs. And what's so fabulous is you get to hear coaching and advisement. These other women.

We offer help. I don't even want you to think about this as like a program. This is the help you want. If you're struggling with the team and getting work done through other people and feeling like you just don't know what the hell you're doing all the time, then just do lead. I know it will change your life. I know it will make the difference that you need. Nowhere else are you going to go where this is the only thing we focus on. This is it. The better you get at handling just these 10 things I said the better you'll feel and the more successful your business will be. So I'm super excited. If you want to learn more about the lead lessons that's starting, just go to the visionary CEO Next step. We have all the details there, all the program information is there, all the modules that you get and lessons are there. And we're offering right now, just this week, an early registration bonus. And I'd love for you to be able to take advantage of that because it's really, really, really good. We haven't offered leads since this time last year, and I don't know when I'm going to offer it live again. So I would do this if you've been thinking about it. Every woman that has joined my program who is a podcast listener for years has. Every single one has said, I wish I hadn't waited this long. So stop waiting, get in here. We're making it as easy as possible for you to start with us. We're going to start in October, and when you register now, we're actually even going to give you a little extra work, like a little extra assignment so that you can get started right away with some support and resolving and triaging the one issue that I know that you have, because everybody comes to us with at least one team issue that they don't know how to solve. All right, a little bit longer podcast today. Thanks for tuning in and tune in tomorrow. Oh, and if you haven't subscribed to this podcast yet, you probably should. Otherwise you're not going to get notified when the bonus drops. Or you can opt in to our private subscriber list by going to the website the visionary CEO and opting in there. But I would actually just suggest you subscribe to this podcast and that way you'll get the update. Okay, talk to you tomorrow.

Remember that I asked you to be a part of my Catalyst podcast event where I'm inviting you to become a visionary catalyst. Share the podcast podcast link with women that you know and as soon as you hit 20 shared links clicks on those, we can measure that. I'm going to give you one of my bonus digital courses. Go to the visionary CEO Catalyst. Get yourself registered, grab the podcast link super easy. And please share it with women that you know that are leading in the world. Because I'd love to be able to impact 20 million women. I know that when women feel more confident in who they are as leaders, it changes who they are in their lives. Let's help women live and lead on their own terms. I can't wait to see how many clicks we get. Let's get it.