The Thriving Entrepreneur

Is your business your baby? If yes, what does that say about your emotional attachment to your company? And is that a good thing?

As entrepreneurs, we are wired to CARE. Care about our business, team, clients, and the outcomes. Unfortunately, many of us take it too far. Meaning we get emotionally attached to what happens in the business. Or worse, we try to control the outcomes in the business in order for it to be aligned with our emotions. We end up getting triggered - badly triggered. Causing us to be extra stressed, moody, mentally unavailable, or unable to lead or perform.

In this episode, David & Rachelle explore emotional attachment to our business and the consequences of this.

Quotable:

DF: “Identifying with your struggle at work means that your problems there determine who you think you are.”

RL: “Who am I without work, without my business?”

DF: “Take some of your power back, and say this is what I’m choosing to do.”

RL: “When you are trying to control outcomes, you have such a big emotional attachment to what happens.”

What you will learn:

- What identifying with your business looks like in practice

- What healthy attachment is & the benefits of it

- What unhealthy attachment is & the dangers of it

- How to care but still be efficient and healthy

- Questions to ask yourself to explore whether you are too attached and what to do about it

A new episode is published every other Friday.

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling

When we think of successful entrepreneurs, we often envision someone who is relentlessly positive and optimistic. However, some argue that having a negative attitude can actually be beneficial for entrepreneurs.

A negative attitude can provide motivation to improve and prevent complacency, among other benefits. By acknowledging weaknesses and potential threats, entrepreneurs may be better equipped to adapt and grow their businesses.

In this episode, we explore the idea of a negative attitude in entrepreneurship and its potential benefits.

What you will learn:

• The difference between a negative attitude vs being realistic
• The benefits of having a negative attitude in business
• Why pop culture’s emphasis on staying positive has its dangers
• Why entrepreneurs should strive to be forward-thinking and confident

Quotable:

RL: “When we live in only in positivity, it becomes quite dangerous.”

DF: “The first question to ask yourself is - a I being realistic?”

RL - “When we overvalue the high of the rollercoaster, we don’t see how low we can go after that.”

DF: “When delivering negative feedback to an employee, the question is: how do I walk this person through getting better?”

RL: “Negativity is not the whole sauce of the improvement, it’s the trigger.”

DF: “If you draw your focus temporarily on the negative, you’re more likely to come up with a solution instead of an excuse.”

Overall, we will challenge conventional wisdom about positivity and encourage entrepreneurs to embrace a more nuanced approach to mindset in business.

Mentioned in this show: Driving Leadership podcast on the Diversity of Diversity

A new episode is published every other Friday.

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling

As entrepreneurs, it's easy to get caught up in the busyness of building a successful business, often at the expense of ourselves and our performance. We people-please and put clients before ourselves just to make it happen. But are we actually being effective?

In this episode, we explore what is not having sufficient boundaries costing you - opportunity-wise and efficiency-wise. And what if you were to would put up stronger boundaries, what would that mean to your business’ success?

In today’s episode, David & Rachelle will cover:

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• What boundaries truly are
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• The importance of setting work boundaries
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• Clarifying what you are trying to do and what makes you effective
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• What you say to yourself
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• Making boundaries before you start
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• How to be clear with yourself and others
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• How not communicating your boundaries means not having any
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• A list of things to observe
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As always, you can expect practical examples and thought-provoking questions to ponder upon.

Feel free to reach out to David and/or Rachelle to further discuss this topic.

David Foster & Rachelle Leerling are founder and entrepreneur coaches. We have weekly thought-provoking discussions about how to thrive as an entrepreneur. No fluff. A new episode is published every Friday.

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling

Have you complicated your business over the years?

While a business starts with 1 great idea & simple processes, we scatter our business in many directions later on.

We tend to overcomplicate our business with new strategies, tools, and long processes, and by (still) offering products & services that don’t perform.

Most additions are often unimportant, irrelevant, or just making things messy. It becomes harder to operate without proper clarity on an overview of the business. Resulting in overwhelm, harder decision-making, and confused leadership. All in all, it’s a recipe for failure and burnout.

So how can entrepreneurs go back to simplicity?

In this episode, David & Rachelle discuss:

• How business complexity happens

• What complexity has to do with your ego

• What effects complexity has on your business leadership

• What effects complexity has on your business outcomes

• Where to start to get back to simplicity

• Why you have to be brutal & bold

Feel free to reach out to David and/or Rachelle to further discuss this topic.

David Foster & Rachelle Leerling are founder and entrepreneur coaches. We have weekly thought-provoking discussions about how to thrive as an entrepreneur. No fluff. A new episode is published every Friday.

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling

How often do you blame your team for not functioning at 100%?

Do you feel too involved in the day-to-day?

While it is easy to point fingers and try to control the operations, it is counterproductive.

For your business and for you.

Leading your team is a skill that needs to be mastered.

If you want to spend most of your time working ON your business, enhancing it is paramount.

The solution comes down to doing the following:

Make sure employees can own their job.

What we discuss:

- What owning a job looks like

- How to give employees the ownership they need and deserve

- What you can do to make them work without your interference

- How you can let go of control more

- How giving them ownership benefits you

A new episode is published every Friday.

We also go live on LinkedIn every Thursday 10:30 EST / 16:30 CET

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling

As the leader of your business, often people aren’t honest with you. Yes-nodding might be part of your everyday business life. Or, they are not completely open about how they feel.

The people around you have their reasons for not speaking up. Their feedback on your leadership, or your ways of working, might be detrimental to their job.

Yet, a business can only grow from learnings and new ways of thinking. The people on the job can sense things you cannot. And more views can lead to breakthroughs in processes, products, customer journeys, or simply the day-to-day company culture.

So it’s time to open up to alternative views and see the benefits of more pairs of eyes on your business…

On Thursday, the Thriving Entrepreneur’s 15 Minutes will be about “How entrepreneurs can encourage criticism and alternative views”.

What we discuss:

• The difference between clear leadership and my-way-or-the-high-way
• How to know if you are keeping criticism and alternative views under the rug
• How to ask for feedback and criticism from your team
• How to create a safe space and a culture of progressive feedback
• What to change about your attitude and behavior in order to let feedback in
• How your company can benefit from new views and new ways

A new episode is published every Friday.

We also go live on LinkedIn every Thursday 10:30 EST / 16:30 CET

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling

Some entrepreneurs/founders see their people-pleasing behavior as a badge of honor. Giving the investors, team and other stakeholders what they think they need. Yes, sometimes sacrifices (against ourselves) need to be made for the sake of business success. But it shouldn’t be the normal behavior we leaders and entrepreneurs have. While being nice and staying on speaking terms is what we want to achieve by doing so, often it has a counter effect. And that is hurting your business.

For instance:

• The hard conversation about a disagreement is not held between you and another founder. Avoiding it makes matters worse. The elephant in the room is blown up, while it could’ve easily been solved.
• You don’t want to lose your position, status or pride by communicating something, while that is exactly what is happening behind your back.
• Your team member is not doing his/her work right. That causes your customer to get low-quality service. You avoid the conversation as you believe feedback can only be done in a harsh way and that would hurt him/her personally.

So the question of today’s episode is: Why is only people pleasing as an entrepreneur/founder bad for your business?

Things David & Rachelle talked about:

• The kind of culture that comes from a people-pleasing leader
• The inevitable disagreements between founders/leaders is good
• Why some co-founders don’t talk about the hard stuff (anymore) and the effects of that
• Why not being open, honest and authentic hurts your business results
• How people pleasing is choosing others over yourself and knowing better
• How to stay in connection with the other party while in that hard conversation

David Foster & Rachelle Leerling are founder and entrepreneur coaches. We have weekly thought-provoking discussions about how to thrive as an entrepreneur. No fluff.

New episodes are published every Friday.

We also go live on LinkedIn every Thursday 10:30 EST / 16:30 CET

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling

Are the problems in your business rooted in being overwhelmed? How can you tell?

What do you have to decide or how do you make sure that you’re not becoming overwhelmed and justifying it?

We know the benefits of being on top of our game: if you are not continually overwhelmed, the work you do, the unexpected challenges and bumps in the road will be less of a challenge. You’ll make better decisions, more quickly and make better progress.

But how do you get there?

Or, maybe better put, how do you keep from getting overwhelmed every day?

Where are you with feeling overwhelmed as a founder or entrepreneur?

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A new episode is published every Friday.

We also go live on LinkedIn every Thursday 10:30 EST / 16:30 CET

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling

Much of a founder’s direction can be characterized as “hope beyond reason” (with a nod to Bruce Springsteen for the phrase).

But where is hope’s limit? At what point does reason rule, no matter how hard we hope?

As founders, we create and develop something that many people would consider out of reach, too difficult, or not worthwhile. But we do it anyway, and with perseverance, guidance, support, and luck, we can be successful.

But sometimes we fail.

And a lot of times, the trap is that the startup hustle culture tells us that reason’s resistance to achieving lofty goals is less powerful than it actually turns out to be.

A new episode is published every Friday.

We also go live on LinkedIn every Thursday 10:30 EST / 16:30 CET

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling

How do you know where your business is headed?

Does the day-to-day demand determine your path?

How do you know where to head?

Well, you have a mission statement. Right there on the website, with a bold headline and crafted prose.

But really, what does a mission statement do? How important is it?

Rachelle and David take on this very topic this Thursday (courtesy of Jack Bradley’s question).

Last week we talked about how an entrepreneur can communicate vision in everyday actions, and in a bit of a backwards direction, this week we are talking about how important the mission statement really is.

• Who is the mission statement for?

• How can an entrepreneur craft and use a mission statement?

• How does that mission statement inform your priorities and what your employees do?
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What is your experience with mission statements? Do you use one? Did you once?

A new episode is published every Friday.

We also go live on LinkedIn every Thursday 10:30 EST / 16:30 CET

More about us and how we support entrepreneurs & founders:

David Foster | www.davidafoster.com | www.linkedin.com/in/-davidfoster

Rachelle Leerling | www.growtribute.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rachelleleerling