5 Pieces of Advice for Aspiring Female Business Leaders Looking to Make Their Mark (Part 1)

In my Dynamic Women Global Community (it’s a free-to-join Facebook group!), I ask some thought-provoking questions, and I get some really amazing answers because I'm not the only one who can give great advice. Most of the ladies that I am sharing their answers with below have been clients of mine and women I know in the community. 

What does it mean to make your mark?

I see it as “people know you”. That you've left an impression on because you're doing great work in your industry. If you're a leader, then others are looking up to you. Maybe you're implementing some things that are really helpful to your industry. ​

With people knowing you, it's probably because you're a good person as well. There are many ways and pieces of advice that I could have pulled from, but I'm going to pull these four that were given by the women in my community and give mine last to fill in any gaps that were left because these are four really amazing ones. 

Over this blog and the next one, I will cover: 5 Pieces of Advice for Aspiring Female Business Leaders Looking to Make Their Mark.

As you read through the blog, I hope you're thinking about:

• “Am I currently doing this?”
• “How can I implement this?” 
• “Where can I do better at this?” 

Then get a little bit of a game plan going, so you can leave your mark in your industry, and be the female business leader you're looking to be. 

Advice #1:

“Be intentional to reach your goals that you set each day, week, month, and follow through and if it gets stuck, ask for help. There's a lot of good help and advice out there.” - Kathy

Wonderful advice there, Kathy. Let’s first talk about setting goals. We all know that we need to be setting goals. Have you set goals that are SMARTER goals? Are they Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely? Then the ER, are you Evaluating and Reviewing or Resetting those goals? 

We all know this, but are we actually implementing it? I think that's the key thing. When you set it for a day, week, and month, the cool thing is you actually can break it down into smaller pieces. It feels more manageable. You feel more confident you can actually achieve it, which is kind of a big deal because a lot of times our mindset is going to mess with us and say, “This is too big, I can't do it”. Or you start procrastinating. 

But when you break it down into daily goals, you can see, “Okay, I meant to read 10 pages of this or watch one video”, and the next day, if you haven't done it, then now you know you have two videos to watch or now you have 20 pages to read. You're going to see when you don't reach that goal and how every day that you don't do something towards it, it compounds and makes you even busier. ​

A way to make sure this is happening is to have some accountability. Kathy says, “If you get stuck, ask for help, there's a lot of good help and advice out there.” Yes, there is, but having some accountability set from the beginning is really helpful. 

For me, I'm going on a health journey. You may have heard me talk about this before, but I wasn't fully ready, and I'm ready now. When I was thinking, “Okay, I want to be healthier. I want to drop some weight to make my knee function better because of less inflammation and less weight that it's carrying around,” I knew what to do, but was I being accountable for that? No, not at all. 

Oftentimes, we're not accountable to ourselves. In this case, I hired a coach to help set my meal plans for me. She checks my accountability because I have to log every single meal and every single amount of food I eat. Am I making progress? Oh, yes! (If you want to talk about that separately, just message me. I’m happy to share more about her.)

Then mark milestones. Celebrating, “I achieved this! I'm here now! I'm at this point.” Have some sort of way to celebrate your milestones, and then make adjustments as you go. Having coaches, having a group you do it with, and having an accountability partner will be really helpful. Actually, I have multiple coaches. I have a counsellor for my life. I have a coach for my life. I have a business advisor for my foundational business. I have a marketing strategist coach, and I have a marketing-speaking business coach. 

It's not like if you reach a certain level of success, you don't have coaches anymore. No, you just have more of them, and that's the thing. I can remember reading a quote from Oprah where it said, “When I became successful, I didn't stop having a coach, I had more of them”, and I was like, “Yes!” That gave me permission to have more, too. 

Advice #2

“Trust yourself, and importantly not to consider setbacks or mistakes as failure but to embrace the learning as a gift.”- Paula

What a fantastic perspective shift here, Paula. Trusting yourself maybe will come a little bit more when you do not like to set yourself up for failure by saying, “If I mess this up, I'm done. I'm no good.” Those mistakes don't change who you are as a person. 

In the Dynamic Year Program, we actually go back through all the things from the past year. All those disappointments, frustrations, things that didn't go well, and we grab the learning from them. Even those disappointments, the things that you're like, “I’m so embarrassed by that” or “I didn’t reach that goal”.

By grabbing the learning, do you know what the cool thing is? You probably won't do the same thing again. It's not just learning from the mistake, but it's then being able to apply what went well in the positive areas. If you look and go, “Wow, I did these amazing things and this was my learning. I worked well with a team, or I do better when I have accountability, or I really enjoy having a beautiful spreadsheet with colours in it that helps me to do better."

Learning, as Paula said, from the mistakes and setbacks, and also learning from the positive things. If you don't have a Dynamic Year Journal yet, please do so. It's going to help you to be able to reflect every week on those learnings because the key problem I hear with people is at the end of the year when they do this, they go, “Ah, I wish I knew this in January when I was making this mistake or having this success, I could have repeated it, or I could have stopped doing it.”

Yes, trust yourself. But most importantly, let the things that don't go your way, be okay. 

In the next blog, I will cover the other 3. Let me know in the comments what you will implement this week!

Read my other blogs:

1. How to Design Relationships and Partnerships
2. 5 Steps to Build Your Business… Even in a Recession
3. How to be Unapologetically Yourself