Five Things I Learned My Fourth Year of Business: Part 2

Four years ago I registered my business: McEwen Media Consulting. I had no idea what this business would be or what a consultant does. And I couldn’t begin to fathom how much this process would change me. Every year as I mark the anniversary of this pivotal decision, I share five lessons I learned about myself and my business.

This year was the most challenging, so it’s hard to boil the learnings down to five. But as I always tell my clients, share publicly the pain you have processed and learned from. Keep everything else to yourself until it’s the right time to share.

A lot of these learnings have come up in my conversations with other business owners in my new podcast Pivotal. Be sure to subscribe to the McEwen Media YouTube channel to receive new episodes every Tuesday starting May 13.

Your inner brat will always try to sabotage your business - especially when you're putting yourself out there in new and unfamiliar spaces

Lesson #2: Know When You’re Following Your Standard and When You’re Being a Brat

One of my core standards for myself and my business is to be very intentional with how I spend my time and my money. I don’t spend either frivolously and I hope when I do, both will lead to growth and abundance.

This is especially true when it comes to in-person networking.

I’m a card-carrying introvert, so on a good day it takes a lot to get me out of the house in hard pants and real shoes.

I’ve been in business long enough to know virtual networking might be more convenient, but in-person is more effective. Even so, I have rules for this.

I prefer morning and afternoon networking events. My brain starts to wind down in the evening, and since most evening events have alcohol, I am not at my sharpest after 5. And I will only sign up for events if I’m familiar with the organizer and it’s clear how it will benefit my business.

Even this isn’t strong enough sometimes to fight my brattiest tendencies - the weather.

If I have to drive to the event, or if the weather is remotely terrible, I am always tempted to bail. One such incident nearly cost me a single connection that is quickly leading to many growth opportunities for my brand and my business.

It was a snowy day in March. I was invited to an all-day networking event for women-run businesses in Durham. I’ve been working on expanding my network outside the GTA. With the recent mass layoffs in Canadian media, if you swing a stick in downtown Toronto you will hit a newly minted media consultant who is also a former TV producer trying to serve clients. It’s becoming a crowded market in the 416. Not-so-much outside the 905.

The event checked all my bratty boxes: it was during the day, the event and organizers were established, and it showed clear business opportunities.

The only thing working against it? The location. I had to drive to Coburg, a roughly two hour drive from my home. And that morning there was a freak ice storm.

The storm added almost an hour to the commute. And as I kept driving past cars that had spun out of control into highway ditches I kept thinking “I should just turn around and go back home.”

Even though I was nearly at the location. Even though turning around wouldn’t change the ice storm. Even though I had winter tires and could safely navigate these conditions, my inner introvert wanted nothing more than to go home and work from my living room couch drinking tea all day

And my inner introvert threw everything it could at me: the roads aren’t safe, we’re missing the first networking session, you could get so much done working at home with a wide-open schedule.

Then it tried to throw this at me: how much business do you expect to secure at this event anyway?

As soon as that idea popped up, I knew this was my brattiest self trying to crash the party.

Not every networking event needs to lead to closed business in order to be considered a success. This was a mistake I made early in my entrepreneur life. I entered every conversation as a sales conversation. And not just any sales, but I wanted to close as soon as someone said “and what do you do?”

This not-so-quiet desperation never lead to new business. And it created a false expectation of what networking can do for your business. It was only when I relaxed and allowed myself to get curious about other people in networking events that things started to take root.

These events have lead to collaborations, referrals, and (over time) new business. Most of all, they lead to surprising expansions of my own network.

I ignored my inner introvert, realizing she was just being a brat and wasn’t thinking of the big picture. 

I arrived in one piece. Granted, I missed the morning networking meeting, but still found ways to connect with other people. Including a random meeting at the lunch counter with a woman named Cathy Ireland.

Cathy is a business development manager for the Spark Centre. And a super-connector.

We had an instant rapport at lunch and exchanged information, promising a more thorough 121 when she came back from vacation. We have a shared vision of the power a growth mindset has for entrepreneurs and the importance of communication in business. We have brainstormed multiple times - and each time walk away with new connections for me to get my keynotes, workshops, and brand before other organizations like the Spark Centre.

It’s still early days and this connection is warming up. But with each new connection and new opportunity arriving in my inbox, I remind myself it almost didn’t happen.

If you expect every exchange to turn into business, you will actually cut off other possibilities. You’ll either turn off potential new business from being too desperate. Or you’ll be blind to the super-connectors who take you on the scenic route to exponential growth.