This October, I came home to the Small Business Owners Community Annual Conference.

What I mean by coming home is that this group is the family that entrepreneurs don't know they need.

Most of the time, those of us who start businesses with the deep passion for making a bigger impact on the world are doing what we do while surrounded by people in our lives who don't really understand us. They don't understand the desire, the drive, the passion or our deep knowing that we were meant for more. 

We can't help but create, whether it makes us money or not.

That's the problem, isn’t it? A lot of us would do what we do first because we love it. Second because it has value for others. We can't always see that what we do easily and joyfully is something that comes neither easily or enjoyably to others. We have trouble seeing our market value.

It doesn't feel like service when we have to send an invoice.

One of the keynote speakers at the conference, Dan Martell, told us that he gets asked all the time what he's going to do when he retires. His response? “Retire from what? From being who I am?”

That resonated so deeply with me. I don't see a time in my life when I won't be creating and connecting and working to improve and transform lives.

2024 has been a challenging year for entrepreneurs in general and for myself specifically. 

At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, I was focused on building a coaching business by connecting with parents and influential grownups in the lives of teens and young adults. I began this coaching business as a life and balance coach in 2021. I evolved to serving young adults and families as “The Adulting Coach” by mid 2022. For two years, I tried like hell to market, brand and sell my coaching offers. I had some success. And a lot of failure.

In 2023, I made it my mission to get on more stages with the intention of using my speaking opportunities as a way to sell coaching. Instead, I found myself falling in love with a new way to impact and inspire others.

In the fall of 2023, I served as the event emcee for Warrior Unchained Women's Business and Empowerment Conference thanks to the amazing Wendy Babcock taking a chance on me and accepting my help with her event.

I stepped onto the SBOC stage to ask Marcus Lemonis a question about my business. (P.S. He called me out on stage in front of everyone and saw right through the struggle I was having with my coaching business.)

I spoke to PONG, The Greater Greenfield Community Chamber, The Milwaukee Breakfast Club, PWOW and other networking groups, which helped me land a paid opportunity to do some team training at local businesses.

In 2024, I shifted my focus to speaking. I created a platform of my own where I could bring in experts to share their expertise and experience with me (and ideally a wider audience of parents of teens). I applied and was selected to speak at several other events. I emceed fundraisers, showcases and a variety of events.

I said, “YES!” whenever the words, “Would you like to speak at…” came out of someone’s mouth in my presence. 

I enrolled zero coaching clients.

In the beginning of this year, I also received a difficult health diagnosis. Navigating the months that followed that news had me walking an even more important path towards purpose and priorities.

I did my work. I grieved and shifted my focus to where life and business could be easy.

Through it all, I was supported and surrounded by the SBOC, this community of entrepreneurs who had become more than my network – they had become family. They cried with me. They laughed with me. Pat Miller and others told me the “mean but true” things I needed to hear in order for me to let go of everything that wasn't working and step fully into what was.

What was working was me. On stage. Having a blast connecting with people and facilitating growth in an atmosphere of fun.

I stopped marketing myself as a coach. Of course, I still am a phenomenal coach, and coaching has not stopped being a “zone of excellence” for me. When I began to fully embody my identity as a speaker and emcee, though, I realized that this is my true “zone of genius.”

On Wednesday, October 16th, at the inaugural Small Business Awards, my name was announced as the winner of the Speaker of the Year award. I was up against some brilliant fellow speakers, and I had been honored to be among the finalists announced at the end of September. To be presented with the award by my dear friend and co-conspirator Wendy Babcock was the icing on the cake.

In my acceptance speech, I told the story about the evolution of my business and my self. A friend I’d met in the community had been guiding me over the past few months, and I shared her insight that perhaps not all coaches are meant to have a coaching business. Some coaches need to give a coaching business a shot because it's the vehicle through which they discover what they're really meant to be.

This was true for me.

Without my coaching business, I would not have discovered (or rediscovered) my love for the stage or my natural ability to bring rooms together and hold space for huge transformations, connection and growth. I'm grateful for it. And looking back, I understand why it was hard. There was always a small part of it that felt forced. 

When energy is misaligned–even a little bit–everything is more difficult than it needs to be.

As we near the end of 2024, I feel that being awarded Speaker of the Year has been about more than claiming my place on stage. It's an acknowledgement and celebration of the fact that I am truly finding my voice. Advocating for my health, my boundaries and my work has taught me so much this year.

I am healing. I am living a life that matters, no matter what my diagnosis may be. I am growing. I am uncovering and speaking my truth and inspiring others in the process.

I couldn't have done it without my community, my SBOC family.

My family and friends have been amazing. They support me and cheer me on, for which I'm truly grateful. There's something about the cheers and tears of fellow entrepreneurs, though. They get it on a deeper level. They know how lonely it can be. And how incredible it feels to build your dream when you DON'T grow it alone.™