Become an Entrepreneur Today

Episode 934: Become an Entrepreneur Today, with Polly Yakovich

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Become an entrepreneur today and start living your dreams. Listen to Polly Yakovich on why she decided to become an entrepreneur today.

In this podcast, Polly discusses why she decided to get out of the grind and become an entrepreneur today.

Polly is co-founder and Chief Strategist at A Brave New, a Seattle digital marketing agency focused on helping businesses accelerate their growth through inbound marketing, branding, and web design. She specializes in working with clients to identify barriers to their growth and overcoming them with strategic content and marketing tactics. She has more than fifteen years of experience in digital marketing and branding.

What you will learn from this episode to become an entrepreneur today:

Why Polly and her business partner Josh decided to become an entrepreneur today and found A Brave New, and what areas of marketing they specialize in for their clients
Why Polly and Josh wanted to move away from nonprofit organizations and specialize in the B2B space when they founded A Brave New
What early challenges the A Brave New team faced when making the jump to B2B, and why Polly and Josh had to learn to believe in the value they were offering
How trial and error and experimentation helped Polly and Josh fine-tune their area of focus and helped them develop and grow the firm
How mentorship and good advice became the foundation of A Brave New’s direction, and why having mentors believe in them was a strong motivator for Polly and Josh
Why Polly believes it is important to be intentional and focus on a clear plan for the future, even if you are busy with the day-to-day grind
Why you shouldn’t try to start from scratch but should learn from established business leaders who have already gone where you hope to go
Why Polly and the team at A Brave New used their own company as an experimentation space to develop new offerings for clients
Why you need to also quit the grind and become an entrepreneur today
Why focusing on helping and adding value can help new clients discover your company, and why the A Brave New team developed a new level of discipline in decision-making

Resources:

A Brave New Podcast: https://www.abravenew.com/podcast
Website: www.abravenew.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/polly-yakovich-5a5151b/
Read this blog about trusting your gut and become an entrepreneur today

Additional Resources:

Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
Listen to this podcast with Brett Gilliland on why you need to become an entrepreneur today

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Full Episode Transcript

Get ready to find your recipe for success on how to become an entrepreneur today from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI, you know, this was the recommitment, if you will, to doubling down in 2020. You know, that was our mission in 2019, checked it off the list, and we decided to recommit to doubling down in 2020.

And one of the ways that we’re doing that is continuing to invest in the build out of what really has turned into a library, a resources library. So if you haven’t been to PredictiveROI.com/Resources in a while, I would encourage you, strongly encourage you to come back, because now you can download free and practical and tactical guides for everything from how to generate leads using LinkedIn, search engine optimization, how to be great at business to business podcasting, and other success strategies that we have compiled from the brilliant insights shared by our very generous guest.

So again, just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources, and whatever you request, We will send it right to your inbox.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Polly Yakovich’s Introduction

Before we welcome today’s very special guest, Polly Yakovich, let me share some additional context around why, when she said yes and when her and I started kind of planning out this conversation, why I was over the moon excited Onward Nation that we have this opportunity to have this conversation in front of you, because I think it’s going to be like in the trenches.

Helpful because her and her business partner, Josh, own a business called A Brave New. And we’ll get to that in just a minute in the conversation. But A Brave New Josh and Polly were struggling with some of the same things that every single business owner struggles with at some point in owning their business. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new business, it doesn’t matter if you’ve owned the business for ten years.

We all struggle with this to some degree and that is cheese. We know a lot about our business. We are super, super helpful to our clients, but we’re not doing as well as we should be doing or we’re not doing it as consistently as we should be doing in telling our story or sharing consistent content like on a weekly basis.

The cornerstone content that we talk about, conversation, sharing that on a consistent basis, like weekly, taking this expertise that you know that you have up in your head, otherwise you wouldn’t have clients and sharing that and building our audience around it and planting this flag, this authority flag, so that you build this reputation of being the authority in your space.

You clearly have expertise on Onward Nation or you wouldn’t have a business candidly. And so when Polly said yes and was willing to have this conversation, I know that she’s going to take you behind the curtain. The thought process that she and Josh went through about how they could double down on that commitment of being helpful and taking this experience that they have up in their heads and sharing that inconsistent basis.

Why did it? Why didn’t they do it before? Why the start and stop before, and then why the commitment to do that going forward? So that’s the type of conversation that we’re going to have, as well as some of the other you know, questions that you know, that I like to ask business owners because 2020 is such a great opportunity to double down.

So without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, Polly.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: The Journey of Polly’s Career

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here today. Oh my gosh, I’m excited to have you here. And super excited that you said yes. But before we dive into some of the questions that you know that I want to ask you, take us behind the curtain here and, and tell us more about you and your past and your journey and then we’ll dive in.

Yeah. So I am a co-owner of a digital agency like you were talking about, that I started with my partner Josh about. I think this is our sixth year, actually, I’m so used to saying five years, but we’re turning the corner, and we started our agency. We came from a big agency background. So your typical, like, 100 plus employees and big agencies are awesome places to learn.

They’re so great. They’re changing every second. They are really busy. Long hours, high, high reward, lots of travel, fun stuff like that. And one of the things Josh and I worked our way up and were leading big teams there in different areas. Key more on the content side, I’m more on the strategy client service side, and we just felt like things started to get really bureaucratic and it took us a really long time to get stuff done.

We got really excited about new concepts and selling stuff to clients, and then we ended up passing it off to a junior team to execute, which sometimes I think disappointed clients a lot, and we just felt like we really wanted to be practitioners. We always wanted to be in the work to some degree, and we felt that our skills were slipping away.

When it came to actually working. We were becoming managers and sellers and we liked that too. But, you know, it bummed us out when clients had something happen and it took us 30 days to execute an email. It just didn’t feel like it fit into real life, real world problems or challenges for business owners. So we started our own agency, sort of on a whim.

I didn’t know that I was an entrepreneur until I just ended up doing it and then realized like, oh, this is where I was meant to be. So we know we did everything, like many people do. We took everything. We tried to do everything that anyone asked us to do. but now we’re an agency that focuses on inbound marketing programs.

We’re a HubSpot partner, so we primarily practice there. And then we also do branding and web design because they complement, you know, a full inbound marketing program very well and are often needed. And we have experience there as well. So we’ve been doing that the last six years. I do mostly marketing and strategy for our clients and ourselves.

Marketing for ourselves, like you said, has been poor and stop and start and I know we’ll dig into that more. On the personal side, I’m the mother of a two and a half year old little boy, and that’s challenging with a small business and a young family. And also, my husband is a chef and a butcher.

And we recently, just last month, opened a butcher shop and restaurant in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, where we live. So we’re very busy. but we’re very happy.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Narrowing Down Your Focus

So that’s good. Well, congratulations on, six years in. And of course, I mean that insincerity, because most businesses don’t get to that point. and, and you’ve gone through some of the refining, I’ll use that word even though you didn’t use that word.

Oh, use that word refining, because we all and my guess is, that many Onward Nation business owners were nodding their heads when you said, you know, when we first started, we were kind of doing everything for everybody. And then you started to narrow your focus down. Take us inside that. Why did you and Josh start to, like, start to narrow the focus down?

And what caused you to do that? Because it sounds like that was a process, and now you’re really gaining some traction. Yeah. You know, it’s really interesting because the agency we came from in our early experience was mostly doing nonprofit work. Okay. So we were doing marketing communications, fundraising for nonprofits, which is a very, in some ways a very similar thing to the B2B marketing that we’re doing now, but in many ways feels like a totally different world.

And so when we first started our agency, we really wanted to get away from nonprofit fundraising and communications for a couple reasons. As much as we love nonprofit organizations, they can be very challenging. They are slow to make decisions for really good reasons. But they are. And, you know, one of the things I used to chafe against when I worked for nonprofits, but it is true, is they’re just a couple years behind the rest of the world when it comes to new tactics.

I mean, really, they have good reasons. Everything they do has to have an ROI. Everything they do has to be, you know, attributable. And those are really important. So they need other people to test stuff out first. But Josh and I just personally were more experimental and cutting edge. So in some ways, we never really totally fit the mold for nonprofits.

And we are always pushing our clients ahead. So when we started our agency, one of our challenges was that most of our contacts and most of our referrals were on the nonprofit side. At the same time, we didn’t want to compete with our old agency, and we really wanted to. We really wanted to get into the B2B space.

We just felt that there was more we personally could learn by being in that environment, and we were very confident that our skills would translate. Both of us had interim steps that were very affirming in between starting that and starting our own and leaving our old agency. So in the beginning, you know, in the nicest possible way, a lot of our contacts that were referred to us were sort of smaller nonprofits, particularly that our other agency couldn’t handle.

And then a lot of people wanted us to do kind of little things that we weren’t sure anyone would pay us to do anything. And we still kind of prove ourselves on the B2B side because we have limited experience. And so, you know, we really just out of necessity, took it all. And we really thought we would carve out this niche doing something very different than what it turned out we were actually good at.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: The Entrepreneurial Journey

I mean, Josh and I are strategists and big thinkers, and Josh is a branding expert. We’re all about content, but we really weren’t confident people would pay us for that. So in some ways, we didn’t actually believe in ourselves enough to offer that right away. And we just thought, okay, what’s so easy that we can offer digital media, digital advertising, everyone needs that.

A lot of times I don’t touch on this, and don’t have a full program. So we can maybe carve out some audience by starting to improve ourselves in small ways. But then it was very difficult because people have small budgets for a reason and they’re not going to take on a bigger program. And then we started getting hired for more of the kind of work that we actually were good at.

And we started to really realize that we were doing ourselves and everyone else a disservice by not just staking our ground at what we really wanted to do and what we were good at. And a couple of our mentors. We’ve been so fortunate to be surrounded by amazing mentors, and we’ve always really relied on other people for input and a couple of our mentors said, you are just dying on the vine with this project to project this kind of business model to you.

We would sell even websites, even bigger websites, but that was just like one project at a time and it was really a slog. So it was like a feast or famine. We’d have a couple big projects a couple months, and then we’d have to, and we’d be so busy working on them because it was really just us in the beginning that we wouldn’t be doing the business, and then we’d finish the project and launch a website or, you know, do what we were doing, and then we’d have to restart our pipeline again.

So with this retainer advice, a lot of decisions we made in the beginning, too, were a reaction to the agency we had left. And then as we’ve grown, we’ve come around to realize like, oh, some of the things that they do. And that happened there for a reason. Like they’re just important for a consistent business model and keeping employees paid and all sorts of things like that.

And we can talk more about that. We rejected so many things that we experienced there just because we were like leaving and doing our own thing in a really different way and the most different agency ever. And then we were like, oh, actually, that’s smart. Now that we have ten employees, like, I see why they do that. You know, now we have to sort of circle back again and bring on some of those disciplines.

And so we did start selling retainers in a moment of like, we’re never going to be able to do what we want to do and pivot the way we need to. If we don’t like sloughed off some of these clients that are really, like taking up all our time. So we just really don’t know how we got the courage to do this, but we really just felt we had no other choice.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Mentorship Will Build Your Character

So Josh and I really just like over a period of, I think 2 or 3 months, let more than half of our clients go. And, you know, we really wish them well. We found them new homes most of the time. But we just said we’re not doing this work anymore. We were advised to do so. And I know many of your listeners and I think probably you have read or done the book traction.

So we went through that and we were really emboldened that there was a system that we could rely on and we weren’t crazy. And so we let ourselves through traction. But in a disciplined way. And we just decided this is what we’re about. We’re about inbound marketing retainers. We only do these two side projects, branding and websites at a certain threshold.

And part of the reason we do that is because it complements our main service. And then also it’s often an entry into learning more about us and going through a full inbound program. A website’s a good way to experiment with an agency, see if you like them for ongoing marketing work. And so we just made a really big pivot about two years ago, and we haven’t looked back since.

It was instantly rewarding. A really nice confirming message for any pivot is that immediately people grab it, they understand it better, they know how it works. They hire you most importantly. So yeah, long answer. That’s how. But a great one. Okay, so a few things. Many things actually stuck out to me when you were sharing that story in a couple of the words that were actually three of the words that really stuck out were you mentioned courage?

Actually, I guess it is four words: courage, mentorship, and then disservice and belief. So it seemed like early on in the business, you didn’t have this belief, that belief in yourselves, whatever context you wanted to use. But it seemed like there was a lack of belief. So we’re going to take everything we possibly can. But then you had some really smart people take you and Josh aside and say, wait a minute, you guys are actually doing a disservice to your clients by doing it that way.

And then through that, it sounds like if I’m linking all this together, that through that mentorship is when the two of you really got the courage to say, yeah, we’re going to make a pivot here. Am I kind of linking all that stuff together? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think for us, mentorship has always been a massive part of my life at every level and every sort of person and business and my career, and I’ve been really super privileged that I haven’t really had to hunt them out, like people have just sort of popped in in my life.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Taking And Applying What’s Been Taught to You

And I’ve always said, I really admire you for that. Would you be willing to, you know, walk alongside me, whatever that looks like? For some, it’s been more formal than others. But when we were first starting our business, we weren’t sure that we were doing the right thing or that we had no experience doing it. Part of us was like, who’s letting us do this?

You know, we’re just boldly doing this. Is that okay? Is that allowed? And, you know, those doubts come in. So I think for us, having mentors who believed in us obviously pushed us as well, but who believed in us when we weren’t sure if we believed in ourselves, really took us pretty far. They often gave us the confidence to do things that we were actually not sure we could do.

Well, okay, I love that because it really illustrates the power of mentorship, but it also illustrates that you can have some really smart mentors around you. Onward Nation, but you have to do then what they suggest to you, right? So the application of that knowledge is where the power really comes from. And because it’s all around us, you have to be willing enough to actually take it and apply it.

Clearly, Polly and Josh, her business partner, did that. And so that’s awesome. Let’s go back to the retainer piece and then, you know, the monthly recurring revenue that resulted from that. So you mentioned that it was instantly rewarding. And so tell us a little bit more about that. Like instantly rewarding from a panel perspective, instantly rewarding from staffing.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Putting a Plan Into Action

So tell us a little bit more about that. Yes, I would say in this pivot and every time we’ve made a pivot or an action like this, it really reinforces that you sort of without getting to woo about it, you really get what you focus on. So a lot of times, I think in my experience as a business owner, you’re complaining that this or that isn’t going well, you’re complaining you’re not getting enough of the right clients, but you’re probably also doing a lot of things that keeps you from that.

And this is, again, when I think mentorship or anybody that you allow into your sphere and give power to speak to you honestly is so important because often you just can’t see it. Your head is down, you’re working hard, you think that you’re doing the right things. You’re just grinding. And grinding has its place, certainly, but sometimes it takes somebody who says, like, look, lift your eyes up a little bit.

Like you say you want this thing, but you’re not spending any time or energy on it, so you’re not going to get it. It’s not going to be a gift that’s just handed to you from heaven. So your pipeline isn’t full, like you’ve done nothing to fill it. You’re hoping that your efforts and grinding will sort of, like somehow tangentially lead to a thing.

But unless you put a plan into action and work it, you’re just not going to get it. And every time we’ve turned our eyes toward the thing that we actually either like, desperately needed or wanted, you just get what you get, what you work hard at, you get what you do consistently. You get what you’re disciplined about.

And even though your intentions are very good, sometimes the things you’re actually working hard and disciplined about aren’t the things that are best for your business. Well, when you say you get what you focus on, right? So if you’re focused on more of the right fit clients coming into your pipeline, does that mean they’re going to magically appear?

No, because I love the word that she used, hoping it’s not rubbing the magic rabbit foot and hoping that your pipeline is full. But if you get more of what you focus on, then maybe a mentor steps into your path and is smart enough to take the advice that he or she gives to you? Will that person make an introduction for you?

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Asking Directly for What You Want

And now that’s a new perspective, partner. But it’s about taking action on the things you’re focused on, right? Yeah. And sometimes I think when you. So for us this was the case I do think you have to be, you know good at what you’re doing and you have to have built relationships along the way. There has to be something there to mine.

Right. I couldn’t have done it when I was like 21 right out of college, even if I was well intentioned. But I think for us at the place in our business where we took our eyes and put them sort of on the actual goal and the people we knew and sort of pivoted what we were asking them about or looking for from them to what we actually wanted.

Then we found that we actually had enough to start building momentum. We just weren’t asking people to write things. We weren’t asking for referrals to the things we wanted to do. We were sort of, again, to use the word hoping, doing really good work and just hoping that it would go further. And this is where sort of sometimes it is annoying, but true.

Like if we applied the principles that we talk about a lot now in other areas and we still talked about then, you know, one of the big principles for direct response, it’s sometimes a dirty word for marketers, but I’m super grateful to my nonprofit direct response background, because it does keep me a lot more focused and disciplined. And one of the key aspects of direct response is just like asking directly for what you want.

People can say yes, people can say no, but often, particularly in new business, before you get to a disciplined process, you are just sort of like hoping people refer to you, hoping people hear about you here, or they’re hoping people come in. And if you don’t ask people don’t. They just don’t think of it that way. Everyone’s super well intentioned, but they’re busy.

They have their own things. They have their own lives. Sometimes they just don’t think, oh yeah, I could actually refer you for a website. I just, you know, I had the pieces that hadn’t been put together for me. Unless, you know, you deliver them, put them together with somebody, everyone we’re talking to is really busy Onward Nation. I’m sure you’re seeing this, but I’m just going to highlight a couple of things here.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Building the Momentum

This is exactly why I was super excited when Polly said yes. So there’s nothing that’s left to chance. She’s working through her business alongside Josh with intentionality in making the task in a very professional way. But then she also used the word momentum. So we’re not hoping that the business grows. We’re not hoping that we find a niche.

We’re not hoping that our pipeline is going to be full, that they’re moving with intentionality in order to build the momentum, to build and scale. This isn’t about, again, sitting in the corner, rubbing a magic rabbit’s foot and hoping that the future is going to be different. This is about taking action, having really smart mentors, getting great advice from people who have done it before, and then going out and doing it.

The other thing I’d add to that is that so much, particularly in the beginning, we’re so busy proving ourselves that we had to create everything. You know, we are rebuilding the way we are all the time. And it was like, well, we’re new. We have to, you know, we have to come up with our pipeline generation strategies ourselves or it doesn’t matter.

And then, as you know, we’ve built that momentum. It’s like, why are we wasting time? Smart people have gone before us and been doing this for years. And so that’s the other thing that’s been a big accelerator for us is just seeing people teach us for a reason. It doesn’t mean we can’t make it our own. It doesn’t mean we can’t jump off of what they created and learned and started and are sharing with us.

But for goodness sakes, like, don’t start from scratch. Why would you do that? It just doesn’t make any sense. And the more we give ourselves permission to be like, we don’t have to prove ourselves all the time. We can be compilers for other people. We hire smart people that can add our own insights along the way, and then we can go so much further.

We can go further if we just leapfrog off other people who, by the way, are saying, leapfrog off me. Everyone who’s sharing this stuff is teaching it for a reason. They’re not saying like, this is a secret, now you have to go and start from scratch, right? Yeah. Compressing the learning curve makes total sense, especially when you’re working with people who want you to do it right.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: The Early Days of Content Strategies

So take us inside. So let’s now kind of I don’t want to say shine a spotlight, but let’s now go behind the curtain of the content piece. Because as you have shared with me before, but both in the beginning of this conversation in the green room before we were recording as well as just in conversations we’ve had outside of this episode that, you know, there was a content system, start and stop.

And then, you know, every business owner goes through it. It’s like, we know we should be creating consistent stuff, you know, good meaty pieces of content. And then we do it for a little bit, and then we stop, and then we do it for a little bit and then we stop. So take us into the early days of the content strategy and why it was to start and stop.

Yeah, I think one of the things that was challenging for us in the very beginning is that we didn’t know who we were or what we were doing, and that’s a challenge that I know you’ve talked about before, too. But it’s sort of like when you’re doing everything for everyone, it’s hard to know what content to create.

And so part of the early peaks and valleys were also like cyclical because we’d have project work and we’d be busy and we’d do it, and then we’d have a little lull and we’d sort of do some stuff for ourselves, and we’d sell something and stop and focus all our energy on our clients, because there were just a couple of us.

I would say as time went on, we kind of started getting into like, the cobbler’s kids have no shoes mentality, you know, you’re so busy. I mean, we create content for a living. That’s what our product is, and we do it for everyone else, and we build them beautiful content strategies, and we tell them that they won’t survive without it.

I mean, I’m being dramatic, but you get it. Yeah. And then we didn’t do it for ourselves. Right. So then it’s or we did it stop and start. So then it sort of becomes a little bit embarrassing, actually, because you’re just repeatedly saying, like, your website has to have these, you know, features don’t look at hours.

It just doesn’t work. You know, like it’s over time. It’s so funny because I meet people all the time. It’s like I’m an architect. Don’t don’t look at my examples. You know, I don’t have any of that for myself. So, or, you know, any sort of kind of business. So, you know, the cumulative effect of being embarrassed by saying, don’t look at our blog.

Oh, sorry, we haven’t posted in four months, and it starts to build over time. I think that, you know, there’s, there’s a coming together of several different things. The cumulative embarrassment of not doing anything and not having stuff to show clients, but saying like, we can trust us. Looking at what we did for someone else is hard. I also think one of the things that in our better moments of creating content that was really nice is, we were able to experiment on ourselves in ways that clients don’t always let you do.

and so when you have a consistent program and you can be disciplined about it, you can learn things in your own space that then you can bring to clients as more of a proven thing, or you figured out the wrinkles, or it took you 100 hours to produce the first one, and you couldn’t possibly charge a client for that.

But you can learn on your own back and then sort of streamline from there. I think another thing that’s always been a challenge for us with this is that we just get, you know, even as we’ve grown, we’re 12 people now, Josh and I get drug back into the day-to-day a lot, and we’ve allowed ourselves to be drug back into the day-to-day.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Have a Crazy New Perspective for Your Content

You know, it’s like that old business adage every time somebody walks into our office with a monkey, we’re like, oh yeah, let me take your monkey. Let me feed and care for it. I’ll give it back to you on the potty trained, you know, I just we I don’t know why we do that. I mean, we’re fixers where people who nobody’s going to care about our business like we do.

We own it. We benefit from it. So we get that. But we just haven’t been very disciplined about saying, like, you have terminal responsibility here. Like, bring me a couple solutions and let’s talk through them together and then you’re going to implement them. So I think, you know, it’s a bunch of disciplines having to come together to even give us the time to do this.

I would say the other thing about producing content that’s been a little bit daunting for us is that there’s so many smart people out there producing content that Josh and I have often felt like, what? What is a new thing we’re adding to the conversation? You know, we have to have some crazy new perspective or be absolutely brilliant to stand above the pack.

And the thing I always try to keep in mind when I have those thoughts is like, all the time I’ll be reading some article and they’re like, this is a major influencer on Instagram with like 10 million followers. And I’m like, I’ve never heard of you before, right? You know, there’s just lots of people out there and they’re going to find different people in different ways.

And just because I know and follow ten of the best marketing leaders doesn’t mean my clients do, or their friends or people who are looking for the help that we provide. And so, I think, you know, the pressure of being brilliant is daunting, but if you can sort of remove yourself from that and say, you know, to borrow a phrase from HubSpot, like, I aim to help, I do, you have something to share that might help you, or help clients, or help potential clients who are looking for me, and I might say it in a different way, or with the different personality that works for them.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Pay For Stuff to Make Sure You Follow Through

And it doesn’t have to be like Gary Vee or Seth Godin or, you know, any of these other people who are brilliant, you know, names that all of us who are marketers know and follow. And the other thing is that Josh and I often look at other content that people are producing and we’re like, oh, that’s simple. Like that seems easy.

We know about that. And so really just getting in the game, it doesn’t have to be for everyone. I would say from a discipline perspective. One of the reasons we’re not stopping and starting right now, and this is boring and basic and something we tell our clients all the time. But we started paying for stuff. And so, you know, when we’re spending money on it, we are more inclined to follow through because that’s an investment that we’re wasting.

If we don’t. And so, you know, we are obviously content producers. We’re producing a lot of content in-house. But, you know, we’re paying to have our podcast produced. We’re paying for some speaking training, we’re paying for a few other things that are then tangential enough that make us like, oh, we have to get some blog posts out because we’re paying.

We’re making a big investment in these other areas. And so if we don’t make the whole system work together in the right way, then we’re throwing that money away. And that money that, you know, is still pretty precious to our business right now. And so really, we just really had a sit down talk with ourselves and said, if we don’t put our money where our mouth is, we’re never going to do it.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Have a Level of Forgiveness

So we have to sort of like make this sort of painful, holy bananas. Okay, so I don’t know if your goal when saying yes was to come on and be a mentor to Onward Nation, but that is exactly what you’ve just done. And in all seriousness, that was so on point. And there’s so much discipline that runs through it.

There’s so much pointed decision making that runs through it. Right? I mean, you really took us behind the curtain to think about like, like emotionally and then like, strategically and tactically for the business, how you and Josh navigated your way through a variety of decisions. Can I distill all of this down into maybe, a couple of things?

And that is, you recognized, obviously, the challenge of being pulled day-to-day, being inconsistent with the content and all of that. But then also, it’s like nobody’s hiring. I know this is going to sound really bad. Nobody’s hiring the 350 pound personal trainer who eats donuts in the gym. It was hiring that person. Yeah, right. And so you guys wanted to be the litmus test, the billboard of yes, we believe.

And there’s so much that we do for ourselves, but it sounded like it was, maybe this is going to make it too trivial, but it was. You guys decided that we’re just going to be different, that we’re not going to be, we’re not going to accept what was in the past. We’re going to make a decision to be better and to be disciplined going forward.

Is that too simple of a distillation? I think it works. I mean, my hesitation is always like, it’s not perfect. We’re not doing it perfectly. It’s not as easy as like, here’s the one, two, three step. I do think it’s a decision, but it’s also like a repetitive decision. And I think there has to be a level, again, not to get too woo about it, but there has to be a level of forgiveness where you’re not like beating yourself up because often we’d be like, oh, we haven’t been doing this.

And it’s like, let it go. That was yesterday. All I can have is this moment. And today. And so it’s like consistently making decisions where if we missed our blog schedule last week okay, last week’s done, how are we going to get back on track this week. And this is true for me too. I don’t know how single owner entrepreneurs do it.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Hold Yourself Accountable to a Higher Standard

I have so much admiration for them because having a partner is amazing because we give ourselves permission. I mean, we’re like siblings now. We’re maybe closer than siblings where he’s like, you missed your blog post last week, you know, and it’s not meant to be shaming, but it’s like we’ve made this commitment. So how can I help you get back on track?

And also, I’m going to ask you Wednesday if you’re on track for this week because like, we’re doing this together and you’re letting the system down in the nicest possible way, putting that pressure on, that’s like, hey, we’re paying the money. We’re letting the system down, letting yourself have that accountability. You know, saying to somebody like, please, in a way that doesn’t make me cry and feel bad about myself, like, I need you to sort of shape me and how I need you to pressure me.

I’m allowing you to do that because I’m committing to this and I need help. So I think that that’s part of it, too. It is a decision, but it’s a regular decision. And then you are actually going to fall off the wagon. You’re going to miss deadlines. You’re going to not get something executed. Clients do that too.

So giving them the same forgiveness, giving yourself the same forgiveness that you often give clients because like stuff comes up. Life is life, you know? So, you know, it’s a process. It always is. That was a great lesson in, giving yourself grace, giving your business partner grace. We all give grace to our clients, like you said. And at the same time, holding yourself accountable to a higher standard.

And, this has been packed full of mentorship and lessons for Onward Nation business owners, Polly. And I’m grateful for that. So thank you very much. And I know that our time is running short before we close out and say goodbye, I just want to ask any final advice that you want to share. Anything you think we might have missed on how to become an entrepreneur today.

Become an Entrepreneur Today: Final Advice from Polly

And then please tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you. Yeah, I don’t. I think my final advice is just like, make a plan, work the plan, have people along the way who know it and can ask you about it and put their finger in it a bit. And like we just said, you know, give yourself forgiveness, but keep pushing.

I mean, there’s grit and grinding. That’s just part of the process. But if you know where you’re going and you can have people keep you on track, there’s nothing magical about it. It’s really just hard work. I mean, there’s fun, but it’s like there’s a discipline there that sounds boring and not fun for us creative marketers, but you can’t have the creativity and the fun without the discipline.

Okay, Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took and I took a bunch, I hope that you did too. Or how often you go back and relisten to Polly’s words of wisdom on how to become an entrepreneur today, which I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take action. Just like when her mentors and Josh’s mentors gave them the advice and compressed the learning curve, or accelerated the learning curve or whatever way that you want to describe that you’ve just got a truckload of smarts from Polly.

Now, the litmus test is going to be, will you take it and take action upon what you just received? I sure hope that you do. And Polly, we all have the same 86,400 seconds today, and I am grateful for your time. Thank you for saying yes. Thank you for coming on to the show to be our mentor and guide.

Oh my gosh, it’s just awesome. Thank you so much, my friend. Thanks for having me. This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

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