Ep. 5 | Perseverance

Hi, this is Kate Zarenko, host of the podcast practices Progress. I've curated content and interviews to inspire and to help fast forward your solopreneur's success by learning from others who are sharing real examples of what it takes to create and to run a business from within their own four walls. I hope these real life experiences are inspiration to what is possible. I am driven every day not only to create a successful business, but one that is sustainable. And I know it's possible for you too.

Hi all. Thanks so much for being with me again this week to talk about another topic. So as a little background, I have a nine year old who I home school and so he is often observing what I am doing at work and the challenges that I face and the wins that I have. And just a little fun fact, he is the one who actually named this podcast practice is progress because he's adamant that nothing is perfect in life. So I love that when I was picking out names that he was able to contribute that.

And so each week that I've done this, he's been curious about the topic. And for this week I said I didn't have one yet and did he have any suggestions. So he asked me, what is the word for somebody who tries and tries to do something like I have building my business? And it made me laugh because it's so true. It's something that I've tried and tried and tried to do over time and I have found success, but it's never ending in the challenges that come up or the desire to create something new like an offer or change systems to better support the business.

And so I said, do you mean the word perseverance? And he goes, yes, that is what I mean. And he goes, the only way big accomplishments happen is through perseverance. I thinking to myself, I was like, that is absolutely true because everything that we see around us, somebody or a collective had to come together and work really hard despite the challenges. I mean, I'm looking around in my room right now at a computer, a pen, a light, a whiteboard.

Those just didn't happen because we said, oh, we want something like that and snap our fingers and have that happen. There were challenges and trial and error to get there. So I absolutely loved that. And when I looked up perseverance, the definition that came up is persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. And I just thought that summed up entrepreneurship so much is constantly what we're up against.

We're still doing the thing even if the results aren't here now, just as somebody inventing a whiteboard would have to face all the challenges and the result that they want isn't happening right now yet, they're still showing up to figure out how to do it. And so I am currently working on a new offer that is out there to the world, but I have yet to fully market it. And what I think is so cool about this offer is that I have found success in my one on ones that I do. But as you heard, I home school now, and that is a new reality that's more permanent than I thought it was going to be. And so scheduling time one on ones becomes difficult, and it caps my ability.

It's an income cap. And so I have been working hard over the last year to figure out what kind of community I could support during the process of building a business. Because right now I support people one on one, whether it's the very beginning stages of their business or they are far into their business, and we're building out systems to better support manual input they're doing and make it more automative. And so I have worked hard at really figuring out what it is that is so difficult for being a solopreneur. And this term, perseverance directly relates to it, because when you're a solopreneur, you wear all the hats and you are constantly faced with a feeling of overwhelm, especially if you're having to figure out an issue that is out of your wheelhouse.

And so this community that I'm creating is a place where you kind of take this isolated experience of solopreneurship and bring it to a community who is going through the same thing you are. And you can lean into them for support. You can ask questions, you can use the collective energy to be able to face the challenges of sales and marketing and know that you're not alone in the anxiety or fear that it might elicit. And so I'm really excited. This is called Connection Cove, and at this moment, I haven't done any active marketing around it, but I just wanted to use it as an example of perseverance, because there have been times in my business where I look, and I think being a mom, the challenges that exist with parenting, with my own brain, does it make sense that I am trying to build this business, but I haven't lost sight.

There's just been something in me that just keeps going forward. And so despite those challenges, I knew I had to figure out another offer where I could provide value to my clients that wasn't just one on one. And in fact, I really think it's going to bring as a whole more value to my clients because they're going to be able to connect with other business owners where they're going to be able to potentially have business opportunities, collaborations. They're going to be able to feel supported in a community and ask the questions that it's really hard to get the answers from the Internet and it's just oftentimes overwhelming. And so being able to lean into a community to take action to grow your business, it just so exciting to me.

And maybe my son picked topic perseverance because he's been seeing me work really hard to bring this community to life. So anyways, I will probably talk about it more because that's something as a solopreneur that's really hard to do is processing your offers out loud, in which we will be holding space for that in connection cove as well. But I think it's important for me to also try to articulate to the masses what I do. And that was leaning back on why I'm doing this podcast in the first place is my goal of public speaking for 2024. And so practices progress, right?

I'm going to look back on this and be like, oh wow, there's some refinement I need to do when discussing what connection cove is. But I wanted to be true to the sentiment of this podcast and why I'm doing it. And I appreciate you for being here and supporting me. And if you have a dream and you want to see results, just think of the term perseverance and that look at everything around you. Somebody somewhere had to dig deep and continue on despite the challenges that got in the way of the results, because that is probably a pinnacle part of entrepreneurship and especially solopreneurship where we are wearing all the hats.

So thank you so much for being with me today and I look forward to connecting next week. Bye.