Running a Business Doesn’t Have to Be This Hard

Everyone says business is hard, but why does it feel this hard?

You start to wonder if something’s wrong with you…

Remember those massive high school textbooks you lugged around all day? Picture your friends inviting you on a hike after school. You grab your backpack and go, without a second thought about the textbooks still inside. Your friends take one look at you and laugh. “Empty that thing. Those can stay in the car.”

We run our businesses the same way, believing resilience means hauling everything uphill and pushing through. For our Dames founder, Meghann Conter, resilience comes from listening to herself wholeheartedly. In her interview with Bold Journey, she shares how she learned to put the weight down.

Resilience Is Built at Every Ceiling

Meghann started her business with no safety net. She was a single woman with nothing to fall back on, launching in the middle of the Great Recession in 2009, in an industry nobody understood yet.

Those ramen years tested her, but the resilience she leans on today came later, at every revenue ceiling. Each new level asked her to become a new kind of leader, and her identity shifted right along with it. There’s no blueprint for that kind of change. Every ceiling meant she had to morph all over again.

What’s on the Other Side Is Always Worth It

Meghann’s spiritual journey, which began around 2012 when she started learning what self-love really meant, changed how she handled those shifts.

She’s faced her share of personal challenges, and none of them were pretty. There were plenty of ugly crying sessions, but every one of them made her a better CEO.

What carried her through was learning to listen. Instead of grinding and forcing her way through, she asked different questions. What do I want? What lights me up? What is my intuition saying? What is my body trying to tell me? The more fluent she became in that language, the more everything began to flow.

“Every time I follow my joy, my intuition, and my body, I end up somewhere better than where I started.”

The shifts were still uncomfortable, but what waited on the other side was always worth it.

Resilience Isn’t a Solo Sport

Every new level made Meghann more resilient, but she didn’t get there alone.

Most of the business books and role models we’ve been handed come from men, and following only those playbooks leaves women burned out and going it alone, which was never in our nature.

Our foremothers did everything in community, and you can still see it today. Watch women in almost any setting, introverted or extroverted, and you’ll notice how naturally we drift toward each other. That’s how we’ve always grown.

So Meghann put her stake in the ground. As she told Bold Journey, “I don’t do it alone anymore, and that’s the whole reason The Dames exists.”

Where to Start Building Yours

Meghann also shares the three skills that made the biggest difference in her journey, along with where to begin.

• Deep self-knowledge and self-love. In her words, “You can’t grow a lasting 7-figure company with adrenal failure, record-high cortisol, chronic sleep deprivation, or complete burnout.”
• Asking for help, and actually receiving it. She suggests starting by breaking your tasks down into asks.
• Financial literacy. She puts the focus on holding wealth instead of just generating it, because “most of us learn how to make money long before we learn how to keep it.”

She breaks down how to build each one in her full interview with Bold Journey.

Just know, there’s an easier trail than the one you’re on, and your textbooks can stay in the car. When you’re ready for more women to hike beside you, explore our membership options.