Now, at 37, I have identified a pattern: in everything I do, every plan I make, I seek to escalate, to realise its full potential, and I will help everyone I come into contact with to do the same.
After two years of licensing, I opened our first franchised tutoring centre. I finally experienced the scalability of business!
I imagined I would have franchisees open and operate the centres while I stayed home with my children, a win–win for everyone. But slow and steady was not a game I knew how to play. The business escalated, and in the following four years we opened more than 30 locations. I was working every moment I was awake. I loved the business and dreamed of achieving over 100 locations nationally and operating in multiple other countries around the world. We were already getting proposals for international expansion. On the outside the business looked textbook awesome!
Again, it was a respectable traditional business. When new acquaintances asked what I did, I would say I was the founder and franchisor of a tutoring franchise with 30 national locations (I was still under 30), and they would give me that slow nod with their mouth turned down that said ‘Hmmm, impressive’. But it wasn't impressive — it was a yucky way to live a life. The demands were sky high and the expenses even higher. Sure, we had revenue coming in and the business was profitable, but there was always some new improvement I needed to invest in, some giant expense that would swallow up the next allocation of what was supposed to be my financial reward for all the work and sacrifice. I was earning decent money, but I couldn't see how I was going to earn on the scale I wanted in my life without working myself into an early grave.
Although it broke my heart, in 2016 I decided to sell the company I had been building since I was 20, and dare to venture into the unknown — to explore who I wanted to be when I grew up.
Looking back, the six months after I sold my company was a hilarious comedy of errors. I've said that in business I'm a curious experimenter. I'm sure you've been there too, stuck at doing one thing for so long that you've actually forgotten what brings you joy in your work. Or you no longer recognise where your skills and natural gifts lie, because you've had to get good at doing so many other things in your role and now you don't know who you are or what it is you actually want to do with your life …
Sorry, I escalated that a little too quickly! In my case, I opened six new businesses in six months in the hope of discovering what I really wanted to do. Here's how that worked out.
Attempt #1: Shexy
I'm five feet tall, and it's really hard to find clothes made for short women with curves. So Shexy (short and sexy) was born. I sank $40 000 into development before discovering how many, many moving parts there were that would propel me right back into the hectic world of dramatic business before I could blink.
Attempt #2: Jay St
I created a line of jewellery on which inspirational words were engraved. Empowering, yes. Boring? Also, yes. I knocked up a Shopify site in a day, sold my first $5000 worth then sold the business.
Attempt #3: Nikhedonia Productions
This one was the most enjoyable. I was reading a book series to my kids one night and they said, ‘Gosh, Mum, I can just see this as a movie’. I had to agree it would make a fabulous movie! Totally Harry Potter meets Maleficent, with great messaging throughout. So the next day I contacted the author. A series of meetings and very big contracts later, I had purchased the film rights and set about finding someone to help me produce a movie series. I went to Los Angeles and had meetings with studio executives, and even found myself on a red carpet next to Charlize Theron at a premiere. After many exciting conversations that led exactly nowhere, I realised how very little I knew about the film industry. I simply wasn't willing to risk the next two years of my life on the pursuit of success that was so out of my control.
After that I went back to the drawing board. I read a heap of business books and listened to a lot of podcasts. I was doing some private coaching, as there were a lot of people with service-based businesses who were trying to scale as I had, and I could teach them how to do that. I loved the coaching side of things, so I thought that while I was searching for my next ‘real’ business I would put some effort into getting better at the coaching craft. I enrolled in a few programs. One of them included an online learning component that allowed me to advance at my own pace. Once I experienced this as a student, I knew I could introduce it into my own programs. All my past experience in business and education meant I was perfectly positioned to write the curriculum in a way that would help people to learn and also to market their knowledge and skills well. That's where the next three businesses came in! I still didn't know what was going to be my thing, so I wanted to test out a few options.
Attempt #4: The Tutoring Institute
This was aimed at helping tutors to grow their tutoring businesses. It was obviously something I knew a lot about, but once I had launched and met with my first few clients I realised that the prospect of doing nothing but talk about tutoring centres over and over again for the next 10 years made me want to retreat into a corner and cry. (Note: Just because you're good at something doesn't mean that's the thing you should be doing. Always go with what sets your heart on fire! Life is too short to stick at something that makes you want to stick skewers into your eyeballs.)
Attempt #5: The Happy Life
I love happiness. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I secretly believed I would grow up and become a motivational speaker! Personal development sets my soul on fire. As I've got older and more worldly wise and worn down by life's demands, I have come to experience more doubts about the idea, even while recognising how much we need it. Positive psychology is something that most of us don't spend nearly enough time on, yet it can greatly enhance our quality of life.
I ran a few in-person happiness workshops, made some gorgeous workbooks and sold the first few people into my program, before recognising that this business was not going to be the winner. While I love happiness and exploring all the things that help create it, I'm a businesswoman who found herself constantly telling people that to be happy they had to start their own business and get out of that job they hate. I love helping people to grow their business and make lots of money and do good things in the world and have more fun. In this I am way too biased to be a happiness guru.
Attempt #6: Scale Up
Ladies and gentlemen, meet our winner. The business that started this online course journey for me. Scale Up was basically what I was doing with business coaching already, but moved from one-on-one coaching to group coaching to many models.
If you've ever hired a private business coach, you know they don't come cheap. This is because their time is their most valuable finite resource. Also, they're usually very experienced, qualified and successful, and you're paying to tap into that knowledge base. But, as I know from my own early experience, you can't always afford a top coach when you're just starting out. Group coaching is a fabulous way both for you as a coach to scale, and also for clients to gain access that they wouldn't otherwise be able to obtain.
Scale Up was initially based on membership. I ran a masterclass each week and a group Q&A session. Private sessions could be added on request.
Through running Scale Up, I found that most of my clients were looking for a way to leverage the knowledge