Sometimes your journey doesn’t make sense to others and even to yourself, but if you can have the courage to own your journey, you can discover what it is you really want to do for work.
Margaret Vandergriff has taken the path less traveled time and time again. She tried lots of work experiments that led her to work she loved. As you’ll soon her, she has a knack for learning how to turn bad experiences into new opportunities!
She’s run a grant writing business for almost 30 years and has recently started a new business as a moving coach.
Margaret now helps self-employed, empty-nest moms find change and adventure in their next phase of life!
Lot of great lessons in our conversation including:
- How a crummy job inspired her to start her first business.
- How she landed her first client without the internet, a computer, or even a car!
- Why year 3 was a magical year in her business after struggling the first couple of years.
- The importance of maintaining your outreach habit.
- How several unsuccessful moves inspired her to start her latest venture as a moving coach.
Life Skills That Matter In This Episode
- Purge your life
- Plan your actions
- Practice self-awareness
- Turn bad experiences into new opportunities.
How Margaret Works and Thinks
- Wake up time: Around 9:00 am
- Core work activities + habits: 1) Time management and prioritizing tasks. 2) Maintaining focus on the task at hand. 3) Content creation.
- Definition of success: How fulfilled she feels and feeling like she’s making a meaningful contribution.
- Regains focus by: Realizing she’s off track and making the conscious effort to get back into what she’s working on.
- Favorite productivity tool: Streak CRM
- 90-day goal: Rebranding her business and working on her new website.
Inspirational Quotes
“You have to stick with it because, it took three years for things to take off, I mean, it was not overnight.”
“I just don’t think you can underestimate the power of relationships in business.”
Coaching Advice
If you want to start exploring your options to work for yourself, Margaret suggested this as the first step to take:
1) Identify a few things that really float your boat and that you’re skilled at.
2) Figure out who the people are that are into the thing that you want to solve.
Special Offer
Download Margaret’s free quiz to find your place personality type
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