The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 74: Taking Risks with Hayley Luckadoo

In today’s episode we are going to cover how to take risks with Hayley Luckadoo. Hayley has an amazing story on how she started her business and what it took to get there. She will share with us how you can move past the fear and start taking risks in a powerful place.

Taking Risks with Hayley Luckadoo

By Melissa Lin

I interviewed Ms. Hayley Luckadoo on taking risks inside your business. Haley has been in her entrepreneur journey for six years now and as a spiritual entrepreneur, motivational speaker and podcast host. She is an expert in entrepreneurship, growing a business, scaling, personal development and loves talking about taking risks in your business, overcoming that fear of failure and really building a growth mindset.

Hayley’s Story:

Hayley had a really kind of weird start into entrepreneurship. Most people either major in business then decide they want to run their own business or they go into the corporate world and decide to start their own company. Hayley never had any intention of running a business. She always kind of had that entrepreneurial spirit, but had never considered it.

Then a month before her wedding, the guy she was with called off the wedding leaving Hayley with all the debt. So she said, “Okay, what can I do right now to make money? What skills do I have right now?” She started learning all about wedding planning and taking in as much information as she could. She planned friends' weddings. They referred her to other people. And within six months she had an almost fully booked out client list. Three years in to running her wedding planning company, which was turning out to be really successful, she realized that she really loved the business side of it.

Hayley’s Biggest Learning Moment in her words:

I also have the problem of being a perfectionist and I'm a workaholic. When you're running two companies that don't really have a lot of overlap with each other and you're trying to give them both the attention that they deserve, it's really, really easy to suddenly start spending all day long working and neglecting your health, your family, and everyone you know.

And that was something that I had to learn the hard way because I got really burned out. But it happened for me just horribly. And to the point where I got so burned out that I was thinking, “I don't know if I can do any of this anymore.” I really got to that point where I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do it anymore because I was that burnout and I was that overworked.

If I could've gone back and done that part differently and given myself a little more grace and a little bit more of a break and just acknowledged that I was still in the learning process of this new business, I probably wouldn't have gotten his burnout as I did. And it would have been a smoother transition and kind of an easier ride to get here.

Risks Hayley Has taken:

Stepping out three years later and saying, “okay, I'm going to cut back just a little bit on this business that's doing so well so that I can start a second business that again, I have really no experience in whatsoever”. And every time I've added something to my business, you know, a podcast, speaking, coaching, any of those things, it's been a huge risk because that time has to come from somewhere.

So I'm cutting into the thing that I know is working and the thing that's making money to do something that's, you know, totally unknown to me. That's really when I started talking about risks. I'd like to mention that because it's easy for me to sit here and say, “Oh, look how many risks I took. And they all worked out really well for me, but there's a lot that didn't.” Obviously that's why it's a risk, you know, you have no idea how it's going to work out. I think the scary thing for all of us when we're facing down a decision like that is it's not so much that we're afraid of how it's going to work out.

It's that we're just really, really afraid that we're going to be a failure. I think a lot of people will stop themselves solely based on fear. If you don't go after that opportunity, then you're still taking a risk that you're never gonna have it.

Exercises to help Risks not Seem Scary:

Look at the pros and cons. Do some kind of a risk assessment. Is it going to be worth it? You need to do this with everything. A lot of times we sit down and we want to talk it out with other people or we want to mull it over in our minds. But when you get things written down on paper so that you can actually see them in front of you, there is a big difference.

So if you're trying to decide to invest some money in something and you feel it's a big risk. If this is a flop, I'm going to lose a lot of money. And that's really scary. Write that down in the con column that you might lose money, that there's the potential for that. But if you're gonna write down that you might lose money, then you obviously have to write down in the pro column that you might make money because you can't have one without the other. Start building out this pro con list, write it down and then look at it. And most of the time you will find more pros than you will find cons. The problem is you're just putting so much emphasis on the one negative that might come out of the situation.

So if you invest in something, you might get more time back, you might make more money, your life might be easier, it might scale your business to the next level. You might be able to help more people and make a bigger impact. You might be able to set your family up for success because you're making that extra money. You might be able to take the time off to take that vacation with your family that you've been wanting to take. And the negatives might be, well I might lose money. Well, okay, that's one negative compared to like 10 positives.

I actually have a workbook for this and I won't dive too much into the workbook, but it's on my website. It's a practice that I started doing years ago and that's the whole reason I turned it into a workbook and it's totally free. But I do this every week and I think it's super helpful. I sit down every Monday and I write down one small risk that I have to take that week and it's something really simple. It can be something like trying a new food or putting my phone down an hour earlier before I go to bed. It doesn't have to be some big investment of your time or money, but I write down one small risk I'm going to take that week and then the next Monday, I do it again.

I also evaluate how did the risk that I took last week turn out for me? I do this every week and then at the end of the month I evaluate all the risks that I took and I say, “how did these turn out for me? Which ones were positive? Which ones were negative? Of the positive ones that I'm really proud that I took and they worked out well, how can I now use them going forward? How can I implement them going forward?”

It gets you comfortable with failure and you're building new good habits in the process. And so when you do that enough with these like little tiny things, then the big things don't seem so scary. They seem so much more normal for you to take a risk and be risking failure when it's an investment of your time or your money or starting a new business or launching something. It doesn't seem so scary because you've been taking risks and failing for a long time now. So I think that's a little practice that I've done that's been just ridiculously helpful.

Stop Making Excuses

Stop making excuses because you can sit here all day long till you're blue in the face and say, “well, I can't afford to lose this money.” “I don't have the time.” “I just can't risk this right now because dot, dot, dot, dot.” I mean, you can come up with a thousand reasons why this is a bad idea, but they're all excuses. Limited mindset creates limited results. So the longer that you sit there and make excuses and limit yourself, the longer you are going to say exactly where you're at.

Stop making excuses and make decisions.

Topics we cover include:

Hayley’s story
Getting over burnt out
Outsourcing
Time management
Terrified of failing
Hayley’s system for taking risks

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(4:10) Hayley’s story

(9:32) What happens when you get burnt out

(12:20) Time management

(19:02) Being terrified of failing

(27:09) Hayley’s system for taking risks

(32:00) Networking, and Hayley’s risks

(35:56) How can someone determine if they are stuck

(38:22) Hayley’s advice on how to move past the fear

GET IN TOUCH WITH HAYLEY:

Instagram:

http://www.instagram.com/hayleyluckadoo

Hayley’s Facebook Page:

www.facebook.com/hayleyluckadoo

Hayley’s Linkedin:

www.linkedin.com/in/hayleyluckadoo

Hayley’s Coaching Program:

https://www.hayleyluckadoo.net/coaching

GET IN TOUCH WITH MELISSA:

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