The Role of Resilience in Entrepreneurship: Colleen's Inspiring Story
Dec 16, 2023Season 2Episode 14
Shireen Botha/Tanya Scotece
Have you ever wondered how some people turn their dire circumstances into stepping stones to success?
Today, we're inviting you into the life of our guest, Colleen - a testament to the power of resilience and determination. From a financially struggling home to the high rises of corporate America, her journey is a wild ride, filled with adversity but also hope. As a single mother on the brink of homelessness, Colleen worked tirelessly, her relentless pursuit of financial independence triggering a transformation that led her to a prosperous career and ultimately, entrepreneurship.
This episode also brings to the forefront the critical role that financial literacy plays in women's entrepreneurial journeys. Our dialogue with Colleen enlightens us on how a clear understanding of one's financial numbers can be a game changer. She shares her experiences of working with women entrepreneurs and unveils strategies to overcome the common issue of undervaluing services and leaving money on the table. It's an enlightening exploration of how financial literacy can fuel business growth and stability.
In our final segment, we delve into the realm of self-sabotage and how it often acts as a roadblock to success. Reflecting on our own experiences with self-doubt and fear, we realize the power of our minds and the enormous influence of the company we keep. We explore how constructive adjustments in our environment and our thought process can empower us to overcome fears and achieve our goals. Buckle up for an enriching discussion packed with real-life experiences, strategies, and advice that could potentially transform your life.
Have you ever wondered how some people turn their dire circumstances into stepping stones to success?
Today, we're inviting you into the life of our guest, Colleen - a testament to the power of resilience and determination. From a financially struggling home to the high rises of corporate America, her journey is a wild ride, filled with adversity but also hope. As a single mother on the brink of homelessness, Colleen worked tirelessly, her relentless pursuit of financial independence triggering a transformation that led her to a prosperous career and ultimately, entrepreneurship.
This episode also brings to the forefront the critical role that financial literacy plays in women's entrepreneurial journeys. Our dialogue with Colleen enlightens us on how a clear understanding of one's financial numbers can be a game changer. She shares her experiences of working with women entrepreneurs and unveils strategies to overcome the common issue of undervaluing services and leaving money on the table. It's an enlightening exploration of how financial literacy can fuel business growth and stability.
In our final segment, we delve into the realm of self-sabotage and how it often acts as a roadblock to success. Reflecting on our own experiences with self-doubt and fear, we realize the power of our minds and the enormous influence of the company we keep. We explore how constructive adjustments in our environment and our thought process can empower us to overcome fears and achieve our goals. Buckle up for an enriching discussion packed with real-life experiences, strategies, and advice that could potentially transform your life.
Tales from the Wild, stories from the Heart A journey into the mind and soul of fired-up business professionals, where they share their vision for the future and hear from a different non-profit organization every month as they create awareness of their goals and their needs. Dive into a world of untamed passion. As we join our host, Shireen Botha, for this month's episode of Friends from Wild Places.
Shireen Botha:
So back to you, Colleen. I just want to start off. Can you just tell us a little bit about who you are as a person, in your background, so we can get to know you a little bit better.
Colleen Biggs:
So I would call myself an overachiever and scrappy. I'm just going to start there. Someone's like what does that mean? Well, she's got kind of this bad. You know, like this side to her that's kind of like goes against the grain, breaks the rules. You know I have a black belt in Taekwondo because I just do things that like will push my mental and my physical body past. You know, what I think is possible and I kind of have a bad attitude sometimes is what my husband says is a joke. You know, like one day I came home with my nose pierced and he was like well, why, why would you do that? What was that about? And I'm like oh, it's because, because you know I can, because I can. I guess that's what I. I felt like I wanted to and I can, so I gave myself permission to do that. So that's a little bit about me.
Colleen Biggs:
I have the biggest heart for women and business owners. I really do. I want every woman to succeed and that goes all the way back to my early years. I was in a very abusive, broken family. When my dad left, when I was 12, everyone in my household kind of receded. No one really wanted to live anymore, be present and everyone was, you know, going through their pain. However, they were going through it and I didn't feel like I had a present parent and I was kind of feeling like on my own, that big bubble of that getting married and growing up, you know, having babies and that kind of dream. You know that I thought was going to happen for me burst, it was done.
Colleen Biggs:
And then there was a lot of struggle with money. You know we were on government support. So from my childhood all I remember is being poor. All I remember is government support and having to use food stamps at a local grocery store where all your other friends and parents shopped was embarrassing. I begged my mom to like drive miles, miles down the road. You know grocery stores now are a lot closer than they were back then, but please don't shop here because we're going to run into someone that's going to know us. And it was very embarrassing to be super poor to go to school and all your friends are wearing Jordan jeans back in the day, you know, and you shopped at the local drug store like that would be like a child shopping at Walgreens for their clothes, and I had to go to school to go to school.
Colleen Biggs:
So I knew at that moment, when I graduated high school and left, my mom moved out of state and had gotten married a few years before that moved out of state, and so I knew I had to be financially independent. And so that is really, I think, what has created this overachiever in me, because I know that I was responsible for standing on my own two feet and sometimes I didn't do it so gracefully. Sometimes I was homeless and you know I I have had a job but I was surfing from couch to couch. Or you know, need of $5 for gas that I'd have to borrow from a friend because I hadn't gotten my paycheck yet. Like I've been through it all. I've gone weeks without eating when I was a single mother because I could only afford diapers and wipes. And even though I would go through the grocery store and shop and put everything in my basket, then I would realize you can't afford any of this and then I would just leave it and leave the store and just get the diapers. So I've been through a lot in my life. I've repeated cycles of marrying people that I thought I could change and they would be able to love me and become a specific person. They can't. You know that doesn't really work. You can't change anybody else, so we shouldn't have expectations, a form of control on other people.
Colleen Biggs:
So I just hit the ground in corporate America. I've been working since I was eight and I know people are like really have no, I had, like I had to have a job like delivering papers, have a paper route, cleaning houses, doing lawns. We always had to be earning money. And then it got to the point where I had to earn money to eat and to live as a teenager. So I would skip school and go to work, work overtime, whatever it took. You know, I barely graduated. Someone asked me did you graduate from high school? Yeah, I graduated from high school, thought I wanted to go to college, started, couldn't afford it so I was like, well, college isn't the right route for me. So I just became a survivor and earned money by pretty much outwitting, outsmarting and being the better employee than anybody else. There wasn't anything I couldn't learn or do because I was just gonna apply myself and I remember telling them that, like you know, so fast forward. I, you know, keep climbing the ladder.
Colleen Biggs:
In corporate America I find a company that I'm working with for a lot of years. I eventually retired from that company to become an entrepreneur and during those you know 18 years with that company, I fell into not on purpose, but fell into real estate, real estate contract negotiating, new business launching and I just really gravitated toward that new business launching. I loved it. I loved working with just people like, growing up, my neighbors, you know moms and dads that wanted to make a difference in their community. They wanted to have a business that served children, and so I had the pleasure of walking them along that path and I just got really good at it and I really do think that the only reason why I was good at it was one I wanted to be the best, but two I cared a lot about them, like they were my friends, they were my neighbors.
Colleen Biggs:
I still today get invitations of these children that they were pregnant with back when we worked together going to, you know, graduating high school, going to college. You know, some of them are getting married. It's crazy. Christmas cards go back and forth. We still have conversations, we still celebrate each other, we still follow each other on social media. They will be my friends and family for life and that's the type of relationships I create with people. I have a deep connection with them. I really care.
Colleen Biggs:
It's not very surfacing, so when things like that email happened, those things really kind of rub me the wrong way, because I don't treat people like that in business right. So I treat people kindly, I learn from them, they learn from me, they become family. So that's really how I built my career and my career was really built in business launching and the success and what it takes to launch a business, and I've done it over. I did it an average about 15 a year just over and over and over and over again. And so that's where that 300 and some number comes from, because I didn't go out and buy a business or launch, create LLCs for every single one of them, buy myself and do it on my own. I was guiding all of these moms and dads and a lot of the wives that wanted to start businesses and the husbands worked. It was just really fun to work with everyday people that wanted to make a change and have freedom as an entrepreneur, and I gravitate toward that still today. It's why I enjoy my freedoms to do what I wanna do when I wanna do it and create my own schedule, and I usually take between Christmas and New Year's off because not a lot's happening during that time and so I just block my schedule and say this is my time to be with family and have downtime. Maybe my husband and I go on vacation, but I just kind of unplug because I think we all need that time to unplug. So that's a little bit about me and what I do today.
Colleen Biggs:
I also love to bring people together in a community. I think support of a community is so, so, so important. We curated communities back in corporate America and they learned so much from each other and that support I felt was even more crucial than the support I was giving them. So when I came out of corporate America, I had curated a community for women and just kind of really started from no one you know, inviting the first person and building this community up, you know, to thousands of women today that are building businesses, they connect, they collaborate.
Colleen Biggs:
I teach them visibility, I give them paths and platforms for visibility that I run, that I interview, that I help them with. We even teach them how to take like a podcast so they can get a podcast interview. But then we say, now that you've done the podcast interview. Here's what you wanna do next. You wanna put it on your blog, on your website. You wanna go on social media and promote this and use this you know these hashtags and use this wording to promote yourself. So we give them about five to six digital footprints just in that one podcast interview, right Cause then we're promoting it, we're putting it on our pages, we're pushing it out to our community. So just that one piece of visibility, and they get many pieces of visibility in the community. So I believe that the more that we can help others and elevate and empower women and lift them, they will absolutely elevate and empower other people. It's just what we do.
Tanya Scotece:
Fascinating, fascinating. Colleen, where did you actually grow up? Were you out in Arizona? Is that where you? Where did you grow up?
Colleen Biggs:
So I grew up in New Jersey when I was a child and then my family moved me to Arizona in 1976. And then I finished going to school and Arizona became my home because I was the youngest out of everybody, so that really became my hub. This is where I feel like I've lived. You know my whole life.
Tanya Scotece:
I'm originally from Connecticut and then had moved to Florida back in like 2006. So it's just funny, cause Arizona? I know nothing about Arizona. It just seems like a place like far, far away and it should read too in South Africa, you know, it's like it's just fascinating where we all are. I just have a question for you, colleen, and I hear you, as far as you know, empowering women, helping women and having you know you express the challenges that you had as a child. As far as being poor, you know no resources, what do you advise or you know elaborate on us for women who are currently struggling financially? Like what do you like? How do people get from point A to point B when we're already in situations of homes and you know, maybe, student loan, debt, credit card debt? What would you say maybe is the relationship of how to, you know, build a better relationship with finances and that side of things.
Colleen Biggs:
Yeah. So I think it really all comes down to financial literacy, tanya. There's so much we're not taught we're not taught in schools, we're not taught by our parents, we're not taught by anyone financial literacy, and the rich continue to get richer and the middle class will always pay. The middle class will just always pay. So I do, with my own clients, have financial literacy conversations. We talk about how to run your business financially different. If you were to, possibly, let's say, if you wanted to run profit first in your business right, you could do it that way.
Colleen Biggs:
I think the biggest thing is most people don't know what they owe, what they have and where they're going. So, having that clarity and understanding this is what my monthly income is and this is what I need to increase my monthly income to. These are the products and services I have to sell. What actions do I need to take to increase my income? Right Would be the first thing and then what actions do I need to take to reduce my expenses? And then how can I eliminate most of my expenses altogether? So I think there's a financial literacy piece that starts right away.
Colleen Biggs:
For someone who is Maybe they have a job or a W-2 or they're an entrepreneur, there's always a way, to date, especially to make money where, if you wanted to eliminate all of your debt, there's Instacart, doordash, uber I could just name a thousand things that you could do on the side to make some additional cash, even if you were working a W-2. So some people that have a job, they might say, well, I can't get a raise, right, I can't make any more money. Well, you can make money on the side to pay off your debt. My own children have done that to save for a house so they could buy a house. So when we are determined and we have a plan, we can achieve it.
Colleen Biggs:
I find that most women don't have a plan and that usually comes back to lack of education on financial literacy and not really being clear on how do I put this plan together.
Colleen Biggs:
So that's where you want to buddy up with or get into a free group or anywhere where you can start surrounding yourself with people that can teach you how to do it. I mean, there's board games out there that cash flow board game that teach you all of that. So that is something I've had to learn on my own. I was never taught that ever. I've just had to learn it and I always thought increasing income was the way to earn more. You've got to increase your income. That's how you become richer. It's really not. It has a lot to do with what you're investing in, has a lot to do with how much money that you have saved, has a lot to do with your debt money owed. It really has a lot to do with the larger picture. So I think that most of those individuals just lack clarity on a complete plan or financial literacy to know what to do.
Tanya Scotece:
Fascinating, and it's kind of like the old story, like when people, let's say, want to work out to get healthier, to get stronger. It's almost like a relationship with food. Or, on the flip side, when people want to lose weight, it's like, ok, well, less calories and increased exercise. It sounds so simple, but yet billions of dollars are spent helping people do that. So it's a bigger conversation, like you illustrated. It's not just OK, we'll just spend less and work more. I mean, it's a bigger picture than that. So what do you? How should I say? As far as getting clients, what type of clients are you looking to get? Or what would you say for women out there, listening to our podcast maybe, that have these visions of being successful and they don't know where to start? Is that somebody that you would help, or are you really successful.
Colleen Biggs:
No, I make it very easy. I wind up working with a lot of startups, a lot of women that are just teetering out of corporate America, or their toe is still in corporate America and their toe is in entrepreneurship, and they're like I just don't know how to build this business. I don't know how to get it started. So I work with a lot of women like that. So they're new and they're launching. The other women that I work with which is a clear, easy demographic is women that already have a business. They're entrepreneurs. They're really trying to make it.
Colleen Biggs:
It's some service that they offer, right, they could be a health coach, they could be a business coach, they could be a virtual assistant, a bookkeeper right, they have services that they offer and they're like I don't know how to grow this thing. I don't know how to make more money. I always say I work with women that wanna generate more income. That's where I start, right, because that helps ease things a little bit to start when you can start generating the income. So I love to work with women to help them generate income. That's my favorite thing to do, because I know that the numbers will show you the path. When you know your numbers, they'll show you your path. So I just start working right away on numbers, what products and services they have, maybe looking at what they haven't added. That they just didn't see was an opportunity.
Colleen Biggs:
Most women I meet are leaving way too much money on the table because they're so kind, they're so nice, they're giving way too much away for free, and that's a shift, a mind shift, that they really have to go through. So when they can see a clear blueprint and a plan, I do retreats for these. I just came off of one last week. I do just one day trainings on these with someone if they wanna hire me to create this, and pretty much what we do is we go through your entire business plan, path, products and services. You have what you can offer, who are the people that you wanna offer it to, and they've got their whole clarity of plan and everyone is just like whoa, now I can finally see how I'm gonna be able to generate that money. Again, it's always a lack of clarity. They just can't see it for themselves.
Shireen Botha:
No, I love the fact that you use the word clarity, because for a lot of my clients and a lot of my prospects that's what I preach the biggest part about being a business owner and entrepreneurs is to know your numbers, have a clear understanding of where you stand financially so that you can make those informed decisions. And so that is the value that I bring on a monthly basis to my clients, where we just sit down and we have a clear look at these financial statements and we talk about it and we come up and brainstorm and throw back ideas, because if we need to increase sales, let's talk about how we can go about plan of action to increase sales. So I absolutely love what you say about clarity, colleen, because you hit the nail on the head when it comes to knowing your entire business plan, knowing your numbers. It's definitely part of it. So thank you for mentioning that.
Shireen Botha:
On the talk of being an entrepreneur and a business owner and I love this question because I ask a lot of my guests the same thing so there's a thing called nature or nurture, and for some people, being an entrepreneurial business owner doesn't come naturally. They have to actually nurture that part of themselves and study and get mentors and really build on it and practice. Where you get these amazing people that are just that comes naturally and they're very successful quite speedily. And so there's always those two people. Both are wonderful entrepreneurs and business owners. They both have their own specific pros and cons. Where do you stand on that linear of that?
Colleen Biggs:
I a thousand percent think that we only see what we see from the outside, looking in, because that's all we're willing to look at. So if we see someone like, oh my gosh, everything they touch turns to gold and they're so lucky and they're this and they're that, I don't believe that didn't come with literacy, that didn't come with education, that didn't come with learning, that didn't come with them educating themselves on what they need and belief and faith. Because those two things thoughts are things. This is probably the number one thing I teach. Thoughts are things. And someone's like are you a mindset coach? I'm like no, I don't teach mindset, but I'll tell you that if you don't think you're going to succeed, you won't because you've already decided you're not going to. If you think you are going to succeed, I'll give you an example.
Colleen Biggs:
I have an event coming up November 17th here in Chandler, arizona, in Arizona, and I said I want 100 women in the room. I rented a room that could hold 100 women. I decided I could fit this many tables in there for sponsors. I could have based on the day from nine to four. I could have this many speakers and that was my goal to get all of them enrolled right 100 attendees and the speakers and the sponsors. Somebody along the way said how many are you expecting? I said 100. They said what if you don't get 100 women in the room? And I paused. It was the first time that I had thought what if I don't? Because it never even came to my mind that I mean I had believed it. I saw it. I rented a room for the size of it, like everything was leading toward that. So there was no doubt in my mind for one second that I wouldn't have 100 women in the room. In fact, today, as of this morning, we've had to shut everything down and turn off registration because I've sold 105 tickets and so maybe some people won't show up. But that doubt that that person put in my, they put it in. I did not have that doubt, they said it, so they have a doubt, right. So that reflection reflected on to me and then now I was like well, there is no part of me that thinks I won't have. So I was so sure it didn't mean I knew how, but I was so sure I was going to have 100 women that I'm not sure I was going to figure out what I needed to figure out to get 100 women in the room.
Colleen Biggs:
There is women and men out there that are in relationships, worried that what if the other person falls out of love? What if they don't see me the same in 20 years as they did, as they do today, because I'm going to get older and have wrinkles and my body maybe won't look as beautiful or whatever it is right. What if they don't love me anymore? There's self-sabotage that happens and everything they do because that person never said that they wouldn't love them, right, and they're reflecting that onto them. So I would tell you that I honestly believe nobody is born with anything special. We are all born with the same fears. It's the fear of loud noises and it's the fear of falling, and if you're not held as a baby, you will die. This we all know. We all know. It's very, very, very simple. Any other fear that somebody has today I have a huge fear of dogs because I've been attacked several times that has been created by myself. I know that and I know I'm the one that will have to get over that. But we create self-sabotage. We create all of this.
Colleen Biggs:
So I don't think Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or Venus Williams came out of the womb as gold medalists, as number one athletes. Their dads, their parents, said you will be a number one athlete and they knew nothing different but the way that they trained him every single day in and day out, and they were not to accept anything less. If you listen to both Serena and Venus they're both tennis players they will tell you there wasn't any other thought in our mind other than you are first place. So when you go into a match, you're going to be first, you play to be first, you practice to be first, because there's no other position than that, and I think it's not nature. I think nature is. We are women and it's in our DNA to nurture. We have parts to produce babies to give life. Men do not. Their DNA is to provide, is to protect. You can see that in every mammal out there. Right, that's what they do, that's in their DNA. That is nature.
Colleen Biggs:
But other than that, I believe my stance on it is we allow ourselves or other things come into our mind that are either going to propel us forward or they're going to diffuse us and stop us, and we get to choose. That's why the mentors, the being around, people that are positive, that are fueling you forward is essential in Anything you're doing. If you're hanging around your same friends that are overweight Tonya right, like you talked about you want to lose weight and work out and go to the gym and you're hanging around all your same friends that you've been around and all of you joke around and you know, talk about sugar, whatever, and you'll, we'll just eat this one donut, not worry about it till the next. You need to get yourself out of that group and you need to put yourself in a group of achievers that want to lose weight, that want to go to the gym, that you need to start watching videos, getting mentors. It's the same.
Colleen Biggs:
When I became a runner, I had to start understanding how I was supposed to prepare for running a half marathon or a marathon. It's not just like running right. There's a lot you have to prepare for that on what you eat and your muscle mass and your off days, your rest days, your run days, or you will hurt yourself, you will strain muscles, you will, you know, break bones. So there's a lot that you have to learn. So I really do believe that we don't pop out of the womb Just naturally going to be something. It is our environment that molds us. So you have to construct your environment for what you want. Period.
Shireen Botha:
Tune in next week for part three of friends from wild places.
Voiceover:
You've been listening to friends from wild places with Shireen Botha. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast from the links to catch every episode and unleash your passion.
