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Small Business Bestie
Entrepreneurship is hard, and sometimes we could use a friend to walk a mile in our shoes. Small Business Bestie is here to provide that friendship, support, and inspiration that small business owners need from time to time.
Small Business Bestie
33: Conquering Fears and Redefining Success with Michelle Gruning
What if you could conquer your biggest fears and redefine success on your own terms? 🥇🧠 Join us as we explore the inspiring journey of Michelle Gruening from MG Coaching, a life and business coach with a mission to empower women entrepreneurs. Michelle shares her courageous experience of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in February 2024, an endeavor that pushed her limits and reshaped her mindset. Her year-long preparation was more than just physical training; it was a profound mental transformation that influenced her daily decisions and underscored the power of a strong will and purpose. Michelle's story is a testament to the dedication required to achieve ambitious goals, illustrating how enduring harsh conditions can forge an unbreakable spirit. 🏔️🩵
We also dive into Michelle's transition from the corporate world to establishing her coaching business, emphasizing the importance of leaving unfulfilling pursuits to embrace new opportunities. She highlights the critical role of therapy in providing accountability and support during significant life changes. MG Coaching focuses on helping women solopreneurs navigate the early stages of their businesses by fostering personal growth and building sustainable habits. Michelle offers strategies to overcome imposter syndrome, aiming to reach ambitious goals without succumbing to hustle culture. Prepare to be inspired and motivated to embark on your journey of transformation and self-discovery. 👏🧘♀️
Check out Michelle here!
MG Coaching- https://www.michellegruening.com/
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Small Business Bestie is edited by Bourbon Barrel Podcasting
Welcome to the Small Business Bestie podcast. I'm your host, Michelle. We are creating community and coaching women entrepreneurs, and we are so glad that you're here. Let's meet. This week's small business bestie. Michelle Gruening from MG Coaching, is joining me today all the way from Boulder, Denver area out here in Colorado. So, Michelle, thank you so much. I cannot believe that I'm sitting in your basement at your house. We've known each other for a while now and I'm so excited to get to talk to you and honestly hear this story that I know that is going to be so valuable to our listeners. So, if you don't mind, take just a minute. Tell me about yourself and what you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. It's so fun to have a fellow Michelle here in the house. So my name is Michelle Groening. I'm a life and business coach that helps women entrepreneurs smash imposter syndrome and redefine their rules for success so they can build a life on their own terms and one that they love, and so I have been doing this coaching business for about three years, but prior to that was in a variety of leadership and management roles for about 13 years, so it's been a long time of working with people.
Speaker 2:Awesome man. Imposter syndrome is one of those things. I just did a little talk yesterday and I was talking about imposter syndrome and what a buzzword it is, and then I was like, but things become a buzzword for a reason, because it's so prevalent, like we all relate to it. Absolutely. So the work that you're doing is really important and I'll just give everybody a little backstory.
Speaker 2:Michelle and I met through a mastermind community that we were both a part of, and I've talked about Mark Keene and his community on the podcast before, so that might sound familiar, but that's how we met. We met at a life transformation event in person for the first time. So Michelle is very passionate and involved with personal development and finding ways to live the best life that you possibly can, and she exemplifies that by, you know, really investing in her own betterment constantly. So I'm so excited. Thank you so much for being here. Okay, I'm just going to break the ice for us. This year was a huge milestone year for you and I want to hear all about it. So please tell me about what happened for you at the beginning of the year and what it's meant for your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. In February of this year of 2024, myself, my husband and two of our dear friends climbed to the summit of the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, which is Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, africa, and I know it's so. It stands at 19,341 feet, which is almost a mile taller than any mountain here in Colorado. But when we decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro we officially decided in February of 2023, the next 12 months of my life were not only physically transforming, because I was training for this incredible adventure, but it transformed my mindset, my personal growth, the way I approach business, and the transformation that I experienced in those 12 months leading up to this trek through Tanzania and up Kilimanjaro was so powerful and there's so many relative and relatable lessons that anyone can take into their life, whether they're climbing a mountain or not.
Speaker 2:I feel like I climb mountains every day, Every day right, yeah, and it was.
Speaker 1:You know, training for something like Mount Kilimanjaro can take a lot of different ways. For it, some people just train about three months before they do their climb. But for me, I made the decision to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and in that same moment I said I'm summiting this mountain. So about 80% of people who attempt Kilimanjaro will reach the summit, and I was determined that I was going to be in that 80%, and so every decision for the next 12 months was made with Kilimanjaro in mind.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that. Yeah, it's so difficult to really find a filter that you can make decisions through that will stick. You know, it's easy to say like oh I'm, you know, right now I'm focused on business growth, and like you can run your decisions through that filter. But it's like fatiguing after a while to say, like I don't want to think about that as the goal every single day. You know. So to get something as huge as like I'm going to climb the biggest mountain in the world and I'm going to run every decision through that filter. Like do I want to eat this ice cream at 10 PM? No, because I'm going to climb Kilimanjaro, you know. Do I want to skip the gym? No, do I want to? I don't know.
Speaker 2:Choose not to go on that practice hike or training hike. You know everything, and not just physically, but I'm sure there's a lot of mental fortitude and training that you had to go through. So were there any things in particular that you did for more of a mental or mindset training for Kili? Yeah, that's what you call it, right, kili, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's what the cool kids call it and what the locals in Tanzania call it is Kili. Okay, so Kili is. It's a very attainable hike for those who have the right will and the right why to make it happen. So throughout those 12 months of training, it was definitely physical training and it's interesting you just talked about like maybe I don't want to go on that training hike as I'm leading up to it and when we were training from the day we made the decision, so about a year out. But when we hit six months out is when we got really serious about practice hikes over the weekends where we would alternate between steep incline and then just distance.
Speaker 1:And there was a weekend in January of 2024 this year, so just about a month before we went on the trek where a massive cold front moved into Colorado and it plunged us into negative degrees I'm talking negative double digit degrees. And it was over the weekend and we had training hikes and we had the decision of do we stay in our nice cozy home you know we've been working out a lot like it'll all be good or do we get out and do the hike? And we ultimately decided we get out and do the hike. So we came back with frozen eyelashes and ice all over our heads just from hiking here in Colorado, but the thing that really pushed us over the edge was there's an incredibly high chance that we will experience this type of weather on the mountain. If I want to be physically and mentally prepared, want to be physically and mentally prepared to be in this weather.
Speaker 1:I have to train in this weather, and Kilimanjaro is a massive mindset challenge. And so there were a lot of times throughout our training where I had to decide between what I wanted most and what I wanted now. And so a lot of times, what I wanted now was to stay in my cozy house or to skip a training hike because maybe I had a really hard workout the day before and I'm just tired. An incredible moment of joy and accomplishment and empowerment and the realization of I can train my butt off for a major goal, put every ounce of energy, focus, money, time, effort into a goal and I can reach it. And so I had those moments a lot throughout training where I was like all right, you say you want this goal the most, prove it.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh my gosh, I need to take that home and live by it, because I definitely think that, you know, we're creatures of habit, right, and we're creatures of comfort, and oftentimes what's comfortable and what is our habitual nature is not in line with what we say we want. And it's not even that it's what we say we want. We're saying it because it's true. Yeah, we want it, but do we want it most? Like you were saying, like that's so powerful, michelle, I really like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Give me another little nugget of wisdom that you gained from that experience no-transcript Kilimanjaro.
Speaker 1:You're climbing up to a higher elevation during the day and then you're climbing back down to sleep at night. It's this whole method and this process of hike high and sleep low, and so for the first few days we would continue hiking high, we'd be gaining all of this elevation throughout the day and then we would climb back down almost the same amount of elevation, and I kept having these moments of the summit is up and the goal is to get to the summit. So why are we going down? And it kind of felt like we were going backwards in a lot of ways and I had to remind myself to trust the process and to trust the guides who have done this hundreds of times before and not just take my own assumptions. But one of the big things I took away from that is, especially in life or in business I know a lot of your listeners are entrepreneurs and we can make tons and tons of progress towards a goal and then we reach a point where we realize am I on the right mountain Metaphorical, hopefully, not literal but am I climbing towards the right goal?
Speaker 1:Do I need to take a step back? Maybe I actually need to turn around and take the path that I passed miles back, days back, years back, whatever, and go a different direction. And in those times where it can feel like we're going backwards, it's important to remember that all progress is valid. All of that progress you made is not negated simply because you're taking another path or you're changing direction, or maybe you realize that it's not what you wanted it to be in the first place, and so you're making that decision to go another direction. And so in those moments where it feels like you're you've been working really hard and you've been growing and you've been investing in yourself and you've been doing all of these things, and you get to a point where you realize, oh man, I need to take a little bit of a step back. It doesn't mean that all of that work and energy and effort you put in is no longer valuable and it's no longer important. All of those steps are part of reaching your goal, right.
Speaker 2:And it's all progress. Yes, I love that and I think you know. And so instead like turning that around to say, like I gained knowledge, I gained experience and I gained the ability to look and say I'm not going where I thought I was going, I need to take steps back, like that's all so valuable. I love it very much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's. You know. Just the ability to recognize that when you step into a new space you may have a feeling of imposter syndrome simply because you've not been there before. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that you're an imposter. That means you're stepping out of your comfort zone, you're growing yourself, you're trying something new. You can almost flip it on its head a little bit where it's. You know, if every 18 months or so, I haven't felt a little out of my element, does that mean you need to step up your growth a little bit? Yeah, is there an opportunity to challenge yourself a bit more? Expand your community no-transcript.
Speaker 2:I'm scared that I'm doing something, that I'm going to look silly. It isn't necessarily that I feel like I am not enough.
Speaker 2:It's that I'm afraid of the unknowns, I'm afraid of the what ifs is when I feel the imposter syndrome and so and I've said it a thousand times on here but for me, like doing something, even when you're scared, is the most like powerful thing that you can do for yourself. You know, because not only are you going to prove like, wow, I can do that, but every time you come up against a challenge in the future, you're going to go yeah, I'm scared now, but I was also scared the last time and I did it and it was fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know Absolutely there. There can be no courage without fear. So every time you step into your courage and you be courageous, you're doing it even though you're scared. So I love that that you recognize that you've done a lot of things scared and but but now you know right, you did, I'm scared and now you know what can happen. A lot of people stay in that what if? State. You know, what if I could climb to the top of Kilimanjaro? Or what if I could open my own business? And they leave it there in the unknown. Because it's what if I fail? I don't make it, I look silly, I fall short. We need to work on reframing it to what if it exceeds my wildest expectations? What if it goes better than I could have ever imagined? Like? Give ourselves that chance to dream Right.
Speaker 2:And also, like you were talking about when you go backwards, sometimes claiming the power that can come from that. When you were talking about training for Kilimanjaro, it reminded me of last year. I had decided about the same time you decided, to climb Kilimanjaro. I said, I'm going to, I'm going to run my first marathon. Yes, and I started training and everything was going really, really well. And then my body started telling me like you're not running a marathon, you know it's probably not going to happen for you this time. And like coming back from that, like having to finally kind of quit, if you will right, like I quit training, I decided I wasn't going to run a marathon. At first I felt a lot of like defeat and disappointment. Embarrassment because you know, I'd put it out on social media that I was going to run a marathon. Everybody knew and everybody's going to know that I'm a quitter. But what I learned from that is like, hey, I didn't run a marathon, but I ran 14 miles one day.
Speaker 1:You know that like is incredible to me.
Speaker 2:Right, but like, so, like, I didn't run the marathon, but I listened to my body, which was saying you don't want to run 26 miles, michelle, and I realized I can do really hard things, because the day that I ran 14 miles, I wanted to stop at mile four, but I kept pushing and I kept pushing and I kept telling myself what I was, you know what I was trying to accomplish. And so, even though there was this failure in my life of not completing the marathon, I grew a ton just to be able to recognize I'm not on the mountain. I should be on. Yay, no, maybe a marathon isn't what I should be training for right now. Yeah, so I love your story.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, yeah thank you for sharing that, that story about the marathon training. I think having those stories shared is so impactful and empowering because, you know, one of my favorite four-letter words is quit. Because there are some things that are not for us that we keep pushing towards, because we put it out on social media or we quote-unquote should be doing it and we don't like it. Right, and we're just quitting. Yeah, we're just doing it for the sake of other people. We're living for other people's happiness and when you give yourself that power to quit something that's not for you, you open up the universe to all of the things that are for you.
Speaker 2:Yes. Do you have a specific example of when that might have happened in your life that you could share?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, yeah. So I, before I started my coaching business in 2021, I had been in the corporate startup world and I was in. The last job that I was in was really awesome until it was really bad. And I will actually shout out to the power of therapy on this one, and I'm very open about that, because I actually hired a therapist to hold me accountable to leaving this job within six months, because at that time, I didn't trust myself enough to believe in myself enough that I could move forward and move out of that position.
Speaker 1:And so, for me, when I finally reached my rock bottom, my breaking point, and I chose myself and I quit that job, I felt like I gave myself the opportunity to begin asking the question what do I want? And through that journey, that transformation that came in the months after leaving that job, I found myself. I gave myself permission to start a company based on the skills and the natural talents that I have and my passion for empowering other women and reminding them that they're never alone and that they do have a choice in how their life is lived. It's their life. But if I had stayed in that job, I would never have become the person that I am, and you know I'm not telling everyone they should go quit their jobs, but but maybe they should. But maybe they should somebody else to give me. And I realized I don't need anybody else's permission, I have my own.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it started this whole journey and it's been. It's been hard Don't get me wrong Right, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm never going back.
Speaker 2:I don't think you should. I won't. You're too good at what you do, so thank you first of all for sharing that. Yeah, I can't imagine feeling trapped in a job or, you know, in an unhealthy or an unhappy environment that way. I think it's so brave of you to hire a therapist to say listen, I know I'm unhappy, I need you to help me figure out a way to be accountable to myself. Yes, so wise, I mean. I think that oftentimes we think of therapy and it gets like this connotation of like therapy is just like if you're feeling sad, you should go to therapy, and like therapy is for all the things in my opinion.
Speaker 2:It's like I don't know where I would be if I hadn't started therapy a few years ago. I definitely wouldn't be talking into this microphone right now, that's for sure. So thank you for sharing that story. Absolutely, I want to talk more about MG Coaching, yeah, and exactly what you offer, what you do, how people can work with you if they're inspired by you or you know, if they feel like you might be the person that will hold them accountable to like finding out what it is they really love and want to do. So tell me about your business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. I started MG Coaching in September of 2021. And I call myself a life and business coach, because saying I'm a transformational coach requires too much more explanation. Huh, so I work with women solopreneurs. Typically they're in their first five years of business and I focus in on that market because it's in those times that, speaking as a women entrepreneur who's been in that space, it can feel overwhelming, because you want to do all of the things and you can do all of the things, just maybe not all at the same time. And so one of the ways that I offer coaching and guidance to people who want to work with me is I do have a mastermind group, and that mastermind group is for women and that's primarily focused on personal growth. So a lot of women join this mastermind group because they feel maybe they lost themselves a little bit in their job or in caring for somebody else and they have kind of neglected themselves, and they want to learn the habits and the tools to pour back into themselves, to strengthen their foundation of who they are and to build habits that are going to take them super far into the future in a way that they want to live. So that's the mastermind group and then from a one-on-one coaching standpoint.
Speaker 1:I love working with women who have these really giant goals and visions and they have no idea how to get there. So that's one of the things that I love to do, is I love to take the time to really dive deep with a one-on-one client, and so we do things like first of all, we identify whether is there any imposter syndrome hanging around there. Where's it coming from? But we really look at where they want to go and then I meet them where they're at right now. So we start with where they're at and we build consistent, actionable small steps that are going to get them to their big goals. So a lot of times, entrepreneurs, there's no shortage of ideas.
Speaker 2:Oh no, there's not.
Speaker 1:There is no shortage of ways that we want to make an impact and we want to grow our businesses. Well, we get a little overwhelmed in the how Right, and so that's what I do is I help women figure out why they want what they want, how they want to achieve it. By what rules do they want to achieve it? Because not everyone subscribes to hustle culture. For me, personally, I'm not going to work until 3 am because I'm asleep. And if you do and if you want to work, that's your prerogative. And that's the coolest thing about this coaching is it's all about helping my clients redefine what success means to them, what success means for their business. And that's why I say life and business coaching, because really, our businesses can only grow as far as we allow ourselves to grow.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think that trying to remove the personal aspect from a business plan or business goals especially if you're an entrepreneur or solopreneur, for sure you have to set goals of what do I want my life to be like, what's the vision for my life, and then how can my business support that? Yes, you know, because oftentimes what we do is we say, oh, I want to have a million dollar company, yeah, right, yeah, and then you have to just kind of like plug things in from your life to make that happen and then we end up burnt out after you know, six weeks, six months, six years, whatever it is, because we never wanted to be in hustle culture, right, but we thought we wanted a million dollar business. And I'm not saying that you have to be a hustler to have a million dollar business Totally For sure.
Speaker 2:Yep, but you know, as an example, I think that we start with what does my life look like, and then how does my business support that, instead of the other way around?
Speaker 1:I love that, and it's especially as entrepreneurs. A lot of times we are our businesses For sure.
Speaker 1:And we can lose our identity as a person in our business identity, and that doesn't work for everybody. And so helping women figure out what they want, set it on their own terms, break free of all those societal expectations that tell us what we should look like and how we should do it and all of those things, and just reclaim that own power to make the choices, to build your life however you want. And so you know as far as how people can work with me if they're so inclined is, I do one-on-one coaching on a part-time basis, which is every other week, or I do full-time, which is a minimum of once a week, and it's all. I don't do anything cookie cutter, so it's all custom, based on the woman, the business and what her goals are, because we are all different and we all operate differently. And I do those in six month engagements because change does not happen overnight and I like working with clients who are committed to doing the work for the long haul, for themselves and for their businesses.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I just want to clarify for my own sake, and if we need to edit this out, we totally can, but with the mastermind that's more geared towards personal development. So right now you don't have like a business community mastermind where it's just, you know, entrepreneurs doing more business, goal setting and holding each other accountable. It's primarily for personal development.
Speaker 1:That is correct. So the mastermind is the people who come to the masterminds are typically employees of someone else. Maybe they have visions of becoming an entrepreneur one day, but they're more focused on themselves. And it's such a supportive, empowering community and sometimes we talk about work in that group, but it is more for you and your soul and your heart and your mind.
Speaker 2:Okay, wonderful, yeah, so I know a little birdie told me that you have some exciting things coming down the pipeline.
Speaker 1:Yes, all right, tell me about that. I do so I can't say too much right now, but I can say that they are Kilimanjaro themed. We talked a little bit about some of the lessons and the wisdom that I pulled out of that trek, and that was just scraping the top We'll say the top of the summit of the mountain of lessons that I pulled out, and so I'm really excited to be working on opportunities for people to connect more with the lessons that I pulled out, and so I'm really excited to be working on opportunities for people to connect more with the lessons that I had and took away from that climb and apply it to their own lives and to their own businesses. And that's about as much as I can say right now, but you know, maybe I can come back in a couple months and share this with your listeners.
Speaker 1:First and you know peek behind the curtain, then I would love that.
Speaker 2:I'm very excited. I'm excited for what's you know in your future as a business owner, but also just in your personal journey, is so fun to watch. I, you know, kind of stalk you on Facebook. Please do so. I'll make sure to link to your social media pages and your website and all of that.
Speaker 2:So if anyone is interested in working with Michelle, to be honest, like I can't say that I've worked with her as my coach, but she has been in the cohort with me in a mastermind and I know that the wisdom and value that she brought to our sessions each week were very impactful in my life and the support and love that I felt from her was, you know, top notch. And I will definitely be considering joining some coaching with Michelle, if not the mastermind. I think it's so important I mean, I talk about it a lot. It's so important for us to have communities where we feel like we're being supported in the ways that we need to be supported, and it's so important to have mentors and coaches. So, if anybody's been on the fence, check Michelle out. She's amazing. And is there anything else that you'd like to leave with our listeners, any nuggets of wisdom or funny anecdotes or anything like that Funny anecdotes.
Speaker 1:Well, also thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here and it's. You mentioned the power of community and that really cannot be underestimated, and I can tell you're building that with small business besties and it's. I would encourage everyone who's listening to find their people and to also know that not everyone can be everything to you and find the people who can support your business, support who you are as a person, support your journey and people who get it, because those are the people who can support your business, support who you are as a person, support your journey and people who get it, because those are the people that are going to help you rise and help you get to where you're going. We don't have to do this alone.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, yes, I was telling someone yesterday I finally have been able to narrow it down to the three things that I think have helped me go from being, you know, a defeated sad I lost my business in the pandemic, nothing's ever going to work out for me again kind of mindset to where I am today and it's only been, you know, three years, and I think the three things that brought me to where I am is personal development, professional development and community development. If I hadn't focused on those three things, if I'd left even one of them out, it wouldn't be working Absolutely. And I feel like it's working because of that, and you have been such a big part of that for me.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, Thanks Michelle, absolutely Michelle.
Speaker 2:All right. Well with that, I guess we will get out of here and we will talk at you all later. Well with that, I guess we will get out of here and we will talk at you all later. Thanks for listening, friends. My name is Michelle Smock and I own Cultivate Accounting, a boutique accounting firm specializing in small business, and I own Small Business Bestie, where I help women entrepreneurs go from idea to launch and beyond. Check the show notes for links to my website and socials and also please take a moment to subscribe and review. It really would. Notes for links to my website and socials and also please take a moment to subscribe and review. It really would mean the world to me.