Grande Dame | Maturepreneurial Women Influencers



Celebrating the Maturepreneurial Grande Dame



Lyn Slater, Accidental Icon

Lyn Slater, Accidental Icon & Maturepreneurial Grande Dame | photo

Click the photo for Lyn’s episode.






Check out Lyn’s website to learn and to read more!

Susan Good, Honey Good dot com

Susan Honey Good, Maturepreneurial Grande Dame | photo

Click the photo for Honey’s episode.








Suzi Grant, Alternative Ageing








Visible, Positive Aging




Collage photo credits (from

Hydrangea Annie Spratt

White gerbera Annie Spratt

White and yellow star flower Jeremy Bishop

Postcron Review: Buyer Beware

Postcron Review: Learn from my mistake and do not make an online purchase without knowing the vendor’s refund policy. Because if you do, you may find yourself – as I did – at the mercy of the kindness of strangers.

Postcron Review: Buyer Beware, Buyer's Remorse

Tom Pumford

Postcron Review: Buyer Beware

I had an interesting and somewhat harrowing experience in September with Postcron, a website that enables you to schedule social media posts in advance. I sincerely thought I had done my due diligence. I read the site copy. I watched YouTube videos. I agonized over the site’s bulk uploader functionality and whether or not I should purchase it.

But what I failed to do was investigate the company’s refund policy.

It doesn’t have one. No refunds are given for any reason. At all.

The company is based in South America. I’m spoiled with United States consumer protection laws. Silly me.

You get what you pay for

I started with the free version of Postcron to check it out. The irony is that I have been using MavSocial’s free version for a couple of years and have had very good experience with it, including a very satisfying exchange with customer service. So why wasn’t I loyal to MavSocial? Why didn’t I purchase MavSocial’s bulk uploader for Facebook and Twitter?

Because I was too cheap!

Because Postcron’s monthly fee was a few dollars less than MavSocial’s. And since Postcron appeared to have a working bulk uploader, I purchased Postcron’s annual plan.

Do as I say, not as I did

Wrong move! The Postcron bulk uploader does not work as advertised. Doing exactly what the website and YouTube video instructed me to do in order to schedule posts to Twitter, I did not get the result I was promised. There were more than twenty posts flagged for errors of the following two types:

  1. Randomly, Twitter’s 140 character limit was exceeded for several posts, even though those posts had less than 140 characters. I counted them. Twice.
  2. Also randomly, the bulk uploader’s image preview did not display the image I attached to my upload file, per Postcron’s instruction. Instead, it displayed the image pulled from the URL I also included in the bulk uploader, also per Postcron’s instructions.

I purchased my plan on a Saturday afternoon. After a couple of hours and three bulk upload attempts with the same unsatisfactory results, I immediately requested a refund. No one was home. I didn’t hear from customer service until Monday.

Hello? Is anybody there?

Over the next week, there followed an exasperating exchange with a Postcron customer service rep, who was obtuse and absolutely no help. The rep simply kept insisting that the bulk uploader worked and she couldn’t recreate my preview errors. She could only recreate the exceeds-140-characters error.

She then tried to tell me that Twitter’s character count was exceeded because I had put the tweet text into the field Postcron’s instructions told me to put them in. Where I really should put them was in another field, where they display better. As if anyone could ever know that without first having to call customer service because the way s/he was instructed to do it didn’t work!

Despite my other upload attempts that also resulted in incorrect image previews and excessive character counts, and despite sending screenshots of those errors to the customer service rep, she would not budge. She never even acknowledged or addressed my screenshots.

America to the rescue

Long, sordid story short, one month later, my credit card company came to the rescue. The customer rep I spoke to there was very clear and very firm with me.

“Sir, we lost your payment dispute. Postcron will not refund your money. The website clearly states that you would not be entitled to a refund under any circumstances. It is your responsibility to know the company refund policy before you make your purchase.”

He was right, of course.

“But since we want you to be a happy customer, we will refund you the money ourselves.”

I was troubled that Postcron could get away with selling such a flawed product with no consequences, but you better believe I took the money.

And ran.

I ran far away from Postcron and straight into the arms of MavSocial’s monthly – monthly – subscription plan. No more annual plans for me. And yes, I am satisfied with MavSocial. Very satisfied, indeed.

A word to the wise is sufficient

Take my advice:

  1. Stay away from Postcron: the bulk uploader does not do what Postcron says it will do in the way Postcron says it will do it. You will be posting to Twitter blind, without truly knowing what your followers will see. That’s a risk I was not willing to pay for the privilege of taking.
  2. Do not make a purchase without knowing beforehand the vendor’s refund policy. DON’T. DO. IT.

Learn from my mistake and for heaven’s sake, read the fine print, even if you have to make a special search for it. I regret that I didn’t.

Postcron Review: Buyer Beware, read the fine print!

Mari Helin-Tuominen

All photos sourced from

Because Why

Because why. Why we do what we do is worth examining and clarifying because it has so much impact on how we do it and how we persevere when we encounter challenges and obstacles.

Because why: knowing why you're doing something gives you power

Ben White

Why Start With Why?

One of the best books I read this year is Simon Sinek’s, Start with Why. As happens with such things, ever since I finished the book it seems I hear people talk about “finding your why” all the time now. This includes, of course, our podcast guests. Sinek’s book was published in 2009. He gave a TED talk the same year that continues to get a lot of views.

The basic premise of the book is that in order to be truly, enduringly successful from the inside out, companies must have awareness of and alignment with why they exist. In fact, the entrepreneurial why is more important than the what or the how, although the latter are both important in their own way.

But why comes first.

1. Because why informs you whether your business even has a market. Why serves as the filter that sifts out the people who could be your customers from everybody else.

Kevin Craine expresses this beautifully in his episode when he says:

I think you have to have a plan. But here’s how I would put it. You have to know your why. What is your why? Why is it that you are doing what you do? And there’s a couple answers to that.


I guess, certainly “why is it for you.” But I’m talking from the business point of view – and we could talk about why am I doing it as a person – but the business part. What is it that you’re doing and why? Why would your customers care? What is it that you do that makes them care about what you do? Why would they buy your product? And why would they just not go to somebody else? And why wouldn’t they just not do anything? What if they just did nothing?


And so, if you start really asking yourself these really hard “Whys?” and finding the answers to those questions that aren’t BS. You know, why would someone hire Kevin Craine to write content for their website when they could go to anyone else or they could do nothing or they could do it themselves?


And so now you start getting an answer to, “Is what I’m doing even going to find a market?”

2. Because why supports leaders and employees when times are tough and they question the wisdom or the value of what they’re doing.

Circumstances will not always be in our favor. The same applies to business and organizational life. There will always be challenges and setbacks to test our collective mettle as well as our wits and skill. When they occur or persist through time, knowing and believing in the company’s mission keeps attitudes positive, fosters optimism, bolsters confidence, and fortifies resolve.

In his episode, Jim Akers advises:

Make sure that you connect with your why; the purpose, mission, people use a lot of different words – the why, the mission, the purpose – but why do you want to do it and who is touched or impacted by it? Because the journey gets tough. There’s a ton of resistance. And if that why, those benefits, are not great enough to motivate you and move you? You can’t get there.

Jean Haynes echoes the same sentiment:

Really think why you’re doing this business and the difference you want to make. Because at the end of the day, if that’s not really strong… it’s difficult when you hit those roadblocks or those times when business is tough to keep yourself motivated and going.

Dinesh Kandanchatha talks about the value of why within the narrower context of staying focused on the most valuable and rewarding aspects of becoming an entrepreneur in the first place. He says:

I start out with, why are you starting the company? If you’re starting the company to create a paycheck for yourself, there’s a lot easier ways to make a paycheck than starting your own company. You can go work for someone else whether it’s a larger company, or work as part of a franchise group or a consulting group.


The reason why you start a company is because you believe you can bring something meaningful to your community, to your professional association, to your craft. And as long as you’re focused on the meaning and on something that’s going to be material in that way, the job parts of it you’ll be able to power through.


One of the tests I use for myself is, if I find that it feels like a job for more than 70% of the time, I need to rethink what I’m doing because I’m probably not doing the things that I really wanted to do when I started the company.


So, focus on why and every time you feel like you’re stuck and it feels too much like a job, come back to the why and see if you’ve compromised on the why. Inevitably, when I have these conversations with founders, it’s because they made a compromise on their vision and that’s got them into the place they are.

3. Because why sends such a powerful message to consumers, clients, or other collaborating participants of what the company stands for.

The power of this message is the alignment it enables among like-minded souls. People will forgive all manner of shortcomings and disappointments if they can recognize the purpose behind a business as one they personally believe in and, often, feel quite passionate about themselves.

One of the readiest examples of this passion is seen in software and hardware beta users who care far less about bugs and limitations than they care about being early adopters or about riding the cutting edge of innovation. Apple is one of Sinek’s favorite examples of an organization that has inspired a cult-like following among users who are more aligned with the brand than with any of its specific products.

In fact, as symbols of a company’s why, its products carry far greater appeal to its consumers than mere utilitarian value. They’re tangible representations of the connection customers feel with the brand message; its why.  This is why Apple fans will buy any and all of its products; because Apple is a disruption company, a company to challenge the status quo, a company that could be characterized in any number of ways, but that cannot be reduced to the maker of a single product or even a single category of products.

4. Because why taps into human feeling and emotion, which are more reliable guides to action, behavior, and strategy than a book of rules.

​Having people be committed with their hearts is far more effective than being committed with their heads. Emotion, not logic, is the glue of connection and relationship. It leads people to “do the right thing,” particularly in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity, or the unknown.

This is especially noticeable as the old command-and-control paradigm dissolves in the workplace and front line employees are empowered to act upon their own authority in the customer’s best interests. We see this fairly commonly now in customer service. But it’s also permeating other aspects of business and organizational culture. For example, in some manufacturing companies individual operators are granted the authority to stop production lines when a problem or error is discovered, even though such stoppages can cost money and productivity.

In order to effectively take such responsibility, company agents must have an understanding of the larger context within which their roles and activities function. Part of that context is the knowledge of why they are doing what they’re doing to fulfill the expectations and requirements of the company’s customers while advancing the business’s purpose and goals.

Employees become empowered, self-sufficient, and autonomous when they have a clear why to internalize and to align themselves and their actions with. And under this scenario, leadership can advance from merely managing behavior to providing mentorship and inspiration.

Income: the outcome of clarity

Joel Kessel observes that Simon Sinek’s book and TED talk are both still relevant today. Summarizing, he says, “People don’t buy what you do or how you do it. They buy why you do it. That’s so true.”

In his episode, Joel shares a clarity process he received from his coach and mentor that leverages finding your why as the starting point for taking the necessary actions that lead, almost inevitably, to income.

It starts with clarity. It’s clarity, [which] leads to competence, which leads to confidence, which leads to more influence, impact, and then income; where a lot of people are chasing the income and that’s where they’re frustrated and they give up; where they haven’t taken the time to take a step back and say, “Well, what am I clear about? What do I want to do? What’s my why? Why do I want to do this? Who do I want to serve and help? And once we have that clarity, holy smokes, the rest really tends to fall into place.


When I first heard that, it was daunting for me. But it was one of the best pieces of advice that I was given as I was starting this journey of transitioning my business and how I want to work. It really does start with that clarity. And then once you have that, it’s the competence and all of a sudden you’re gaining so much more confidence in what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for. And then, believe it or not, you start to influence and impact people. And then the income is there. It’s a wonderful thing to experience.


Start with why. Have that clarity. Ask yourself, “Why do I want to do what I do?”

Why comes first

Why influences so many aspects of your entrepreneurial journey that how well you define it could be the difference between your success and failure.  Take the time to identify your why.  It will provide your business with a foundation for reaching people in authentic, meaningful and valuable ways that transcend your means of reaching them.

Because why: knowing why you do what you do fosters support


All photos sourced from

Step Ten: Stay the Course

Stay the Course is step ten of the ten-step Maturepreneurial series How to Start a Business After 40.

image of sailboat on still waters

Hugo Kerr

Stay the course

Step ten, like step two, is a step I personally find challenging to fulfill. Once I start something new, after a time that might be short or long depending on the circumstances, I will tend to feel “lost at sea.” I manage to take the first steps of the journey and see initial progress. I may also still see great future promise.

And yet.

I begin to experience existential angst.

And self doubt.

I ask myself questions like:

  • Is this all there is?
  • Why do I feel like I’m not getting anywhere?
  • Am I looking too soon or too hard for results?
  • Am I micromanaging myself?

Partly, I would say the latter is true. If not myself, then at least I have a tendency to micromanage the process (which spiritual teachers would argue is the self). In any event, this is a symptom of my orientation towards results and outcomes. If your work, your effort, your focus, or your attention are all about the outcomes they’re expected to provide, then you’ve probably lost touch with any meaning, and therefore joy, the process itself can bring you. I’ve certainly done it enough times to know.

Weather the doldrums

Successfully staying the course – any course – to me, means not losing faith, courage, or heart when I’m “in the doldrums.”

In maritime usage, the doldrums are places in the ocean near the equator where the prevailing winds are calm. In fact, the wind can disappear altogether, leaving sail boats trapped or stranded for days or weeks at a time.

That’s kind of how I feel after the initial rush of starting something new and having to consistently apply myself to it without seeing a lot of change or progress. I feel stagnant. And in that stillness or absence of momentum, I start to question myself and whether I’m doing the right thing; i.e, pursuing the proper course to achieve my goals in the first place.

I also feel a little bit guilty: I’m not fulfilling my potential. And somehow that’s my fault.

The good news is: now I understand this human experience is not uncommon. And entrepreneurs are no less susceptible to the doldrums than anyone else who feels trapped by their choices as the consequences play themselves out, perhaps more slowly than they would wish. Sometimes they play out with drama, excitement, or rewarding milestones. Often they play out with little to show for the time and effort we put into our work.

“Never give up”

At times like these, I find comfort and inspiration in what Chuck Gumbert has to say about this stage of the entrepreneurial journey.

“Sit back, establish a series of goals, and then develop some plans to go accomplish those goals. And then the biggest piece of it is, have the gumption to stay the course. Never give up. Never give up.

Chuck goes on to talk about correcting course. He says, “There’s nothing wrong with changing tactics.” But he also says that you have to keep your eye on the goal and keep working towards it.

“Don’t change the goal. And don’t give up.”

Jason Treu also talks about staying the course. He says that most businesses take four to five years to reach maturity, so committing to the long haul is necessary to reach the end goal.

You have to make big bets and spend time on things, but they aren’t always going to work. And you just have to keep doing them. That’s the hardest part of being an entrepreneur and starting a business and trying to think bigger down the road, is that you just don’t know what’s going to happen. And you have to believe that you will find the right path and things will work themselves out over time.

Jason cautions entrepreneurs against looking around, especially in the online space where so many businesses proliferate today, and feeling daunted by people who claim to have built businesses in a very short time span. Jason believes that, even where these claims are true, eventually those businesses will plateau. They will reach a point where as much time and patience are required of them to stay the course as is required in businesses slower to gain traction.

If you’re thinking about having a business in 24 months that is going to explode and take off, I’m here to tell you that those are a very small minority and if they do, they’ll eventually plateau and they’ll still be stuck. And then they won’t know what to do either. So everyone’s going to reach that point. It’s one of those things that you just have to understand and have in the back of your head. And then I think you can build a sustainable business that’s really successful over a long period of time.

Henry Lopez takes a similar view. He believes that “determined, steady and consistent work” is what moves a business forward and eventually leads to success. You have to understand that failure and setbacks are part of the entrepreneurial journey. He attributes his own success to “some lucky opportunities and breaks and some being at the right place at the right time but a methodical and consistent approach to developing my businesses.”

In his episode, Dave Mancuso says, “It took about two years for me to find the right clients that created the synergy for my business to move forward.” He makes the encouraging observation that once you do find some of the right clients, you tend to start finding more like them.

Dave also talks about not giving up. “Every time I’ve stumbled, I’ve found out that it was actually an opportunity to move forward and not necessarily fall down and stop.”

Like Dave and Henry, Douglas Burdett also found success in the long play.

It was a pretty steady climb. If you look at the analytics for my podcast, The Marketing Book podcast, you will see that there are no big spikes, but it’s just a real steady climb of listeners. So, it’s the same sort of thing where, I would say, that your listeners should probably be expecting the worst and plan for that.

Playing the odds

Dinesh Kandanchatha offers similar and very helpful insights into the entrepreneurial life.

“For every good idea, there’s roughly six bad ideas. The problem is that you don’t get to the good idea unless you run through the bad ones.”

In order to do that, you need to execute on your ideas and give them time to develop. Dinesh says, “The key thing is to start them and ascertain quickly whether or not they’re taking you on your way.”

Dinesh does not shy away from his mistakes or failures. When Elaine asked him what was his least successful idea and how did he change tactics to fix it, he first answered, “Oh dear, that’s a long list! How many hours do you have?” He’s had new product launches that “failed abysmally.” One of his companies was sued and put into bankruptcy for IP infringement. However, like Chuck Gumbert, Dinesh reiterates that you can’t give up.

The reality is, again, that’s how the game is played. So if you’re worried about bad ideas this is the wrong business to be in. Don’t be in entrepreneurship if you’re worried about getting things wrong. You’ve got to get used to failure and get used to getting back up again and dusting yourself off.

Dinesh talks about learning from not only mistakes, but from the very process of executing on your ideas. That is how you discover and test your personal limits, the limits of your market, the limits of your team, the limits of your business. If something doesn’t work the way you expected it to, pivot. It’s a necessary part of business growth and development.

Dinesh speaks directly to staying the course when he offers the following advice:

Be prepared for it to take longer than you think. And what that means is, decide if it’s something you’re willing to spend the next five years doing. Most entrepreneurs think this is going to be a one year journey, or a two year journey, maybe three years at the outside. And you know, our time is valuable as we get older. We personally value it more. So whatever you choose to do with your time, especially as it relates to entrepreneurship, make sure it’s something you’re going to be willing to commit the next five years to. Otherwise, don’t start it. It has to be strong enough that you’re willing to say, ‘I’m going to spend five years trying to make this work.’ I think that’s a great crystallizing idea that will help you decide if that business you want to start, that thing you want to do, is worth that much of the time that you have.

In his personal experience as an entrepreneur and in working and networking with entrepreneurs of all different ages, Dinesh has observed that opportunities in business life cycles seem to arise at five year marks. Dinesh attributes this timing to the human body clock and a mental habit of bundling our life experience into five year periods. He believes at ages ending in five and zeros, we become self-reflective and take mental stock of our previous choices and our future options.

Many people sell their businesses after five years. The next major point of exit often comes at ten years. Anecdotally, Dinesh has noticed that, for example, milestones like founding companies, selling companies, bringing in investors, and raising money are notably tied to a five or zero number. Dinesh’s personal favorite is the “20 year overnight success.”

But staying the course is a process you can fully anticipate and plan for. As he explains:

It’s going to take longer than you think. So if you think it’s going to take three years, it’s probably going to take five years. If you think it’s going to take five years, then it’s probably going to take seven years. So if you commit to five, it’ll either force you to scale your idea to something you can execute in five and if you aren’t able to execute in five, you still have knowledge that you can go, “Look. That was that five years. I’m going to move on to the next five years and do either something different or do something that’s a variation.”

Expect to reflect

As Jason Treu observes, all businesses plateau. It’s only a matter of time until things slow down and you have to simply persist in applying yourself to your current vision and goals or reassess and try something different. Staying the course could then mean, “staying the course of your entrepreneurial journey” versus staying the course of a particular tactic, strategy, or even business line.

Some of my personal coping strategies during these uneventful and trying times is to look for ways to disengage from my expectations and enjoy the journey. Celebrating milestones is one example. Another is to simply focus on something else, whether that’s a hobby or other activity that refreshes me and renews my energy.

Reading business books and listening to podcasts can also be very helpful and supportive. I have found an uplifting sense of community and solidarity with other entrepreneurs by simply reading or listening to their stories. Between the experiences of some and the insights of others, I can’t help but be inspired and fortified to carry on.

Guy running down road with sunrise
Joshua Sortino

Some final Nevers

The bottom line is: You’re the captain of the ship.

What to do next will still and always be your call to make, regardless of your circumstances or how many people you may surround yourself with; regardless of how high or low the stakes may be.

But never give up, because it’s never too late to succeed.

All photos sourced from

Step Nine: Course Correct

Course Correct is Step Nine of the ten-step Maturepreneurial series How to Start a Business After 40. “Wise up, don’t give up” as you execute, learn, and identify knowledge or experience gaps you must fill in order to move your business forward.

Guy reading a map in the road

The map is not the territory.

Regis Freyd

Charting your course

One of my favorite Maturepreneurial quotes is from Nicky Roche.

We always underestimate our own level of competence and I wish we wouldn’t.


One of my personal passions is to try and get people to understand their own belief by just sitting down and putting some effort and thought behind reviewing where they’re at, how they got to where they’re at and quantifying and qualifying their own future. And they’ll realize that they do have the skills.


Because it’s not hard. Business is not hard. Business is just common sense.


We don’t launch a corporate, global company when we launch our own business. We don’t launch an IBM or a Coca-Cola or whatever it might be with these massive structures and complicated strategies. We actually launch our own dream. We launch our own vision and we launch it small.


And it grows and it builds. And as it grows and it builds, so do we. And if we don’t have the knowledge that we need to get it to the next step, we fill that knowledge gap as and when we need it.


So, why do we not allow ourselves to take that next step simply because we don’t think that we’re capable of the bigness of it, when we’re actually going to start small and grow?

This quote speaks directly to launch-anxiety; the fear of getting started. But it also speaks to the incremental, completely manageable nature of building a business. So much distribution and consumption these days is on-demand and just-in-time that I have to ask,

  • Why shouldn’t knowledge and skill attainment also be just in time?
  • Why shouldn’t we start out expecting to learn from doing?
  • Why stop ourselves from starting or from moving forward because we can’t predict every outcome or scenario?

Some knowledge cannot be planned for. Some needs cannot be anticipated. But that doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t be acquired and fulfilled all in good time.

Just-in-time learning

Lise Metzger had been running a successful, profitable photography business for many years when the 2008 financial crisis hit. Coupled with photography’s widespread transformation to digital format during those years, Lise found her business revenue and profits severely curbed. Given these changes and the particular demands of her personal life, it became necessary for her to take a part time job.

Attending a talk about food and the environment around this time, Lise met a woman farmer, Shannon, whom she approached and asked permission to photograph. After a photo shoot at Shannon’s farm, Shannon suggested to Lise that she start a blog. Lise hadn’t seriously considered publicizing the farm photos. They were raw. They were different from the photos she had been taking and selling. But after doing a couple more farm shoots, when Lise showed the new work to a friend, he told her she was on to something. He encouraged her to start a photo project on women farmers.

Passionate about the environment and our food supply, Lise loved the new direction and decided she would follow it. She also knew she wanted to eventually create a book from the farm project. A blog seemed like the best, most immediate way she could start. It would be photographs and long form writing about the lives of women farmers.

In fact, with regard to her maturepreneurial venture, Lise has said that the most successful thing she did for her business was publish her website, Grounded Women. Her learning curve for technology and social media was steep. She had to learn how to use WordPress, design the site, and pull together all the content. And she acknowledges she was scared to begin. Once she did though, she found the response to be very supportive.

Takeaway: Today, Lise’s photography business is busy again. But during the lull, she had the courage to pursue a new and rewarding direction about which she knew nothing but that, today, shows a promising future.

Lyn Slater, too, didn’t know what she was doing before she dove into her blog. She says in her episode, “I had no plan.” What she did have was a lot of research under her belt.

Lyn has been a lifelong learner. She was a college professor, but she saw teaching as a two-way street where she learned as much from her students as they learned from her. As she grew older and became more serious about her interest in fashion, she took courses at the New York Fashion Institute of Technology, including one in social media and one in opening a vintage store. Her professors kept telling her she needed to start a blog, she needed to write about what she was learning, what she was doing, and what she was telling them about fashion.

So, Lyn researched the kind of blogs that targeted older women. In the world of fashion magazines, she felt there were no opportunities for fit, intelligent, culturally-engaged older women who lived in cities to talk about fashion or to think about fashion beyond admiring and consuming clothing.

The online world proved to be no better.

Lyn looked around for a good year at different websites and platforms. She decided what she liked and what she didn’t like; what she felt worked and what didn’t work across a number of fashion blogs. She also investigated different publishing products and eventually built her blog site using Square Space.

Now, Lyn raves about Square Space’s ease of use, but as a sociology professor and a counselor, internet marketing, internet presence and social media were nowhere near her areas of expertise and comfort.

Takeaway: Lyn learned what she need to learn when she needed to learn it, specifically in order to launch her blog.

Last spring, Lyn was signed with the Elite Modeling Agency. Today, she continues to work on taking her business and her brand to the next level.

Failure as success-postponed

Some cases of course correction are about overcoming obstacles that are blocking the course you’re on. This was the case for Connie Inukai, inventor of the Tip and Split ® device.

Connie had created the Tip and Split ® prototype and was ready to have the product manufactured. She says this was the hardest part of her endeavor. She waited a whole year on her first manufacturer, one she sourced through the internet, who finally sent her “a piece of plastic that didn’t do anything,” She had to fire him.

When the second manufacturer she engaged sent her the products, the defective rate was 20%! Since she wanted no returns to result from production, this was unacceptable. She had to fire him too.

The third manufacturer she engaged came recommended by her patent attorney and promised her a 95% guarantee rate on the production of her product. Three manufacturers later, Connie finally had a successful product launch and has already done a product redesign to make slight improvements.

Takeaway: By cutting her losses with the manufacturers who failed to deliver, Connie was able to find the right match for her business. She didn’t give up, but rather she persevered through the obvious setbacks until she was successful.

Tom Schwab‘s company, Interview Valet, was actually too successful in one regard: generating business. An abundance of clients were clicking on the website’s Buy Now button, but the company came to realize that there was no discrimination in its prospecting. This allowed many people to become customers whose businesses were not yet set up to successfully leverage the benefits that Interview Valet makes possible: widespread promotion and exposure to targeted audiences through podcast interviews.

After serving its first one hundred customers, the Interview Valet team analyzed why some guests were successful and some were not. They discovered a methodology by which to determine ahead of time whether or not a client had the foundations in place that would turn the exposure from podcast interviews into improved business and revenues.

Takeaway: Just taking any client was not good for the client and it was not good for Interview Valet. The company had been saying “Yes” to the wrong customers and needed to become more discriminating for all parties to be truly successful.

Today, every Interview Valet client is evaluated up front for how likely they are to be successful with the service. And if they aren’t, Interview Valet gives them the knowledge and tools with which to prepare themselves to do so.

Donna Barker had a brilliant idea for a new business and website. Or so she thought. She named it Mem-Wow and the idea was to write memoirs that made people say, “Wow!” She worked on the business for a year before she realized that she was not building capacity and so, the business would never scale. In order to be successful, she alone would have to do all the work, basically nonstop. That’s when she decided to give up the idea entirely.

Later, after she successfully launched both Write Woman, Write and The Creative Women Summit, Donna attributed much of her success to her ability to engage with and involve other stakeholders in her projects, including people who have more knowledge in a given subject than she does; an ability she had not leveraged in her Mem-Wow business model.

Takeaway: By moving on from Mem-Wow to other, better ideas, Donna allowed success to find her where her true strengths lay.

Adam Urbanski had a similar experience to Donna’s. After founding and successfully selling his restaurants, a business notorious for its high rates of failure, Adam decided he could offer consulting services to teach others what he knew.  Armed with the right knowledge, his clients could then go on to replicate his success. He named the business Food Business Innovation – FBI for short – and he even created a nice logo that “almost looked like an FBI shield.”

However, having created his offering in a vacuum, with no customer input or feedback, he soon realized that it was doomed to fail. His assumption that if his idea was good enough, people would buy it, was naive and never accounted for the marketplace and what his potential customers wanted or needed.

Takeaway: When Adam abandoned FBI, he created the space for his eventual success with Marketing Mentors, where he also incorporated the valuable lessons he learned about putting customers first when creating and marketing a new business.

Be ready and willing to pivot

Sometimes course correcting isn’t about filling a knowledge or experience gap, it’s about finding an entirely new direction. This is especially true where a business that was successful in the past is no longer successful and needs to be replaced.

In Joleene Moody‘s case, it was the success itself that needed to be replaced because it no longer fulfilled her.

Joleene started her career in television news. After 12 years, although she was successful, she realized that she hated her job and decided to get out. She began to look for and explore opportunities in public speaking. During this same period, she also discovered coaching as a means to supplement her income. Joleene had no experience or education in either of these areas, but within a couple of years, she became a sought-after speaker and coach, earning six figures!

Ironically, she came to realize that while the money was good, her heart just was not in her work or her success, so she decided – once again – to change course.

Joleene chose to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. And although there were tempting distractions, this time she stayed true to her plan. After doing a lot of research and teaching herself what she needed to know in order to successfully market and deliver her services, Joleene once again achieved success. Today she is a prolific ghost writer of books and blogs, which helps her pay the bills.

But she has also created the freedom to pursue her own projects. She has written two television pilots and she is working on a screenplay. She says,

Here’s a 45 year old woman writing scripts; who’s trying to sell them; who goes to television festivals to learn how to pitch – in all these years, I’ve learned how to pitch to other entrepreneurs to try to sell coaching packages or writing a book for them – and now I’m learning how to stand in front of producers and executives and be like,


“So, I’ve got this really great idea…”


Everything falls into play. And it took me – and I want everyone to hear this – all of these years to figure it out and I don’t regret any of it.

Takeaway: You don’t have to settle for success you don’t enjoy. It may take a while and it almost certainly will take a lot of work, but if you don’t like what you’re doing, you can change direction and nothing you’ve learned will be wasted.

Artem Verbo Photo of Sail Boat on Water
Artem Verbo

Turning the ship around

Chuck Gumbert provides one of the most focused illustrations of course correction. He has devoted his entire maturepreneurial career to turning struggling or failing businesses around to profitability.

Chuck follows a proprietary model to effect successful turnarounds. When he comes in to a new company, his first step is to work through the fundamentals of leadership with the executive team. Next he guides them to develop a vision. Once the vision is understood, he works with them to develop the strategy. After the strategy, they develop aligned actions or tactical plans that support it.

“Only then,” says Chuck, “can you hold people accountable. Once you’ve got those fundamental steps put together, then an organization can actually be successful.”

Chuck has repeatedly demonstrated that correcting course, particularly when it is carefully planned and consistently executed, can ultimately lead to, or lead back to, profitability.

Takeaway: If a company in distress can turnaround, so can yours, whether you’re just starting out or navigating obstacles and knowledge or experience gaps during the normal course of business.

When to Quit

And for those times when you’re wondering how to decide whether to course correct or move on, here’s an excellent episode from The Tim Ferriss Show. It’s called When to Quit – Lessons from World-Class Entrepreneurs, Investors, Authors, and More. Unlike Tim’s traditional interview format, it’s a collection of audio recordings from previous guests: Scott Belsky, Seth Godin, James Altucher, Debbie Millman, Adam Robinson, Chase Jarvis, and Rhonda Patrick that answer Tim’s question(s),


It’s never too late to succeed!

All photos sourced from

Step Eight: Launch your business


Flower with a bee

Open for bees-ness

Diana Măceşanu

Time to launch your business

You’ve done all the prep work.







The Cold Turkey Approach











The Accidental Launch







The Transition Out






The Slow-Burn Liftoff









Every Launch Unique




arc of light in night sky photo

All photos sourced from