WHY DE WINTER?
We may not have met but I bet we’ve got a lot in common.
I know exactly what it’s like to have dreams and ambitions, and how it feels to start, nurture and grow a good business. I’ve experienced the good times when it felt like we could take on the world and win, which we quite often did!
I’ve also been to the dark side, experienced lots of sleepless nights, angst about the mortgage, fear about where the next contract would come from and the guilt of not focusing enough on family and friendships. I’ve been to the brink and stared down that black hole on several occasions.
Creating a business, building a team and caring for clients is a real privilege. It’s also a massive responsibility with many moments of self-doubt, insecurity, confusion, anxiety and downright fear.
Most of us starting a business know what we want to achieve for it - and ourselves - and how we want to feel when we get home at night.
I realised that I’m not the only one who lost sight of all of that and gradually became overwhelmed by the pressures of keeping employees, clients, suppliers – and family - happy, delivering the work at the right time and quality, sending the invoice and paying the salaries and the mortgage.
I was the one who ended up making a living but not really making a life.
There was negativity, frustration and a lack of fulfilment. I was spending too much time at night awake, anxious and starting each day feeling ill at ease. There was a feeling that there was something missing in life, something didn’t feel quite right.
I'd lost the dream
Sound familiar? It’s certainly the shared experience of a number of business owners and leaders that I work with.
They too had lost sight of their dream, lost touch with what inspired them to start their business in the first place, and lost their sense of personal and corporate direction.
The buzz and excitement had given way to niggles, doubts, dissatisfaction and restlessness, a loss of confidence and even strained personal relationships.
Despite the profit, reputation, the house, the car and the holidays, they felt neither fulfilled nor ‘successful’.
That has a real knock-on effect on any business. After all, when owners and leaders no longer have total clarity on their corporate and personal goals, what are their employees supposed to believe in or strive for?
Disengagement of that kind usually results in loss of morale, impaired performance, high staff turnover and reputational issues, all of which jeopardise the very sustainability of the business.
Hems de Winter
That was me.
I did something about it. I succeeded in swapping mediocrity for meaning and replacing frustration with personal fulfillment and corporate success
What I did about it …
I lived the sleepless nights for years, felt the self-doubt, the uncertainty, fear of the future, the feelings of desperation and helplessness.
I’ve faced the same situations, challenges and emotions as every SME owner or leader. It was the external perspective, the constructive challenge and effective strategies from a coach and mentor are what changed my life and gave me the clarity, purpose and fulfilment in business I had lacked for so long.
Those same strategies that helped me create a successful team, sustainable business and personal fulfilment are what I can deliver to today’s SME entrepreneurs.