The most important skill in entrepreneurship (that no one can teach you)

This episode is about personal accountability in entrepreneurship, There’s no boss. No manager. No one watching your screen. So why are you still waiting for someone to make you do stuff?

This week’s episode is part personal story, part loving kick in the butt. I'll regale you with some stories about being accountable to myself to a FAULT in hopes that we can all find a happy medium and show up for ourselves (without burning out over it).

Inside, I’m sharing:

• The wild lesson I learned performing unrehearsed onstage at 9 years old 👀
• Why “The Show Must Go On” energy has both served me and haunted me
• A simple question to diagnose what’s actually holding up your business
• Encouragement to believe your business deserves your attention (and for you to behave like an all-star employee)

This one’s for you if:
 ✨ You’ve been putting off working ON your business and are stuck IN it

 ✨ You know what to do—but you’re not doing it

Let’s fix that. I’ll walk you through it.

And if you want help showing up on Instagram in a way that actually grows your audience and gets clients—check the free training below.

00:00
The Journey of Self-Employment

00:34
Lessons from the Stage

02:48
The Importance of Personal Accountability

04:54
Overcoming Challenges in Business

06:37
Finding Solutions to Obstacles

09:04
Embracing Your Role as Your Own Boss

✨Tap here to watch a FREE masterclass on “How To Get Clients From Instagram (without wasting hours glued to your phone)"

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/evergreen-webinar-registration/

Tap here to get your free Posts That Sell Template (This caption got us 10 sales calls in 3 hours)

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/10-sales-calls-new

🎉 Tap here to work with Jenna inside Magic Marketing Machine (or MMM+)!

https://www.magicmarketingmachine.com

Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

Jenna Harding (00:10.338)
think about being self-employed.

Jenna Harding (01:34.418)
The thing about being self-employed is nobody is making you do it.

Jenna Harding (01:44.336)
The thing about being self-employed is nobody is making you do it. You show up for you, you're in charge, you're in charge of your days.

Jenna Harding (02:02.162)
But most people have lived a life being socialized to do what you're told. You went through school, you did what you were told. You got a job, you did what you were told. You lived in your parents' house, you did what you were told. So this transition to getting to be in charge of yourself and your time also comes along with a responsibility that, you know, a lot of us don't have innate skills in.

Jenna Harding (02:31.635)
responsibility and innate skills in

Jenna Harding (02:37.808)
implementing like personal accountability.

Jenna Harding (02:48.496)
or even like taking...

Jenna Harding (02:56.102)
or even  recovering from your mistakes because there is no one to reprimand you except for you and then you go too hard on yourself. even like witnessing a mistake, fixing the mistake and then moving forward. Like these are all skills you have to acquire as a business owner.

Jenna Harding (03:29.876)
A lot of times people will tell me that, know, Jenna, so Instagram, if you're new here, if you're new here, hi, I'm Jenna, your new marketing coach. I teach service-based business owners how to get clients from Instagram. And here on this podcast, I talk a lot about marketing, business, and content creation.

If you wanna get clients from Instagram and you wanna do it in 15 minutes a day, there is a free training in the description of this episode that will tell you how we can work together.

Jenna Harding (04:02.622)
that will tell you the exact strategy that my clients use and how we can work together inside my proven program, Magic Marketing Machine. So anyway, I hear from people all the time, Jen, will contact you must be so easy for you because you grew up on stage. Yes, fair. I did grow up on stage. I am a trained actor that was my past life. But sometimes I think people don't realize the biggest lessons I took from that lifestyle, from that career.

ways that it has paid me for it that aren't what you would imagine. Because I can teach you how to show up on camera. I can teach you where to look. I can even endow you with, endow you? Instill you? Whatever. I can make you feel confident. I can help you be understandable. I can help you be charismatic. We can teach you all of that.

just like I had to learn all of that when I was starting out as an actor. But there are some things that happened in my life as an actor that I feel like paid me back exponentially. And here's one of them. When I was nine years old, I was cast in Alice in Wonderland and it was community theater, but like big time community theater. it wasn't, it was children and adults and big stages. We performed at the Royal George theater in Niagara on the lake, which seats just over 300

people and I got to like not go to school and just be in the play instead of going to school for a few weeks which is awesome so it was like it was a big deal and it was taken very seriously and the directors and production team they took it very seriously like they treated us like little professional actors

Jenna Harding (05:49.652)
And I just gotta give you...

And there were full sets and fog machines and black lights and elaborate costumes. Some of the coolest costumes were the Queen of Hearts and the Queen of... What's the other queen in Alice in Wonderland? There's two queens. And one wears all red and one wears all white. And they were actually played by men in drag and they had these like very big elaborate costumes. It was very cool. And there was this song...

There was this song in the show that I think the Red Queen sang and the Red Queen happened to also be the director of this play.

Jenna Harding (06:38.726)
And as much as we took all of this very seriously and practiced and practiced and you know tickets cost real money and real audience was coming to watch the show, somehow we managed to basically never rehearse the Red Queen's song. And I, I was Alice. Did I tell you that? Okay I was Alice. So little nine-year-old me in my little peach and white poofy dress with a crinoline on stage for the entire show.

never left the stage because the whole journey goes around Alice. Like there's no B plot in Alice from Underland and it was musical.

We never rehearsed the Red Queen's, I'm really doing a job of telling the story, we never rehearsed the Red Queen's number. And so it came the day that we needed to perform the show and the stuff with the kids, rehearsed a million times over, but I think because it was the director's number, it got put as the very last thing and I think there's an allegory or something for...

business ownership in there as well, leaving your own stuff to the very end and not paying attention to what's important for you because you're busy working on everybody else's stuff.

Jenna Harding (08:08.158)
think there's a metaphor in that as well for business ownership because you're so focused on everybody else and making sure everybody else has what they need. You put your own business on the back burner and don't give your own business what you need. Anyway, that's what the director had done. We get to opening night and and this number shows up that was never rehearsed and I'm on stage for the whole thing. And I remember the night before I never asked my mom for help. I was like very independent about all of my theater. But the night before I asked her for

help reading over the script to make sure that I had the lines memorized for that scene because the whole scene and song again we had never done and so he then told me

And I wasn't even afraid. I wasn't scared, I guess, because I was too young, and I think because, like...

When you're young, you're like, truly, what's the worst that can happen? Embarrassment wasn't something I often felt because who cares? And what's worst that can happen? They're not going to boo me off the stage. What's going to make this moment look bad is if I look scared or if I look embarrassed or if I let the audience know that I'm not 100 % confident or if I try and relate to the audience somehow like, hey guys, hey, it's me, Alice. Listen, this is his fault.

like that's what's gonna ruin this scene. If I'm able to just show up and fake it and seem confident and stay in character, then it's gonna work, right? I don't remember being scared at all. I just remember being like, wow, this is some crazy shit. yeah, sure enough, we show up on stage. Sure enough. So the moment comes and...

Jenna Harding (09:55.092)
I remember little flashes of it, like I was so young, but they put me on a throne center stage and he kind of just did his thing dancing all around me and sang his song and I just reacted and responded enthusiastically and did my little actor kid actor thing and it was fine. Everyone was fine. Nobody died. Go ahead. Okay.

Jenna Harding (10:45.842)
And so I was thinking when it comes to you and your content and the tasks that you aren't holding yourself accountable for and the things that are falling off your plate, what if you had to?

What would you do differently if you had to do it? What if you were your own boss and you acted like an employee for yourself? What if you were little Alice on stage and the show must go on and you had to do it? And how can we harness that energy to have more personal accountability in our businesses?

Jenna Harding (11:34.866)
just trying to stay focused while I pause.

Jenna Harding (11:49.788)
Now sidebar, there is some little tea trauma in that whole the show must go on.

attitude. I'm not saying that it was the... I'm not saying that I came out unscathed. When you put a child on stage in a situation like that and I was on stage all through like my teen years and I went to college for musical theater and like so... like there is some little tea drama. I'm not... I might push a little bit harder than the average person should when it comes to The Show Must Go On. Like actually last week I was supposed to teach a Magic Marketing Machine group call.

And my province is on fire. There's like really crazy wildfires right now. this I got, I didn't realize how thick the smoke was and I was actually working in the sunroom. So I was sitting in dense smoke all morning without realizing it. And I got super, super sick. Suddenly I had this crazy headache and then I had nausea from the headache and I couldn't even open my eyes. And I was laying there shaking with a heated blanket on my body and like a cold compress on my head. And I was saying to my husband like, my gosh, the call is starting soon. Like I think I can.

make it no I think I can make it no I don't think I'm gonna make it and then I as I started recovering because they took like Advil and

and food and I was just trying to get better and I was like, okay, babe, I think I can make it. What time is it? And he's like, the call started 10 minutes ago. Now, so that's wild. I really should have rested. And I did show up half an hour late and that's never happened before. Like in four years of teaching these magic marketing machine calls, I can count on one hand the times that I have missed when I was supposed to be there. But this was a wild experience. And when I got there, of course, because so many people

Jenna Harding (13:33.258)
program, like it's healers and helpers, know, lactation consultants and life coaches and sleep consultants and...

really like empathetic dog trainers and horse RMTs and like a lot of the people that are drawn to me are healers and helpers and mostly women and a lot of mothers and so of course everyone was like, Jenny, you should really just lay down. But anyway, as I marched up the stairs from my little sick den on the couch telling Jordan, no, no, I insist, I'm gonna go make the call, I started singing, the show must go on, the show must go on, from Moulin Rouge.

So yeah, a little bit of little T trauma there.

Jenna Harding (14:34.898)
Still though, what would you do if you had to do it? Why are you putting things off? No one is ever gonna be standing over you again, because you're self-employed now, right? We got businesses, we are not going back to that nine to five grind workforce. What would you...

There will never again be someone standing over you with the ruler stick, slapping your desk, saying, get to work. It's not gonna happen. We have to be 100 % accountable for our own success.

Jenna Harding (15:18.696)
We have to be good employees for our businesses. We have to believe that we matter enough to work on our businesses and to work on our marketing, work on our sales, to work on our mindset and our mental health and our market and our Instagram. We have to believe that we matter enough to spend time on that and not...

Jenna Harding (15:48.446)
to spend time on that.

Jenna Harding (16:00.646)
Nobody's gonna make you do it but you. And, I mean, if we're gonna try and be super proactive because it's sometimes hard to just flip a switch with a change, why aren't you? Try asking yourself, why aren't I doing that thing? And see if you can get to the crux of the matter, the root of the matter, of your avoidance. I know sometimes with Instagram, especially in marketing and the clients I work with, when I finally, when I tell people, when I, when I,

When I encourage people to really get to the root of why they're not doing something, they often find it and it's simple. And so even if you just ask yourself right now, try and dig deep. What is holding me back? Sometimes it gets to the point where someone's like, well, my phone crashes every freaking time I go to make a post. Okay. Can we get you a new phone? Can we restore factory settings? Can we empty out your photos?

Can we sit down with a cup of chamomile tea or wine and empty things out and give you some storage space back? Can we find a, you know, can you get a, can you use your husband's phone for your content creation? Can we find a solution there? Because if that's actually the thing that keeps getting you so frustrated that you can't make content, because we can fix that.

If it's I have no ideas, okay, come in a magic marketing machine. I will help you. If it's editing a video takes too long, okay, same answer, actually. We have all these tips for how to edit your videos faster, film them in a way that makes them easier to edit, or you can make carousels, you can make B-roll reels. We can find solutions if you can identify the reason you're not doing the thing. And that doesn't just go for Instagram, of course. It's marketing, it's...

It's everything to do with your business, you know?

Jenna Harding (17:51.166)
Can you imagine though little Jenna on stage with these two like over the top cross dressed men in front of an audience of over 300 people and she's just making it up. Wow. I can't believe I did that.

Jenna Harding (18:16.37)
That's all from me loves, I'll see you the next one!