Humble Beginnings to a Superstar End!

Hear the story of how it all started from entrepreneur Janis Boudreau. 
What began as a simple journey turned into a lifelong committment for excellence in her life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Welcome to Advanced Lifestyle and Business Podcasts. I'm Janice Bujo, and I'm a heartfelt leader in the area of business development and a strategist that is focused forward on teaching women to make dreams, set goals, and create an actionable business blueprint for success. Welcome everyone. This is the first podcast show that I am publishing. I've been working on this for a little while. Listen, Empowered Ladies, we all started somewhere. Assessing what we have within us, around us, and financially. We can utilize so many things as a valuable resource to get that business to its next step. Or the feeling that a lot of you are stuck on the steps. In the beginning, there are so many buts. Let's break through those today. What's stopping the next stage you need to be in to prosper? We have to believe in ourselves and build up. Nobody but you can change a humble beginning to a superstar ending. But let me tell you my humble story. I started my business after ending a marriage that did not work out. I had two small children. I was fortunate enough to get remarried fairly quickly after, but I was lost as a mom trying to figure out how I was gonna see my kids, still be able to do sports and do it somewhat as a single mom, because while my current husband is amazing, a lot was left on my shoulders. I had worked in the corporate world. I had been a manager at several locations I was at, but I always had business desires. My roots go back to uh community college where I took business first, and then I followed up with nursing. Trying to uh combine the two together, I guess, is what did happen later. But how do you start, right? There's that first but I got an idea, something simplistic. For me, it was diabetic foot care. I knew that if I could specialize in it, I could create a business out of it. Um, just like my idea, there's so many great ideas out there. I just had to figure out how I was going to start this up with no money, great support from my husband. What I needed to do to break it through, that it was going to be profitable, not just a dream and an idea. So I ended up just literally packing a bag of tools in my trunk. I thought minimalistic, I did not overspend. I needed exactly what I needed to get through the first step. Then, as I got comfortable with that step, I decided that I need to get this business more out there. I mean, I researched, I educated myself, I really aligned myself with a lot of people and education that would help me along the way in the process for sure. Before you know it, I wasn't just doing home visits anymore. I was doing clinic. Clinic moved to a commercial location. I can't tell you how successful in the end it was. It's not so much monetarily, but I created an atmosphere and a life for myself that would be better for my kids. I was having to pick them up after school. I didn't want to put them in childcare. I decided that whatever adventure I went on with my company, it wasn't really going to be necessarily about money, but it was going to be about how it truly changed my life for the better. And that it did. When I started my company, there was just so many butts in the beginning. I can't even begin to tell you how afraid I was when I started my company in the beginning. I had no idea at all if it was going to work. I didn't know if anybody was going to book with me, if they were going to be able to find me. I had a lot of stress and I knew I still had to bring in an income. So, you know what? I just really looked at it. I picked an extraordinary goal and I went with it. I broke everything down into steps. I already told you I didn't overbuy. I tried to look at each step, what things I had to change or do to get to the lifestyle that I wanted to have. So the biggest thing that I noticed with starting a business definitely is all the buts. But this, but that, but I'm afraid, but what if I get rejected? Uh, but what if I don't have enough money? But what if it doesn't work? But that's a big change. These are all things that are going through your mind when you're starting a business. It's definitely what went through mine. I had to just be fearless and move forward. When we talk about rejection and fear, I mean, I think that's the biggest one is we are so afraid in the face of others to create something outside ourselves, something very authentic that people might not like it. They may look at us different. It might not be what the standard is. But you have to push past that. I mean, if we as a society didn't push back against all the rejection and fear, none of us would be moving forward in our lives. I mean, we wouldn't have what we are today. I suggest to you if you can ever break down those rejections and fears that you are afraid of. You don't know if you don't start. I couldn't believe it. I actually just blocked it out of my mind, said hell with it, did it, did what I wanted to do. And it was kind of like let the chips fall, let's see if this works out. And it did. I just kept my eye on the prize. And again, little steps. Um, another but, like I said, was uh you're too busy. We are all too busy. We're too busy to diet, we're too busy to go for a walk, we're too busy on our phones, we're too busy taking the kids to sports. There's a million reasons why you can't start, but there's so many more why you can. I used to stay up, I swear I'd be hiding under the covers at uh 10 o'clock at night with my phone. I did a lot of research, I really looked into demographics and who in the area could have a business like me. I found the moments. Absolutely, I did. When you want something so bad, you will find them. You will get the art of discipline of helping yourself to have a better lifestyle. There are so many opportunities out there to wake up at 5 a.m. if you need to, get on that computer for a couple hours. It's there. We just have to take it. There are times you could just have your laptop out, just promise yourself you'll work uh 30 minutes on it. But I will tell you, it's only when you decide to go all in that you will prosper. So another huge butt along the way uh for me too is finances. Gosh, I remember, talk about a humble beginning. I remember not having enough and having to make a choice between doing some extra grocery shopping and getting a receipt book. That's how it was for me in the beginning, but I knew that by making simple choices, um, and I made them. I went and got that receipt book. I made sure I had what I had, I could make it. There are so many free programs out there. There is so much help that is economical, and you don't have to start on step one and jump to step 20. If you if you do what I'm telling you to do through the steps, usually the money is provided at each step. That is a point in your business that you have strategized and you are at that level to be able to spend that money. What I do see people do is, man, when they go all in, they're putting$50,000 into a business right on day one, right at that step one. Sometimes there are investments that way. I mean, especially in uh, I'd say the restaurant industry and different things. But what I'm trying to say is don't spend money unless you have to. Start thinking about getting some education, aligning yourself with people who can help you out in your business, who can help direct you to the actual things you need to know. Next, changing and trying something new. Holy smoke! How many of us out there have had the same job? Uh, I know me, I work long-term care. I was actually did mortgages at the bank at one time. I mean, I've I've been through it all. I was a home care manager at a uh corporate company. So I've been there, and change is really hard because you're adapting it into your life. But let's talk about it on a different level, too. Some of you joining me aren't just new business owners. A lot of us have had businesses for 10 years and we're kind of stuck, we're stuck right in the middle. So that's where that changing and trying something new really comes in. What do they say? If you come up with a goal and you can laugh saying it, it is not a big enough goal. You want to be a little bit scared of the goal that you're making, of the choices that you're going to change. We don't grow if we remain stagnant. You have to realize for me, you don't think it was hard. I was now a newly single mother, didn't have enough money for receipts, had enough sterilized tools, a bag in my trunk, and I started off with five clients. I have grown my company into having five clinic locations. We have a home care division, we have two indigenous First Nations reserves that we take care of. And um, we continue to grow. So in my business, I was constantly changing. My gosh, I remember I swear some of my best ideas came from having a glass of wine on my porch. So I remember in those early years, which was about eight years ago, just sitting on that porch. And I swear the more relaxed that I would become, and the more in tune with the things that I needed, I would come up with the most fantastic ideas. And I used to say to myself, five second roll, five second roll. And I would almost get out my phone and try to write them down so quickly, because often these ideas that popped in when I was in a relax mode were things that elevated my company later. They really took me to the next level. These were often things that I was adding in as an extra service, um, products, changing staff, adding staff, developing new ideas. So I would definitely stay in that quiet time. I just think the difference between a successful business owner and maybe one who's not is we get past that rejection and fear. We take the leap. We have listened to the five-second rule. I mean, by that evening, I was in bed with a laptop or a phone developing the plan of the idea that I had come up with while drinking wine on the porch. I mean, for me, it had served me really well. I often have to say I didn't have a lot of outside influence. I did look to a lot of my suppliers for guidance in my industry. I did not find a lot of the associations necessarily were helpful, or a lot of the, I don't know, sometimes the worst is uh all the salespeople. That definitely didn't help. If anything, it was more me doing research on my own. Um, whatever you're doing, or the next step you want to take in your business, you're really engulfing it, right? You're really trying to know everything about it. So I did. I spent a lot of time with um research and things like that. But I also did a lot of changing, right? In the way I was thinking. How could this single mom who I mean, I came off a real rough go there, create what I did. I know I definitely didn't give up on myself, and the people around me didn't give up on me either. I just find that sometimes, no matter the humble story that we come from, people get stuck in their humble story. I could have been that mom that stayed the way I was. I could have stayed working at that corporation, or along this last decade, I could have even stayed exactly where I was in my business. I would still be that one-off person working for themselves. I wouldn't engage all the different levels that I ended up moving to. I just think that you gotta move on past whatever your story is. You can either sink or swim. You can live with your humble beginning, or yeah, you can have a superstar ending. I know there's a lot of talk out there too about um, everybody does what would you call it, almost projection. You visualize what you're going to be in the end. I have to admit, I do do a lot of that. I think that did help me get out of my humble story. I started to look at who I could be, what that person looked like, what that person did, what that person wore, and I was going to transform myself from humble to superstar. I don't know necessarily that I'm a superstar, but I know I've had a really great time uh helping people on the journey too. I think that you just have to put your goals in place and you have to start to look at what's worth it to you and tweak it. And believe me, there's been times for some of you that are in the middle of their businesses, maybe been doing them for 10, 20 years. Also, the change. You can get new staff, you can get a new business, you can market differently, you know, you can change things up a little bit. Let's be honest. I'm 47 years old. I am now semi-retired, I'll call it, because I've moved away from uh daily operations and taking care of clients. I am now the CEO of my organization. And I do a lot of mentoring and management of the upper staff. And on my own, I mean, I did this. My God, I'm on a podcast. Can you imagine? I don't think I ever would have thought in a million years I'd be talking to people on a microphone at my house, um, doing what I'm doing. So what happened with me is sometimes, let's talk about this new business. I realized that what have I been doing the most over the last five years that I'm passionate about? Not that I'm not passionate about my old business, but what am I passionate about what I'm doing now? And I realized that for five years I've been mentoring, answering calls, emails, talking to people, set up their businesses, talking people who are 10 years into a business but can't hit the next level. They're not sure. They've missed steps three through eight, and they need help identifying simple solutions to strategize and get them to the next. I mean, that got me all fired up. I'm telling you, I have more fun doing the one-on-one, doing these podcasts, and giving people encouragement. So I'm not kidding. Like, I mean, talk about fear. Holy smoke! I must have edited this three times before I even came onto the show today. There's a lot of um fear out there for sure. So here's the thing talk about finances, this new business. How could I do this? Set it apart from the rest, not necessarily, you know, blow my finances out. Well, you know what? You can get a lot of this stuff at a reasonable rate for my equipment. I knew that it would be easier for me to learn how to make a website, go from there. I mean, I am very much self-taught. I swear I'm the queen of YouTube videos. Who out there, right? Do we not all YouTube stuff? My gosh, I think I YouTube yesterday how to make a specialty chicken. But with this business, I knew different things. And in four days, I got this new business up and running. I then again, maybe it's that glass of wine on the porch, but then I started to see, well, that's great that I'm I'm gonna coach, I'm gonna do these one-on-one sessions, but what else can you do with it? So I developed this whole program where I am going to offer quite a few things over the month. And I noticed from a certain colleague of mine that they had done it even through membership, which was a great opportunity for kind of collaborating and let's getting all these empowered women together, that you could come together on the website, learn some great teachings, uh podcasts, webinars. Um, and I really do believe I have an unstoppable business method. The steps that will get you, learn where you are in your steps and take to the next one. So I decided to do a membership. I mean, this has grown, I think, so much. Uh I've been working on this since January. And it progresses, right? I'm not getting stuck in a step, I'm moving forward. So I'm going through what some of you are going through. Like I said, whether it's a brand new business or maybe it's a complete business change, we're gonna work together and probably grow together on this too. And was this changing and trying something new? Yeah, this was. This is putting my face on everything. This is having enough belief in myself that I have something of value to give you, to talk about with you. And I hope for you that you have that belief, that there's something that you're doing that is not ordinary. It's extraordinary, and that you should be believing in yourself enough to put the effort to grow it, to align yourself with people and teachers who will. Encourage you. Sometimes we need to change our surroundings and the people we're with or the things we're doing. We need to align ourselves with our future self that is successful in the business that we are in. We need to see that we are already there. I hope that everyone I've really got a lot of great things planned, as I was saying. So I'm hoping that everybody tunes in every week and I can tell you some of the things that have worked for me, some things that have not, some alignments that are important, resources. I hope to have some fun with you guys. That's for absolute sure. The key is to not give up. Start surrounding yourselves with things that support the ideas and dreams that you want. Start listening to things that give you a little bit of answers. Your story is not that different than mine. One of the biggest things is we've all been there. I know my story is the same and it continues to change. So this is going to be a first short webinar while I get ready for the next one and a lot of good great things to come. Make sure you keep following your dreams, ladies. And remember, Empowered Ladies, we all started somewhere. This is Janice Boudreaux signing off. See you next time, my empowered women. Think big, act fast, and be unstoppable.