Your ‘Why’ Will Change And That’s the Point w/ Lauren Najar

You don’t start a business because you have it all figured out. Most of the time, you’re just trying to solve a problem right in front of you.

Today, I’m sharing the real story behind how my business started. I didn’t start this with some big purpose or long-term vision. I started it because I needed to make more money and take some pressure off at home. That was it. But it didn’t stay that simple.

This is a real look at what happens when your why stops making sense and you have to figure out what actually matters to you now. From chasing income to realizing the impact I was making, I’m walking through the moments that shifted how I see my work, success, and what I actually want out of all of this. I also share how becoming a mom reshaped everything for me, especially how I think about support, confidence, and what I want my daughter to learn from watching me.

You might start for one reason, but if you stick with it, it’s probably going to turn into something completely different.

Chapters:

00:40 I never planned to be an entrepreneur

03:10 Early beliefs about business and success

05:40 Choosing a “safe” career path

07:40 The moment business became interesting

09:10 Life events that changed everything

10:40 Climbing the corporate ladder

12:40 Feeling stuck despite doing everything right

14:10 Side hustles and searching for more

15:40 What didn’t sit right in MLM culture

17:10 Learning social media and sales

18:40 The real reason I started my business

20:10 Making money as the first motivation

21:40 When the why started to shift

23:10 Discovering my strength in creating connections

24:40 The shift from income to impact

26:10 How motherhood reshaped everything

27:40 Redefining success and support

29:10 Why your why will evolve

30:40 What actually drives me now 

Let’s Stay Connected:
→ Follow Lauren on Instagram: www.instagram.com/laurennajar
→ Learn more or work with me: www.laurennajar.com
→ Follow Business Over Cocktails on IG: www.instagram.com/businessovercocktails
→ Attend Growth & Connect retreats & events: www.instagram.com/growthandconnect

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey there, and welcome to Business Over Cocktails. I'm Lauren Najar, your host and hype woman, bringing you real talk about entrepreneurship. This is the podcast where we dive into the bold whys, the messy middles, and the game-changing aha moments that lead to success. You'll hear unfiltered stories from entrepreneurs plus bite-sized solo episodes inside the Business Chaser series, where we cut through the noise and get straight to what actually drives sales, visibility, and growth. So whether you're here to get fired up or finally feel seen in your business journey, pull up a seat, pour your favorite drink, and let's have a real conversation. Hello, hello. Welcome back to Business Over Cocktails. If we don't know each other yet, I'm Lauren Najar. I'm a business coach, a marketing agency owner, a podcast host, and an event host. So welcome to my world. If this is the first time we're meeting, thank you for listening to Business Over Cocktails. And if you have not, if we have met, I should say, and you've been listening to each episode, or you've already been a listener, thank you for coming back for this episode. Today I want to talk about our business wise. And now that I've been in business for a while, I don't want to say a long time, but I guess like normal stats, in case you I guess if you don't know this, but most businesses fail in the first two years, then that percentage does increase. Where if you have a business, if your business fail, mo a lot of businesses fail, then in the next five years. So if you have a business and you've already survived two years, that is a huge stat you just surpassed. Five years again, a huge stat that you just surpassed. And you're here for the long haul, pretty much. So I want to talk about the why behind starting my business because, you know, I don't I'm I don't know what the consensus would be, but I will just talk from my own perspective that I didn't like set out to be an entrepreneur. That was just like not something that was ever anything that I wanted to do. I think it was there was more emphasis on like the job itself versus oh yeah, like I'm an entrepreneur. I've never like identified with that until I mean, I guess when I started my business. I never really felt like that was something that had substance. You know, I I remember in college there was an entrepreneur major, but I remember that being where you just took a bunch of easy classes, like you weren't taking hard classes. And I knew someone, someone that was in a lot of my other finance classes, because I have a finance degree, and I had someone that was in several of my other business classes. He was actually going for an entrepreneur. Maybe he was double majoring in finance and entrepreneurship, something like that. I don't know. But he had similar classes to me, but he also was going for entrepreneurship. So it was just very interesting to me because I think also the term entrepreneur comes with like it's it can be a very general term and it could mean like something like it almost have like a bad connotation, like I'm an entrepreneur, aka I don't know what I'm doing, and I have nothing in the works. And that's that was actually more common from what I would always hear from. Like, oh yeah, they're an entrepreneur, and like everyone would just be like, ha ha ha. And that not being a real thing. So I didn't really have a lot of business owners in my family either. Pretty much my whole family, at least on my dad's side, everybody worked at the steel mills here in northwest Indiana. It's a very huge steel mill hub. Lots of steel is produced here on Lake Michigan. Every single person in my dad's family worked at the steel mills. My mom's side, my great grandma and my grandma actually owned a beauty salon. But by the time I was born, it was kind of like on its way out. I mean, my great grandma at that time was 70 and like semi-retired. And then my grandma at the time kind of like still ran things, but they didn't really ever like evolve. So their salon kind of closed down slowly when their customers essentially started dying off. They were very, from what I was told, they were very popular in the 50s and the 60s and even in the 70s, and then like life just kind of slowed down, or their salon just kind of slowed down, people moved away, and again, like they didn't really evolve into like other hairstyles. So therefore, they didn't really like they just kept the same clients that they had and that wanted the same haircuts all the time. They didn't like spend time like attracting new clients and doing different marketing stuff. So, anyways, that's kind of all to say I didn't really have any entrepreneurs in my family. So, you know, I really didn't have like aspirations to be something like all of my life either. I remember when I was a kid, people told me that I wrote really well and I told stories really well. And my grandma for most of my life would tell me that I'm gonna be an author, which maybe I will be pretty soon, let's just say. But you know, I I remember like when I was in school, like people were like, oh, like what do you want to be when you grow up? I'm like, I'll be, I'm gonna be an author. So I always said author. I'm trying to think of like what else. Like, I really didn't have any aspirations. Like with then when it came down to school and like college and you had to declare a major, I actually applied to all of these schools for education. And I was like, I'm just gonna be a teacher because that felt like the safe option, right? At least for me. I know that that is not a safe option, not saying that at all. It was just a safe option for me. It was like, okay, I don't really know what I want to do. And then, like, I think there's also this pressure of like, what is gonna guarantee me a job outside of college? And from what kind of happens if you're a teacher and you're lucky enough to live near like a school system or find a school system like the one we have here. It's you go to school for education and then you do get a job pretty quickly, especially in areas where we live in, they're always like up and coming and being built, and more and more people are moving into these areas. So, and that was the truth for my sister as well. She got a job pretty much right out of college. So I end up, you know, switching my major based on another teacher that I had in high school telling me, like, no, you shouldn't go for teaching. Like, what else do you want to do? And I said finance. And I just went with that. And I think I had a little bit of influence for my mom. My mom went to school for business management, and then, but she never did anything with her degree. She was a stay-at-home mom most of my life. And again, like then I went for finance, and that kind of like opened up things for me. So then I was like, ooh, I'm interested in trading. And I, oh, you know what? I I take this back. I had a really good statistics class. So we had a statistics class my senior year of high school. And so that is when I got really into numbers. I've always been good at math. I was always in honors math. Ever since I was in sixth grade, you had the option to like kind of test out of like whatever the next level of math was. So I skipped a whole grade in math, and math honors was just like you were doing math a level up. And I was in math honors all the way through middle school and high school. And then because there wasn't another math class, I took statistics in my senior year of high school. And they took us to the Chicago Board of Trade. And that is actually the moment that I was like, ooh, I want to do this. And the Chicago Board of Trade, they trade stock or not stocks, they trade like corn and like goods like that, right? It's it is very chaotic. Like we saw like when the bell rang and everyone like ran out on the floor. It's not as crazy as like the New York Stock Exchange. It's not as big, but it is still kind of like the same thing. It's just they're trading different commodities, essentially. So that is when I got like into like business more and into like the numbers and finances. But really, like my whole entire career in college, there was a moment where I wanted to be a day trader. So I was like, oh, this sounds really cool. Like I can just like trade stocks in my computer all day. I was I was very big into tech and computers my whole life. I was definitely one of the kids that played like the Sims and video games rather than playing outside all day long. Playing on the family computer, going in chat rooms, things like that. I was definitely that type of a kid. I did play sports, but if I wasn't outside playing sports, I didn't really care to spend time in the pool all day. I wanted to be on the computer. But, anyways, so I graduated college and I mean my parents passed away while I was in college and stuff too. So I was going through a lot, and then I had cancer right out of college. And I really, like before all of that happened, I just had this desire to make a lot of money and to have a boat on Lake Michigan in Chicago at one of the docks in Chicago. And I always told myself I would be like the person with the boat. I was, I would be the friend with the boat. And I still feel like I can do that one day. Like now I'm closer to doing that. But then I went through all the things I went through and life kind of changed for me because I really desired to have a very high stress job because I equated that to making more money. So when I got sick and parents passed away and all the things, like I came out of that on the other side of really not knowing what I wanted to do anymore. Thankfully, I had my banking job throughout all of these things. And so I had a career, I had a job that I could move up in. And I did move up in it throughout all of those years and kept moving up and kept getting promotions. And I stayed there for almost 10 years by the time I left. And, you know, I had this like push and pull relationship with, you know, they put me on like a management track and sent me to like, you know, I had to travel once a month to go listen to like speakers and learn how to do things and like learn how to speak and learn how to network. And a lot of it was very valuable. And I, and I love that they sent that to me and it was an honor. And I had moments throughout my whole career there of like, oh, cool, like they see some value in me and I'm gonna focus on like doing the best here and moving up and all the things. But then like something else would happen. It's like, okay, well, that was fun while that lasted, and now I want to leave. And all this was happening when like I got married, and I was really unhappy with where I was going. I was surrounded by people who really loved what they were doing. And they were getting their jobs out of grad school. Like my two best friends are nurse practitioners, and they loved what they did. You know, one of my girlfriends was travel nursing, it fit her to a T. She loves to travel. She likes being a nurse, she likes the, you know, chaos of emergency rooms at the time. My other friend went to grad school and she's a pediatric nurse practitioner and got a job at the University of Chicago. And like it's so, like, it was so inspiring to be around people who are actually doing what they love. But I was struggling because I went to school for finance, but I went through all of these things and I just like didn't know where I fit. Like I kind of like the banking industry, but I didn't want to stay where I was. And then my husband, too, was still in the banking industry. I met him when we worked together in the banking industry. And the job that he had, he really loved. And he would always say how he would retire from that job because he loved who we worked with and he loved what he was doing. And so I was constantly surrounded by people who really loved what they're doing. So I went on this journey to like find what I wanted to do. And I think my why as I started out on this journey was really to find something that really lit me up and was aligned. And you've probably, I know a lot of us, especially millennials, we always want to find like the deeper purpose and meaning behind stuff. And we don't want to like waste our time doing things that we don't love, at least most of us. And so I think like sometimes that seems like a pipe dream where, you know, we have to work, we have to provide for our families, we have to provide for ourselves. And sometimes we're in a line of work where it checks all of those boxes, but we actually hate our job. And sometimes, regardless of what is happening, we can't leave. Or, you know, it doesn't make sense to change jobs, or it's like kind of like volatile that you rather be just like comfortable right now because of your family situation or whatever it is. And I'm glad that I didn't do anything like irrational. I didn't like jump from job to job, but I stayed in this job, but I pursued side hustles. You know, I did Beachbody, I did herbal life, I did like this wine MLM thing where I did in-home tastings. I did a lot of stuff. And I really tried to find a way to make extra money because especially in Beachbody, I was seeing people making thousands of dollars a month and they had replaced their nine to five income with their beachbody business. And this is like, if you're not familiar with how Beachbody was like 10 years ago, it was booming 10 years ago. It was where you're buying like these kits, people would spend, I don't even remember,$60 a month, maybe. Was it a hundred? I forget. I think it was like a over a hundred dollars if you bought like the DVD program. DVD, if you bought the program and like a Shakeology, but then the subscription of Shakeology, I think it was like$50 or$60, and it would be a 30-day supply. And you had like an upline and your downline, and it was kind of like, you know, MLM, you know, pyramid, whatever. And you would make a certain percentage of people underneath you, right? And so I made like, I think I made a total of like$100. And a lot of the things that they had me do didn't really sit right with me. I didn't, I really didn't drink the shakeology. Like I always felt so hungry from like eating smoothies. I still do. Like, I need real food. I can't just say I can have a smoothie for maybe a snack, but like I can't like have a smoothie for like meal replacement shake. Like it, that just didn't work for me. But, anyways, so I guess I learned that like took me on a path though where I learned how to utilize social media as a business. And a lot of the things that they were having me do didn't sit right with me, like sending a hundred DMs a day, or they would call it like power hour. And you would send a hundred DMs in an hour because all you were doing was copying and pasting things. And so Instagram would yell at you because you're doing it too fast and they're gonna ban your account because you're being like a robot. Same thing with Facebook. You're thrown into Facebook jail because you're spamming too many people. And so, like that part didn't sit right with me. So I didn't do a lot of that, but it did open my eyes to how to write posts on social media and how to talk to people in social media. So this was like 2016, 2017. And so my I wanted to find something that was aligned with me, but I wanted to make more money. Like I was still propelled to like make more money, was not making a lot of money in my banking job. And again, this is right around the time where I just got married. I've always been independent. I'm the oldest of three kids. My mom is the oldest of three kids. I come from a long line. Like my grandma was an eldest daughter, my great grandma was an eldest daughter. I come from a long line of hyper independent women and strong, stubborn women. And as I grow older, I'm trying to break that curse because I have a daughter. She will probably be my only child. However, she's a girl, and I don't want her to have the same things that I had to live up to that my mom and my grandma had to live up to, too. So, anyways, it was always like a badge of honor that I would wear where I felt like I'm independent, I'm super, like I don't need anyone's help. And when my husband came along, it was such a refreshing thing because he provided for me, and I had never had that in my life. You know, I was in long-term relationships a few times before him, but I was the one that had the job and the money and had to drive the person around if they drank too much, and I was never like cared for because even when I had cancer, somehow I'd argue with my partner at that point too. So I don't know. It was a different time, stressful time, right? But, anyways, I just was very cared for and I felt supported, but then that made me feel like I don't want him to bear all of the financial responsibility. He definitely made more money than me at that time, and at that time not by much, because he was brand new at his job, but he was making more money than me. And he definitely wanted to take care of me, and he's still, he's still very much like that. He is the he definitely wears the provider role, which I'm so appreciative of. And here we are 12 years later, I'm trying to lean into it more. So I'm very grateful for that. But there is always this part of me that wanted to be an equal contributor to the household because I didn't want, I think again, that comes down to like, well, I still want to be independent. I want to make my own money, and I don't want to like borrow someone else's, right? Even though we were married. So fast forward to like when I wanted to start my business and I hired my first business coach, I still have this journal to this day. I never journaled before. But my coach at the time was like, and the back of your journal, write down what are your biggest fears are and what is your why. And that was like a huge thing that I think a lot of businesses still talk about. And a lot of business coaches, they're like, what is your why? What is your why? Blah, blah, blah. And sometimes it's hard to think about. Sometimes it's just, well, I want to make more money, and that's okay too. But my why was truly I want to make money so that my husband isn't so stressed out anymore about making money. And I won't go into details and like why I think that is or whatever. It's just like, you know, we moved to Chicago, we had a lot of expenses, and I wasn't making a lot of money at my job. And, you know, I think again, he just wants to make sure everything's okay. But I again, my why, and that is that is still a big driver of mine, maybe not so much anymore. But that is why I started my business, and that was my why. And truly, when I signed my first few clients in the first, at least the first year or two of my business, it was like, I want to make money so I can have extra money to give to our household, and he doesn't have to wear the burden of being the only sole provider in our house. That's still a huge, that's a huge deal to me. And now when I think about that, that's not really my soul why anymore. A lot of it has changed to me to realize my dreams because really when I started my business, I didn't have, I didn't have dreams. It was really just to make extra money. And then I kind of like, okay, I guess I'm gonna do this business coaching thing. And it was a roundabout way that I kind of like stumbled upon all of this. And it was like, again, like going back to how I started this episode, like I didn't set out to be a business coach, I didn't set out to be an entrepreneur, I didn't set out to be social media manager. I never wanted any of these things. It just kind of like all organically happened when I was searching for something that I needed. And so when I started my business, it was really for him. And then I'm then I just start thinking about, you know, as time goes on and you sign clients and then you realize the difference that you are actually making in other people's lives, then it starts to become more about you. And then I realize, like, actually, I'm really good at this. And what's next for me? And you can think of like money milestones and things like that, but like that has never spoke to me because I always I always just want more money. I don't like, it's like cool. Now I make, you know, I make, you know, minimum$1,000 a month. That was like so cool. It's like in the next 12 months, I have at least$1,000 coming in. Like, that's so crazy. Then that becomes three. Then that became five. Then that became seven. Then that became ten. And you know, here I am on the other side of that, where it still feels the same as it did. I mean, maybe, maybe not, it doesn't feel the same, but it feels, doesn't feel life-changing. But there are other things that I think about now and my why for continuing. And a lot of that is impact now. And the impact portion of this grew kind of in the middle of these last seven and a half years. I realized that maybe about five or six years ago, about six years ago now, I have a gift for connecting and building relationships. And I know like then hindsight's 2020, looking at my life and how I've connected different groups of people my whole life, I know I'm a good connector. I know I do that in my real life. I've done that my whole life in real life. And so it's so effortless to me to be giving and to be forthcoming in elevating someone else. And whether that means referring my client to somebody else, connecting two of my clients, connecting one of my referral partners to another person to something similar to me, I believe in abundance like that. And so I love connecting people. And so the more I really realized that I do this well was the moment that I knew I could impact more and more people. And that came from conversations with clients, that came from people that are struggling with certain things that they think are not possible, but things that I knew were possible for them. And there's this other side of me that, again, I've shown to my friends at that point, I could pump people up and I make them do things that they might not feel comfortable doing. And I I can be someone's hype woman pretty, pretty big. But I can see and believe in people more than they do believe in themselves. So all of that has really come into fruition over the last five to six years because just through conversations and then the quality of clients that I continue to have. And I realize the impact I can have and the ripple effect that I can create. And that means more to me than like a dollar amount. Like I can't even think of like what would be so amazing though is I can have this impact and get paid a lot of money. Because if I'm earning money and it just doesn't feel right to me, I'm gonna, it's just gonna be refused in some way. If I am so aligned with what I'm doing, that's when the money comes easiest. And so my why really is impact now. And my daughter has a lot to do with that too. And I don't think I have a traditional why of like, oh, I want to show my daughter what's possible. I do, but I don't think I need to be an entrepreneur to do that. My line of work does not matter for me to show her what's possible because you know, her dad is works at a bank. Like he's not a business owner, but he can still share that same sentiment of you can do whatever it is that you want to do, and you can be a good person doing it. And so I don't know, definitely like my why is my daughter and giving her a really good life. But if I think of it like that, that makes me want to work even more, but that's not what it's all about. I want to spend time with her. I am grateful that I have a flexible schedule, but that's also not my why. I'm grateful for the schedule, but I think I want to show her that like her feelings and her ideas are valid because that is something that I did not have growing up. I felt that the things that I wanted to do and what I wanted to dress like or what I wanted to pursue was definitely looked down upon. And I think that might have been other people's shortcomings. And so I didn't really feel I had a lot of support in what I actually wanted to pursue in life because it was never even a conversation, it was just no. And I felt like I wasn't being heard. And I think that's why, you know, we can go down like the trauma rabbit hole now, but like that's why I sought out relationships all the time. I was like in relationships constantly. Because I think I craved that and wasn't getting that from like parents or anything. So I think that is my why. Like I'm I'm actually like real time thinking about it right now. My why is to show my daughter was what's possible, but it's not like, oh, what's possible when you build your own business and all this stuff. It's it's just the fact of like, if you want to do something and you feel it in your gut that you should be doing it, and people might think you're crazy, but you still want to do it, then you should do it. And I never want her to feel that I don't believe in her. And I think that has been such a profound new factoid that I've discovered. I can have, again, I can have any job in the world and I can still give her that message. So this isn't, I don't think it's necessarily about like, oh, my wife or started my business. It's at the end of the day, like I said, I never wanted to become a business owner. I never really had lifetime aspirations to become an entrepreneur. I love being an entrepreneur now, but I feel like I backed into it. And so my message to her is like, you, yes, you can put anything, you can do anything you put your mind to, yes, but it's deeper than that. It's I want her to feel supported and to show that you can create impact for people and you can be there for people and you can support people, but you can also do what's best for you at the end of the day. And I think I have a good balance of that, where she sees me work from home all of the time. She has the ability to hop on calls if she needs me, which is so cool. But she also can see me get dressed up on a regular basis. And she sees me go to work, but I'm also gonna come home. And she's too little to understand that now, but pretty soon she's gonna understand what it is that I do. And I want her to realize that I don't need to work myself to the bone. I can work really hard, but I can also feel like give her her, like be there for her and support her and hear her out and believe in what she has to do too, and and that she's special and and all of the things because she really has unlocked my confidence in business. And I don't think I would have had the success I've had, especially in the last two years if it weren't for her. So all that to say is we're talking about whys. Your why can evolve as well because your life's going to evolve. And so my life, my why comes down to, you know, showing my daughter what's possible for sure when you do believe in yourself. You know, I definitely want to always, I want to give my husband and my family a really good life with the money that I make. And then I think the last thing and the most important thing is I really want to do something that I feel passionate about and I'm fulfilled and that I can make a difference. And so I'm going to continue pursuing that feeling because it's not always going to be just business coaching or marketing agency, because I've evolved from that. It used to just be business coaching and I would help people make more money and I still do that. Or then it's I'm doing something for people in my marketing agency, and I'm helping them make more money by doing it for them, and I'm still doing that. Then the other things are now I'm hosting events and now I'm sharing these stories on this podcast where people get to listen and hear, and it and it's for the betterment of themselves and their mindset and hearing real people's stories to make sure that they're not alone. My retreats do the same thing, creating a space of support and making people feel seen and heard when they don't have that anywhere else. And it's going to evolve even more. So I'm constantly chasing impact. And I think that my business allows me, and any business in any capacity, it's going to support me and my drive to impact people and make people's lives better. And I can do it through doing this and really elevating people that have good intentions and want to build relationships and want to have connections. So it was a struggle for me for a really long time because I was like, my why doesn't fit with me anymore. Like, what is my why again? And you're going to have moments like that too. Your why is going to change. But as long as you do and you are propelled by your why, sometimes if it's just to make more money, it's just to make more money, that's fine too. But I think your your why can be a little bit deeper than that. It's what is that money going towards? Or what is that feeling you're going towards? So that's what I want to leave you with today. If you don't know your why, or you have to revisit your why, now is the time to do that. Have a great week, and I will be back here on Friday. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Business Over Cocktails, where real stories and bold business moves come to life. If this episode lit something up in you, share it with a friend, tag me at Laura Najar, or the podcast page at Business Over Cocktails. Make sure to leave a quick review as well. It helps more than you know. Until next time, keep chasing what matters and building the business that feels like you. Cheers.