The Importance of Resilience in Entrepreneurship – Gail Dolby

Today’s guest is Gail Dobly.  Gail helps entrepreneurs increase their profitability and get paid what they are worth.

Entrepreneurship is a unique journey filled with unexpected detours and dead ends. That’s why resilience is one of the most important concepts when building a business. And our guest today will tell you all about it!

Meet Gail Doby. Gail is the Chief Vision Officer and Co-Founder of Gail Doby Coaching & Consulting, a firm that’s working with designers, architects, and other creatives to help them increase their profitability and get paid what they’re worth.

With a BSBA in Finance and Banking and more than 20 years of experience running her own design firm, Gail is passionate about helping creative entrepreneurs overcome the most common business roadblocks and challenges. On top of that, she also works as a strategist, brand builder, interviewer, marketer, and operations manager.

Gail is also a published book author. Her latest book, called Business Breakthrough: Your Creative Value Blueprint to Get Paid What You Are Worth, provides a business model that delivers the right balance of creativity, seamless process, and pricing options.

In this episode of the Think Business With Tyler podcast, we talk about the importance of resilience in entrepreneurship, why teamwork is the ultimate shortcut, how to find the hire the right people for your business, and why learning is a lifelong process.

If you want to learn about what it’s like running a business and leading people, tune into this episode to find out what Gail has to say.

Guest-At-A-Glance

 

💡 Name: Gail Doby

💡 What she does: She’s the Chief Vision Officer and Co-Founder of Gail Doby Coaching & Consulting.

💡 Noteworthy: Gail is also a published author. Her latest book is called Business Breakthrough: Your Creative Value Blueprint to Get Paid What You Are Worth.

💡 Key Quote: “I really believe that sometimes you have to be pushed up to the wall, and you have to understand who you are. And I am not one to work for a corporation or anybody else, to be frank.”

💡 Where to find Gail: LinkedIn

Key Insights

Be prepared and be resilient. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur because being an entrepreneur requires a special set of skills mixed with patience and perseverance. When you’re a business owner, you need to always be prepared. You have to develop resilience and be ready to act even when you’re terrified. Gail says,

“Every few years, every two to three, no more than seven years, you’re going to have something major that will happen in the world that has nothing to do with you. And if you are not prepared for this and you haven’t thought about what kind of reserves do I need to have in my business financially? What do I need to have in place? What happens if all of a sudden everything just shuts down, like COVID? We’ve had some of the worst experiences in my lifetime of a business, and we’ve survived every single one of them because we have been resilient. And I think the real key here is to remember that things will come our way, we need to be prepared for them, but most importantly, we have to have courage, and we have to be resilient, and we have to do things even when we’re terrified.”

Teamwork is the ultimate shortcut. There’s an old African proverb that says, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’ This couldn’t be more true when it comes to business and teamwork. As Gail nicely puts it, teamwork is the ultimate shortcut. She explains,

“To me, just figure out what are you looking for. What kind of traits and attributes? And then, if you’re willing to mentor and be open, you would be surprised at the talent that’s there and available that you’re probably not even thinking about. It’ll make your life so much easier and be open to really looking at a job is not necessarily having a really broad scope of things that they’re doing, but narrow it down to somebody’s strengths and use their strengths and let them go for it because that’s where you’re gonna have the magic happen.”

Think of people as gifts that you can unwrap. Gail is all about believing in people and never putting anyone in certain age brackets. She believes that people can surprise you; you just have to give them a chance. According to Gail, we should think of people as gifts we can unwrap. She explains her theory,

“What I would suggest is that you think about every single person as some gift that you can unwrap. And if you can unwrap that gift, you’re going to find all of these really cool characteristics about these people. I don’t care what age they are. Put that aside and be open to the possibility that some of the best people you could possibly hire could be a lot older than you expect and older than you are, or they could be a lot younger. So either way, you should be open to the opportunity and then just be curious and find out what their interests are, and you might be surprised, in fact, you’ll be shocked at what kind of a company you can build.”

Always be learning. It’s a tale as old as times: learning should be a lifelong process. No matter your age or your profession, you should always be learning and exploring new growth opportunities. As some might say, lifelong learning is the secret to lifelong success. Gail says,

“I am a massive reader. I read a lot, and I have been on a terror reading and reading and reading. And so I’ll read about five to seven books per topic. And if I want to get really clear on how to be a better leader, how to have a better culture, how to exit my business, I’m going to read as much as I can on those topics, and I’m going to start talking to subject matter experts on those things. And in fact, I invite them onto my podcast. So for me, I love that because the learning piece is what keeps you fresh and young, and it also keeps you ahead of your competition.”

Top Quotes

 

“I do things terrified all the time, literally almost by the day. And I think if you can work in that framework and understand that on the other side of terrified is where our growth happens. And that’s when it gets really exciting when you push yourself beyond what you think you can.”

“I would agree with that because it is hard to do this for yourself, and we really are not very good about being our own psychologists. So if you have somebody who has courage, who’s been down the path before, find somebody who can take you down the path that you want to go, and that they’ve already been, and that’s always the best advice.”

“If I make a decision that I’m going to hire a particular person or a position in the company, all I have to do is make that decision that I’m going to hire that person, and usually I find them before I even get the job description. And it just as soon as you make decisions and decisions are so key, we can’t get stuck in this wondering if you should make the decision or if I make the decision, will it be a mistake? You just got to go for it.”

“I think another challenge that I see very commonly is the complaint about work-life balance, and they want work-life balance. And I think that it’s like a unicorn. If you have such a thing, tell me about it.  but you can achieve better balance, but I think the word is really integration. So if you can find a way to integrate your work life with your home life, you’re going to have a happier life because the reality is you can’t separate the two because one supports the other and vice versa.”

“Blocking your time is super important. If you want to have more time for a family, you block that into your calendar. If you want to have more time for charitable work, you block it into your calendar. If you want to do more marketing, you block it into your calendar, and then you follow that. You don’t change it. You really stick with your plan, but make sure that your time is allocated to the right things so that you’re actually accomplishing what you want in your life.”

Links

Gail Doby Website

Business Breakthrough: Your Creative Value Blueprint to Get Paid What You’re Worth

Resources

How a Mentor Changed His Life – EA Csolkovits
What Does Success Mean and How to Achieve it – Mitch Matthews