Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in career development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Colleen Gallagher, Founder of Colleen Gallagher International, located in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

My business is Colleen Gallagher International, online coaching, training, and education company. The mission is to activate, educate and empower people in creating lifestyles they love and organizations to offer lifestyle careers so their employees' lives and career goals align. My customers are highly creative individuals and organizations that have suppressed their creativity to fit into a job or identity matrix. They do this to fit into certain molds to ensure they receive consistent money instead of following their true essence. This has caused the organizations not to reach the level of success they can, even though they have good teams and systems. This has caused the individual to suffer mental health issues or disorders by forcing them to produce in a career that does not fulfill them.

This individual and organization is a high achiever who appears to have everything figured out on the outside with their career, lifestyle, relationships, teams, systems, branding, etc. However, the organization and individuals are barely getting by and counting down the days until they can leave their lives and begin to feel free. The individual and organization core values they want to live into but are not are: freedom, inclusivity, seeing they are having a direct impact on people, and feeling they have clarity on why they are doing things in their life to achieve the success they want. More than anything in the world, this person and organization want to live and offer a life where these values are being applied every day in their life or organization.

Lastly, this person and organization feel a strong connection to a Power greater than them. They do daily practices that allow the person and organization to feel connected to greater power and purpose, whether that be God, a Source, a religion, or the Universe. This person and organization want to feel they can talk about their practices as part of their process in career success instead of feeling like it must be hidden so that no one gets offended if people have different beliefs and practices. This person and organization are highly intuitive, spiritual, adaptable, and often seem like they are magical. But they haven't had an opportunity to share their process of how they appear this way because it is connected to their spiritual practices, which has built resentment and anger as they feel they have to compromise who they are in order to make money.

My clients come to me at their most significant pain point: going through a breakup or divorce, a health crisis they need healing from (usually cancer), or when an organization knows that it can no longer continue doing things to be accepted in mainstream business but must begin to do things their way!

Tell us about yourself

I began my business because I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 14, where I was told I'd be on medication every day for the rest of my life and that it would be very challenging when I wanted to have children. As a sales engineer, I worked for a $23 billion company right out of college, where I covered multi-million-dollar territories. I began to see I felt trapped and had to work on this career path as it was best to have yearly checkups with specialized doctors and get my prescribed medication at the best price. Plus, the fear of the future; if I left a large organization with a great healthcare plan, how would I be able to become pregnant when I wanted that part of my life? Eventually, I closed my largest sales deal at the time, and instead of feeling happy, proud, and accomplished, I felt horrified and wondering this was all I had to look forward to in my life for the rest of my life t age 23.

So, this is when I began to see how to create a career where I could travel the world on my terms instead of needing a corporation to travel! I began to listen to hundreds of hours of webinars of people all over the world who were living a lifestyle they love. I started to study people on social media of how they built a brand through the different platforms. This led me to quit my job and move across the world to New Zealand, where I got another corporate job, but I isolated myself so that I could do 4 hours of yoga and meditation a day. This is where I got the idea to write my first book, hire my first life coach, and then my first business coach, where I learned how to do funnels.

During the 4.5 years, I have continued to be inspired to move my business forward after three books, 29 online designed, created, and sold programs, six manufactured products, a top podcast, completing my MS in Global Technology and Development, as well as working towards my Ph.D. because of the impact and transformations my community shares with me. Every day I wake up and receive messages about how people and business owners feel more alive, inspired, driven, like they are on the right path instead of the wrong path, receive income results, enhanced relationships personally and with teams, as well as their products and services fulfilling their mission to make this world a better place through their right.

This keeps me going, inspired, and knowing that when we stay committed and consistent to what we know can change this world through us; we make a massive difference. The most recent example was when I was in Egypt, and one of my followers messaged me, and I met up with them to sign my books. This showed me in 4.5 years, if this happens, what will happen in 10 years?

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

My biggest accomplishment as a business owner is always seeing my client's results, whether that is them receiving automated income in the online world, creating their first product or service, getting out of a relationship that making them unhappy, or falling in love with the right relationships, being able to become well or overcoming western medicine diagnosis as I did, and seeing an organization offer career paths that enhance people's lives instead of making them unhappy. Lastly, my most proud moment for me has been seeing other women who were told they could not get pregnant by reading my third book and have their babies.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

The hardest thing with being a business owner, especially when you are your own brand, is not to take things personally when things don't go our way. When you are the face of the brand, you want everything to go perfectly and everyone to be happy. You want to promise the world and then over-deliver on top of that. However, when you have third-party technology applications, manufacturers, and life accidents or miscommunications happen, and people are upset or unhappy, it can be hard not to take things personally. That is the hardest thing because when you care about people and want what is best for them through your services and products and things go unplanned, we get very down on ourselves and think we messed everything up. Instead of acknowledging sometimes life happens and everything will get figured out!

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Get Started Today. Act daily and know you are never going to be ready or feel like you have enough money. However, only when you act you will learn what will work to get you closer to your goals and won't work. When you act, you gain experience; from experience, you gain wisdom, and wisdom is what allows your business to be successful or not.
  2. Be Connected to your Why. Why does this matter to you beyond making more money or having the most epic life with jets, private villas, amazing cars, and travel? Why is it you are doing this? Why do you care about what you are doing daily to not just help yourself but service others? If you are not connected to this, you will lose motivation.
  3. Always Think Long Term Instead of Short Term. Think of how this email, launch, communication, conflict resolution, etc., goal is to think of this person not as a client but as a relationship that will still serve me 5 years from now. When you take this perspective, it changes how you handle things and your idea that you need money today at the cost of a customer relationship.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Entrepreneurship is the best career in the world as you learn how to improve your relationship with yourself so you can become the leader of your own life, plus impact the world in the way you know will make a difference. You then become obsessed with how creative you can become to help as many other people as possible through your passion and what has allowed you to change your life.

Lastly, relationships are the most important things in our life. Relationships can make us or break us in this life. Relationships offer a huge perspective as they are the biggest mirrors in our life where we are reflected in ourselves and where we are functioning in life. If we have a lot of painful relationships, it's because we have not yet mastered how to have healthy, functional, and safe relationships.

If we have a lot of relationships where we know how to have healthy conflict resolution or that allows us to move things forward, we are in greater alignment with the purpose of our life. The more you learn about relationships and how to improve every relationship in your life, the better your life will be. When we lead own selves to become the best we can be and master our emotions. Somehow the world ironically begins to deliver beauty back into our life.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://colleengallagher.co/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheColleenGallagher/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecolleengallagher/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/col_gallagher1
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleen-gallagher-81691661/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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