What is a CEO Day? 

With less than 100 days left of the year, how do you know if you are on track to have one of the best or off track on experiencing the most defeating years of your business ownership? 

Wait- how do you know at all what success should look like by now? 

As a business consultant and marketing strategist for over 5 years and entrepreneur for the past 13 years, I can tell you that managing and directing yourself is one of the most challenging aspects of being self-employed. 

Whether you know that your efforts are converting to impact or falling flat to deliver, there must be a part of your journey that allows you to take a pause, reflect, realign, and refocus on what truly budges the needle. 

A CEO Day is the dedicated time to clear distractions to work ON your business, not in your business. 

Thinking like a CEO, you are making executive decisions on operations, sales, marketing, team, but most importantly: your vision and problem solving to get your business back on-track! 

CEO Days is a free monthly “work on your business” workshop that brings entrepreneurs from around the world together for 2 hours to focus on growing and improving. 

The folks who sign up for this program understand how difficult it is to create MORE time out of their busy late nights, early mornings, maybe even weekends, spent on their business to take a step back, and this workshop helps them to create the space they wouldn’t otherwise make for themselves. 

Signing up ensures this is sacred time locked in on their calendar to prioritize asking the important questions: 

1. What did I do this month that made the most impact?

2. What was holding me back? 

3. Where is my headspace and what is on my plate?

4. How can I push myself to learn something new or get a new perspective on my business?

And from there, we don’t just reflect, we DO: 

1. Getting work DONE for a few extra minutes on something I don’t usually get to work on while serving clients or running the operations

2. Creating a 30-Day plan for the month ahead so I am always focused on what matters most. 

3. And most important- connecting with other individuals who have come before me with the challenges I face or people I want to continue to talk with who brought up something powerful at this meeting! 

It’s rare to find an opportunity that has you feeling accomplished, focused, clarity, connected, and ready for MORE. This is why hundreds of business owners who are leading a mission-driven life and business make it a MUST to attend CEO Days each and every month! 

The mission of CEO Days

is to empower 100,000 entrepreneurs by 2030 to become sustainable business owners who achieve consistent year-over-year increases in profit, purpose, passion, and planning!

How did I come up with this?
CEO Days aims to challenge the statistic that nearly 50% of small businesses don’t last past 5 years in business. Having the time to improve and ease into the next month ahead ensures the success of the business with bite-sized wins, resources, encouragement, and direction. 

We hope you attend this communal workshop that is taking over the world of small business enterprises with empowerment at CEO Days!

Welcome to Sunday Intentions

Today's Sunday Intention was a punch in the gut for me to reflect upon and I go into the past of my CEO journey that you may not yet know about me.

Since starting chiropractic care with Dr. Katie Ray of New Day, the care taught me to not resist emotions so much, but to allow them to pass through our bodies.

To think- a nearly 30-year-old realizes that welcoming emotions with a sense of empowerment for the very first time: no matter how good or bad the emotion- welcome it all. And being fully expressed with feeling each warm, electric current pass through me.  What a powerful lesson to take away from this and apply it to business & the CEO Journey that always is more about who we are as humans rather than how well we follow a path to do business a certain way.  

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
 – Rainer Maria Rilke

No feeling is final. Let's begin at the start.

My career story always involved fierce competition, losing one opportunity after the next, and was surrounded by a lot of resistance from people who were supposed to be encouraging me, not telling me that I was incapable. There were a few amazing people of inspiration who did, however, really give me that chance!

Entrepreneurship came about when I experienced the ‘I’ve had enough’ moment

It was this experience as a 23-year-old starting my career that I was always fighting up a current to challenge myself and think as a self-starter. I didn’t always have the support I needed to build to where I am today, but I feel like I always was challenged to feel the “bad” emotion first of doubt, fear, and lack of confidence first that now allows me to feel victorious, successful, and aligned. Do you see how you have to take the chance to accept the challenging parts that transform you into something MORE?!

I have wanted to be a photographer since I was 10 years old. My parents were encouraging by helping me with the hobby and supporting me to the stores to get my film developed and pay for my rolls, they gifted me my first $100 digital camera at 13, and then as I reached 17, they got really nervous but took me to Best Buy to celebrate the $800 I saved up working all summer long cutting grass and working at the park district to buy my first DSLR camera -the professional-looking ones. 

When it came to choosing a college major- however, the doubt started to sink in from them. They wanted me to not be a “starving artist” without a real job- I followed their fear of being broke and pursued a career in advertising / PR instead. 

In my first job, I was working in a department I made up and the concept of “social media for business” was just being introduced to the company I was working with by, guess who- me, myself, and I. 

The idea was so off the wall, I got told how often that social media was a waste of time, a distraction for business, and my employers simply didn’t “get it,” when I was trying to coach the staff how to use their LinkedIn pages and grow a following. 

Yesterday, I had a chat with one of my previous employers at my very first marketing position. It was so amazing to see him and hear these words. He said one very important thing to me I’d been waiting for over the past 7 years: “Dana, we knew all along you were ahead of our time with marketing & social media. We just resisted it and fought to grow and now we look back and thought, wow, we had someone SO eager to teach us and excel in this- we just weren’t ready for it.” 

Fast forward, I was making my own path then just out of spite to my parents and doubters that photography IS a way to earn income- they just didn’t see a formal job setup for it. And I run a marketing consulting business where people are paying me for my ideas on a marketing strategy that helps them grow, scale, and become more visible. I like to say being an entrepreneur is completely about experiencing the “Bad” emotions first to know what it feels like to want to change the world so badly, you are striving to find the solution and make it work!!! 

I stopped following my mom’s anxiety-driven advice. Not Because I don’t love her. Not because I doubt that as a mom, she should stop worrying about me (this is something in the brain that is instilled in mothers that physically makes them worry about us until they die).

I stopped feeding into the idea that I wasn’t doing a good enough job and instead, view a company’s lack of adaptability with changing times something that I can grow past and serve others who are ready for me! It’s incredible when we change our perspective, how much more valuable we can perceive ourselves as!

But because 99% of ALL things she worries about never comes true and is more limiting than I can take. Not once has anything she feared actually happened to me! Not one thing I could have said to this company I worked for would have made a big impact because it was just the wrong ears to listen. That feeling of not being good enough was just temporary once I gained the experience of perspective.

If I changed MY life based on the temporary emotion of fear of the made-up worries, experiencing the life I want wouldn’t be possible. Can you relate? 

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Have you been living in so much fear for the 1% chance things could actually go wrong? Does that stop you from taking major action because you are so resistant to feeling a temporary emotion that will pass through you and make way for you to welcome a very powerful, incredible feeling which lies ahead on your journey? 

Looking at our business, we have to choose for ourselves who we are really listening to and if we are making each decision out of fear or scarcity, or truly willing to welcome all emotions of both worry, doubt, and success, achievement. Yet another reason I call this a “CEO Journey,” not a “CEO Roadmap". It’s YOUR journey to experience and define exactly what YOU want to. 

This week's Intention:

I intend to ask myself today who I am really listening to and why do they have too much power over me?
Do I really want to live out life and build a business more fully without fear of something always going wrong? Can I handle a temporary feeling of discomfort to allow the most incredible feelings on the other side of it once I grow past it?   

With so much uncertainty and fear surrounding us in the media, the news feeds, and our peers' anxiety, demand that you will “make it work '' to allow the good emotions to be celebrated more than focusing on the bad emotions. They are coming anyway- so let them in with a new perspective that nothing is final- it’s just a TEMPORARY feeling! You got this! 

Have a great rest of your week,

Dana

Plan for JUNE with this recap of CEO Days!

Missed our MAY session because of Memorial Day? This guided recording will take you through CEO Days that you can utilize on your own time!

To access the document, please sign up for CEO Days below:

Have you ever gone to an event and wondered,

“WHY AM I HERE?”

“This is a waste of my TIME that I’d rather be doing anything else!”

With the increasing amount of webinars, workshops, and free meet-up’s, let’s get one thing straight- your time is your TIME & money is waiting for you somewhere else!

If you find yourself looking back on your week, month, or year having spent the time to show up, but just in the wrong spaces, places, and conversations, here is a list of questions to ask yourself before committing your precious time to these events!

It seems to me that sometimes I attend something for the wrong reasons and quickly regret being there.

I’ve spent over a decade as a well-liked, but not as highly paid entrepreneur as I’d like to be. After feeling defeated and frustrated one too many times, I realized that I was just putting myself in the wrong rooms due to a lack of intentionality or alignment with the result I was hoping for.

For the sake of you being able to sleep in, not be so drained, and pay yourself more in both time, energy, and money as a CEO day, I hope that these questions are part of your regular routine to make a bigger difference in the way you are operating your business!

When looking at the event invitation:

Do I understand what this event is really about?

Am I helping myself or doing a favor for someone?

Is it crucial that I am there? 

What is expected of me to be fully present at this event? 

On a scale of 1-10, what priority is this on my list of commitments?

What is the cost to show up (financial, time, commitment, energy)?

What is the actual opportunity for me to be there?

Is there something besides this event that at the time, is a better use of attaining my goals?

If I were to go to this event: 

What will I be experiencing?

What will I be gaining?

Who will I be serving?

What pockets am I adding money to?

Who will be there?

Who will I be associated with if I attend?

Who will I meet? 

What will I say to the people I meet?

What do I want to be known as when I leave the room?

When preparing for the event:

What should I wear (in my branding for this group)?

What should I bring? 

Will I have time before the event to mentally charge myself with an intention and reflection?

Will I have time after the event to reflect on it and make any necessary follow up?

Ultimately, who do I want the result to be out of attending this event?

Each month, CEO’s & brand influencers of their movements and enterprises meet with me regularly to get more intentional about where we spend our time and how we grow our businesses. If you’d love to be part of this community, find more resources for working ON your business at CEO Days!