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Starting my business has been quite the ride, full of ups and downs. In the first episode of "The Dana Show," I spill the tea on what I've learned during my first year as a business owner. It's been a journey of resilience, self-discovery, and staying true to myself.
Lesson 1: Survival Mode Doesn't Work
I kicked things off in survival mode. After a rough divorce and losing my job, I jumped into business out of sheer necessity. But let me tell you, that frantic energy of needing to succeed at all costs? It wasn't bringing in the right clients. I found out that a calm, focused approach works way better.
Lesson 2: Embrace Your Strengths and Weaknesses
I realized my real strengths are in storytelling and teaching. I started out doing social media management, but it just wasn't my thing. I'm way better at helping folks figure out their brand and message. Once I leaned into my strengths, I started enjoying my work a whole lot more.
Lesson 3: Discover What You Want to Do
Through trial and error, I figured out what I didn't want to do—social media management. That led me to teaching, which I love. Getting the chance to teach at Point Park University was a dream come true. It confirmed that education and storytelling are where my heart is.
Lesson 4: Be Picky About Who You Work With
In the beginning, I took on any client just to keep things going. But not every client is a good fit, and I learned that the hard way. Being selective and making sure we're a good match has made all the difference. It's all about quality over quantity.
Lesson 5: Be Authentic and Unapologetically You
I dabbled with AI tools for branding and marketing, but I quickly learned the importance of keeping it real. AI is handy, but it can't replace my unique voice and personal touch. Staying true to myself is key, and I don't want to sound like everyone else.
Wrapping It Up
This first year in business has been a game-changer. These five lessons—ditching survival mode, embracing my strengths, finding my passion, being selective with clients, and keeping it real—are insights I hope can help other entrepreneurs. Sharing my story is all about inspiring others to navigate their own business journeys with confidence.
Let's Connect
Catch more insights and stories on "The Dana Show." If you want to be featured on a future episode, hit me up at Dana@DanaSchulte.com.
#BusinessJourney #EntrepreneurLife #LessonsLearned #AuthenticityMatters #BrandingTips #Storytelling #TeachingPassion #ClientRelationships #BusinessGrowth #TheDanaShow
Transcript
Dana Schulte:
Hello internet friends and welcome to the Dana Show where we BS about business and branding. If you're new here, I'm Dana. If you're not new here, well, you must be a time traveler because this is my first episode. So I'm launching this show to celebrate the one year anniversary of starting my business. And let me tell you, I have learned so much over the past year. And today I'm going to share with you my biggest lessons.
Dana Schulte:
So in future episodes, we'll talk about business and branding. We'll be BSing with fellow business owners and all about their struggles, their successes, and how branding ties into everything in their business. So I want you to get a real look at real business owners and see what works and hasn't worked for them. So let's get started on my five lessons from running my business for a year. OK, so lesson number one.
Dana Schulte:
Working in survival mode doesn't work. When I launched my business a year ago, I was six years out of being separated. And in that six years, my divorce was finalized. It was not pleasant. It was a horrific experience. I had custody issues and then I lost my job in 2024, which is a big reason why I launched my business because I couldn't find anything for the six months of my unemployment.
Dana Schulte:
I couldn't find the right fit for me. And I decided to go ahead and take the leap and do this on my own. But I was freaking out. I was stressed and frantic and quite frankly, a little bit desperate because I needed to feed my children. I needed to keep a roof over our heads. I had a financial need. This was not a side gig. This was not something extra.
Dana Schulte:
So I really put my all into it and I worked so hard and I had some successes and then I didn't and you know the ups and downs. But what I really learned that coming into it without like I have to have to have to I need this I need this I need this that energy was just not bringing in the right clients for me. And it wasn't the way I wanted to work. It was just.
Dana Schulte:
So stressful and really unhealthy, but I, I needed to support myself and to support my children. So I, know, you do what you have to do. So the next thing, lesson number two, I had to learn to accept my strengths and my weaknesses. So.
Dana Schulte:
I, my, one of my biggest strengths is I'm a storyteller and I'm also a teacher at heart. And that was something that in the past, when I worked for a school, I really hoped I would get to do teaching and I wasn't able to. It just didn't work out that way. And that's fine. But it's something that I've always done a little bit on the side. I've done through past videos, I've done classes for adult ed.
Dana Schulte:
All kinds of different things because I really enjoy helping other people and I'm a good teacher. So that is a strength for me. And storytelling is also a strength for me and something that I just, I wasn't bringing though to my teaching in on my videos and things like that. So I knew it. I know what my strengths are.
Dana Schulte:
I wasn't really focusing on them enough. I was focusing on things I wasn't as good at because I thought those were the things that were going to bring me income. And again, I needed income. So I was focusing on, for example, social media management. I know more about social media and social media management than the average person, but it is not my strength.
Dana Schulte:
It is not, there are so many people who are quite frankly better at it than I am. What I'm good at is figuring out the message, figuring out your branding, figuring out how that works with your social media, helping you devise a plan. But with social media, I really believe that you need to have someone inside your business doing your day-to-day social media.
Dana Schulte:
If you work with an outside company, maybe that's to polish it, to help you come up with a plan, maybe to help you record and edit videos, if that's the kind of thing you want to do. But your social media needs, in my opinion, needs to be personal and authentic. And you can't hire someone to be authentic for you. And either you need to hire an in-house person to do it or you need to do it yourself in some way.
Dana Schulte:
Participate in that in some way. So I found it really hard trying to do other people's social media because I'm not in their business. I'm not in their industry and I'm not doing the day to day work. So it's really hard for me to show those things when I'm not involved. And honestly, if you're going to have someone do those things, you end up sending it to them anyway.
Dana Schulte:
You might as well just post it at that point. Definitely hire someone to come in, consult, to help you organize, to help you manage, help you polish, help you decide your messaging. But that day to day, I really believe that you need to be doing a lot of that on your own in some way. So that was something that I discovered. wasn't good for me. I wasn't doing a very good job for my clients because it's something they needed to do to be authentic.
Dana Schulte:
And also I find it really stressful. You know, having to constant post, the algorithms, the you don't want to make a mistake. It's one of the biggest challenges I've always had in my work is it's public. So for a lot of people, if you make a typo on something, the only person who sees it is like you and the handful of people you're working with, maybe in a report or something, your boss. If I make a typo on something, it's public.
Dana Schulte:
And that's a lot of pressure at times. But what I really find is the time, is it getting liked? Did I get it posted? Is it posted at the right time? Did it go to everywhere it's supposed to go? And managing multiple accounts and trying to keep all of that straight and manage the calendar, it's just not for me, okay, to do for someone else.
Dana Schulte:
It's just something I really learned that is not my strong suit. is a weakness for me in my business compared to the other things that I'm good at. I said I can do it, but it's not my strong suit. What I'm good at is branding, is finding out what makes you real and relatable and what's your story. Why would other people want to work with you as opposed to someone else? What makes you different?
Dana Schulte:
And how do we package all of that and make it something that you can be consistent with? No, a lot of people think when they hear branding, they just think, your logo and your colors. But branding, I'm going to replace the word branding for you. I want you to think about instead of the word brand when you hear the word branding, I want you to instead think the word reputation. OK, so branding is reputation.
Dana Schulte:
And what I mean by that is branding is really what other people think about you, which is essentially your reputation. Right. Branding doesn't begin and end with your logo. Nobody cares what your logo looks like. It is a tool that you use to help you be recognizable instantly. That's why every three year old knows what the golden arches are when they go down the street. Right. Got to get the happy meal. So
Dana Schulte:
We use the logo in your branding to become recognizable, but your branding really is your reputation. Do people want to work with you and why? That's your brand and how we work with that by creating the messages and putting that out there. But you could have the best marketing in the world and provide the worst service. it's not you're not going to get more clients. You'll get some you'll get clients through your marketing. You won't get repeat clients.
Dana Schulte:
If that makes sense. So figuring out I'm good at helping you figure that out. What makes you different? How do we utilize all of those tools? What I needed to do was find a way to balance what my clients and potential clients need while staying true to what I'm good at and what I feel confident doing. And that took me a while. And I tried a lot of different things.
Dana Schulte:
And some of worked and some of them didn't. And really, it came down to I need to focus on my strengths and believe that by doing that and that's my best work, then the right clients will will come and find me because they have a need that I can help fill. Right. So lesson number three, discovering what I want to do.
Dana Schulte:
So I figured out pretty quickly what I didn't want to do. Like I said before, being a social media manager is not what I want to do. And I even ended up giving up a nonprofit position that ended up being pretty much social media manager because it's not how I wanted to spend my time. And it was taking a lot of time. And I, again, I didn't feel good at it. It was stressful and it just wasn't working for me.
Dana Schulte:
And I don't think it was working for them either, to be honest. So I was just like, you know what? You have a need. I'm not filling that need. This isn't where my strengths are. I'm going to go ahead and step back and let you find someone who is a better fit for that, for that position, for what your needs are. And that was really hard for me because I love that organization. I still do. And I quite frankly felt like a failure.
Dana Schulte:
And that was a really hard one to be like, no, I can't do this anymore. And you're better off without me. So discovering what I wanted to do was a big part of building my business. And at the very beginning of this year of 2025, I had an amazing opportunity come my way. And it was truly a dream come true.
Dana Schulte:
I started teaching at Point Park University. I have always wanted to teach at the college level, always. I have dreamt of being a college professor, but I just didn't make sense for me to go and get my PhD and change, completely change career paths. Well, it turns out I don't have to do that. I'm an adjunct professor. I teach one or two classes.
Dana Schulte:
I taught one class in the spring. I'm teaching again the same class this coming spring and possibly one or two more. We'll see still in the talks about that. But what I discovered is I love it. It's something I dreamt about. It's something I'm good at and I really, really enjoyed doing it. And I got a good grade. I got a B on my feedback from my students.
Dana Schulte:
And I was very happy with that considering this is the first time it ever taught at the college level. I was responsible for all of the curriculum, for all of the testing, for everything. I got a course description and I was up to me and I was hired very late. So I was hired on Friday and class started Monday. Like I said, this opportunity literally like dropped in my lap from the heavens. It was amazing. And
Dana Schulte:
I, so I was very much building this class as I went. I just didn't have the time to do that. Plus I needed to get used to the pace of a college class meeting two days a week, an hour and a half class and all of the things that go with it. So it was a very much a learning experience for me, but it really confirmed for me that teaching is in fact one of my strengths. Storytelling is in fact one of my strengths.
Dana Schulte:
And when I came out of the class in the spring, I was going, wait a minute, what am I doing in my business? Why am I not focusing on this? This is what I'm good at. I'm literally being paid to teach college students. And that means something. So I was it was really eye opening for me in a lot of different areas and
Dana Schulte:
What I found I was really getting tired of and what I didn't like about my business was the back and the forth with the clients. Took forever to get things done because I'd meet, we'd do the proposal, I'd send it back to them, I'd wait for them to get back to me, I'd send them the contract, I'd wait for that to get back and then we'd meet to start the project and then I'd work on it and get feedback and then I'd work on it and get feedback and edit and feedback and edit and...
Dana Schulte:
Back and forth and back and forth and then scheduling social media posts and this and that and then they want changes and it just was not what I wanted to do. I was frustrated. think my clients were getting frustrated with me and at the time I didn't know what else to do. That's what I was taught that you do. When I got my master's degree in marketing is you do the proposal, you do the work, you this is how it goes.
Dana Schulte:
But honestly, I just I didn't enjoy it. I don't think my clients enjoy it. So I really had to take a look at what am I doing? What do I actually want to do? Which brings me to lesson number four. I had to learn to be picky about who I work with, because remember in the beginning I was in survival mode, so I needed to keep food on my table.
Dana Schulte:
Whenever someone was interested, I jumped. I that's the hustle, right? Well, I made mistakes. And I made one really big mistake with a client that
Dana Schulte:
I don't even want to talk about. Like it was bad. It was so, so bad. It was so bad. So bad. But what I learned is in order to run my business the best way for me, I need to make sure that my client and I are good fits for each other. And it goes both ways. I'm very versatile. I can work with almost anybody, but
Dana Schulte:
If someone's not a good fit for me, then I'm ultimately not a good fit for them, right? And I really needed to find the right people and not be afraid to say no. But I was like, I, yeah, $200, $500 sure. I'll do whatever you want. I, you know, and I, cause I'm looking at my bills, my bills are coming in. My kids are like, there's the fridges empty, not literally, but like, know, like we need to eat. Um,
Dana Schulte:
You know, my daughter was in volleyball, both my kids are now in college and kids are expensive. Life is expensive and everything's going up and my income was not steady. And it was just a lot. So really deciding saying no to a potential client was so hard for me. like, I don't want to say no. But when I didn't say no,
Dana Schulte:
And I took on someone I wasn't sure about, like, let me give it a chance. It would blow up in my face like crazy. And then I would end up basically telling them this isn't a good fit. And then the drama and the fallout. it's just, I needed to be picky about who I work with. And I thought I was, and I wasn't enough at least. But sometimes you don't know what you don't know until you need to know it. So my...
Dana Schulte:
Lesson number five was I need to be authentically and unapologetically mean. And I did I did do this to a degree, but I also took a deep dive into AI because that's what everybody's doing. And I quickly found out that if it's a tool, that if you're using it as a tool for your branding and marketing to do your writing and you come up with the ideas, it sucks.
Dana Schulte:
Sucks because if I go to chat GPT and say, hey, I need you to come up with five branding ideas for me and I would do this for my own marketing. It would give me five ideas and like, these are great. And then it's the same ideas of telling everybody it's not unique. It's not unique to me. It's not personal. It's just the same crap everyone else is getting and then everyone else is doing it. And I especially found writing with AI was instantly recognizable for people.
Dana Schulte:
And honestly, that made me look stupid. And I didn't do that a lot, but I experimented with it. And I think that has value and I learned, right? That's what we do. We learn and we apply. I tried using it to cut time, but I was tired of sounding like everybody else. And which is the opposite of what I wanted to do. Now I do think AI is a great tool. I teach this as part of
Dana Schulte:
My class at Point Park is because it's a writing class is that it is a tool. I like it as a tool for taking notes. If I'm in a meeting with a client, if I'm doing a fit call, I can have my AI take notes and I can focus on what the person's saying and then go back and review the notes. That makes sense to me. I'm not asking you to correct or create. It is good for correcting the grammar.
Dana Schulte:
And things like that. I'm fine with that. It's just to me, that's the same as spell check. When I was in college, we had professors be like, don't use spell check. That's cheating. Well, not everyone uses spell check. I think using AI to like check your grammar is acceptable, but as long as you're doing the writing. Right. And I also find it really good for analyzing notes or if I have a brain dump, finding themes in my brain dump, you know, creating workflows, helping me decide my schedule for the day or the week or the month.
Dana Schulte:
Those are places where I've incorporated AI, but the writing parts of it, the creative parts of it, the branding and the marketing parts of it, that's for me to do because otherwise I sound like everybody else and that's not what I want.
Dana Schulte:
And people are also, because they recognize AI now, they don't want to deal with AI. They want to deal with real people. So bringing it all together, reviewing our five lessons, my five lessons. One, working in survival mode doesn't work. Two, accepting my strengths and weaknesses. Three, discovering what I want to do.
Dana Schulte:
Four, being picky about who I work with and five, being authentic and unapologetically me. So the solution was changing my products, which changed everything about my business, including my workflow. So at the end of the day, it is essentially the same products. I still help with branding, with marketing, with web, with social media, video, all of those things. But now I start every call, every client with a fit call, a 15 minute fit call.
Dana Schulte:
And we determine if we're a good fit for each other. And if we're not, sometimes I can refer them to someone else they might be a better fit with. Sometimes I can't meet their needs. If you need a social media manager who's going to manage your day-to-day social media, that's not me. But I know some good ones and I'm happy to refer you out. And then I do a brand formula interview. It's an hour, one to two hour interview where we deep dive into your business. I learn
Dana Schulte:
The heart of it, why you started it, why you're doing it, the ins and outs. And then I help my clients discover their special brand of magic, put it in a PDF file, give them everything that they need. And then we move on to the brand Elixir Intensive. So this phase is done over one to two days. And we sit down and we work and we edit and you approve.
Dana Schulte:
And at the end of one to two days, depending on the workload, everything's done. You're ready to publish. You're ready to go. And it takes what was sometimes weeks, months, long projects into a few days. Now, the entire process takes about a month from fit call to end. But overall, your dedication to it, there's none of that back and forth. It's so much smoother.
Dana Schulte:
I love this new method and more importantly, I'm excited about it. So if you want to work with me, you can reach me, a comment, DM me, Dana at danashulti.com, shoot me an email. I'm so thrilled to have be here a year later to have learned so many great things, to share those things with you. If you'd like to be on a future episode of the Dana show,
Dana Schulte:
Email me at Dana at Dana Schulte dot com and I will see you next time.
