33 Lessons from a 33 Year Old Female Founder
33 lessons from a 33 year old female Founder of a mindfulness consulting firm. These lessons are based on my lived experience of founding and running a profitable consulting firm for the past 2 years.
Before I share these lessons I want to acknowledge my privilege in all my experiences (white, skinny, cis-gender).
I want to share these lessons ahead of my 34th birthday because I love hearing about business experiences from other women — so here are mine.
Here we go!
The 33 Lessons
- Don’t believe all the stories you tell yourself — especially about yourself.
2. The hustle is not for everyone but success is. You decide what “hustle” looks like for you. If I had a dollar for every time someone’s advice for success was to “get up at 5:00 AM” or “be visible” I would have 💰💰💰💰💰💰.
3. You define success for yourself. I used to be so caught up in the 10k month and six figures — and let me tell you, if that’s the goal you’ll reach it and then what. Define what success looks like for you not just revenue goals.
4. Just because you didn’t experience it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen — your lived experience is just that yours and no one else’s. When someone else tells you about their experience there’s no proof required cause it’s theirs.
5. People see 3 ways — identify how they’re seeing quickly in a conversations. People see with their eyes (they see only what’s in front of them, they judge, take things at face value), see through reasoning (they don’t see things outside of their lived experience/direct knowledge), see with the heart (see at face value & then go further to understand people’s experiences) — these are mindfulness principles.
6. The hardest decisions I’ve had to make have always resulted in the biggest payoffs. Not always what I expected, but I ended up in what I felt was always the right place at the right time.
7. Confidence cannot be bought — you have to work hard to dismantle those ingrained beliefs about yourself and it’s self-work (often unpleasant and painful work).
8. The quietest whispers lead to the loudest roars. The smallest decisions I made in my business had the biggest impact.
9. Don’t make yourself small to make other people comfortable, especially when you talk about your business and achievements.
10. If you think you have a mental health condition get diagnosed by a licensed professional. For years I thought I was just disorganized, procrastinating, a “worrier”, a day dreamer — then I got diagnosed with high generalized anxiety and it all made sense. On this note, coaches and mentors are great but they’re not substitutes for therapy.
11. There’s a big difference between chasing money & building wealth. Ugh this was a big lesson to learn, chasing money will leave you always wanting more (money money, more clients, more followers) just for the sake of more. Building wealth feels powerful, there’s a big why behind it.
12. If you only feel like you’re winning if other people are losing… I got bad news for you, you’re not really winning or at lest you don’t actually believe you are.
13. Don’t just lift up other women, help them remove barriers. I joined several women only business communities and it’s the most beautiful thing in the world to see women lift each other up, support each other with any ask they have.
14. You can change your mind as many times as you want BUT pay attention to why you keep changing… consistency is still important, so understand your need to change. Are you changing things all the time to keep busy or procrastinate or are you actually evolving?
15. Remember opinions are not facts — cannot stress this enough but opinions are not facts… they’re just someone’s lens of a situation or person. That goes for you too, your opinion is just that and is always through the lens of your experience/ privilege.
16. Don’t fake it till you make it — this is so toxic, faking it made me feel like a fraud, instead find out why you feel the need to fake it and work on fixing that with a coach, therapist, with yourself.
17. Stop looking to other people to validate your decisions. The moment you validate your own decisions it’s so powerful. That’s the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship… the good & the bad it’s all you and there’s freedom in that.
18. Talk about your goals out loud, tell other people what your big audacious goals are.
19. When you see someone who is achieving what you want to achieve, don’t go into jealousy mode (well let yourself be a little jealous you’re human, it’s all good) and then reach out & ask them how they did it.
20. Don’t define yourself by your wins or your losses.
21. Examine your coping mechanisms. My go to used to be wine, just a glass of wine to take the edge off at the end of the day. Did I think I had a problem… no… because to a certain extent it’s so glamorized for the powerful woman to have a big glass of wine in her hand at the end of the day. Looking back now I can see the big 🚩on this one but I didn’t for a long time.
22. Check on you money beliefs & money management — my whole life I thought I was bad with money… turns out I just never really cared about my relationship with money & didn’t have good systems in place (I personally recommend profit first system).
23. Money won’t change you but it will amplify who you are.
24. A mentor & a good coach will change your business — sometimes you have to admin that don’t know what you don’t know.
25. Rest should be a non negotiable & you define what rest looks like for you. I’m still learning how to do this, no one really teaches us how to rest, most of the focus in business is on productivity, competition and achievement.
You don’t have to earn your rest.
26. Have an evening wind down routine… yes yes don’t skip on the morning routine it sets you up for the day but the night time routine was a game changer for me. And I don’t mean what time you wake up/go to bed but how you end your day (is it in bed with IG/TikTok, used to be for me). My current routine is water, read, sleep meditation and zZZ. No social media for 1 hour before bed.
27. Make time for deep focus work (I max out at 90 minutes) then I take a break (15 to 20 min) then deep focus work again — multi tasking does not work, just makes everything harder for your brain 🧠. Deep work for me is one task, no distractions, no other tasks in my field of view.
28. Spend time in nature with no technology. The biggest ideas for my business came to me on a beach in Barbados & when I was sitting on a bench in a small forest/park in Vancouver. Okay to be fair I did use my notes app to jot down the ideas (but no social media, emails, work etc.).
29. The people you thought would support you the most may not, and others will surprise you — connect with the people who lift you up, but also understand everyone will view your risk taking/success through their own stories. Healthy boundaries is key here.
30. Give yourself the grace you give other people.
31. Don’t mold into what other people expect of you — I know this is easy to say & there is a lot of privilege in this also, in showing up as your true self and not what others expect of you, but it’s worth it, it’s gonna feel good and you’ll attract clients that get you & relate to you.
32. Create a good relationship with failure. I still cringe when I hear the word failure or hearing the phrase “failure is just a lesson”, sure it may be but I still don’t use those phrases with myself, instead I opt to say “that didn’t go as planned”, “it wasn’t what I expected” and “this does not define me or determine my success”.
33. Set HUGE visions and start visualizing them come true — be in the visions before they happen for you, close your eyes and feel what it will be like when they come true.
We made it! 33 lessons from a 33 year old female Founder! Hope this article finds whoever needs it the most 🤠!
Aura Telman is the Founder of 13thrive. A mindfulness consulting firm helping leaders build community at work & lead with clarity through mindfulness principles. It’s important to acknowledge modern Western practitioners and teachers of mindfulness learned about mindfulness practices and principles from the sacred Buddhist and Hindu traditions.
