Five Questions with Ombretta Mancini
We’ve got a brand new series for you, we’re chatting to some of our favourite speakers about their businesses, the challenges they’ve faced and how they overcame them. All in five questions (sometimes more if we get over excited)
This time we sat down with Ombretta Mancini, an Edinburgh based Certified Leadership Coach, Consultant and Facilitator with fifteen years’ experience working in the Training and Development industry. She is the founder and owner of Own Your Step, a Coaching and Consulting practice that specializes in helping Family Businesses develop their Next Generation of Leaders. Suffice to say she knows her stuff, read what she has to say below:
What advice would you give young women starting out in the business world?
Probably figure out the “what” before you figure out the “how”; meaning, when you start a business, get really clear on what it is your business is going to be about, what values you stand for and what stamp you are here to make on the world. At least, that was the experience in my business.
What happens is You. You decide. ‘Okay, I’m going to do this.’ Then you go looking for courses or mentors, or colleagues and learn how to build it. See, if you don’t have clarity around where you’re going and what you’re building, attending training or courses can become an extremely frustrating experience. You believe that the training you sign up for is going to get you the result that you’re looking for, so you go through the training but you find you can’t answer most of the questions because you don’t have enough clarity around your business idea. Or, the techniques or frameworks they’re sharing, you can’t really apply because you don’t have anything to apply them to and it ends up being a waste of time and money. Best piece of advice: invest your time, energy and money in getting crystal clear on what you want your business to represent and what you want it to be about. Then you figure out how to build that. The building part the easy part.
So, in terms of starting out, it’s always slow and steady wins the race, right?
Well, also something choosing something that doesn’t box you in. Say you start a business because you have an idea for product, right? Every product has a shelf life, it’s part of the product cycle. Eventually the market will either become saturated or consumer needs will move on. If you don’t adapt, then you end up missing out on future opportunities. If you make your product or service the centre of your business, if it becomes your company’s ethos, then you are constantly chasing the market and trying to catch up and get it to pay attention to you, as opposed to ‘I’ve created this business because it serves this purpose and my product or service is in function of that purpose’. This way, the purpose becomes the driver of the business, and you can adapt the product because you’re not attached to what the product looks like or what the service looks like. Rather the function that product serves is what becomes important to you. When purpose is driving your business, you’re more comfortable in either throwing the product out and coming up with a new idea or tweaking it and changing it because the product isn’t your baby, the purpose that that product is fulfilling is. That purpose, the change that you’re trying to make in this world. That’s your baby. Then you ask yourself questions like — how am I improving humanity? That thought process outlives any product cycle, any market cycle.
What was one of the biggest challenges you faced when starting your business?
Starting a business is the toughest personal development opportunity I ever pursued. The level of pressure and the ways it stretches you and really digs into all your doubts, it feeds the voice in the back of your head that says, ‘nobody’s gonna care what you think’. It was by far the most challenging of any of the life choices that I’ve made. But also, by far the most fulfilling.
How did you overcome that?
You never do. I still have it. There are things that now come easier to me, and then others I wiggle my way around. You think ‘okay, I can’t take this one fronton, so how can I still get to where I want to go? Can I come at it through a side door that I’m more comfortable with?’. You get a little sneaky around how you make progress. It’s not a straight line, and regardless, ultimately it’s a choice. Despite all the self-help books you read, all the coaches and all the mentors and friends and relatives and family, whatever, whoever you have cheering you on from the side lines — none of that matters until you decide. ‘Okay. I’m doing this.’ Even if you’re running screaming and shitting your pants the whole way, covering your eyes and just jumping off the cliff hoping somebody shows up with a parachute. In the end, you have to make the decision to do it anyway.
And sometimes the challenges we have are dependent on the society and social structure we live. For females, there’s often an added layer of challenges. The degree of these challenges will vary depending how you were raised, your generation and the country you’re raised in and a multitude of other factors, but there are very few cultures, and very few women that I’ve met along the way that claim they were raised in a family where they were strongly encouraged to speak up and stand up. The situation has definitely improved in more recent years, but we still have a ways to go. When your inside voice is matched by the outside world, overcoming personal challenges becomes a hell of a lot harder, because then you’re not only fighting to quite the voices in your head but all around you as well. It’s harder to believe that what you’re thinking is not true when what you’re thinking and what others are saying matches. There’s like a double validation that this thought or belief is true.
It’s lonely sometimes, it’s triggering because you’re thinking, I know it’s hard and I know that nobody has done this but please stop telling me I can’t because I really want to do this. Sometimes you have to brave is enough to say — if you don’t have anything constructive to say, just shut up.
It’s hard work and constantly raising your own awareness around limiting beliefs is a big piece of the progress you’ll make. Often, our thinking is default thinking, it’s old thinking that was ingrained in us, it was part of our upbringing. You job is to relearn to be yourself.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
I think it’s been times where people have reflected back what they see in me.
It’s grounded me and it’s given me confidence and while I know it’s external validation, it’s helped in bringing awareness to some of the value I bring to the table. I think there’s a part of us — and we probably all experience this to different degrees — but there’s a phase of our life where we think that the rest of the world is like us. That that everybody feels the way we do, that everybody thinks the way we do and that we all have the same abilities. That the things that come easy to you, come easy to everyone so we devalue our abilities. Until you meet people and you just show up as yourself and they tell you how valuable you are to them, just by being you.
That was important to me because it helped define my value, not in a validating way, but in more of an awareness way, like, ‘Oh, I am different. But I’m also valuable, just because I am who I am’. That knowledge of your uniqueness and how that uniqueness has value to the world without any effort on your part is extremely important. Just because you are you. That makes you valuable.
How do you stay motivated to keep pushing forward in your career?
It’s not consistent, sometimes an idea inspires me and it gets me excited and I’ll run with it. Other times, it’s progress my clients make, it’s a reminder that I am here to make a difference. So, I show up, even when I don’t feel like it, because the world needs me.
Other days I don’t, I decide — I’m not consulting today, period. There’s no way you can maintain the same level of engagement and motivation and passion and enjoyment. I shouldn’t say there’s no way I haven’t found a way, so please let me know if you have and I’ll sign up to whatever class you’re teaching. Progress to me comes in waves.
Sometimes when I’m not feeling as hot about myself, when I think I really should be somewhere else or have done more, it helps to look back and say ‘okay well where I was six months ago’? And just tally up some of the wins. Then I say ‘okay I don’t totally suck. I’m okay. Tomorrow I’ll do better’. So, celebrating, pausing, taking a moment to reflect is essential to progress but so is using that time to recalibrate your efforts.
Sometimes we choose to go down a certain path and feel we have to stick with that choice even when it no longer brings us joy. Some of us were taught that you can’t quit once you start something. As I’ve gotten older, I come to believe that less and less and … much, much, much, much less.
Everything you learn, every conversation you have must inform your next decision. And if that new piece of information you just gather is highlighting how the direction you initial chose is no longer pertinent or fulfilling, then please, by all means, quit. Find something else. Don’t keep at it just because you’re concerned about what people might say. In my industry, the coaching industry, this happens a lot. As we progress through our coaching training programmes we are encouraged to choose a niche. You hone in on who going to work with. It might be divorced women, new moms, corporate leaders and so on. Then you start working with that group of people or you start digging into the market research to figure out what your message is, and you realise, ‘actually, it doesn’t really excite me to talk to these people. I don’t feel engaged. That’s not what I want to do’. That when many coaches freeze, because they’ll be concerned — now that they’ve shared with the ‘world’ who it is they work with — nobody will take them seriously if they change their mind. They get stuck on ’what will everyone think?’.
And the answer is, who cares?
When you stick with work that doesn’t bring your joy — nobody wins. We live in a society where we’re conditioned that once you make a commitment you have to stick with it. But what if it’s not longer serving its purpose. Do you still stick to it?
If it’s lost its purpose continuing on the same path is of no benefit to anybody. You are better off invest your energy in building something worthwhile, both for you and humanity.
What do you think makes a business successful?
It depends on what vision you have for the business. Are you going in as a solopreneur and will always and only be a solopreneur? Do you want to build a business in the traditional sense of the word? Do you want staff so you can become the CEO?
To me a successful business is a business that works for you and not the other way around. Do you want the business because it will make you a lot of money? Okay, why do you want to make a lot of money? Because it’ll give me financial freedom. Then financial freedom is your goal — not the business.
I want a business that makes a difference. Okay, then that’s how you determine your success, focus on the end result of the business. If you build the business just to have a business, then you become a slave to it.
What is the purpose of the business? Determine what that is and then work towards that.
Clarity of purpose will determine what you’re trying to achieve. Depending on what you want the business to do for you, then you choose the model that makes most sense. Then with every one of those choices come pros and cons and you evaluate those, then you plan for the cons and you celebrate the pros. Then you move on.
Another thing to consider is the situation you’re coming from. For example starting your own business from a past as an employee requires a huge mind shift. As an employee, you’re provided with a fair bit of structure and consistency, you receive a payment every two weeks, paid vacation and sick leave, clarity of role and expectations. Running your own business works quite differently. It works similarly to how your own personal growth might work, there will be periods where business is booming and others when business will be a bit drier. The mindset shift is learning how to navigate those periods. How do you stay on course and not deflate when business retracts? Because business will never be constant and it’s natural cycle is made of ebbs and flows, your growth lies in learning the steps to this dance.
If you’d like to find out more about Ombretta, you can find her on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. She’s also speaking at our first Edinburgh event (!!) Kickass Women Slay Together make sure to get your tickets.
