Meet Katrina Sawa the JumpStart Your Biz Coach and a finalist for the Innovative Women In Business Award!
How/why did you begin your business?
I saw so many small business owners struggling just to get by each month and working way too hard for the money they were making when I was selling advertising in the local newspaper. Not only that but they were going out of business so quickly in many cases that they never had a chance. I knew that I could change that, all they needed was some help, training, guidance and support to learn how to run a more successful business and I knew that I could help them do that. My goal in the beginning was to help local small businesses run smoother, more efficiently, find better and more effective ways to market themselves and get customers, support them navigate life’s challenges and so much more.
I started locally not knowing it was possible to go global. I worked my butt off too in the process and found it wasn’t so easy to make a lot of money just trading hours for dollars. When I discovered the world of online marketing, coaching and information marketing a whole new world opened up for myself and all of my clients.
What has been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
My biggest challenge was getting out of my own way. I knew I knew a lot about building a successful business and marketing and I could teach thousands of people what I knew so they could do it too. What I didn’t do was stop often enough along the way to look at my own life, my own marriage, what I wanted and what was missing. I learned more about how to “be” in my business rather than just “doing” things I thought I needed to do to become more successful. When I first learned that message and really began implementing it into my life and my business day-to-day, that’s the year I hit six-figure revenues in my business. I did nothing different in the business, I was just “being” different.
When I learned that what I wanted I was no longer receiving in my marriage or from myself, that’s when I had to take the biggest leap of faith of all. I got divorced, moved out and bought a house all on my own not knowing if I would be able to make enough each month to support myself…but I did it anyway. I learned how to love myself more and to not settle in my life, my business or in any aspect of what I was doing. After that decision, I continued taking big leaps of faith, one after the other, sometimes unknowingly. Love and faith are my two business and life mantras now, that’s what I live by.
How do you define SUCCESS?
Success to me is living a life of complete happiness. That could mean different things to different people but to me it means having a strong, loving family connection. Surrounding myself with those who love and support me first and foremost. Then secondly it’s the business success. Since my business is my passion and my work isn’t really work for me, it goes hand it hand with having that completely happy life. To be completely successful is an inner feeling in my mind, it’s not an outer degree of what we have or make.
If there was one thing you wish you knew before you began your business, what would that be?
To hire the right mentors to teach me the things I didn’t know that I needed to know so I could move faster in growing my business and without so many costly mistakes.
What makes you an innovative woman?
I have more off the cuff ideas for people when I meet them than I think anyone does. My mind is always spinning with ways someone could make more money, work less, systematize in their business, innovate themselves, create more, charge more, do more, reach more, etc. Innovative in the dictionary means to be: clever, imaginative, ingenious, innovational, creative, innovatory, inventive, original and I think that about sums me up. I constantly have people tell me I’m so creative, full of ideas, I can see outside the box and that I can see so much bigger than they can see even for themselves.
To find out more about Katrina visit www.JumpstartYourMarketing.com.