Scaling a business can be overwhelming, especially for women entrepreneurs. But Sigrun Gudjonsdottir says all they have to do is take the leap. Sigrun is a lifestyle entrepreneur, business strategist, international speaker, and leading business mentor for female online entrepreneurs in Europe. On a mission to speed up gender equality through female entrepreneurship, Sigrun developed workshops and summer schools for women stuck in the scaling process. Catch her on today’s interview with Dolores Hirschmann about how to overcome the fear of launching and how to move your company forward in today’s ecosystem where everything is changing so fast. If you’re a female entrepreneur or a woman committed to growing your online business or you’re trying to break through the six-figure mark, then grab a cup of tea or coffee and listen to this episode with Sigrun.

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Empowering Entrepreneurial Women In The Scaling Process With Sigrun Gudjonsdottir

I am so excited about my conversation with Sigrun Gudjonsdottir. I’ve known her for a few years. Let me introduce her before I tell you more about what I’m looking forward to. Sigrun is a lifestyle entrepreneur, business strategist and international speaker. She’s a leading business mentor for female online entrepreneurs in Europe. She’s a TEDx speaker and host of The Sigrun Show podcast. She is on a mission to accelerate gender equality through female entrepreneurship. I met Sigrun a few years ago at an event we were in person before COVID. I remember I was so impressed by her energy, by meeting with her and having a conversation with her. At the time, she announced she is going to launch the biggest event in Iceland for female entrepreneurs. She’s originally from Iceland. She is based between Iceland and Switzerland. She’s a big deal in the European ecosystem of cultures, strategies and mentors for female entrepreneurs.

Here’s what I’m dying to ask her. One of the things I’ve watched is her commitment to making launching an online product a fun and engaging experience. I don’t know if you are like me but launching stresses me out. It gets me anxious and makes me nervous. There are many moving pieces. I’m always thinking like I’m missing something or doing something wrong. If you are a female entrepreneur or a woman committed to growing your online business, and you’ve been worried about launching or you’re trying to break through the next six-figure mark, then you must grab a cup of tea or coffee to start in the morning and read this episode with Sigrun. I’m going to ask her how we overcome the fear of launching and how do we move our company forward in the ecosystem that we’re living in now where everything is changing so fast. Grab that cup of tea and get cozy.

—

I am excited to welcome our dear friend and colleague that we’ve known for from the previous COVID years when we could travel and hang out. We met in Arizona in 2019. Sigrun is a lifestyle entrepreneur. She’s a business strategist and international speaker. She’s the leading mentor for female online entrepreneurs in Europe. She’s a TEDx speaker and host of The Sigrun Show Podcast, which you got some awards on. She’s on a mission to accelerate gender equality through female entrepreneurship. Sigrun, welcome to the Masters In Clarity podcast. I’m so excited to have you.

I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Let’s start a little bit with the journey. Now everything is clear. You know what you’re doing. Your team is growing. You’re full-on, but was it that way always? Where does all of this come from?

I started my one-woman show. I thought at the beginning that I was just going to have this small business where I would replace my previous income. I was a CEO for ten years of small businesses. The largest business I run had 75 employees. My favorite size of business was around 20, 25 people. Never in a million years did I think I would grow my business. We have twenty right now and we’re probably going to grow to 25 before the end of the summer of 2021. This is how most female-led service-based businesses start. It’s more out of necessity. You’ve maybe lost a job or gone through some hardships somewhere. I don’t know many women who start a business just because, “I want to start a business.”

There’s something that has happened, whether it’s personal or business or corporate. They’ve had children or come through a divorce. In my case, I was sick for seven months. That made me think, do I want to sit at a desk, work for other people and run other people’s businesses when I’m not feeling well and I cannot control my own time? I also found myself in Switzerland. I’d fallen in love with a Swiss man. Suddenly, I was like, “I cannot take more than twenty days holidays.” That’s not the life I want to live so far away from my family and home country. I started to think about, “Could I have my own business?” but I didn’t know what. I saw a few women having online businesses and traveling the world.

Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: Service-based online businesses are easy to start. You need no money to get started. It’s peanuts compared to a brick-and-mortar business.

I was following a woman who called herself the Suitcase Entrepreneur. We’re friends now, Natalie Sisson. I was like, “It must be possible. At least one woman is doing it.” That was the idea of deciding my lifestyle, which was living in two countries, being able to travel and take care of my health. That was the concept. I didn’t know exactly what I would do, but I decided what I did not want to have and how I wanted to work. That eliminates a lot of options already. With the business coaching part, I was a little bit like the guy in The Alchemist. I was running around trying to figure out another business idea that was not so obvious. Often the most obvious ideas, even though you think they’re somehow lame or everybody’s doing it, “This is business number thousand or million. Why should I do it? Why should people come to me?” That’s still a business. It means there is a huge business opportunity if a lot of people are doing it.

I finally became friends with this concept. With my business background, doing an MBA and running businesses for ten years, I could be a business coach. I also have been a Dale Carnegie trainer, so I also had a coaching experience. Finally, I got to terms with it. I started off thinking, “I’ve run businesses before. I must figure this out.” That took me about nine months of avoiding hiring help. There, you can also save a lot of time. First of all, take the obvious business idea, which typically is the right one and the second part is to get help. After I finally got help, nine months in business, there was a click in my mind. They’re like, “This is how you sell online.”

Before, I had been wasting my time creating a freebie and writing blog posts. These are important things to do in marketing but you need to know how to sell. Selling needs to come a lot sooner. It should be the first thing you think about like, «How do I sell online?» The first buyer is typically a friend of a friend or someone who already knows you, and then you can do the freebie and the blog posts and all that stuff. This is what I learned through my journey. After it clicked for me, I quickly made $55,000 in three months after I figured out how to make money online. In my second year in business, I was already well over six figures. In my third year of business, I was $340,000. With one-on-one coaching and group coaching, I got quite far. When I added a truly scalable online program in my fourth year of business, that was my million-dollar year. I kept on growing from there and now I’m aiming for the eight figures.

Let me translate a little bit of what you said because it’s so important, especially for the market that we serve, female entrepreneurs. It’s this permission to turn what you know, what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been hired before. Don’t overthink it. Turn that into a business. Instead of having one boss that limits how much time you take off, you are now working for many people. You’re diversifying your risk. You’re still working but you’re controlling who you work for and how you manage your time. Many of us women think that if we’re going to start a business, we’re going to have to be unique out there that nobody’s doing it. I see this a lot on TEDx speakers. It’s like, “I have to have an idea that is earth-shattering.” No, you just have to reinforce an idea and you do it differently. You’re a business coach, Sigrun, but you’re an exceptional business coach. You are different from others. Talk to me about how are you different from any other business coach?

First of all, most business coaches do not have experience running a business. That’s a big one. I run other people’s businesses for ten years. I’ve done startups, mergers, fast-growth and turnarounds. I did all of that. I have this massive, diverse business experience. I was a CEO of a small company. I had the actual experience of running up to 70 people. That’s my sweet spot because there are a lot of business coaches out there. They have businesses of experience but they have been a corporate executive. They were a CEO in a big company. That’s very different from running a small company and startups. It’s so hard to start this. You’re alone and you have to do everything. When do you hire the first person, when not, and setting up the business structure?

I felt fortunate that I had gone through this myself even setting up the accounting for my own business, which I did myself because I wanted to make sure it was properly done. I had done this for another company. I was not doing it for the first time. I have an MBA from London Business School. On top of that, it’s my mission. Even though I like making money and I teach people how to make money, I’m on a mission to accelerate gender equality. That is what I’m meant to do. I happened to do it through online business. I could have decided to do it some other way, be a politician or something, but it’s more fun to do it for online business.

It’s the smallest hindrance. It’s easiest to get started a service-based online business. You need no money to get started. You should invest in some help and maybe you have to create a website and things like that, but it’s peanuts compared to a brick and mortar business or developing some products. I do have clients that do things like that. I’m always thinking that’s such a big investment. It’s scarier to start when you have to invest $10,000 or $20,000 just like that before you have your first client. A service-based online business is perfect for women as it is not so scary to get started. I truly believe anyone can do it.

Take the obvious business idea. It typically is the right one.

Let’s talk about that because your focus is on women. It’s about gender equality and empowering women to own their financial life to control their economics. Are your clients, women who have not yet started a business? Are they already running a business? Who’s your ideal client? What does that journey with you look like?

I wanted to add to the previous question of what’s different. Because I have four Master’s degrees myself and this long CEO experience, I tend to attract women that are highly educated and experienced. They come from corporate or they have been an entrepreneur for a decade or longer and they are stuck. They don’t know how to scale their business. They’re stuck in the one-on-one business model. My uniqueness also comes in the scaling part. When I started my own business, I knew that I wanted to scale. In my first year of business, it was all about just getting to six figures. Once I had figured that out, I’m like, “Now I know how to double it.” The first six-figure is always the hardest. After that, it’s easy. It’s the same as the million. The first million is the hardest. Now you can get $1 million in a month versus a year, and then it’s going to be a week at some point.

They are highly educated and highly experienced. They’ve had success, but the problem is when we’ve had success, it’s harder to ask for help. I felt it myself. It’s hard to go back down. It’s almost like you have to take a few steps back and become a beginner. Imagine if you know how to ski and you want to learn to snowboard. I tried it and I didn’t like the falling. I was like, «I’ll go back on skis.» To me, it’s a similar feeling. It’s women who had success in their career, whether they worked for someone else or for themselves. They come to this point of like, “I want to scale. I want to go online instead of offline.” There’s this feeling of like, «I know nothing.» It’s frustrating. This is my ideal client. I do also have women who will have lesser education and experience but overall, they’ve had success before.

They come to me at the beginning but also later on. I have decided to have several levels. I have one ideal client. They’re in different stages of their business journey. I have a program where I take them through a ten-week period where I kickstart their online business journey. After ten weeks, they have built their email list. They have figured out their ideal client and their messaging. They’ve built their first course and made sales. This is a breakthrough for them. Maybe they’ve tried it for a whole year. Maybe they were like me, struggling to figure out, doing some freebie and not having any traction. We get this massive traction in a short amount of time. I figured out, “They have to learn how to sell the course with a proper launching method,” so I created another ten-week intensive.

My method is a little bit different from other people who teach online. Most online courses teach you how to do something. You don’t do it in the course. I have implementation courses. I give my students enough information every week on what they need to do. The following week, they get enough information on what to do. What I’ve seen with women is overwhelm. This tends to be a female problem more than a male problem.

The word, “overwhelm, stuck, don’t know what to do, feel lost,” I’m like, “First of all, let’s stop using those words and instead say, ‘I don’t know yet. What are the next steps?’” Using these negative words will make it worse for you. I had created other courses where I give them all the information, “You could do a freebie. You could do this and do that.” That’s not good. The possibilities are endless and that creates overwhelm. They look around and say, «Where should I start? What should I do next? What’re the best steps?” Since they cannot figure that out themselves, I decided I’ll take information away and limit the amount of information they get. They can get all the information later. At that beginning, especially those who are in their first six months or one year of business, it is best if it’s laid out step-by-step with a limited amount of information, just enough, and you just focused on what you need to do every week.

Once they’re over that, after women have gone through these two 10-week programs, I have a 12-month group coaching program where my goal is to get them to $6,000 and then $250,000. That’s the goal, $10,000 to $20,000 a month income. It’s not necessarily new information. It’s repetition because knowledge is not the problem. We know all that. We can read books and do online courses. Knowledge is never the problem. It’s actually doing it. For my high achievers or those who want to go for the million, I have to create a program for them too. I decided to call it Red Circle because red is my favorite color.

Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: When you’ve had success, it’s harder to go back down and ask for help. It’s like you have to take a few steps back and become a beginner.

Let me ask you a couple of questions. COVID has changed a lot of things. In the online world, it’s become very noisy and crowded. I follow you. I know you’re successful in teaching and guiding people through online launches. There’s so much information, misinformation and programs out there that tell you, «You buy this program, you’ll launch and get your money back.» It doesn’t usually work out that way. I know from my clients and my experience that sometimes for women, launching creates a whole emotional journey of dread. I’ve had a client that’s like, “I want to throw up.” How do you help women navigate the launch especially in a world where Facebook ads are incredibly expensive? How do you get traffic and get something to work for women that are just starting?

That’s why I created this launch program. It’s interesting that I didn’t have a launch program all these years because I love launching. It is something I’ve been doing now for several years. First of all, I have to pick one launch method that I know works. If you hear about all the methods, it’ll be overwhelm, stuck, lost and all these horrible words that make it worse for ourselves. I pick one launch method that I know works and that I’ve been using over the years. We guide them through and then I help them. I don’t call it a sales pitch but we put all the workshops. I tell everyone to do the same thing and they all have to do it on the same day.

For instance, I have 100 women doing a workshop on the same day. This benefits them and me in many ways because I can promote, «Here are 100 workshops you could participate in, pick one that you like.» I bring my participants sign-ups. They promote each other because I’m telling them, “This is collaboration. This is not just about you getting sign-ups. You need to help your colleagues also get sign-ups because they might be a friend of yours that’s not interested in what you teach but interested in what some other teaches.” They organically get sign-ups. On top of that, we do teach them Facebook ads. I have a Facebook ads coach on the team. This was missing in programs that I saw a few years ago but I see a lot of others have picked this up as well.

We have a Facebook ad coach and sees on it. It’s challenging for those who have never run ads before. They’ve never even promoted their workshop before. I’ll tell them to go for it. Whatever happens, you have to go through it. It’s like a snowboard example. You’re not going to be a good snowboarder on day one. You’re going to fall down the hill. The first time you run Facebook ads, it’s not going to be great but it’s better you do it, learn something from it and get some sign-ups. That’s how you get started. Facebook ads have gotten tricky. I’ve lost two Facebook ad accounts. I’m personally banned from doing ads. My page is banned. It’s gone crazy but I tell everyone, “It should not deter you from trying because there’s always a way.” I went ahead and created a new page. We’re running ads.

There’s always a solution out there. We dip our toes into the water and try it out. Ads are not that expensive if you do it properly. That’s what they need to learn. It takes a lot of testing, but step-by-step and all doing it at the same time because that’s also where everyone is feeling the same. The emotions come up. If you launch for the first time, it’s stressful but collectively, you have always someone to turn to and a shoulder to cry on, and then you can celebrate that you did it. I have this thing I post in the group like, «How proud are you of yourself that you did your very first workshop? Show me with a gift.» I see the whole gift library come up and it makes me proud to have women do all these firsts. It’s the first workshop, first Facebook ad and first Facebook live. I love it and at the same time, I’m in another program, helping someone have their first multiple six-figure launch.

I love what you’re saying and focusing on women because it doesn’t matter how you do the business thing. We still have to do it. Parts of it are fun, very intimidating and overwhelming. You’ve done such a great job of building a community around it. You can tell on how you talk about your ladies that there is a passion behind it. You’re a family. Families are doing something challenging together. It’s so much easier knowing that you’re not the only one who didn’t get the email right or who got a workshop with three sign-ups or whatever it is. It’s the first time you ride the bike. In Masters In Clarity, our company, we help people master their own clarity. You and I know that people, especially women, need to know everything before they take action. Sometimes that hurts because action sometimes brings clarity. Most times, clarity doesn’t come from a vacuum. It comes from being in the field and trying and testing. How much clarity do you personally need to take action?

I don’t need a lot. I use this as an example. I wanted a Peloton. Peloton does not ship to Iceland nor Switzerland. I happened to live in both places. Since I’m spending most of the time in Iceland right now because of COVID and I bought a new place, I wanted it here. When the computer says, «It’s not possible,” I want it even more. If I was the person that has to know everything before I do it, I would figure out how to transport it to Iceland before I buy it. I didn’t because I know it delays the whole process. I’m confident that I’ll figure it out. It might be complicated. It might be expensive, but I will not make that deter me from doing it because I want this bike.

One problem most women have over men is being overwhelmed.

I ordered the bike and it says 7 to 8 weeks order time. I asked a friend of mine who lives in Northern Germany if I can ship it to his place because Peloton does not also want to ship to a shipping company. That would be the easiest. They also don’t want to ship in a box. They want to install it at your place. More hurdles on the way. I’ll ship it to my friend who lives half an hour away from the harbor so that’s perfect. I asked my friend if he knows anyone who can build a box for me? He finds a carpenter 2 kilometers away. The carpenter picks up the bike at his place, takes it to his place and built a wooden box. The bike is already put together except the big monitor is not on top. The big monitor is in a box. He gets it like that, but they did not want to leave a box around the bike, which is ridiculous. It is what it is.

This carpenter builds a wooden box. That was another $250 but I thought that’s okay. The shipping company that I found picks up the bike from the carpenter in the wooden box. It went on the ship. As we’re speaking, it is on the ship on the way to Iceland. When it arrives in Iceland, I have to order a big car to ship the box to my home. I have to open up the box on the street because I live in an apartment building. Someone has to bring up the Peloton. If you think about all of this, most people won’t do it because it’s not important.

It’s the same with my Self-Made Summit, which is finally happening in 2022. I’ve had to postpone it twice because of COVID. I’ve made no financial losses and very few refunds. Everybody’s willing to wait. I booked the venue. When I booked the venue originally, that was one and a half years before the first date where it was supposed to happen. I had not decided what the conference was about, the name of it, who was going to come and who was going to speak. I booked the venue because I knew when you book the venue, you’re going to have to figure it out. I came up with the saying, “Put a date on your dream, the rest is logistics.”

We have a Peloton event coming up. It’s going to be the Peloton unveiling. We have a huge event on June 20, 2022 in Iceland that I am going to go to. I’m going to make a commitment right now to be there. I want to go to Iceland, so why not make a whole trip around it? You’re going to have your event and your Peloton. What else are you looking forward to in the next twelve months?

I am growing my team. I am looking forward to changing my business and possibly business model a little bit. I’ve talked about Facebook ads being tricky. I see some disruption coming up. Sometimes this is like you feel it’s bubbling in your head. I feel some changes are coming to my business in a good way because I want to make things easier for myself, for my team and my clients. Whatever that is, that will be unraveled. What I’m most excited about is I am running this training, online business summer school. I’m frustrated about women taking a break in the summer. How it all started? In 2017, I created my first scalable program and that was my first million-dollar year.

I was proud. I created twelve modules. It was supposed to be one year program because I thought the short 6, 8, 10-week programs were not good enough. I’ve learned my lesson. People don’t want twelve-month programs necessarily. They want intensive, short spurts of energy and then they want to take a bit of a break. I created this program. I have people in the program and then it comes to Spring 2018. It’s about a year and a half into my scalable program. I’m so proud of the content I’m creating. It’s taking me a lot of effort. Creating content is much harder for me than doing a podcast interview or something. It’s like pulling teeth for me. I’m there and people are not using it in the way that I hoped for.

I had success stories. I had women doing great things. Probably the 10% are going to be successful anyway, whatever you put in front of them. There’s always going to be 10% that will never do anything. The people that we need to focus on are the 80%. How do we get the 80% to do the work? I realized that was on me. They had bought my program and I had all this amazing content but something was missing to make them take action. I was thinking like, “What can I do?” When I get frustrated, I get my best ideas. I was like, “I’ve got to put on a summer school.” The program was called SOMBA, Sigrun’s Online MBA.

Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: People don’t want twelve-month programs. They want intensive, short spurts of energy and then they want to take a bit of a break.

I decided SOMBA summer school is coming. I didn’t tell them what it was. That was so cool. I wish I could relive this every summer. Nobody knew what it was. They just knew that something exciting was coming and then I announced it, “You’re going to create an online course this summer. It’s for four weeks. It’s free and I’m going to advertise it for you. Who’s in?” Half of the paying clients are. This was only for paying clients, this wasn’t free. This was eight weeks at the time. Later, I changed it to ten weeks but this was the ten-week intensive that I created in 2018. First, it was like a challenge inside my program. I loved running it. It cost me a lot of energy. There was no content created. I knew what they needed to do and I was going to get them to do it. They were not going to waste another summer doing nothing in their business.

The following year, they were starting to send me emails in February, March, April, “Are you doing it again?” They were not doing anything. They waited for the next summer. They were super excited. I’m like, “I’ll do it again.” The 50%, 60% of people in the program participated with amazing success stories. People are having $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 launches. After a four-week free course, I added a surprise, “I’ll teach you how to do an upsell.” It wasn’t just about creating a course. They were learning how to sell another program right after the free course. After that experience, I went to my mastermind and said, “I’m onto something.” It’s this challenge type of a program inside my program. This is my real gem. This is what I like. It’s this energy. I’m a little bit of a slave driver. I like to push people and inspire them to take action. This is much more me, but I cannot do this all the time. This is tiring and they said, “Hire someone else to run it.” I’m like, “Can you do that? That feels like cheating,” but I did.

In September 2019, I decided to change the name to SOMBA Kickstart. We created a ten-week intensive and that’s now my main program. This is where I had a $1 million launch in January 2021. This is my main program where I get people in and then they move through other programs with me. I also had a winner. I have someone who wins the whole competition, the challenge. The winner from 2018, I went to her and said, “Would you be willing to run this with me?” She became my first SOMBA head coach in my business. I have 8 or 10 coaches on my team now. I realized I couldn’t do it on my own. We started to do this together. She became the program manager for this program. I created all the videos and the content. I’m active in the Facebook group, but I realized the coaching has to be done by someone else. I cannot be this full-on energy all the time. It’s amazing how this has turned into my program.

I decided to still run it in summer. I have a January version and then I have a June version, SOMBA summer school, which I started in July to be correct. I was thinking, “How do I launch this program?” I was like, “All these women are taking a break in the summer. I’m going to do an online business summer school for free.” I’m teaching them a four-week training. Anyone can come and they will make progress in their business, whether they buy the program or not. That’s what I’m truly excited about. I was looking at some statistics when I was deciding this. Ninety percent of female-owned businesses make less than six figures. They have no employees, which doesn’t help the economy.

I remember when I visited the US, the first thing they talk about when they’re talking about the economy is how many jobs have been added. If you’re not adding a job to the economy, you’re a freelancer. You’re not putting on the wheels. You’re not helping others in that sense. What shocked me even more, 1/3 of businesses in the US are started by women but they make 4% of the overall revenue. I’d read the book, Outliers, several years ago. Have you read that book?

I haven’t, but it’s in my book list.

In the book, he talks about a study done in Baltimore about children and their reading skills. It was about whether rich or poor kids would fare better. It was a study around that or make a class. They followed them for four years. If you measured their reading skills at the beginning and at the end of the school year, it was similar. It didn’t matter what background you had or what you did at home. What you learned in school seemed to be equal. They measured their reading skills from the end of the school year to the start of the school year over the summer. The rich kids had improved their reading skills because their parents told them to read at home.

When starting a business, knowledge is never the problem. It’s doing it.

The school year came again and the kids caught up a little bit, the ones who had not been reading, but the others improved more. Over four years, it was a difference of what they call 52 points. This is my theory and what I’m so excited about. I’ve done a podcast episode on it. Probably this is going to be some articles. I’m making these connections. I’m like, “Baltimore school kids, I have female entrepreneurs and I don’t care what their background is, rich, middle class or poor, that’s not the issue here. Most take a break in the summer. Those who don’t, where do you think they’re at?” These are the ones that make six figures. The 90% are always below six figures because they take a break in the summer. If I can do anything about that, if I can start to talk about it this way, I hope that others see it this way. We can take a holiday. People are like, “The kids are on break.”

Everybody, even employees take it. You’re talking about July and August.

Three to four months. If I talk to a woman at the end of April, «When are you going to do your next marketing campaign?» They say, «September.» That makes me furious. My new tagline is, “When others take a break, we build our business.”

Thank you so much, Sigrun. You’ve shared so much of your journey and information. For those reading, I wanted to check out this summer program. I signed up for it myself. We have Outlier as a book that everybody should go and get right away. I know you love the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. Where can people find you or even sign up for the summer program?

The best way to find me is The Sigrun Show podcast. If you’re already listening to a podcast, you will like to listen to another one. I invite you to join the Online Business Summer School Program. It’s running the whole month of June 2021. It’s Sigrun.com/Join-SummerSchool. You can check out my website, Sigrun.com.

Any parting words?

Don’t take a break in the summer.

Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: 90% of entrepreneurs take a break in the summer. Those who don’t are the ones that make six figures.

Have fun but don’t take a break in the summer. Thank you so much, Sigrun, for joining us and giving us this time with invaluable information.

Thank you so much for having me.

—

I had the best conversation with Sigrun. Here’s what we talked about. First of all, she told us a story about her Peloton bike. If you’ve been following her online, you probably have heard parts of this. In her story about her Peloton bike, she breaks down what commitment looks like. What she shared is she wanted this Peloton bike and that experience for working out. Getting that Peloton bike to Iceland is almost impossible because Peloton doesn’t ship to Iceland because it was a logistics nightmare, but all she needed to do is commit to getting that bike to her apartment in Iceland, and second, get creative on how to go about it.

The way she did it is she had it shipped from the US to Germany, which is what they do. In Germany, she found someone who knew a carpenter who picked up the bike from the port because it was shipped by a boat. The carpenter grabbed the bike and built a custom wooden box for the bike so it wouldn’t break. Peloton sells it and they have to come and assemble it at your house, which is not going to happen in Iceland. She had that box created for the bike and then the box was shipped to Iceland. The bike was all put together easy for her.

It’s a cute story but what it talks about is the power of making things happen, the power of committing to an idea and a goal, and getting creative around it. In our conversation, we also talked about what are the things that nobody’s talking about but she’s adamant about bringing this conversation up around the gap that we have in women-owned businesses when women take the summer off. If you are a business owner and you’re a woman, you know what I’m talking about. Many of us have this feeling, especially if you’re a mom, that we tend to try to slow down when our kids are at home in the summer. It’s great to take time with the family.

She’s not talking about not taking a vacation. She’s talking about that thing that women business owners do that we cannot disconnect and take the summer off. In those summers off, we lose momentum in our business. She’s talking about the importance of being consistent and showing up for work. She’s launching a product, a challenge of moving your business forward in the summer with her SOMBA. If you haven’t had time to review the whole interview yet, I highly suggest that you do because there is so much richness in the insights that Sigrun shares with us. Go ahead, get cozy and take notes.

Important Links:

• Sigrun Gudjonsdottir
• The Sigrun Show– podcast
• https://www.sigrun.com/somba-kickstart/
• Outliers
• The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People
• https://www.sigrunprograms.com/somba-momentum

About Sigrun Gudjonsdottir

Sigrun is a Lifestyle Entrepreneur, Business Strategist, and International Speaker. As the leading business mentor for female online entrepreneurs in Europe, TEDx speaker, and host of the Sigrun Show podcast, she is on a mission to accelerate gender equality through female entrepreneurship.