Photo Credit: Peppermint Lane Photography
Leonie Dawson is a celebrated soul-centered life + business teacher, best-selling author and passionate philanthropist. Over the past 11 years she has taught hundreds of thousands of women how to have more spirited lives and abundant businesses through her books + training academy.
Leonie has been recognised for her business acumen by being a top 6 finalist in MyBusiness Award for Australian Business Woman of the Year, and a finalist in Ausmumpreneur of the Year Award.
Leonie lives in the alpine mountains of Canberra, Australia with her hunky husband and their two mermaid daughters.
Enjoy her exclusive Business Heroine interview…
BH: How did you end up doing what you do? Tell us your story!
Leonie: I started blogging 11 years ago – not as a business strategy – but as a way to share what I was creating. I wrote, made art, ran spiritual retreats as a hobby while I worked in a cubicle as a public servant during the week. Just through sharing and connecting online, I started to gain an “audience” and my hobby became more like a business as I began to sell my offerings.
One fateful day, I decided to commit to the goal of making $30k in the next year doing what I loved so I could ditch my cubicle job. But when I ran the numbers, I couldn’t work out how that was even possible. I was a numbers-phobic, marketing-hating hippy.
And yet, I didn’t give up. I could so easily have said “Well, that’s impossible. I could never do that.”
Instead, I said “There must be something I don’t know yet. I know I can learn this.”
Having that openness to learning and having stubborn faith was really the thing that made the difference for me.
I realised that I’d spent so much time building my creative and spiritual muscles at the gym, but that my business and marketing muscles were completely flaccid. I committed to learning everything I could, and implementing, and working out the success secrets of other business owners who were making it work.
And I did it. Within 12 months, I’d earned $30k a year from my passions. The following year I doubled that. And I continued double and even tripling my business growth each year.
This once-numbers-phobic, business-ignorant hippy is now the CEO of a multi million dollar company. We self-publish my best-selling goals workbooks and sell in over 100 countries, and run an online training company for women.
And even though I now have the “success story” – I do want to share that the journey of learning is still not over. For example, this year, I have had to learn how to build and manage a team well. I have definitely made huge mistakes – from hiring the wrong person, to being passive-aggressive with my staff, to fluctuating between micromanaging and being completely and overly too hands-off.
As Maya Angelou said – “When we know better, we do better.” It was such a wonderful place to grow and evolve and heal my own stuff. To apologise wholeheartedly. To listen and find out where I can do better.
I can honestly, hand on my heart say that I am so very grateful for the rough patches in the business and for learning where I am messing up. When I know better, I do better. It’s an intense, supercharged spiritual journey where you have to face all your own fears and limitations and crappy communication skills and emotional messiness and lack of discipline, and continue honing your craft to become the best version of yourself.
Photo Credit: Tracy Lee Photography
BH: What is your ‘Wake Up Call for the World?’ In other words, what is most of the world asleep about that you would love to wake up?
Leonie: I want everyone to know:
You are safe.
You are loved.
You are whole.
And you are also incredibly powerful. And deeply needed on this planet.
And that you have a mission here. A mission to help so many.
Each of our missions are crafted differently, to bring healing into every place and space in the world.
Trust your calling, and offer it wholeheartedly.
And let the journey of business transform you.
BH: What are the biggest challenges or aspirations your clients come to you with, and what does your work make possible for them?
Leonie: Honestly? I love when people come to me and they are overworked.
It shows they have great discipline. And probably good traction happening in their company. But they aren’t being strategic with their energy.
We live here in this physical world with a limited stock of time and energy. And in order for us to live in our wholeness, with good health + a joyful life, we simply MUST learn to maximise our impact in our business using the least amount of effort possible.
Every single day, when you turn up to work, ask yourself:
“What is the most important thing I can do today to drive my company forward?”
And then do that.
We can’t do it all. But we absolutely must do the important things that make the real difference.
Photo Credit: Tracy Lee Photography
BH: One of the non-businessy things we love about you is that we share a similar appreciation for “uglie” selfies! Uglies are the new selfies! Want to play?
Leonie: I love it! I feel like I have a God-given gift at the uglies. I used to do a lot of drama and plays, and I have this incredible flexible face and I can do some extraordinary impressions. It’s a beautiful thing!
{Click to comment… Just another day at the BH headquarters!}
{Click to read the full story about this gorgeousness}
BH: What words of wisdom do you have for all the emerging Business Heroines out there who are on the cusp of creating their own purpose-based business?
Leonie:
You can’t pour water from an empty cup. Make sure you are filling your well energetically and physically as you build your business. It is so incredibly easy to get depleted. We have to do business a better way than that crap, unsustainable paradigm.
Invest in education. It has the best return on investment you can count on.
Having said that, you DO have to implement that education. Implement, implement, implement.
Don’t spend time staring at all your fears and self-doubt. Your job is to turn up and create. That is all. Do what is important. Put your fear blinkers on. And become a monk to your dreams.
Special Offer from Heroine Leonie Dawson!
Grab the FREE Biz + Blog Star Workbook + find out:
How to get a super profitable business super quickly
7 ways to get 20,000 blog readers
How to have a one million dollar idea
Tips, tools + tricks to garnering a HUGE audience
How to charge for your stuff (the question EVERYONE asks!)
How to make lots of gorgeous abundance online using your creative + soulful gifts
& how to not go bonkerdoodles & (OMG!) have glorious fun as you do it!