In this episode of Turning Lemons Into Lemonade, you’ll hear from Janneke den Draak. Janneke is from the Netherlands and is blazing a trail of coaching and online courses in a country where that isn’t the norm!
Janneke started her business through two key circumstances that forced her into a life of entrepreneurship. First, she had been an IT engineer who at the age of 28 was diagnosed with repetitive motion syndrome – meaning that she could no longer use her arms and hands at a computer any more – leaving her with an inability to do a LOT of different types of jobs – not just the one for which she had been trained!
In the days prior to Google – Janneke did an internet search and found Dragon Dictation software and started learning how to run her computer with dictation. Shortly thereafter, she got a job as a consultant on speech recognition and Dragon Dictation. A few years later, her entire department was let go – and she was out of a job! Fortunately, because they were eliminating her department, she was able to contact the clients and take them with her. One of the big struggles she described as a first time entrepreneur was the inexperience of negotiating her own contracts – and how that was a brand new skill that she wasn’t prepared for!
Janneke said that one of the biggest pieces of advice she would give a woman business owner is to find a tribe of people who can support you in your business! We talked about how it sometimes feels lonely as an entrepreneur – and a tribe of people to support you not only helps in your mental fortitude, but also in the success of your business! She said that in the Netherlands, there aren’t a lot of coaching programs, or live events, so she has found that online tribes have helped her in her business!
Community is a KEY to business success. As business owners, we often spend a lot of time by ourselves in front of our computer – and those community connections are often what keeps us going when things get tough!
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To find out more about Janneke, you can find her at learndragononline.com
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