We recently connected with Laryn Weaver and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Laryn , thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

At some point, most people have the idea of working for themselves. After a particularly difficult day/week/season in a job, we dream about the freedom that comes from being self-employed. Owning our own business is often painted as the answer to every problem, and the reality of the day to day work required is minimized.
Twenty years ago I made a jump from a stable, yet unsatisfying sales position to a high risk-high reward position with a new company. I was ambitious, driven, and eager to maximize my efforts with real financial rewards. At the time however, I was also a mama to four children under six. In order to make this work, I needed to have in-home help (that we couldn’t afford) or we needed to sell one of our cars and have my husband be the stay-at-home Dad. We opted for the latter, and I threw myself completely into building quickly. I still worked mostly from home, but I was out most evenings which left the bath time and bedtime routine to my husband. Within a year I had more than doubled my income and believed that only abundant growth would follow. What I was not prepared for was the pressure. I worked 100% commission and 100% of our family budget lay on my shoulders. Most of the time I welcomed the challenge, but one particularly challenging February almost broke me. We lived in Western Pennsylvania at the time, and we had weeks of unending snow storms. This was twenty years ago, so there online sales we not yet a possibility. Everything depending upon meeting with prospective customers. I couldn’t get out to sell. My team couldn’t get out to sell. Everything ground to a halt, and I panicked. Just because I there were no sales did not mean there was no mortgage or kids to feed.
As one would expect, the snow eventually stopped. We all got back to work, and over the next ten years we built our small work-from-home business into over a million a year in revenue. But that pressure and the fear it induced stuck with me.
There have been many times over the 25 years in business that I have thought about getting a job. I could just show up, do my tasks, get my paycheck, and go home. Many days that sounds so much easier. Maybe. Maybe it would be easier, depending on the job, but easy is not always right or best. While I firmly believe that not everyone is cut out for being a business owner and that is a good thing; business owners need employees who are task driven, I also believe that when we commit to owning our own business, when we go all in and put everything on the line, it strengthens our resolve and forces us to confront our weaknesses. Through recognizing our weaknesses, we grow to surround ourselves with people of varying gifts, and we become the kind of employer we wish we would have had.
My business has changed drastically since that February, and I have had many up years and many down years. My children are now all grown, and I have the privilege of being Lala to their children, but I still own and operate Laryn Weaver Consulting and share my experience with others.
Yes, I have sometimes wished for an easier path, but I also know the grass is always greener, and I wouldn’t change the color of my garden for anything. Being a business owner is not what I do, it is what I am. I believe I have followed a path that I was created to follow, and now I am privileged to mentor other women who aspire to follow a similar path.

Laryn , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

There is a line that Josephine March says in the book/movie “Little Women” that says, “I could have been a great many things.” My children chide me that I have been a great many things, and while that is true, my core mission has never wavered. I aspired to live a life on purpose and sought out ways to help others to do the same. As a sales person, I found that even though I was skilled at selling and could make a good living doing that, I began to care less and less about the widgets I sold and more and more about the team of people with whom I sold. My desire to encourage, inspire, teach, and build up other people took me on a different path. I became a motivational speaker, wrote a couple of books, and began my work as a consultant. In my life I have been a waitress, a retail manager, a direct sales person, a speaker, an author, a nonprofit Executive Director, an educator, and a wife and mother. I also cleaned houses for a brief time and did telemarketing to make ends meet once! I have never been afraid of trying something new or ashamed of doing manual labor.
Today and since 2011, I am a coach. I have tried on different titles and worked with different companies, but I am a basic person with a basic premise. I want each person that I work with to have a deep understanding of their own worth and value, the skills and gifts that they bring to the world. I want to encourage them to take risks that make sense to their mission and give them the support and sounding board to uphold their own priorities and boundaries. I am not a business coach, although 95% of my clients are business owners. I am a coach for women. What makes me different from a life coach is my background, my experience, and my expertise in business. I understand the challenges of running a business and building a family, and while my clients’ lives are more important to me than their businesses, I do have the acumen to assist them in making decisions involving their business when necessary.
I am most proud of my marriage of 31 years and our four children. The kids are now ages 22-27, three are married, two have children of their own, and all are contributing members of society. One is a stay-at-home mom who homeschools and makes incredible homemade bread. Another is a work-from-home mom who has her masters degree in English and is a copy editor, specializing in poetry. I have a daughter who is a welder and a complete creative who can paint, draw, sing, and weld just about anything. I have a newly graduated son who will be married this fall. All four of these incredible people have a strong faith, a committed and vibrant work ethic, hearts of compassion, and an unwavering commitment to beauty, truth, and goodness. Whatever else I accomplish in my life, it is the honor of being a mother to these incredible people that makes me most proud. It is that sense of pride that I desire to support in the women who come to me for guidance and coaching. My clients will always be reminded of their own worth and of their reasons for doing what they do. My success is in building a foundation that they can look back in twenty years and know they lived life based on their terms without compromising their most important things.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

America has been built on independence and songs like, “I Did it My Way” by Frank Sinatra and classic heroes like the Lone Ranger. These archetypes create the belief that we must be all things at all times to all people. Phrases such as “It’s lonely at the top” and “self-made man” suggest that success can only come through personal skills and hard fought independent effort. The real truth is more about community, collaboration, humility, and relinquishing the title role. It is difficult to argue this point though when the very foundations of our country rely on the individual stories of glory and overcoming. America is one of the only nations that values individual successes more than collective ones. With all of this as a backdrop and then add in my formation years during the 1980’s when everyone was going to be a millionaire by 30, there is little room left in that set up for lifting up those around you.
This is not to confuse collaboration with socialism, individual efforts and gifts are invaluable, but when I finally learned that my weaknesses were opportunities for greater growth not failures in moral character, things began to change. When I no longer looked tried to hide my mistakes or pretend that I had it all figured out, I was able to become vulnerable to those I was leading and enable them to do the same. We need each other to find real fulfillment and lasting success. It is a lie to believe that any one person can possess all the virtues and skills needed, and when leaders attempt to be that person, huge failure awaits them. My perfectionism led to the collapse of my business, and while it devastated me both financially and professionally at the time, it freed me from the lies of a culture convinced of its own superiority and enabled me to embrace my own flaws and see others as equal contributors to success.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The absolute best source of new clients is referrals. I no longer desire a huge client base, and I am most fulfilled when I get to work intimately with a few clients at a time. My greatest joy comes through walking alongside a client through stages of growth and loss as they find their successes over time. This time commitment and my desire to be more involved with each person forced me to forego the online courses and plug-and-play programs. This limits my financial gain, but it elevates my personal enjoyment and sense of purpose, so to me that is a greater success. Due to these choices, I rely almost solely on referrals as I spend less and less time on social media. It is also one of the greatest compliments a client can give me when they refer a friend. These personal testimonies give my work the social proof that no other advertisements can.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.larynweaver.com
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• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laryn-weaver-79964a68/
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Image Credits

Adam W Harper Photography