"An entrepreneur is someone who has the gumption to say yes to an idea before it becomes a reality."
Bri Seeley Tweet
The Entrepreneur Coach, Bri Seeley, helps entrepreneurs create long-term, sustainable success… on their terms! Bri distills her 14-years of real-world experience into easily digestible and tangible tools to help entrepreneurs go from zero to profit. She knows that one-size never fits all, so her approach is customized and tailor-made to help each client monetize their vision.
Bri is the #1 ranked ‘Entrepreneur Coach’ on Google. She was awarded a Silver Stevie Award in 2020 for Coach of the Year – Business and a Bronze Stevie Award in 2020 for Woman of the Year – Business Services. She is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council and the author of the best-selling Permission to Leap. Bri’s expertise has been featured in over 50 press outlets including Good Morning America, The TODAY Show, Thrive Global, Entrepreneur, Yahoo!, Forbes, and more, and has been interviewed on hundreds of podcasts.
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Table of Contents
Thank you so much for giving us your time! Before we begin, could you introduce yourself to our readers and take us through what exactly your company does and what your vision is for its future?
Bri Seeley: My company helps entrepreneurs succeed… on their terms! According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of businesses fail and after COVID-19, the business closure rate in the US rose to 41%. After working with thousands of entrepreneurs around the world who have both succeeded and failed, I have seen first-hand what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. I firmly believe that every business has the opportunity for success and my job is to help entrepreneurs thrive while making a huge impact in the world.
My vision for the future is a world filled with wealthy creatives who are changing the fabric of society. I want to see the inequities of our current world abolished and for everyone to have the opportunity to contribute their gifts while creating immense wealth for themselves.
NO child ever says I want to be a CEO/entrepreneur when I grow up. What did you want to be and how did you get where you are today?
Bri Seeley: I wanted to be a lawyer! Life took me in a different direction when I enrolled in college a year early, decided to take a few fashion classes to brush up on my 13 years of sewing skills, and ended up with both a Bachelor’s and Masters in Fashion Design. At the age of 23, I had just returned from Florence, Italy after completing my Master’s in The Art of Fashion Design and accidentally created my first business.
I was working a Secretary job to establish my independence and pay for my life, but I didn’t want my creativity to die. My fashion label started as a few custom commissions for bridesmaid, prom, and flower girl dresses. After a few years, I began doing fashion shows and installations. In my 6th year of business, I was invited to show at the largest trade show in America and accepted into an Emerging Designer Bootcamp. The following year I was showing at Los Angeles Fashion Week, dressing celebrities and selling on Zappos.com.
As things progressed with my fashion brand, I started feeling more and more anxiety, stress, and depression. I thought it was because my business wasn’t moving quickly enough to reach the metrics I set, but in hindsight, it was because the business model was out of alignment with what I needed to thrive. Following a poignant meditation where I was guided to “walk away,” I closed my fashion business and ventured into the unknown.
It was while clearing out my residual fashion accouterment I found several emails of entrepreneurs who asked me to help them build and grow their businesses. They cited the immense success I had created with my business and wanted my guidance to help them do the same. At the time of receipt, I turned them all down because I was a Fashion Designer. Looking back upon the emails created a lightbulb moment for me and was the inspiration for me to start my Entrepreneur Coaching business. Seven years later, I couldn’t be happier or more fulfilled by the impact I get to make in the lives of others every day.
Tell us something about yourself that others in your organization might be surprised to know.
Bri Seeley: I struggle with motivation and inspiration just as much as anyone. I think there’s a misnomer that once you reach a certain level, things become easy and they just flow. It’s true to a certain extent that aspects of my journey are easier, but when I am expanding to a new level I face the same resistance and fear that accompanies any major growth. I do believe I’m more adept at spotting it and navigating through it, but I still experience moments of wanting to quit, believing it’s too hard, and getting down on myself for not being “there” yet.
Many readers may wonder how to become an entrepreneur but what is an entrepreneur? How would you define it?
Bri Seeley: An entrepreneur is someone who has the gumption to say yes to an idea before it becomes a reality.
In working with new entrepreneurs, this is one of the biggest challenges I see them all go through. The gap between idea and reality can be very difficult to navigate. It requires immense levels of faith, confidence, and gumption (sometimes I even think it requires a slight amount of delusion). Not every person has it within them to say yes to an intangible idea and be able to sustain the energy and effort required to bring it to life. Entrepreneurs do.
What is the importance of having a supportive and inclusive culture?
Bri Seeley: Entrepreneurship is not a journey that can be taken alone. Being surrounded by people who believe in you, support you, and are willing to help you work towards the birth of an idea is non-negotiable.
How can a leader be disruptive in the post covid world?
Bri Seeley: Business leading up to Covid was lazy. Too many business leaders were relying on the past to define the future. Luckily, the post covid business world can no longer rely on the sentiment “this is how it’s been done in the past.” Jim Beam had an advertising campaign for their 225th anniversary which perfectly illustrated this. Leaders can disrupt their industries by hosting think tanks to pool ideas, looking to other industries’ practices, anticipating trends and evolution, listening to their customers, and generally doing anything which doesn’t involve the strategies they employed prior to 2020.
One of my strategies has been to never bring on an advisor from my specific industry. I have found that experts in specific industries tend to stay within the confines of how their industry approaches business and growth. They’re unwilling to try anything new or opt for disruptive ideas because it’s outside the bounds of what they know to be true. When I surround myself with experts and leaders from other industries, I am able to learn alternate ways of approaching the same situation, thus triggering innovative and disruptive approaches to how I move forward.
If a 5-year-old asked you to describe your job, what would you tell them?
Bri Seeley: I get to help women use their talents to change the world, and make a lot of money in the process!
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Bri Seeley: The most difficult decision I’ve had to make as an entrepreneur was to close the business I had built for eight years. Obviously, it was difficult because I had poured my heart, soul, and money into something which I could no longer sustain. The positive impact this had on my customers at the time was that I had begun to “call it in” and wasn’t bringing all of my talents to the table. I had found myself getting lazy with my approach to design work and was doing the bare minimum because I mentally was not engaged with the business any longer. On the other side of closing the business and starting my current business, my customers over the last seven years have been incredibly impacted.
Not only through the knowledge, I bring to them, but also the passion. My fashion business wore me down until I had nothing left to give. My coaching business fills me up and I find myself bringing more energy, enthusiasm, and creativity to my clients than ever before! I can see myself doing this for the rest of my life and maintaining the same level of contribution to every entrepreneur I have the privilege of working with!
Leaders are usually asked about their most useful qualities but let’s change things up a bit. What is your most useless talent?
Bri Seeley: Only one living creature would disagree with me about this answer… My most useless talent is that I am the best cat mom in the whole world! It’s kept Peechez alive, abundantly spoiled, and happy for 15 years, but there’s really no impact in this talent on anyone or anything except her.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. If you wrote a book about your life until today, what would the title be?
Bri Seeley: Well, I did write that book. It’s called ‘Permission to Leap.’ Since a very, very young age, I have given myself permission to leap in areas such as: legally changing my name at the age of 14, going to college a year early, moving to Italy without knowing a single person or the language, starting four businesses, following my dreams around the country, closing two of my businesses overnight, saying yes to a remote relocation program in the middle of a global pandemic, and more. I firmly believe that the best life is one where you give yourself the opportunity to be great and to be fulfilled. If I face a circumstance or situation where I’m not my best and I’m not fulfilled, I give myself permission to leap into my next chapter.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Bri Seeley for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Bri Seeley or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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