No One Is Coming: A Thanksgiving Story About Taking Your Power Back
This Thanksgiving weekend, I’m counting my blessings. Near the top of the list are the business owners who have trusted me to help them see their business with different eyes.
To explain why that matters so much to me, I need to tell you how I got here. For a long time, I didn’t think I belonged in this work at all.
Raised in the busy
I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. My dad ran a welding shop. My brother ran a hunting lodge for 30 years, hosting sport hunters from across the U.S. and Europe, and I was right there with him. We were a team of about 15. I helped with sales calls when live hunting TV shows promoted a guest’s one-week experience, worked U.S. trade shows, and cooked and cleaned for 40 guests a week.
In my twenties, I opened my own bakery with a retail storefront in BC. Business was in my blood, and I knew how to work hard. What I didn’t know yet was the difference between working IN a business and building one.
When life changes the plan
Then my marriage ended, and the direction of my life changed overnight. The bakery dream gave way to one goal: survive and raise my son. I moved from BC back to Manitoba, so I’d have my family’s support.
And... I didn’t do it alone. For ten years, I had a coach, Sandra, who quite honestly dragged me forward into a new life. From her, I learned what it means to have someone on the sidelines who can see where you’re going before you can.
Hold on to that. It comes back.
The question that changed everything
One of the most pivotal moments of my life came during a call with a legal aid lawyer. I was complaining about losing my ex-husband’s health insurance, and he simply asked, “Why don’t you do it yourself?”
That one question blew my limited thinking wide open. It was a light-bulb moment. No one was coming. There was no white knight. It was up to me. I’m still grateful to that unnamed lawyer for giving me my power back.
That question sent me to college in Swan River, Manitoba, for an office administration certificate and a business diploma. To make it work, I drove a rural school bus route from the farm into town, and I fell in love with those students.
Yet, I never thought I was smart enough for university. It turns out that was just a self-esteem issue, like so many things. With help from the Adult Learning Centre, Donna in particular believed in me, I upgraded my English from 56% to 96% and started my education degree by distance learning.
Every morning, I dropped the kids off at school and rode my bike, winter included, to the Friendship Centre to study and fax in my assignments. In the afternoon, I drove a bus full of kids home, then did more homework in my little house on the prairie, on dial-up internet, while raising my young son.
The trailer in the driveway
To finish the last two years of my degree, I had to move to a university. The plan was Whitehorse, Yukon, with a new man.
He came to pick us up. The whole house was packed into a trailer. And then he backed out and decided it wasn’t right.
So there I was, with a trailer full of everything we owned and a 10-year-old son. No one was coming. Again.
I pivoted, and we moved to Saskatoon. There’s a lot more to that chapter, but that’s a story for another day.
Someday arrives
I finished my degree and built a career as a teacher, with consulting and speaking on the side. Someday, I told myself, I’d grow that into something full-time.
Then COVID hit, and I saw how fragile my “someday” plan really was. My teaching job could be taken away from me, and I wasn’t making or saving enough to keep my life going without a job.
At the same time, I was heartbroken by what I was seeing in the public school system. I couldn’t change it from the inside, but I could control where I put my energy. I chose to stop being part of it.
Someday was here. And once again, no one was coming to secure my future. It was up to me to make more money, so I’d have more choices.
The door I almost didn’t walk through
I knew I needed to get known. Toastmasters had already given me a lot of visibility, just from saying yes and getting in front of people. But I needed more, so I signed up for a $500 do-it-yourself marketing program.
Then they asked if I’d considered their business coaching program. My first thought? I’m not qualified for that.
Sound familiar? It was the same voice that once told me I wasn’t smart enough for university.
It turns out I’d been helping people solve problems my whole life: at the lodge, in the bakery, in the classroom, and in every training room since. I’d been doing the work. I just hadn’t put a name on it.
What I’ve learned
Lately, with the mentorship of Grant Cardone, I keep spotting principles I’d been living for years without knowing it. On our Friday coaching call, he talked about exactly this, and it took me right back to that call with the legal aid lawyer.
Back then, I thought my problem was that I’d lost my health coverage. It wasn’t. My real problem was that I was waiting for someone else to fix it. The moment I took my power back and focused on what I could control, everything changed. Securing my future, and my son’s, was in my hands. It always had been.
I see the same thing with business owners every week. One of Grant’s big ideas is that the faster you can hire, the faster and bigger you can grow. And almost every owner answers with the same objection: “I can’t find good people.”
That’s the health insurance all over again. It feels like the problem, but it isn’t.
It’s easy to blame the workforce, the economy, or the generation coming up. Those things are real, but they just are. You can’t control them. Your job is to work around them and fix the real issue.
And the real issue is usually this: the business isn’t making enough money to pay someone well enough to do whatever it takes. There’s no compensation plan that lines up with what actually motivates them to become an expert in their role.
The answer is the same one that a lawyer handed me years ago: do it yourself. Make more money, so you have more choices. Choices about who you hire, what you pay, and how you build a team that stays.
That comes back to the same three areas every owner and team must become a genius in:
Sales: bringing in more revenue
Marketing: getting known
Execution: delivering, consistently
Get those right, and you can afford the people who make the business run without you.
The coach on the sidelines
Here’s where it all comes back around. When momentum starts lurching forward, owners and their teams get swept into the doing: putting out fires, picking up after staff, chasing the next urgent thing. The blinders go on.
Just this week, one of my clients was so focused on doing the work that they’d stopped looking ahead entirely. That’s exactly when a coach on the sidelines gives you an unfair advantage in the marketplace. My job is to see the next vision and the next steps, and to pull you toward them, the way Sandra once did for me.
Not every owner is ready for that. Some move at a slower pace because they are their own bottleneck. They can’t let go of the responsibilities they’ve always carried. I get it. I’ve been there.
But the ones who have the capacity to move? Watching them step out of running the business and into building it, so they can pay their people top wages and keep phenomenal staff, is the greatest gift of my work.
So this Thanksgiving, I’m grateful. For the dad and brother who raised me in business. For Sandra, who wouldn’t let me stay stuck. For a lawyer whose name I never knew, and the one question that gave me my power back. And for every client who has let me drag them forward, too.
Your turn: Where are you waiting for someone else to fix something in your business? Pick one fire you’ll stop putting out yourself this month, and one thing you’ll take back into your own hands. And if you’d like someone on the sidelines helping you see the next step, reply to this email or book a call at 306-241-4880.
Happy Thanksgiving.
— Penny
Nilsen Business Coaching & Consulting Clarity. Strategy. Results.
PS: Join our 𝟭𝟬𝗫 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗕𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 Business 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 (first two visits are on me)
10X Mentoring is Penny Nilsen's Group or 1-on-1 business mentorship program, powered by Grant Cardone and designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners get “unstuck”, break through revenue plateaus, and scale their businesses faster than ever before with my OFF System.
