218: Why You Should Hire a Coach Outside of Your Industry with Amanda Arcone

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hey, friends, welcome back to the She Thinks Big Podcast. I really feel like this is the podcast for female entrepreneurs who are done thinking small and safe and are really ready to build a business that works for them. Today, aligned with all of that, I am chatting with my amazing client, Amanda Arcone, owner of New England Home & Interiors.

Amanda took the leap from a 30-year corporate career in commercial banking to building a thriving interior design business in a second home, ski community in Northern New Hampshire. Here is why I asked Amanda to have this conversation with me.

One of the most common questions I get is, “Should I hire a coach inside my industry or someone outside? Someone that might have a broader perspective?” I think this really goes along with the thinking small and thinking big. I have a lot of prospective client calls with the people who say, "Hey, I've been working with XYZ coach in their course or in their program that focuses on whatever industry—insert industry specific—and they're really helping me get all of my systems and processes nailed down.”

Which, here's the thing, my friends, I am sure they are. But if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably figured out that owning a business is way more than systems and processes. Owning a business, there are business skills, business concepts, a business mindset that is universal, that isn't industry-specific.

I know, because I've had lots of conversations with Amanda on this, that she has really strong feelings about this. Because she's experienced firsthand, why working with a coach outside her industry gave her the clarity and flexibility to really grow in a way that felt right for her.

In our conversation, we're diving into why hiring a coach outside your industry might be the smartest move you make. Also diving into how I'm going to tackle those tricky parts of business, pricing, hiring, figuring out what actually works for her. Also a bit, we're going to talk a little bit about why your mindset is just as important as your systems when it comes to growth.

But before we dive in, I am curious, where are you listening from today, on your morning walk, trying to pull the dog away from squirrels? Are you in the car mentally preparing for yet another trip to the grocery store? Are you folding laundry? Wondering how one household can produce this many socks?

Wherever you are, thank you for bringing me along. I'm going to be your friend for the next few minutes. I really promise that this conversation is going to be worth it. All right, you ready? Let's get started.

Hello listeners and welcome back to the She Thinks Big Podcast. I am happy today to have one of my favorite clients with me, Amanda. I'm going to let her do her own introduction because she's probably going to introduce herself way better than I ever could because she's got great things going on.

But we're going to dig into it today. We're going to dig into why having someone outside your industry coach you, sometimes is better than having someone inside your industry. We're going to chat about that. We're going to learn about her journey because she's really had a great run of it here. It keeps growing her business. All right, I'm just going to stop now. Amanda, tell us who you are, where you are, what you do. Tell us all the things.

Amanda Arcone: Sure. Thanks for having me on. I always love talking to you and sharing my insight that I've gotten from myself and my own career, and then jumping into a new industry and having a coach with you come along with me. My back story is, my name is Amanda. I own New England Home & Interiors here in Northern New Hampshire, Franconia, New Hampshire.

If you're a skier, you might know us as Cannon Mountain, about two hours north of Boston. It's a big second-home community that we serve here primarily. I'd say 97% of our clients are second-home owners or at least second-home owners. I have had this business technically for four years. I've had a retail showroom and studio brick-and-mortar for two years. We do all the things for interior design and decorating.

We do full service over innovations and construction, and all the fun, pretty stuff in decorating. Window treatments too are a big part of our business.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, love it. Listen, most of Amanda's clients, she just said, this is their second or sometimes even third home. She is on a vacation/ski/Northern New England, if anyone's ever been to Northern New England. There are parts of it that are super needy but rural.

A lot of times I hear people say, "Well, my area is different." Yeah, they're all different. This is what makes Amanda's area different where she is. All right, before we go into the growth of the business, I want you to share with the audience, what did you do before this? What was your professional background? What kind of work were you doing?

Amanda Arcone: Before that, I was in commercial banking. I did commercial lending for quite a few years. I had a corporate career for 30 years before I opened my own business. I had a lot of experience working with a lot of different types of industries, and as a commercial lender and banker, part of that job is coaching and working with clients, and understanding their financials and cash flow and those types of things.

I knew what I was getting myself into to some degree. You don't really know until you really are in it. But I understood what I needed from a capital perspective, what I knew the time investment was going to be. I had a general understanding of owning my own business. Owning an interior design business was a little bit different.

I think it is a really unusual business and I've underwritten all kinds of loans, and I've managed the treasury management for a lot of large commercial clients. It will take a lot of my own back story experience, but there are some nuances to interior design that are unique, but they weren't enough that I couldn't figure them out with analyzing them against what I knew in my own.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, a lot of what you did translated really well into interior design.

Amanda Arcone: Yeah, I would say there's a large percentage of what you're doing in this. I hate to break anyone's heart, but when you start a business, I don't care what it is, but it's 80% business, 20% the other stuff. I would say 20% of my day today has been interior design, like fun looking at paint and fabrics. Then the rest of my day I was on a phone call with my financial company. I did some other business-related things.

There's so much that you need to have from a business perspective to get in line and in order. I wish it could have been about the prettys that are some days that you can do more of that stuff, but you are running a business.

Andrea Liebross: What made you transition, though, from commercial banking to this?

Amanda Arcone: Well, I think a lot of designers come at this where they’re like, “I've really wanted to do this for a really, really long time.” I flipped a couple of homes. I always, always did my own interior design. We had a large renovation in my last home. We bought another home, a large home, a large old farmhouse that we've been slowly hacking away at now.

Of course, I never have time to work on it because I'm so busy with everybody else's projects. But I've always had, since I was very young, and I think a lot of designers, they come at this with that mindset, I have this creative side of me that I want to explore, but for me, I always want to have a design business, but I also wanted to have a business.

I didn't just want to have a design business. I wanted to have a business, I'm really interested in figuring out the business side of things. You need to be able to hack away at that, as uncomfortable as it is. I know you talk a lot about that at various points in the journey. It's continual. It will never end until the day I may need to decide to sell the business or close the business.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. You use that word journey, which it totally is. It's a journey as you learn and experience different aspects of owning a business. If you think back to the very beginning, what do you think your biggest challenges were on day one? What would you say the biggest challenges were then? Does it seem like a long time ago?

Amanda Arcone: Yeah, I know. Now it feels like it's so long to go. I knew who my niche was. When people talk about developing a niche, I don't really see myself as a niche. I see the client as the niche. My niche is second homeowners because I think your area, a lot of times, should inform what your niche is. Don't try to go on some exploratory journey of who you are and all of that. It’s like look around you.

Andrea Liebross: How would you describe the business landscape up there?

Amanda Arcone: Yeah, it's a second homeowner. By default, if you own a second home, for the most part, you have the ability to hire an interior designer. Not only do you have the ability, you actually need to hire an interior designer because you're running back and forth between Boston and New York, wherever you're coming from up to here. You need someone to be eyes on the project and to be a resource for other resources in your area, depending on what it is you're doing.

You're not just about you and what you're doing, you're about all the things that are interconnected to you. You become sort of the key that puts all of the pieces of the puzzle together, the connected tissue of what a design project looks like.

Even if it's just decorating, you still need people to deliver it and put it in the house, and maybe paint the walls. I'm not talking about just construction level, but even a decorating project for a room. I think you need an onsite presence, the availability. That really determined how I wanted to approach myself.

Originally I thought, “Oh, virtual design would really be great.” I actually tried a virtual design project. I'm like, “That doesn't work for me.” You have to experiment in the beginning, just don't trade. Maybe virtual design could work for someone up here. Not for me. I like to walk around, meet the tradespeople, see the client every week or every other week.

I need a lot of involvement. It's how my personality goes. I think you have to understand what type of person you are as well. I needed to touch fabrics. I needed to sit on sofas, just like clients oftentimes need to sit on sofas. That led me down the path of, “Oh, okay, well, I need a studio. Well, I want to do it this way. How do I want to do that?” You just have to start asking yourself those questions. How do I want to approach the relationship with the clients that I'm going to be serving?

Andrea Liebross: Yep. Again, it's a journey, it evolves. So true.

Amanda Arcone: Absolutely.

Andrea Liebross: Because you didn't have your first studio space until about what, two years in?

Amanda Arcone: Yeah. It took about two years before I got the studio. A lot of that was just figuring out the financial aspect and putting numbers right into little boxes in Excel or Google Sheets. You really have to put a plan together, it doesn't have to be complex and color-coded and pivot tables.

But you need to have an understanding of how much this is going to cost me and what's on the other side of that. That was where my banking experience and lending came in really handy in doing it.

Andrea Liebross: What support did you have to seek early on? You had a lot of the financial piece in your brain, at least early on. When you started to consider other support systems, coaches, vendors, whatever, early on, how did you make those decisions? Or what influenced that?

Amanda Arcone: Again, it was the type of client, the type of houses. I was really looking at who I am serving and who could help me serve them. I did do research on vendors, and also I did contact you, probably about a month after I signed my lease, two years ago. That was a big part of it, having someone else that I could talk to.

I had been listening to a lot of interior design business podcasts. There was lots of conflicting information. I think I also mentioned to you, I was a member of Designer Society of America. Through that, a roundabout program received my certification in interior design because I feel education is an important aspect of this journey as well, not just in the beginning but throughout.

I had a lot of conversations with folks that I had met with who understood who my background was. I decided that putting back on my corporate hat, that I wanted to have some coaching from someone outside of interior design because there was too much, I felt like the interior design coaches all took a hard line on one way or another. That thinking at the time did not work for me. I needed to seek out a coach that would be outside of that, that’s when you and I ended up connecting and finding you.

Andrea Liebross: Right. I think that's interesting, going back to the part where we talked about the journey. There is no hard and fast one way to do anything.

Amanda Arcone: Nope. Absolutely not. That's the tricky part.

Andrea Liebross: That's the tricky part. Well, there lies the trickiest part of it all, in managing your mind around that, like, "I've been doing it A, should I change to B? Because someone told me A was the best way to do it.” There's an intersection, I think, of mindset and systems.

There's a lot of fuzziness as you're going from knowing to not knowing to knowing to not knowing to knowing. Actually, I just saw an Instagram post, a Reel and there was a person describing, she was at like a whiteboard and she had knowing and not knowing. Those are two circles on the board. In between, she had this really squiggly line and she called that squiggly line that connected the knowing and not knowing, the “learning space.”

She also called that squiggly line the “frustration space” because it's frustrating when you're in that knowing and not knowing, but yet that's where the most magic is. Because that's where you get to develop what works for you.

I think sometimes, and you tell me if I'm wrong, but I think sometimes having a coach that's outside of your industry helps you get through that learning space, helps you get through that frustration so that then you can make a decision as to what feels best in the knowing space versus someone just telling you, “Here's how you go from A to B.”

Amanda Arcone: Correct.

Andrea Liebross: Does that sound right?

Amanda Arcone: I agree, it's someone straightening out that line a little. If you're a design coach and you're on camp A or camp B, they're not going to be able to get you to unwind that line to the other side. That may be where you need to go for your own growth, and where also having a coach outside of your industry, who will get to know you a little bit more versus the interior design industry.

I don't need them to tell me about the design industry, I want them to know me. A lot of our stuff is very personal when you're working one-on-one, it's literally one-on-one, and different scenarios, and everyone's life is very different and everyone's personality is different.

Where you are, you can have two people with the same identical revenue goals and the same identical business model, but where they are in their personal life, which this intersects into all of the time, it's personal, both on the client's item for yourself, you need someone that understands that piece of it and how you, as me, think.

I think where a lot of designers get caught up, or any business owner really, is that your intuition, helping thought, feeling, intuition, those types of things need to also be vetted in the process of, and all that stuff lives in the squiggly line area.

I'm very intuitive when it comes to decision-making, even though I sometimes question that, oftentimes, counsel with you is always around some of that intuitive thinking and the feelings that underline that. That was very, to your point, uncovering that in a more agnostic way, if you will, which is saying, you're going to actually run your business this way with this pricing model and this process, or this one saying, “Do it this way.”

Andrea Liebross: Even though model A works, because sometimes people will say, “Well, I've tried this. It's tried and true, it works,” okay, but there are other options that work. I think sometimes I'll hear, like I'll be on a consult call and they'll say, “Well, I'm following so-and-so's method because they told me it works.” I'm like, “Yeah, it does work. And there are also other things that could work for you. Who are you as a human? What's going to feel right for you.”

One of the things that you and I did lots of back and forth on is pricing and how you're going to structure your fees. I don't know if you want to share a little bit about that, but you came up with what works for you.

Amanda Arcone: Yeah. With a lot of back and forth.

Andrea Liebross: A lot of back and forth. Well, it was experimenting a little bit too.

Amanda Arcone: Right. I think that everyone should be open to that. I tried one way and it didn't feel right. I tried another way. Still didn't feel right. Who knows, right now I felt right for coming up on a year of the new way. Going into that new way of pricing has worked extremely well, not only for me and how I asked for the money, talk about the money, get the money, clarity to the client.

That feels really good to me. Will there be a project that I can maybe make a change to that because that project demands it? We have our first large commercial project that we're going to be starting shortly.

Maybe I change that up a little bit because of the vendors that we're working with and the margins that we may or may not get and the deals that we can work out with because we can bring volume to the vendors. What are they willing? That's going to maybe drive how I feel about how I price out to the client.

Andrea Liebross: Right. Who's paying you? If it's a commercial project, it's not a homeowner. It's a business owner.

Amanda Arcone: It's a business. Exactly. I think in your mind, just because you've made up your mind in a way, I'm always keeping my eye out for what is the best practice for that project.

Andrea Liebross: Right. It's for you and the client. I also hear a lot of times that designers or whoever the professional is will say, "Well, I think my client will prefer X. They'll want to know X. They'll want to know the cost completely upfront.” But what do you want to know? What feels right? Because you said it helps you talk about it with them.

It feels better for you to maybe do it in a different way. I feel like there has to be a marriage of that in navigating what's going to feel good for you as the business owner and how you want to present it to the client. That's a lot of thoughts going on in there. A lot of thoughts.

Amanda Arcone: Yeah. It is. If you feel good about what you're saying, by default, maybe not all of the time, but most of the time, the client will feel okay with it. I feel like confidence begets confidence, all of those one thing begets the next. I'm pretty honest with everybody that asks me, I charge hourly, the flat did not work for me.

I lost money on that model, and I tried all the different ways of flat fees and in the different phases and all the things and so many things especially when you're doing construction, even when you're sourcing, even when you're buying, it doesn't matter. I tried that for a few years and no, hourly has been a game changer for me and I feel more confident.

Also, I'm more positive with the client, too. I feel like I'm being paid my worth and my value. I'm speaking to that in a confident way. When people say, “Oh, gosh, how many hours is this going to take?” I'm like, “Well, I'm going to say 40 to 80, but a lot of that is up to you. If you can make a quick decision on a paint color and a refrigerator, then we're zipping along here. But if you can't determine where we're going to frame that wallet, then we might need more time.” Too many variables.

Andrea Liebross: Well, you're also giving power back to the client, in a sense, too.

Amanda Arcone: Absolutely.

Andrea Liebross: You have to decide how long this takes.

Amanda Arcone: Absolutely, and it was funny. I had a client at the very beginning when I switched over. I said, "Well, I'm now hourly.” Let me just tell you, that girl can make decisions after we went hourly because she was like, "Oh yeah, I like that wallpaper. Let's go with that."

I was like, "Okay, this would have been a much bigger conversation." So it's just, I think it does put them in the mindset to also be decision-makers. That was a long way of saying, "I just feel more comfortable." It's like more comfortable conversation for me versus the flat fee, which felt like it was like all these little hidden formulas that they didn't really see. Yes. You know, because you're like square footage and this is how much time it takes me to do this. Well, but just because it took you this much time on 10 previous projects doesn't mean this one. This could be an outlier. You could be dealing with a major decision-maker problem.

Andrea Liebross: This is like the nuanced stuff that I think working with a coach outside the industry, or who doesn't have one way of doing things, that's where the value comes in, because it's like you and I could have conversations about it, what felt better for you. Also, what works best, not just in this aspect, but in all aspects of your business, how does it meld best into your family and your personal life. That's certainly not formulaic.

Amanda Arcone: It’s not. No, no, no, no, exactly. Money also becomes, everybody has their own money mindset, money issues of their own self and I found that prior to doing my new pricing model and I'm making all those decisions, I was putting my, you and I talked about this, I'm like, “This is not me. This is them, not me,” and I was trying to impose myself on them because there were just too many hidden variables in the other way I felt.

Somebody else could feel like that's full disclosure the best way to do it because it's just clean, but for me, it didn't feel clean. Again, it's that feeling like what do you feel comfortable with? Where is your confidence level in talking about things and whether it's your process or money or whatever, it's like what are those processes that are behind why you do what you do, having some understanding of that, getting in touch with that is really important.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, because it's like the clarity word again. It wasn't clear to you doing the flat fees. You thought some people think, "Oh, that's going to be so clear to the client." Maybe not, because again, it's all, yes.

Amanda Arcone: Yeah, it was fuzzy math.

Andrea Liebross: It was fuzzy math. Yes.

Amanda Arcone: But to other people, that's not fuzzy math. For some people, that's okay. It felt like fuzzy math to me.

Andrea Liebross: One way isn't right. There's not one way.

Amanda Arcone: Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

Andrea Liebross: What tangible changes have you seen in your business besides the bottom line, because the bottom line has increased, we'll call it, what tangible changes have you seen in yourself as a business owner or in the business, say, in the last two years, as you've evolved into this sort of second phase of your business?

Amanda Arcone: Well, definitely having the studio space has been a huge change for me. It's allowed me to grow my client base. I do have more business, so having the studio space, and then having a key hire has been also a key driver in the business model deciding to hire a window treatment designer specifically to handle that side of the business and really look at the business as three pieces: window treatment, interior design, and our showroom/studio. We operate those three. Obviously, we're all under one company, but having a space and a specific employee has been important to tangible growth for me.

Andrea Liebross: All right, so there are a couple of other things that are very personal. Who's the right hire? Thinking about who's the right person, who's going to work best with you, what are you looking for? Again, it's like not a one as fit all. I mean, because you and I talked about that a bunch of times, like how to structure that. Should this person just be X number of hours a week? Should we give them a salary? Should we say it could be unlimited hours a week? All of those things are really personal. Again, it goes back to what feels clearest to you, what feels like it aligns with who you want to be.

Amanda Arcone: Exactly. A lot of it is your own appetite for risk. I'm a big believer I'm a bit of an appetite for risk. I also believe in hiring up and not down, even though I struggled through like quick books and some of the financial stuff, because I really couldn't find the right company for me. I finally did. So I was willing to suffer through doing a little bit of the admin work to be able to afford to hire up, hire somebody that knows way more than me.

Window treatments are very nuanced. I mean, they're just so complicated. I think probably one of the more complicated things of interior design or decorating project. For me, it was to hire that person and to hire up and then I'd figure out everything below it, but I knew because that person could be a driver of revenue.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. Yeah, see, so again, because sometimes people don't want to hire up. But for Amanda, that felt good. Personal. Then the studio space, you've had two different studio spaces in the last two years. That was a decision.

Amanda Arcone: Yes. That was a big decision. Yeah. Where, the first location we had, it, I thought, and it was, it grew the business, we got some great projects, but ended up not being the community that I wanted to be in. That's the feel thing. I wanted to be in a different community even though it's just 20 minutes away. It's a bit of a nuance to my area but I think that's something that everybody should think about as if you are going to be opening up a studio or marketing yourself in a place.

Even though these two communities are pretty close together and they both have ski mountains and they both have second homeowners and they both have big houses and townhouses and all houses in between, there was something about the community that we are now in that felt better for me. So, it was a big feeling move, but it was also a really good move project-wise because we've doubled our client base since we've moved, so it's been a good move.

But you have to have a bit of a feeling and understanding of that, your market, in order to make that decision. But it was a risk that I was willing to take to leave the old space behind.

Andrea Liebross: In that moving of studio space, there were some real practical decisions that Amanda and I talked through. Sometimes I remember leaving her messages, “Okay, just tell me what are the facts, so I know that.” Then once we clarified that, then we went into more of why do you want to move? How does this align better with who you want to be? That business community too was important.

The other businesses in the area and are you feeling like you connect with them? So again, it goes back to there's facts, but then there's also so many feelings that are involved in business and being a business owner that you've got to have space. I have my own coaches. You've got to have your own space to discuss that. It's not a formula.

All right. What's in store for future Amanda? So if we were to talk to the Amanda of three years from now, what's she doing?

Amanda Arcone: Oh, boy, gosh.

Andrea Liebross: Future you. Here's future you.

Amanda Arcone: I'm not a fly-by-the-night type of person, but I do go with my intuition. If something feels good, I tend to explore that a little bit, but it goes back to a little bit of risk management. I'd be open to taking on projects outside of my area, maybe doing something outside of the country. I'd just love to do something interesting outside of my own immediate area. So, we'll see. I keep myself open.

I think that's another thing, you can't really lock yourself into, one of the things I hated about my corporate career was everyone’s like, “Every year, you have your evaluation with your manager,” and they're like, "Oh, what do you see yourself in the organization in three to five years? You're on this track or that track." And I'm like, "I don't know. I don't know how I'm going to feel about you in a year. I don't know how I'm going to feel about that client in a year. I have no idea."

I mean, if you had told me two years ago that I would be moving into this space in this community, which is where I live and closer to my home and builders I know and tradespeople I know, et cetera, I probably wouldn't have thought that I was going to do that or so quickly, but the opportunity opened itself and I jumped on it.

Andrea Liebross: Right. Also, you still have a lease at the other place. This was one of those like, “What if?” What if I sign a three-year lease but after two years I find a new space? Okay. Then we just deal with it then. We don't know, like you don't know, but I think part of business success comes from being open to possibilities and not losing yourself in.

Amanda Arcone: I agree. You have to be. You have to be open to the opportunities, the relationships, a lot of it through your networking. I mean, I would love to collaborate with other designers.

I love the idea of being a resource for other designers. I have a lot of designers that probably come up here from Boston, have clients from Boston. I would love to hear, “How can I help you?” And work with other designers and have projects going on up here that may be challenging to get here from New York and Boston and so forth.

We've run into some situations where clients are in a situation because they've got designers that they're using on Park City, Utah, but they're trying to disappear. Wow, we could really be feet on the ground, a resource, we have a showroom, clients can sit on the sofa, all the things. I'd like to be more of a resource with the designer community down the road, and how to help them in that way, just as a resource here.

You never know where opportunity is going to take you. I just think you've got to be open and positive to it, not that you don't want to say yes to everything. But I think it's important.

Andrea Liebross: You can always figure it out. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't make decisions because of the what-ifs. It's like, “What if it all works out? What if it's great?”

Amanda Arcone: Yeah. I think so.

Andrea Liebross: All right, to wrap this up, what advice would you give other business owners who are hesitant about, actually, really anything? What would you tell them when they're trying to figure out how to grow their business, or who to get support from or should they trust themselves? What do you think? What's your best piece of advice?

Amanda Arcone: Well, I think obviously having you as a coach has been a really good benefit. Obviously, it's one of the reasons why we're talking today. I think people need to really understand, I think you do have to get in touch with yourself a little bit, but not in a way that's like, “What's my brand and what are my colors?” and all that stuff.

People get way lost in that. It's like, “Who are you? Literally, who are you?” You're not going to be able to answer that 100%, but how do you like to communicate with people? If you need help vetting that out, I think getting a coach outside of the industry that’s not going to put you back into the track of you're this niche and you're these colors and this logo and you do your things with these little printouts, this way and that way, that's not how to be successful.

You really have to get in touch with yourself. You have to really understand the financial aspects of things, really understand how you're going to make the money and what it's going to cost you to make the money. You can't start any business—and this is my banker hat coming on—you can't start any business with zero dollars. You cannot.

Andrea Liebross: Yes, preach, preach.

Amanda Arcone: Yeah, you need to sit down and do the hard exercise of putting some numbers together and putting a plan together. Even if it's just a six-month or nine-month or one-year plan, you need to have, and if you've never done that before and you've never owned a business or you haven't worked for anybody before or worked for anybody in this business, particularly you need someone outside of this business to help you through that business process.

I would say at least that should be part of your plan. Yes, get your design coach. I've used a few interior design coaches for a little bit of things, but for my core coaching from the business perspective, you really need to consider your options there. I would say get all those things together.

Andrea Liebross: All the pieces. Support yourself in it, because it doesn't mean that you need to know how to do everything but you have to be willing to use resources to help you in the areas that you're not comfortable in.

Amanda Arcone: Yeah, but you need a professional coach. You need a professional business coach because I'm on all these Facebook pages and all the things, and I hear ridiculous stories and comments and things, and that's not professional. It's a professional industry. You're dealing with high-level professionals and you need to present yourself professionally. You need professional coaching.

Andrea Liebross: I love it.

Amanda Arcone: That's our two cents.

Andrea Liebross: That's our two cents. Well, thank you for being here. This has been great, I always love talking to you because I always learn something too in the process, and I appreciate your honesty and openness.

Amanda Arcone: Yeah, well, thank you. I was up talking to you too.

Andrea Liebross: If people wanted to follow what's happening in northern New England, how can they find you?

Amanda Arcone: New England Home & Interiors. That's just the website, www.newenglandhomeandinteriors.com. Instagram, @newenglandhomeandinteriors. Facebook, @newenglandhomeinteriors, LinkedIn, New England Home Interiors, it's pretty simple.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, it's pretty simple. Follow Amanda on Instagram, because she has some fun stories. I like watching the snow personally, because she's always putting snow there. At least at this time of year.

Amanda Arcone: Yeah, I know. I get [inaudible] snow at this point.

Andrea Liebross: Wow, what a conversation. If there is one thing to take away from Amanda's journey, I think it's this: There's no single right way to grow a business. Only the way that works best for you. Having a sounding board to help you explore that is necessary. It is necessary.

Whether you're trying to figure out how to hire the right people, restructure your pricing, even deciding where you want your business to go, not where it could go, I think that feeling good about owning a business is really about making informed decisions that align with your vision, why you started this thing in the first place. I asked Amanda to remember to have this conversation with me because she's someone who's told me time and time again how valuable it was to work with a coach outside of her industry. This is something, remember, I get asked this all the time, “Should I hire someone who knows my field inside and out or do I need a fresh broader perspective?”

Amanda's experience is a perfect example of why stepping outside the industry bubble can be a game changer. Here's the thing, you don't have to figure out how to run your business all alone. If today's episode got you thinking about where you're at in your business, let's talk.

Come book a call with me. Go to andreaslinks.com and book a call. They are free. We'll dive into where you're at right now, what challenges you're facing, what you wish were different. Most importantly, if coaching can help you move forward. There is no pressure, there is no commitment. It's really just a real conversation about what's possible.

The worst case scenario, you'll get on that call in one mindset of thinking one thing and you'll get off thinking another. You're going to walk away with a fresh perspective on your business. Best case, we figure out how to take things to that next level together.

I like to say I can help you double your revenue and double your time at home with your family. Don't overthink it. Head over to andreaslinks.com and book a call. Thank you for tuning in today, whether you're still in the car, resisting the urge to honk at the slow driver in front of you, whether you're standing in the grocery store line, wondering why you picked the slowest one again, or hiding from your kids in the pantry with a handful of chocolate chips. Wherever you are, I appreciate you. Until next time, keep thinking big. You've got this.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

If you found value in today's episode, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're ready to take this learning a step further and apply it to your own business and life, head to andreaslinks.com and click the button to schedule a discovery call. Until next time, keep thinking big.