Transcript

Hi, I am Carmen Sognonvi and you will probably notice that this video looks a little bit different than my usual ones.

I’m actually on the road this week but I wanted to make this video because my friend Annika Martins is doing this thing called “celebration series” and she basically invited different friends of hers who are bloggers or video bloggers to do a post about what they have to celebrate.

It really couldn’t have come in a better week because I’m actually at an event right now called InfusionCon.

We have just signed up to use the software called InfusionSoft which is this really amazing all-in-one sales and marketing software. We’re gonna be implementing it for our martial arts school Urban Martial Arts.

As I’ve been sitting here listening to all of these amazing speakers and hearing about how other business are using the software, I’m just blown away by the crazy things that (and I mean crazy in a good way) the amazing things that these business owners are doing in terms of delivering a great customer experience, in terms of communicating with their customers, personalizing those communications.

This is making me feel like oh my god I have such a long way to go. There’s so many things I want to do and I’m just so far from reaching those goals.

So I’m glad that Annika invited me to think about what I have to celebrate because I think that it’s very easy as entrepreneurs to get caught up in what we want to happen.

I’m the kind of person where I’m just never satisfied with how things are. I’m constantly thinking about how to improve the experience that our students and our families have at our school.

I constantly want to streamline our processes and our systems, so I’m just never satisfied with how things are.

That’s a good thing but at the same time I think sometimes we need to step back a little bit as entrepreneurs and really take some time to really celebrate what we have accomplished so far.

March of 2012 was actually our fourth anniversary. We’ve been open at Urban Martial Arts for four years as of last month, and you know when I think back to the early days, we’ve just come such a long way.

When we first opened we had no idea if this was even going to happen, just getting that first twenty dollars from the first person that came in and paid for a trial class, that was amazing and you know fast-forward to today, we’ve got hundreds of students, families, we’re getting written up in the press and, sometimes I think it’s important to just step back and realize you know what, we’ve come a long way.

I especially think about the fact that when we opened the business what our lives were like, me and my husband Serge. At the time we were both working our day jobs, in addition to that we were also working nights and weekends in the restaurant industry to make extra money, so we were hustling really really hard and, um, making very little money [laughter] quite frankly.

Fast forward to today, just the fact that our business is able to not only support the two of us purely based on what we make out of the school, letting us live a pretty comfortable lifestyle but we are also able to employ three other people, that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment, in the bigger scheme of things.

So, what’s the message that I’m trying to convey? I guess I really want you to think about what you have to be grateful for in your life. What should you be celebrating in your business rather than always focusing on what needs to be better, what isn’t good enough.

Sometimes it’s healthy to take a step back and think you know what, “I need to give myself a pat on the back”. You know, there’s some stuff that we are doing pretty well.

So, thank you Annika for inviting me do this. It couldn’t have come at a better time. My mind has been blown at this event, all the cool stories I’m hearing and all the awesome ideas that I’m getting, like my mind is just buzzing about all the cool things that we need to be implementing.

So it was really healthy for me I think to take a step back and just, you know, take a moment to appreciate the journey that we’ve been on and realize that while the future holds a lot of cool stuff, we’ve also come a long way since we started. So keep that in mind.

As usual you can find me on carmensognonvi.com. Bye for now.

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