288: 6 Mistakes That Nearly Took Me (and My Business) Out

[00:00:00] Tiffany Sauder: These are things I would go back and do differently. I would make different decisions around. I think my life would be at a different place had I done these things. I hope that my journey and the things that I've learned helps accelerate your journey faster. I think we all want our mistakes to be redeemed in somebody else getting it.

[00:00:19] Tiffany Sauder: I am Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom to four girls, and a woman figuring it out just like you. If you're tired of living a life of have to and finally ready to build a life of want to, then you're in the right place. Come on, let's go Build your Life of And.

[00:00:42] Tiffany Sauder: We have several new people joining us on the feed here. It's been exciting to watch it grow over the last couple of months, and so I just wanna say if you're new here, welcome. Thank you for joining us and joining me. You know, this is a place where we really talk about what does it really look like to build a life that doesn't ask you to choose between ambition and relationships, career and health and dreams and your sanity, and know it's not easy, but when you start with believing it's possible.

[00:01:09] Tiffany Sauder: Than like literally, not that you can do anything but. It starts with believing it's possible. So this is a place where people who believe that having both things in life is totally possible. So thanks for joining us in this episode. I'm really taking a look at like kind of pulling back the curtain on six big things that I got pretty wrong in business over 20 years of building the agency.

[00:01:32] Tiffany Sauder: And there's some beliefs that I carried with me, some convictions that I had that ultimately cost me a ton of time and energy profitability. Just peace at home as well. And so whether you're leading a team, launching something new or just trying to make work a little better right now, these are some mindset shifts and hard truths that I personally wish that I had understood and known sooner.

[00:01:55] Tiffany Sauder: So anyway, take a listen and I hope that these help you as you're closing out 2025 and thinking about 2026, which is so very much where I'm, my brain is at right now. I hope these six. Vulnerable truths help you get there a little bit faster. Thanks for listening. Okay. Number one, I believed that knowing how to grow a business is the same as knowing how to run one.

[00:02:20] Tiffany Sauder: I believed knowing how to grow a business was the same as knowing how to run one, but the truth is those are not the same things at all. Growing a business takes sales and marketing knowledge. It takes the ability to go out into a marketplace and create demand. Generally, I'm more naturally suited for this, like an outgoing personality, a way to like just sort of being able to iterate quickly, get market feedback, all that kind of stuff.

[00:02:45] Tiffany Sauder: Growing a business is a very specific muscle and skillset, and then there is. The running the business, building the infrastructure, building the training, building the systems, putting the technology in place, putting, having the data that you need to be able to run the business well, accounting, infrastructure, all that stuff that is a totally different tool and a totally different muscle, and usually a totally different person.

[00:03:11] Tiffany Sauder: This is not a new concept, but I cannot overstate enough how getting this wrong, not understanding that those were two different practices, two different principles, growing a business and running a business. I totally believe element three would be three times the size it is today. If I had gotten that right early, I thought I could do it all.

[00:03:32] Tiffany Sauder: I thought I didn't have the money for both roles, and I realized you've gotta figure out the right time to get both roles in place. It completely cost us growth. It cost us profitability. It cost me a lot of stuff in my personal life. Not getting that right, knowing how to grow a business and knowing how to run one are completely different disciplines, completely different, oftentimes skillsets.

[00:03:54] Tiffany Sauder: And if you don't respect that and believe that, that is absolutely true for your business too. I'm telling you, you're not gonna get as far as fast as you could if you had the other partner with you. I had to find my integrator, I had to have my find my operational partner, and now that's like a team of people.

[00:04:12] Tiffany Sauder: And having somebody who thinks like that is completely priceless and you've gotta make sure that they are also completely clued in with you, like connected with you. Culturally that their values are exactly the same as yours or it doesn't work. So knowing how to grow a business and knowing how to run one are completely different things.

[00:04:30] Tiffany Sauder: I got that wrong. The second one, it feels a little bit embarrassingly obvious when I say it out loud, but hang with me. I believe that being well known was the same as being successful. I believed being well known was the same as being successful, and I think this is probably rooted in. Where I come from and the name I was trying to make for myself and for Element three in the city.

[00:04:52] Tiffany Sauder: So I am a small town kid in the truest sense of the word. There were like 1200 people in my small town, 70 people in my graduating high school. Like it was a very small pond. I moved to Indianapolis, which in my world was the big city. And I didn't grow up here. I wasn't in a fraternity or a sorority, so, and college, so I didn't have like a built in network here.

[00:05:16] Tiffany Sauder: I didn't go to a, a private high school here, which there's a huge network there. I didn't have parents who were really connected into the business community. My husband wasn't from here. Like we literally. Plopped ourselves, you know, in a half acre lot in a house in Indianapolis and was like, here we are.

[00:05:35] Tiffany Sauder: I guess we'll start to get to know people. And I had to figure out how do I make a name for myself? And I remember sitting in my office in the very early days at Element three, opening up our local business journal in. Looking at these people, these leaders, these brands, these people who are writing articles and being like, how do I become that?

[00:05:55] Tiffany Sauder: How do I get people to know that I exist? How do I get people to understand what I believe and think, like, how do I separate myself from this great big. See of a city and become known like individually for the things I can do, the things I want to create, the stuff in my head, the talents in my body, like the leadership, how do I do that?

[00:06:22] Tiffany Sauder: And so being well known. I equated very, very closely with being successful. And so as I tried to figure out how do I become successful, it became a playbook of how do I become well known? And so we really rode and explored the like. Not like the, the awards tour. The awards circuit really hard. The Inc 5,000, the 40 and the 40, the best and brightest, the, you know, creative awards inside of our industry.

[00:06:56] Tiffany Sauder: We chased after that hard because it gave us a reason to write press releases. It gave us reasons to stand out. It gave us a reason for people to pay attention to what we were doing, and I don't think in and of itself that was bad. I still think that was smart for us to explore. I just assumed if we were being successful in all of those things, that that also meant that business was fundamentally sound.

[00:07:22] Tiffany Sauder: And that is not true. And it's a little terrifying to say that out loud, but I was confusing the two and we had to get some things really right. And it's kind of like this. Cultural flywheel, it starts to happen. It's like, oh, I saw you guys won this award, like you guys must be crushing it. Like, hey, blah, blah.

[00:07:42] Tiffany Sauder: And it's like, oh yeah. If somebody says we're crushing it, we must be crushing it. And I don't have a critical like bent to my life. And so I wasn't looking at the business being like, yeah, I'm mean the like awards are good, but we've got all this crap to fix. I was believing the hype and. That's a really dangerous game, and I know that now, and I often tell entrepreneurs, like one of my pieces of advice is like, the highs are not that high and the lows are not that low.

[00:08:10] Tiffany Sauder: Early in our marriage, my husband was a traitor. He did a lot with the market and he would always say on days we make a ton of money. We weren't that good. And on days that we lose a lot, we're not that bad. Like he more naturally sees the middle of the road. And my personality more naturally like rides the high and rides the.

[00:08:31] Tiffany Sauder: Again, I've matured through that. I think like this is the wisdom of me being married to somebody so different than me and his, his wiring. I get to see, wow, what would it feel like to like not ride the high and not ride the low? And now I see the wisdom in that, but that was not the game that I was playing.

[00:08:46] Tiffany Sauder: That was not where I was at at that time in my life. And so just be really careful. The awards definitely serve a purpose. They're an amazing marketing tool. I don't think they're bad in and of themselves. I just. Confus them for what they are. They're really marketing tools and financial like ways to make money for media outlets and for organizations.

[00:09:10] Tiffany Sauder: Don't confuse it. There's a reason you pay a fee. There's a reason, there's a big ceremony, there's a reason, there's an application fee and they're driving, you know, lots of people to say like, Hey, like. Submit. 'cause they make money when they do that. And again, I'm not folding the system. I'm just saying understand it for what it is.

[00:09:29] Tiffany Sauder: It is not actually a badge of success. It doesn't mean your business is healthy, it doesn't mean your culture is healthy. It doesn't mean your clients are healthy if you're winning those awards. Make sure that you're asking the right questions of your business if you're in a heavy award cycle, okay, maybe I'm the only idiot that fell into that trap.

[00:09:51] Tiffany Sauder: If so, go ahead and let me know. Number three, I believed moving fast means that you are moving forward. I wrongly believed that moving fast meant that you are moving forward, and in fact, moving fast and moving forward are not the same thing at all. And I have really come to. I would say embrace a measured pace over a fast pace.

[00:10:14] Tiffany Sauder: Almost every time you hear things like in the tech world, you hear about like, you know, put together an MVP and ship it as fast as you can, like first to market wins. And I just think there's a lot of pressure to move fast in business and what that oftentimes gets. Translated into is ship decisions before they're fully thought through or before you understand the resourcing or before you've thought through all the potential outcomes or before you've properly ingested it into your organization so that once you put it in the marketplace, people actually know what's happening and you skip all these steps and then it becomes a.

[00:10:53] Tiffany Sauder: Cluster, like a big mess of leadership making decisions, shipping product that people don't know how to execute on, or shutting down this technology and moving it to this one. And there's not a clear cutover plan or. Hey, we're gonna test moving into this market for a new product or a new service, and the organization doesn't understand why or what was the thinking, or if it hits, what are we gonna do?

[00:11:16] Tiffany Sauder: Are we building another division? Like what's happening? I fell into this trap of like, Hey, moving fast is a competitive advantage. That's no problem. I naturally need a very small amount of information to make a decision and to feel confident. And so that's like. I don't know, like cocaine for somebody like me, like decision, decision, decision, decision.

[00:11:37] Tiffany Sauder: No problem. I feel good when I'm doing that. And the organization was like, we don't even understand what you're deciding. We certainly don't have time to plan for what the impact is for that. And we don't have time to share with you. Like, here's some of our concerns. Can you hear us? And so they were just drug all over the place and like understandably started to get really tired.

[00:12:00] Tiffany Sauder: Like I get that now. So moving fast and moving forward are not the same thing. The exciting thing is, is that once you all start moving forward together, you can actually start to move faster, but not at the beginning. It feels very slow, but there is a peacefulness and a certainty and a confidence that comes with the security of.

[00:12:26] Tiffany Sauder: Doing things well and intentionally and completely that allows the train to be able to pick up speed over time. So, okay, moving fast does not moving you're mo mean you're moving forward. But if you move forward it, I have found it actually does give you the permission to start moving a little faster as everybody gets aligned.

[00:12:48] Tiffany Sauder: I wanna take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey. Behind the Microphone, share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life. So whether you're trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone, they're gonna help you make it simple, strategic, and impactful.

[00:13:13] Tiffany Sauder: Number four, good intentions beget good outcomes. Good intentions beget good outcomes. I believed that, that if you had good intentions, that you were gonna get good things out of life. You're gonna get good things out of people. You're gonna get good things out of your culture. That's actually not true at all.

[00:13:30] Tiffany Sauder: I don't know a single leader, I'll give you an example who says, you know what my intention is to build a really crappy culture. That's my intention. Think if you surveyed a thousand leaders, like 995 of them would say. I totally intend to build a good culture. Why do we have so few good cultures? Because good intentions does not mean that you actually know how to do it.

[00:13:58] Tiffany Sauder: And I think as leaders, I know as leaders, I'll say think, but I'm pretty sure it's no, we judge ourselves and our intentions and not our actual capacity to do the thing. Like I have always intended to have an organization. That has a culture that employees are excited to work for. To be a leader that people trust and know can lead them to the next place in their career, into their life, to have a product and service offering that clients are delighted to pay for and they see a strategic value in their business when they engage with us.

[00:14:33] Tiffany Sauder: I want to, I wanna have clients who are like, you are a game changer in my organization. That has always been my intention. The truth of the matter is there are seasons where our organization has not delivered on that because we did not know how to do it. I see this financially. People say, I intend to be able to retire at 65 years old.

[00:14:53] Tiffany Sauder: Okay? Just because you intend to doesn't mean you're going to, if you don't have the tools, if are not gonna get there, if you don't have the behaviors, you are not gonna get there. So good intentions do not beget good outcomes. And I think that we can be like really surprised. At least I was. When our organizations are like shit shows and we're like, holy crap, how do we get here?

[00:15:15] Tiffany Sauder: This is not what I intended at all. I thought my decisions were leading to a very different end. They're not. I have to make different decisions. I have to have the courage to look in the mirror. Change what's happening because your good intentions are not making good outcomes. And so it doesn't matter how well-intentioned you are, look at the thing you have, because our organizations are a direct reflection of our values and our decisions.

[00:15:42] Tiffany Sauder: So if there's something in your organization you don't like and you're a leader there, look in the mirror first. Number five, we have two left. I believed wrongly that motivating people is leading them. The truth is motivating people is not the same as leading them. I'll use like an example in my home. So if I tell my girls, I'm like, Hey girls, like come on, I have four girls.

[00:16:07] Tiffany Sauder: Everybody we're gonna need to get in the car in three minutes. Like, hurry up, chop, tap top. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Come on girls. We can do it. Like everybody in the car. Three minutes. Come on guys, let's go. Let's go, let's go. I know we can do it. Keep moving fast. Let's roll. Let's rock. Let's come on.

[00:16:21] Tiffany Sauder: Like that's motivating them to get into the car. Three minutes, everybody get in the car. I'm just like a cheerleader with pom-poms jumping up and down with a fairly happy tone of voice, motivating them to get in the car. Or I could lead them. I could say, Hey girls, let's meet at the bottom of the stairs.

[00:16:39] Tiffany Sauder: Okay. 30 seconds. Everybody meets the bottom of stairs. Aubrey, I want you to grab snacks for everybody. Ainsley, I want you to grab drinks for everybody. Ivy, I want you to grab toys for you and Quincy. Quincy. I want you to get your shoes on and meet us by the back door. Everybody, I want you to do your job.

[00:16:57] Tiffany Sauder: Grab your shoes, meet at the back door in two minutes. Any questions? Let's break on three. Everybody roll. Everybody has a specific job. They know how their piece of it fits into the hole. They understand in two minutes we need to sit by, meet by the back door. I can do a quick check. Did everybody get what they were supposed to?

[00:17:16] Tiffany Sauder: And then we have another 30 seconds to load up and get out of the house. Still an encouraging tone of voice still, like, Hey, we're all in this together. But I gave everybody a specific job. I was leading them and. They knew what they had to do. They gave them a minute to say, any questions? Are we good? Okay, let's meet at the back door and let's rock and roll.

[00:17:37] Tiffany Sauder: It's a very silly example, but I think we do this in our organizations. I did this, I was like, guys, we're gonna win. We're gonna be the best agency in the city. We're gonna be the biggest agency in the city. We're gonna have the best culture ever. It's gonna be so awesome when we get there. And people were like, I mean, that's cool like, and everything, but like how?

[00:17:56] Tiffany Sauder: Like what do I do? Like what do we do to get there? And I think in my specific journey, I was 25 years old when I started Element three, or when I started as the president of Element three. And we were nothing in the landscape of agencies, and so I had to sell people on the future a lot to say, this is where we're going, this is what it's gonna look like to get them to join me and to like.

[00:18:26] Tiffany Sauder: Give me a few years of their career and to use their time and talents and experience to help make us better. I had to sell 'EM futures largely, and I think that became a leadership habit for me, where that was what I was most comfortable with. I naturally live in the future and communicate into ambiguity, and today is the most boring part of it for me, naturally.

[00:18:49] Tiffany Sauder: And I lost sight of being a motivating leader and being a leader. Like being a motivational needs to be part of your toolbox, but it is not the only note inside the leadership package. So I use like 18 analogies right there, but hopefully you get the idea. Okay. The last one, and this is really, I would say just reiterating something I'm really passionate about.

[00:19:16] Tiffany Sauder: This last one is that I believed relationships have infinite elasticity. You can stretch and stretch and stretch and stretch and stretch them, and that they will never break. And that's not true. Maybe my relationship with my mom is in that category of, you know, relationships that can stretch and no matter what, she'll love me.

[00:19:34] Tiffany Sauder: But I mean this specifically when it comes to your. Spouse, your partner, a person that's like doing life with you. And JR and I both put a lot of stress on our marriage, and we stretched and stretched and stretched and stretched it until it broke. And I think we're both committed to that never happening again.

[00:19:56] Tiffany Sauder: And I hate that we had to get to that spot to be so committed to it. And so part of my promise to myself is that I'm never gonna not beat this drum. You have to work harder at your marriage and at your family than you do at your job. And when I mean work harder, there is no question that the hours, my waking hours, like in quantity needed to go to my work to get to where we are today.

[00:20:22] Tiffany Sauder: My husband would say the exact same thing, like he, the quantity of hours he puts into his job is more than the quantity of hours that he puts into us as a family in a week. That's okay. We really missed on even figuring out what does quality look like? Like what do we need from one another, and the same tools that we use at work to excel, like having a plan, having a shared vision, having really specific times where we meet and get on the same page and have a proactive posture towards our day and our week, and a team orientation to getting this family.

[00:20:58] Tiffany Sauder: I'm gonna say across the finish line, and I mean like across the finish line to our goals and our kids out of the house in a way that are aligned with our values and we're really proud of, and that our marriage is on track. And is it gonna be a 10 every single week? Every single month of every single year?

[00:21:14] Tiffany Sauder: No, that's not realistic, but you know what your low, low watermark looks like. And you know when behaviors and communication and habits erode to a place where it's not being fed at all. I'm telling you, that branch will die off. If it doesn't have fresh nutrients, it will, and it happens slowly, all of a sudden.

[00:21:37] Tiffany Sauder: That really sucks. And so having these like hygiene habits like we have in our businesses, you do a three day offsite for your business plan. You have salespeople come in for big conferences. You go and do big offsite plannings with your big clients. You sit down with a bank and figure out what's our financing needs for the year?

[00:21:57] Tiffany Sauder: Why don't we sit down with our spouses, with our significant others and do that? Like, why don't we do that? We're so lazy. If you have an achievement mindset, and if you're listening to this podcast, I know you do, you want excellence in this area of your life too. Do not fool yourself into thinking that it is a set of random interactions with a set of random behaviors, with a very surface level set of conversations that's gonna get you to a really rich relationship with that person.

[00:22:27] Tiffany Sauder: It's not how it works. It is not how it works. Relationships do not have infinite elasticity. Your breaking point might not be close or it's further away than somebody else's or the other person's, but it doesn't matter. Like be excellent in this area too. You deserve it. You deserve it. It's so important.

[00:22:48] Tiffany Sauder: So those are my six things. These are things I would go back and do differently. I would make different decisions around. I think my life would be at a different place had I done these things. I don't like lament that I'm like grateful for. The journey. I think it makes my memory very strong on not getting these things wrong, and I hope that my journey and the things that I've learned helps accelerate your journey faster.

[00:23:15] Tiffany Sauder: I think we all want our mistakes to be redeemed in somebody else getting it right. So thanks for listening today and I'd love to hear which one of these hit the hardest for you. Reach out either over Instagram, DM me or LinkedIn, and I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening to the Life of And this is your weekly reminder to keep making bold choices, saying clear yeses and holding space for what matters most.

[00:23:41] Tiffany Sauder: As always, if you like this episode, I'd love for you to drop a review and share it with your friend. It's the fastest way that we can grow the show. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you next time.