182 Brooke Erol: Purpose, Passion and Profit

Brooke Erol is on a mission to humanize the workplace by helping people align with their authentic purpose and passion. CEO and founder of Purposeful Business and author of From Hierarchy to High Performance and

Create a Life You Love, Brooke shares her advice for women in business on asking for help, raising money, and finding your own powerful and purposeful voice.

Melinda Wittstock:         Brook, welcome to Wings.

Brooke Erol:                       Hi, Melinda. It’s good to be here. Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s great to have you. I’m so excited always to learn on these Friday Minisodes. What is inspiring you right now in your life and your business?

Brooke Erol:                       The inspiration that I’ve been holding onto for a very long time is to make people happier in the work place. I just talked to a lot of people who are suffering or not using their potential, unhappy, and they’re unhealthy in the same way so my inspiration is definitely to make the workplace a little bit more human.

Melinda Wittstock:         What is it that makes people so unhappy at work? Is it they’re doing a job that’s just feels like a job, it’s not really linked to their purpose or what is it?

Brooke Erol:                       Yeah. That’s a very good question. I think there are many, many reasons but one of them is definitely the job at the workplace hasn’t been aligned with who we are for a very long time. It’s just people are selling their time and making money to pay the bills but overtime as we get more conscious and we want to have a better life and a more fulfilled life, I think that’s not enough anymore. It is the industrial age mindset. It worked really well. It doesn’t mean everything was bad about it but now people are seeking more purpose in their lives. Jobs are not really fulfilling their purpose so that’s the main problem that I see.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is true and there’s such a trend towards entrepreneurship or wanting to be an entrepreneur but not necessarily. Is everybody suited for entrepreneurship?

Brooke Erol:                       Yes, so true and that’s why a lot of people have a lot of challenges about being an entrepreneur too but one of the reasons why there are so many especially in the generation is because they can’t really seem to find a place that they would love to work. They really don’t want to sell their time only to make money that they don’t like. They want to really like all their weekdays as much as their weekends.

They don’t want to wait for retirement that they don’t even know when it’s going to happen. I think that’s forcing the workforce and many organizations to look differently on their work environments and their cultures and what to do, and a lot of time don’t have really great answers yet.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is so true. Even for very talented natural entrepreneurs, life and business can be challenging, what are some of the things that are challenging you right now?

Brooke Erol:                       Yes. First of all I think the biggest one is like you don’t think you need a lot of capital when you start as an entrepreneur if you only are selling service. You don’t have any tangible products and you’re thinking, “Okay, there’s not too much investment to make. I will do a good website and maybe do it on my own. I’ll just be out there to get clients.” That is some bad assumption that I made for example because you still need to do your marketing, you want to learn stuff.

It’s such a fast pace environment that you have to is like get more skills in your plate, more tools in your plate and all of that cost money so like definitely having more capital was like something that I didn’t think that was necessary. That has been my challenge at the very beginning especially for years. Another challenge is not trying to do everything, you love your product, I love what I do. I really care about the message that I’m trying to give out there but that’s never enough but that’s never enough, right?

Do you have to do the sales? You have to do the accounting, you have to do the marketing, you have to do it all and you think you can do it all by yourself. That’s been another challenge that I had. I think those would be the two main ones that I would just want to share with you right now.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. Along the way, your leap from corporate way back and into entrepreneurship, you’ve I know learned a lot of things along the way. What are your top three go to pieces of advice for women who’ve taken that … Sorry, I’m going to say that again. What are your top three go to pieces of advice for women who’ve already taken the leap into entrepreneurship or perhaps are thinking about it?

Brooke Erol:                       Sure. First of all, as women for some reason and this is universal, so I feel like women are mostly when they grow up they want to please a lot of people and if they don’t take themselves as seriously as man do in my opinion at least, so to really do some self-development so that you know your own value is one of the main things you can do is I believe. Because unless you know what you deserve and you deserve the best of all, you can’t really use all your potential because you’re just trying to be nice.

You don’t want to say too many nos. You just want to please people. To be an entrepreneur, you really have to stand your ground and be powerful in your own space which we all have. We just don’t use it as much. That would be my first one. The second one is definitely think like a woman and know that woman and man are totally equal in this sense at least. They can’t be equal in terms of giving birth and everything.

We have biological differences but we are equal and we can make the same amount of money. We shouldn’t be always so humble. We have to really fight for our rights and to have equality in the workplace as an entrepreneur. We have to believe in ourselves more as women. The other one is there’s not a difference between woman and man but it’s just we have to really find our purpose.

If we know how we want to contribute to this world, we just have to find what is really important for us because in those, in those roller coaster days, we all have as entrepreneurs the things that we’re going to make you go and be persistent to follow your dream and your business would be just knowing that’s your purpose in life. It should be tied into what we believe, it should be tied into our values and then they will never give up and be persistent. Those would be my first three pick.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wonderful. Do you also, Brooke, work with people who are transitioning into entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs?

Brooke Erol:                       Yes because I’ve been there and I know how nice and also it’s so challenging it is. I just dropped my big job which would pay us, paying me well without even finding what my purpose or my next stop was. I have to quit because it was just damaging my soul. I really felt like I’m not being respectful to myself anymore so that’s why I dropped it but there’s so many challenges that you face when you do that or even if you know what you’re going to do as an entrepreneur.

It’s a process and it’s not an easy process, so I can relate to those type of people really well because I’ve been there. It’s not been so easy but there is a way to overcome the limiting beliefs and all the challenges and it’s possible to get to the other point that you want to be, so yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s wonderful. That heat up my next questions which is how can people find you and work with you?

Brooke Erol:                       Yes. Thank you. If it is like individuals who want to work with me, my business, my website is yourbestlifeinc.com. I offer a 30 minute consultation there if they contact me through my website to see if there’s anything I can help them with because we have to have a good match. They have to like what I can do for them, I really have to know if there’s anything I can do for them. That’s for individuals.

If it’s an organization who’s trying to find their purpose and they are a new entrepreneur but they haven’t clarified that, that is my website to go to is www.purposeful.business. There’s not dot com. It’s purposeful business and again, there I do offer a consultation so that we can see if there’s anything I can do for the organization, for their new startup, for the new entrepreneurship. Those would be those best places to find me.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wonderful. Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Brooke Erol:                       Thank you, Melinda. Thanks for having. I love to be here.