147 | The Mental Game of Entrepreneurship, Rapid Growth and a $1 Billion Dollar Valuation with Miranda Lievers Co-Founder of Thinkific

Miranda as a keynote speaker for the full day “Dream Big Conference” hosted by Vancity Business Babes, March 2023 📸 @hannershannahphoto

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE:

We are so excited to have incredibly inspiring guest, Miranda Lievers, Co-Founder of tech company Thinkific, who has helped 50,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their companies while educating more than 100 million students around the globe. 

In 2021 Miranda and her team took Thinkific public with a $1B+ valuation, Beyond Thinkific she has also grown numerous businesses from a small web design agency to a nationally recognized photography studio, she’s helped scale a team from 40 to 1600 people, brought in over 7 figures with her side hustle!

In this episode, we talk about the rapid growth of Thinkific and where Miranda had to be mentally to handle the growth and changes within the company, the creative solutions she and her company came up with to keep the company sustaining during that time, the challenges that she faced in her journey and so much more!

This Woman is a HUGE inspiration and we are so excited for you to get to know her on the pod!

Connect with Miranda:

https://mirandalievers.com/

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The Power of Staying Close to Customers

Thinkific's early success was attributed to staying close to their customers. They provided hands-on customer support, knew their customers by name, and adapted the platform based on user feedback.

Pandemic Pivot

When the pandemic hit, Thinkific experienced rapid growth as businesses and entrepreneurs rushed to pivot online. Existing customers increased their usage, and the company saw a surge in new sign-ups.

Community Support

Thinkific introduced the Entrepreneur's Growth Fund, pairing new customers with existing ones who could provide consulting and support. This creative solution helped bridge the support gap during the rapid influx of new users.

Mindset Shift

One of the most critical lessons Miranda learned was that many barriers and constraints in business are self-imposed. She emphasized that mindset shifts, such as deciding to play a bigger game, often lead to pivotal moments, rather than external factors like funding or advisors.

Pretty Dress Syndrome

Miranda highlighted how many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of waiting for specific milestones or conditions to pursue opportunities. She encouraged listeners to recognize and challenge these self-imposed limitations.

Continual Growth

Miranda emphasized that entrepreneurship requires continuous personal growth to keep up with the rapid scale of a business. This personal development should be ongoing and often happens in parallel with business growth.

Accomplishments on Paper

Miranda acknowledged that her list of accomplishments on paper is impressive. However, she emphasized that hitting milestones doesn't magically change everything overnight; you're still the same person, but perhaps with newfound confidence.



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transcript

[00:00:00] Danielle: Welcome back, everyone to the podcast. I'm so happy that you are here tuning in. First of all, just thank you for being here. Thanks for being a part of our podcast community. I hope you are loving these interviews and episodes I'm bringing you. I am so excited for our next guest here. Her name is Miranda Levers and she is the co-founder of a tech company called Think iic.

[00:00:24] Danielle: You've probably heard of it, but they have helped. 50,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their companies while educating a hundred million students from around the world. In 2021, Miranda and her team took Thinkific Public and they had a 1 billion, yes, 1 billion. Valuation and beyond Thinkific.

[00:00:50] Danielle: Miranda has also grown numerous other businesses from a small web design agency to a nationally recognized photography studio, [00:01:00] and she's also helped scale a team from 40 to 1600 people and brought in over seven figures with her side hustle. I am so excited for you to tune into this episode. Miranda is a total boss, and what I really love about our conversation is that Miranda is super down to earth and really easy to talk to.

[00:01:22] Danielle: We talked about the rapid growth of think it fake. What that looked like on a tangible, tactical level and what her mental game had to be during that season as they grew significantly and didn't have the team to support it. We also talk about creative solutions that the company had to come up with when they rapidly grew, and I think you guys are gonna get so much out of that tip alone.

[00:01:48] Danielle: So I am so excited. This woman is a huge inspiration and I'm. So over the moon to share with you that Miranda is going to be one of our incredible [00:02:00] inspiring speakers for our Dream Big conference happening this Friday. It's happening this Friday, March 10th, and if you do not have a ticket yet, honestly like.

[00:02:11] Danielle: Cancel all your plans, . I don't care if you have a full day of meetings. Cancel those plans. Get yourself in the room. This is going to be an incredible event, whether you're local to Vancouver or you have to book a last minute plane ticket to join us. You've gotta be in the room because we are gonna have the most amazing day together.

[00:02:32] Danielle: We have incredibly inspiring speakers lined up. We have panels, we have workshops throughout the day, and we're gonna be ending off with an epic after party, including a dj, refreshments, treats, and lots of surprises along the way. So you guys are not gonna wanna. This event, so get rid of your excuses and get yourself in the room.

[00:02:54] Danielle: You can go to business babes collective.com to grab your ticket at the time of recording this. We [00:03:00] are over 70% sold out. and I know that we only have, I believe, one or two V I p tickets left. So our v I P ticket includes a private breakfast in the morning with our speakers. It also includes a bonus dream big workshop as well, and a really incredible goody bag full of amazing.

[00:03:24] Danielle: So make sure you go grab your ticket because we will sell out for this event. And I wanna meet you in person. I know you've been listening to this podcast, you've been enjoying these episodes, but I wanna meet you. I wanna give you a big hug and say hello. So definitely come join us and make sure if you do and you attend the event, come up to me.

[00:03:44] Danielle: I would love to connect with you. I'd love to meet you and, uh, get to know you and your business more as. All right. Now let's go ahead and dive into our amazing episode today. Welcome to the Business Babes Collective Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle [00:04:00] Weep. In this podcast, you'll learn tangible business tips and strategies on how to grow successfully and sustainably.

[00:04:08] Danielle: We'll also interview seasoned entre. So you can listen in on their stories and see behind the scenes of what it took to grow and scale their businesses. Let's dive in as we discuss the wild, exciting, crazy challenging rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship. Hi Miranda. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today.

[00:04:29] Danielle: Thanks so much for

[00:04:30] Miranda: having me. Likewise.

[00:04:31] Danielle: I can't wait to find out a little bit more about you. I know kind of a broad version of who you are, what you do, but I would love for you to share, just in your own words, what has your journey been like? How did you get into entrepreneurship? Tell us all the things.

[00:04:47] Danielle: how

[00:04:48] Miranda: long do we have? I feel like that can be a long conversation or a short convers. Let me try to give like the highest level, but most comprehensive view I can possibly come up with. So no pressure. I tell [00:05:00] people that I've been an entrepreneur since, I think I was eight years old, but when I was eight, I lived in the middle of nowhere in Northern Alberta on a dirt road that nobody drove down.

[00:05:10] Miranda: But if they did happen to drive down it, they probably would've found me with my. Stand at the end of my driveway, ready to hustle . And so that's amazing. I was out there long before I had an audience. Um, but really my love for entrepreneurship started, I would say that early. And so my dad, I was very lucky.

[00:05:31] Miranda: So my dad did a comp side degree starting in the late eighties. And what that meant was, is that I was exposed to technology and a computer in the home and internet in the home. Long before anyone else. And so when the internet was still just command line Unix, like no pictures, just all texts, I was online and that gave me that really early exposure to tech and my love of small business and really just doing my own [00:06:00] thing combined.

[00:06:01] Miranda: So very early when I was still a teen, I was doing in-home computer repair and website design before, like in the nineties, like a long time ago. And that sort of, you know, continued through my journey as I like to say, that I really had the advantage of combining those small business entrepreneurial roots coming from a family of self-made farmers and beekeepers and small business people combined with technology and have ping pong between those worlds along the way.

[00:06:32] Miranda: And so fast forward most recently. Has been at Thinkific where we really started with the mission of serving the small business owners that I so deeply cared about in a way that would tech enable them and give them more than like two hands. Because one of the realities of small business is that we often.

[00:06:54] Miranda: Don't have the capacity to do all of the wonderful things that we know that we could do for our business. And bringing [00:07:00] technology to them was a way for me to serve the community that I care about in a way that gave them an extra set of hands.

[00:07:06] Danielle: So cool. I love that. I think that's so amazing that. You saw obviously a opportunity, but also a challenge that entrepreneurs were having, and I think that's where the best business businesses and business ideas start is like, how can I create a solution for these people that I care about?

[00:07:29] Danielle: And yeah. So tell us about that like journey of building that because. I'm sure at the time it was just this very new idea. So I would love to just hear what were some of the challenges that sort of came along with that. I love that you asked that. So for

[00:07:46] Miranda: those listening who don't know, think of it. Think if it is a platform, a software platform that makes it simple for small businesses and not so small businesses to create and deliver online courses and membership sites under their own [00:08:00] brands.

[00:08:00] Miranda: And going way back to early days, as I said, is I was really. Personally involved in both tech and small business. And often folks would tell me it's, oh my gosh, you should be a consultant. You should be doing consulting. So this is right before Thinkific. And I used to say the reality is that small business owners do not know that they need consultants, cannot afford consultants.

[00:08:22] Miranda: And even when both of those things are true, going back to the idea that they only have two hands and they can't implement what they know that they need to do in order to grow their businesses. And so when I met my co-founder, Greg, they had actually started building Thinkific as a software before I met them, but at the time were.

[00:08:41] Miranda: A SaaS platform, meaning like they weren't self-served, you couldn't just sign up and get going on your own. But had started from that same place of a small business owner with a problem. Greg was teaching LSAT courses, which is law school admissions testing in person, and felt like there's gotta be a better way than doing this in person.

[00:08:59] Miranda: And [00:09:00] he originally took his course and turned it into a patch together online course and found many other folks were coming and saying, I don't need to get into law school, but can you help me take my course and put it online? And that was where the early impetus for building what would become Thinkific came from.

[00:09:20] Miranda: So when I met Greg and his brother, uh, With this mission in my head of how do I serve these small business owners? And they had started building software that at the time they were selling or trying to sell to big institutions and associations that do professional development courses, that kind of thing.

[00:09:41] Miranda: But what I saw was a way to tech enable small business, a real path to bring this. To this community that I cared about. And so really at that time, like there were four of us, it was really just, it's, this is interesting. I'd love to work on this for a while. And we just went heads [00:10:00] down building at the time what we really imagined could be.

[00:10:04] Miranda: And so it's interesting to think about that. And that was just, we were still four of us eight years ago. I. We've had quite rapid growth as the world has gone online, as business models have shifted to online delivery, as we all know, but along the way, the real. Moments and movements happen just by like by paying attention to what our customers were asking for and what they needed but didn't know to ask for, and just staying really, really close to them.

[00:10:34] Miranda: Like I said, as we started with a course creator with a problem and serving. Business owners with problems and by staying really close to them. And what that looked like was we were the ones doing all the customer support tickets. I used to joke that all of our support happened between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM Cuz that was when I had time to respond to all the support tickets and my peers did too.

[00:10:56] Miranda: And so we were all in there talking to our customers every day, [00:11:00] helping them out early on our software. Half the stuff had to be done manually by us. And so for a long time we knew every single customer that was signing up cuz we had to sign them up. We originally had to talk to them to get a credit card number and upload their content for them, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:11:17] Miranda: And over time we were able to automate many of those things and I remember. The very first time that I was looking at a report and saw that somebody that I didn't recognize had made money on our platform, and I was like, wait, who is this? Does anybody else know who this is? And all of us were like, no.

[00:11:35] Miranda: Like I've never talked to that person. Like we knew our customers like by name. Like we'd talked to them on the phone, like we knew them all. And I just remember that very first time that somebody. Got started on Thinkific without us like having to help them or do things for them. And they were finding success all on their own, enabled by the software.

[00:11:53] Miranda: And so that was. An early moment. That is

[00:11:56] Danielle: amazing. That's so cool. And I feel like [00:12:00] too, like what a crazy time it must have been to be in that world kind of before it blew up and then, and then going through that season. I'm really curious like what you found and also like probably some of the challenges that you went through during those.

[00:12:19] Danielle: I feel like few years, and I could be wrong, like you would obviously know more than I would about, but I feel like, you know, 2019 then, and then of course 2020 as well, there was this huge boom of online courses and memberships and everyone was trying to put their businesses online. , what was that like for you personally as a business?

[00:12:42] Danielle: Like what did you have to go through and I can only imagine. Your mental game must have had to be really strong. I would love to hear that journey.

[00:12:51] Miranda: Oh my gosh. I'm glad that you brought up the mental game because over time I've certainly come to appreciate that it's all the mental game . And so [00:13:00] taking a step earlier, I'll, I'll talk about what the pandemic was like at the start of our business, but to the idea of like what were some of the ups and downs and trials and tribulations, and I think that we.

[00:13:10] Miranda: We inadvertently put ourselves in a good place. I think by just being really curious and experimental with everything we did, both outside and inside. And so anyone building software is familiar with the Lean Startup method, which is really about. Build an M V P minimum viable product. Get it in front of your customers.

[00:13:29] Miranda: Listen, learn, iterate, repeat. But we approached everything inside our company with that same curiosity, iteration and listening feedback loops. And so, often, I even stumble when folks say, what didn't go according to plan? Or what were the failures along the way? Because there were countless things that didn't go how we expected them to go, but that was the intent.

[00:13:52] Miranda: The intent was, let's try stuff, see what works, do more of the stuff that works, do less of the stuff that's not working. And so I [00:14:00] don't even tend to frame it as stuff that failed or didn't work. It's right. Cause when you're constantly trying new things and just iterating as you go. That's like a daily occurrence.

[00:14:11] Miranda: But so internally we built those same li listening mechanisms where we were asking our team, what do you want to, what do you love so that we don't accidentally break it? What should we stop doing? Be stop doing, because it's what's not working? And what do we need to add to what we're doing? What do we start?

[00:14:29] Miranda: Where do we stop and what do we, what do we. And continued those cycles of iteration internally, uh, quarter after quarter, year after year. And that drove a lot of our growth just as much as everything that we did externally for our customers. Mm-hmm. . Um, and that fundamentally had put us in a good place where we had thankfully built fairly reliable infrastructure and, uh, an early team.

[00:14:56] Miranda: At the beginning of the pandemic, we were a team of 115 [00:15:00] and. Had moments of growth and moments of pause and regroup and and before that, and thankfully we just had really strong foundations, both technically and I would say as a team when the pandemic hit, because as we all came to understand nearly overnight the business models that our world had been built on.

[00:15:22] Miranda: Became loose and ungrounded, and so many people found that their business model was completely untenable. In a world where we're facing lockdowns and we can't meet customers in person, and everybody needed to rapidly pivot, pivot online, and we were. Thankfully, just like in a, in the unique position to help.

[00:15:41] Miranda: Mm-hmm. , what that meant was after a period where everybody held their breath, cuz nothing happened for a week or so where everybody, right. Worldwide just held our breath because we didn't know. But then the world came . So what that looked like is we went from something like [00:16:00] 250 new. Free accounts every day to like over three times that on a daily basis.

[00:16:07] Miranda: Sustained. Wow. Um, the existing customers that we had all rapidly increased their usage. So from a customer support standpoint, overnight, like our, we were completely flooded beyond any, you know, possible contingency of being able to handle incoming customers, and that was sustained for a long time. One of the things that we did very early in the pandemic, just recognizing that like, you know, so even turning on the floodgates to try to hire support as quickly as we could there, that there's a time delay to do that.

[00:16:44] Miranda: Uh, you had to train people and you have, you have to train, you have to hire them, you have to train them. Oh my goodness. And literally it was, I think our support volumes went up like four times or something, or maybe even more overnight. And so we did some cool things at the beginning of the pandemic, recognizing that our [00:17:00] customer.

[00:17:01] Miranda: In many cases, what they were doing with Thinkific was also side to another business. So even our existing customers were finding their lots of cases, their income had been greatly affected. And then we had new people who were trying to come to Thinkific and it was like, wait, like we've got people who really know Thinkific and we've got new customers who need to know, think iPic, and what would it look like if we paired them together?

[00:17:24] Miranda: We built something called, we called the Entrepreneur's Growth Fund. Put a million dollars behind funding. Uh, we basically paired new customers with existing customers and we would pay our existing customers, um, cons for consulting. Effectively, we sort of built some packages for them to be able to support new customers because then our dollars could like the same, you know, with our dollars we can support two people.

[00:17:49] Miranda: Yes, we can support our customer cuz we're paying them our existing customer, and then we're serving our new customer because they're helping them. So that worked out really nice. And helped to bridge some of that time [00:18:00] as a

[00:18:01] Danielle: business. But can I, can I just pause there for a second cuz I just, I don't want people to miss that because I feel like that is such a brilliant idea of having your current customers support new customers.

[00:18:15] Danielle: Like I feel like that. Is so great because you're also building that loyalty to your customer base because you know if they're being supported and if they're being like showcased as these experts that can help these new people, like it just builds in that like customer loyalty and that brand loyalty, which I feel like probably really was key in your guys' growth during that time because you probably had like evangel.

[00:18:45] Danielle: It's for your brand, you know, going out there and sharing. So

[00:18:49] Miranda: that's really cool. Thank you for pausing there. I, yeah, I think. . One of the things that I appreciate, especially through those early years, is that our focus and our North Star [00:19:00] was and is like, has always been a success of the customer. And when you put them first yes.

[00:19:06] Miranda: Then I think it creates the conditions for really creative solutions. Mm-hmm. like this one in a different way than if your North Star is revenue or customer growth or some other number. Right. And so really just recognizing. We needed a way to help more of them be successful and that we could eliminate in some places ourselves from, from the conversation and, and that kind of thing happens in our community where, um, folks are helpful to each other as well.

[00:19:36] Danielle: Yeah, I think like building a strong community within your brand is, I mean, that's something I am so passionate about, like community collaboration and I think that, um, the creativity that you had to make that happen is really key because I think as entrepreneurs we're sometimes, we're just always looking on, okay, what's like the right way to do this?

[00:19:58] Danielle: Or what are other [00:20:00] people we're looking like everywhere else? Like, what is someone else doing? Or, and I. Sometimes the best ideas come from, like you said, like listening to your, to your customer, coming up with creative solutions like building that, you know, community and support network. And I just think that's a huge take away for any, any business owner that if you're having a challenge in your business, like how can you be creative with the solution that maybe isn't a traditional.

[00:20:29] Danielle: Option that has maybe been done before or that you thought of, but I just, I wanted to to make sure people got that. Cause I think that's such a key takeaway of what you said.

[00:20:41] Miranda: Thank you. Just to wrap up that story, cause I feel like we could probably talk all day on the think of story, but there's lots to talk about too.

[00:20:48] Miranda: Yeah. Effectively, we grew really fast, so we started the pandemic as a team of 115, and that ballooned to nearly 500 within a couple of years. Through that process, we [00:21:00] made the decision to raise capital for our business, and due to the valuations in the public markets, outpacing the valuations in the private markets at the time, we were actually able to take think of it public.

[00:21:09] Miranda: So we did that two years ago, which was a wild journey, and now two years post becoming a public company. It's a, it's an inter, it's been certainly an interesting time and now for, for those who follow the markets and the capital markets and tech growth, et cetera, it's definitely a rocky time as everyone comes off of, uh, this unstable period from a how do people interact with software and do business and what's online and what's offline.

[00:21:41] Miranda: And, and, and things have been more unstable recently, but it certainly has been a wild. So

[00:21:46] Danielle: how do you feel like you have changed in this process, like in your journey of when Thinkific first began and like now going on to potentially other things? I would love to hear that like a little bit [00:22:00] more about what your, what's next for you.

[00:22:02] Danielle: But I'd love to hear how has your journey been? Like personally and professionally. And what are some like things that you've, I don't know, learned or challenges that have kind of changed you? I'd love to know that. Oh,

[00:22:16] Miranda: I love that. Thank you for asking that. It's, I said earlier on that I've learned over time that it's all a mental game.

[00:22:23] Miranda: So it's, so much of it is really needing to. level yourself up as fast. The reality of rapid scale is that you need to level yourself up as faster, faster, uh mm-hmm. than your business is. And so when your business is growing 30, 40, 50, 60, sometimes more percent year over year, that means that it requires of you really.

[00:22:48] Miranda: Rapid and ongoing personal growth too. Mm-hmm. . Um, so certainly lots of learnings. Uh, you know, certainly lots of hours with my executive coach who I've [00:23:00] referred to over time as my therapist for my business. Self , yes. Lots of internalizing great feedback. Seeking feedback and internalizing that feedback.

[00:23:10] Miranda: Some of the interesting, like high level takeaways that I think are really applicable. To anyone. One was just the idea that a lot of our, especially many of our biggest pivots were based on a change of our mindset rather than based on the conditions of the business. And let me give you a specific for that.

[00:23:29] Miranda: So the first time that we took round of outside investment we had and was, we raised 500, just over $500,000 from local investors. We had signed the papers for. Investment round in the fall of 2015. Just because of the back and forth and timing, et cetera, et cetera. It would come to be that we wouldn't actually put the money that we raised in our account until March.

[00:23:57] Miranda: And so there was about a five month period between when [00:24:00] we signed, we knew that the money was coming and when the money actually went into our account. . But when we go back in time and we look at our business over that period of time, the change in the, like the pivot point in our trajectory, the pivot point in our growth, the pivot point in like us playing a bigger game as a company, it happened when we made the decision to accept.

[00:24:24] Miranda: the investment. Mm. It didn't come when the money from the investment actually came. Right. And the truth is, by the time we put the money in the bank, we didn't need it because our business had grown so much only from a change in our mindset. Wow. An attitude, frankly, because it, there had been like, there was no other benefit.

[00:24:45] Miranda: We had just decided to play a bigger game. We decided to act like the kind of company that was playing at a different level. Mm-hmm. We, and that drove, it's like hustle. Yes. But it's like, not just that it, it was just [00:25:00] like we just made the decision to play a bigger game and never actually needed that money.

[00:25:04] Miranda: And I can point to numerous examples where that was true, where often we. and are excited by is like, oh, like somebody wants to come in and advise us like a, some, mm-hmm. like a big, like a big exciting new advisor. Or we got into an accelerator program that we were really excited about or we got investment and we took invest like smaller investments a couple of times.

[00:25:25] Miranda: And each of those times we were looking outside for something that was gonna come in and save us, or not even save us, but accelerate everything that we were doing. But when I look back, it was never. Like the change was never the, the advice that came from the advisor or the benefits that came from the accelerator or the money that came from the investment.

[00:25:47] Miranda: The pivot points were always when we made the change in decision. Not when we realize that medical powerful,

[00:25:54] Danielle: I, I can so relate to that. Like just when I think [00:26:00] about times in my own journey where it, yeah, you make a decision or you just, it's like a switch of, okay, I think about myself and my business differently now, and then you make different decisions and you.

[00:26:16] Danielle: Yeah, bigger. If you take bigger risks and you Yeah. And that is, man, that is so powerful. And I think it's such an important thing for, especially

[00:26:27] Miranda: like small businesses

[00:26:29] Danielle: when you, like, I would love for you to maybe just touch a little bit on when you are, when you make that kind of mindset shift, how do you bridge the gap between.

[00:26:43] Danielle: Knowing, okay, this is actually where, where technically we're at , like this is like the, and then this is where we wanna go. I think about vision. I would love to hear your perspective on like just seeing where you're going and making decisions from that place instead of making [00:27:00] decisions on, but this is where we're at right now because a lot of people, they make decisions based on where they're currently at or, oh, we can't afford that yet.

[00:27:13] Danielle: We don't wanna take this big risk cuz we're not ready. So I would love to hear

[00:27:17] Miranda: your thoughts on it. Yeah, that's a, that's a long topic of conversation, . Um, I know we don't have an unlimited time, but I think that what I've. My experience has been, and what I've seen and continue to see, especially when I have conversations with others, is that many of those rules, so many of that we're not big enough for that.

[00:27:37] Miranda: Mm-hmm. , well, like that's not quite the level we're at yet. We're not, we can't do that yet. Think like that, be that yet, like almost a hundred percent of the time. Those rules, those constraints, those. The barriers that we're putting up, like they're invented and we're inventing them. Yeah. We're like, these are rules that don't exist [00:28:00] that we've created in our head, and we've set our own like set of requirements that we must beat in order to do them.

[00:28:11] Miranda: It's almost like we've built the game in our head of, okay, well if only like when I. another like an employee. I can do that. Or if I were to achieve this award, then I'd be in a position to go ask for this or approach this person. If I was to be nominated for such and such, or if I hit this level of growth, then like we create these if then conditions.

[00:28:37] Miranda: Yes. In our head. A friend of mine, uh, recently referred to this as pretty dress syndrome and she recently, she's an incredible writer. She's been writing for years, but she's well known. She writes all over the place, but she just published a. And a whole bunch of opportunities opened up and she reflected on that because we often think it's like, oh, if only [00:29:00] I was a published author, then I would have all of these opportunities.

[00:29:04] Miranda: But looking. At that experience objectively, she came to understand a little bit of what I'm saying, which is she's like, honestly, all of these things that now unlock for me because I'm a published author. They were there before. It's just that I wasn't going after them. Right. And I wasn't feeling confident in stepping into them or asking for them or putting myself in those places.

[00:29:28] Miranda: And so she referred to it as the pretty dress syndrome is, it's that you put on a pretty dress and you just go out in the world and you, you know, you smile a little brighter, you twirl a little more. Yeah. Um, because you feel more confident, you feel, uh, you know, more. Present, capable, all of those things, but we don't need, and we do that in business.

[00:29:49] Miranda: Mm-hmm. , which is like, if only I hit this milestone, this team size, this revenue number, this growth number, this award, this customer. then. So if then, and so [00:30:00] listening for, and watching for all of the places that we're putting these, if then, uh, scenarios in the path in front of us has been like, I feel like it took me a really long time to be able to learn this and see this.

[00:30:12] Miranda: Mm-hmm. somewhat objectively, but I said to my co-founder recently, I'm in, like, I, I'm now. Humbled and in awe when I look at my list of accomplishments on paper, because on paper it's like, well, no, I'm just the same girl that's like at the end of my driveway, hustling crafts, , you know? That's awesome. I have this piece of paper now that has said that I've hit all of these fancy milestones, right?

[00:30:38] Miranda: But I, but the day after you hit the milestone is just another day. It's like you're. , the grass isn't actually greener. Like, it's not like new opportunities fall from the sky. It's, it's just, you know, like, yeah, like, okay, like you hit the thing, but the next day you're still just the same person and you're still out there, but maybe you feel a little bit more like you're wearing a pretty dress.

[00:30:57] Miranda: Mm-hmm. , uh, and that is available to all of us. [00:31:00]

[00:31:00] Danielle: So powerful. Oh my gosh, Kate, I could literally talk to you for so long. Um, and so excited because you are gonna be a part of our Dream Big conference that is happening on March 10th. So, um, yeah, I cannot wait to just hear more of your story and I can't wait for other people to get to connect with.

[00:31:21] Danielle: And meet you because I think it's just so incredibly inspiring what you've been able to create. And I would love to hear before we end off, what are you most proud of your entrepreneurial journey so

[00:31:32] Miranda: far? What am I most proud of? I, I am most, going back to early days, like I said, is that I just am in awe and love small business and entrepreneurs.

[00:31:45] Miranda: I believe that entrepreneurship makes the world go round and I. am deeply like humbled and an awe to have been able to help so many small business owners around the globe. With Thinkific, we've served over 50,000 [00:32:00] active businesses who are building and creating what they imagine could be leaning into what they're passionate about and turning that thing that they love into what they do.

[00:32:11] Miranda: And they collectively have served over a hundred million students who have learned around the planet. And I don't know how you beat that, but. I intend to just continue to figure out new ways to serve this incredible community. Mm-hmm. Um, because, you know, I believe that collectively we can do incredible things.

[00:32:31] Danielle: So cool. Where can people connect with you? Where can people find you and learn more about you? ,

[00:32:39] Miranda: all the things. Yeah, probably my website and then, and then, so go there first. Miranda levers.com and then Instagram is the other place, uh, that I am. But if you connect with me there, I'm in sort of this transition, which is that I've stepped away from, think of Vic as my nine to five.

[00:32:55] Miranda: Still very much involved. Still advising, still I'm teaching there this week. Stepped away [00:33:00] as my nine to five and with that, figuring out what comes next for me and how I next want to serve this community. So would absolutely love it if folks hit Miranda liebers.com. Um, just to stay in touch.

[00:33:12] Danielle: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:12] Danielle: amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for this interview. It was so inspiring and. Thank you so much for being a part of our event. I can't wait to connect with you more and get to meet you in person. So, um, yeah, if you're listening and you want to connect with Miranda, definitely do that. Connect with her on her website, and then also join us in person so that we can connect together.

[00:33:35] Danielle: But thank you again and we'll connect with you again Very.

[00:33:40] Miranda: Awesome. Thank you so much.

[00:33:44] Danielle: If you love this episode, make sure you screenshot, post and tag us on Instagram at business babes co. Want to know when the next episode goes live? Subscribe on your podcast app and while you're there, leave us a review. Until next time, keep dreaming big, [00:34:00] setting goals and taking action.

Danielle Wiebe