Everyone thinks when you’re working hard at running your business that you will have loads of money. The reality is often very different. In this episode, Katherine highlights the times when you will have no money as a business owner, as well as ways to prepare for them. Cash flow issues are the obvious one, but there's another time you will have less money that is rarely talked about, and often forgotten. 

It happens to all of us. It’s the... “while you’re at it, could you...?” conversation that happens when you’re already halfway through a project or completing a service. Sometimes it’s a five-minute job, often it’s not, and you end up working extra for free. In this episode, Katherine explains the key to handling potential client creep – it's simpler than you might expect. 

In this open and honest interview with Katherine, Lyssa-Fêe Crump shares her story, her experience living with a number of health challenges including PoTS, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and Narcolepsy, and balancing these alongside her success in her professional life. Lyssa's Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyssafeecrump/ https://www.instagram.com/lyssacrump/ https://hiyield.co.uk/ https://www.potsuk.org/ https://www.ehlers-danlos.org/ https://www.narcolepsy.org.uk/

In the first of the interview episodes focusing on entrepreneurs who are balancing career success with health challenges, Katherine has volunteered as tribute to go first. Diagnosed with Sjogren’s Disease in 2022, she discusses how she has grown her business and how her health has impacted on how she's managed her agency since her diagnosis.

When you are running your own business, it’s important to remember one thing: the reason why you started. This reason is personal to you, whether you want to escape the 9-5, spend more time with your family or something else, but it should be something you remind yourself of frequently. In this episode, Katherine expands on this and explains why this is crucial as an entrepreneur. 

It sounds obvious, but it is crucial as a business owner to actually take a break, book a holiday or give yourself time to rest. In this episode Katherine emphasises the importance of setting boundaries, avoiding burnout and making time to live your life away from work. 

Your business is growing, developing and, from the outside, everything looks amazing. But, with growth comes change, and what happens when you actually start to fall out of love with your business, your work is giving you anxiety and you actually dread showing up to work? It’s rarely spoken about, but Katherine shares her very real experience of this, and how she changed things in order to fall back in love with her business again. 

It happens to everyone in business. You’ve discussed a project or service, talked about prices and even sent the final confirmation and then – poof! - the customer ghosts you. You chase, you reach out, but you get nothing back. At some point down the line, they suddenly reappear and want to start tomorrow. In this episode Katherine shares how to handle this very common situation, rather than let panic set in. 

When you’re an entrepreneur, it’s easy for the hours to creep up and up. You work your 9-5, but then you jump on emails in the evening or pick up work over the weekend. The result? It’s not sustainable; it ends in burnout. Katherine has learned the hard way, and in this episode she shares the reality and how she’s managed this. 

Whether you’re just starting out or an expert in your field running multiple businesses, one fact remains certain: people will ignore you. In this episode, Katherine shares her experience of this, and how best to handle it when (not if) it happens to you. 

In life and in business a valuable lesson to learn is that, sometimes, people are dicks. It’s not always a fairy tale, and in this episode, Katherine shares her perspective on how to handle the trickier relationships in business. 

One little spoken about reality of being an entrepreneur is that, no matter what is going on in your personal life, you still have to show up to work. It seems obvious, but when you’re just starting out in business, the buck stops with you, so what happens if you’re sick? In this episode, Katherine shares what she wishes she’d known from the start. 

If you love what you do and you’re fantastic at what you do, for many the natural next step is to specialise and start your own business. In this episode, Katherine shares the realities of turning a job you love into a business and, crucially, how your job will change as your business grows. 

The customer is always right... Except for when they’re wrong. But how do you handle this as a business, especially if you offer advice or services? Katherine draws upon her experience in business to share what she does in this situation and how to manage those tricky conversations with clients. 

If you’re launching a new business, the one thing you can guarantee is that you’ll be offered a barrage of advice. But not all advice is equal, as Katherine explains. In this episode, she shares the merits of starting small, investing in yourself and scaling up as you grow. 

The pressure to achieve that elusive work/life balance is one that all business owners will recognise. In this episode, Katherine shares how she combats this mythical idea with a more realistic work/life integration, and how it doesn’t have to be all work and no play as an entrepreneur. 

Ensuring you are getting paid by clients can become a massive issue for small businesses – it's difficult to maintain positive client relationships when chasing payments. Katherine shares her advice and the key, but very simple tactic that helped her master this problem as a growing business. 

Who is Katherine George, and why has she created the Running in the Dark podcast? Katherine has been an entrepreneur since 2014 and over the years, through the highs and lows, she has learned that running a business is, well, actually really hard. But no-one talks about it. Katherine is here to drop the bravado and will be talking about all of the things you should be told before you start a business, as well as sharing her advice along the way. 

A podcast about business, not running.