Pop Quiz, Monday Interview with Heidi Dening
The Pop Quiz, Monday, is a fun little exam that we love to give to savvy business owners. The examination is not a surprise, after all, since the interviewee already knew about the questions in advance. However, we can always pretend and have fun with the scenario of a young entrepreneur sitting in class nervously biting on their pencil. They are ready to take a pop quiz on a chapter that they were supposed to read the night before. Instead, they played Metroid all night on their SNES (Oops, this was me in high school). The real purpose of the pop quiz is that this is a fun way to introduce business tips from real-world experiences that you can not learn in a classroom.
We want to thank our entrepreneur for being a good sport and volunteering their time to answer a few questions to help our community grow from their knowledge.
I want to introduce you to our guest today, who will be taking our Pop Quiz Monday.
1. Can you please tell everyone your name?
Heidi Dening
2. Tell us about your business and what you do?
I’m a keynote speaker, author, and workshop facilitator specialising in resilience, self-leadership, and business performance.
My signature program is called ‘The Workplace Resilience Project,’ and it is an impactful 6montth program that builds resilient companies and teams so they can better deal with adversity and change.
Over the last 22 years I have started, scaled and sold an award-winning health and education business; founded an international not-for-profit with hundreds of volunteers across two countries; and delivered empowering presentations and programs to business leaders at Accenture, Westpac, & Random House to name just a few, on topics such as business performance, resilience and self-leadership.
3. Why did you want to become an entrepreneur?
I have education in my DNA and have always wanted to use this passion and skill to create positive change. I believe in the saying, “If you give a person a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach a person to fish, you feed them for a lifetime.” Therefore, the goal of the programs and presentations that I deliver is to create transformation that has a long-lasting impact on the organisations as well as the individuals who work in them.
4. What are the challenging aspects of running a business?
The challenges I initially had with this business was that I previously had 17 successful years in the B2C space where I was used to individuals making quick purchasing decisions. My current business is in the B2B area, and it has taken me quite some time to get used to the long sales cycle when working with corporates and also the difficulty in getting in front of the actual decision-maker.
5. What do you love most about your job?
Education changes lives, so when I can educate and empower leaders and their teams to embrace self-leadership strategies and build their resilience so they can rise above adversity and deal better with the change, that makes me one happy gal. I also love the fact that if it’s going to be, it’s up to me! I am in the driving seat of my life and have every opportunity to make a success of it.
6. How do you have fun at work (team building, pranks, etc..)?
I speak at a lot of conferences where I get to meet a wide range of people, and there are always opportunities for engaging conversations over a glass or two of wine at the end of the day. Not only do I get to giggle at the stories I’m told, but I also get to learn about the successes and challenges that these professionals experience.
7. What would one piece of advice that you give to a new business owner?
If you want to start a business from scratch, firstly begin it as a side hustle before you take the leap and quit your job. It nearly always takes longer than you have imagined and costs more than you have planned.
Thank you for taking our pop quiz today. You get an A+ for effort. You can learn more about our interviewee and their business by visiting them on the web:
Web — https://heididening.com/
Originally published at https://www.inboxdude.com on November 17, 2019.
