We were lucky to catch up with Sarah Wood recently and have shared our conversation below.
Sarah, first a big thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and insights with us today. I’m sure many of our readers will benefit from your wisdom, and one of the areas where we think your insight might be most helpful is related to imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is holding so many people back from reaching their true and highest potential and so we’d love to hear about your journey and how you overcame imposter syndrome.
There are so many people out there who want to tell you how hard it is to start a business or run a successful business. A lot of the people giving you this advice have never done it themselves. I had wanted to start a business for 10 years, but I was scared that I didn’t have what it took to do it on my own, I would watch others in the industry and always think to myself “I can do that!”. My husband always supported and believed in my ambition and once I stepped off that ledge I didn’t look back. I still have days where I wonder if I will be able to scale to what I see others doing, but I always remember that the first step is the hardest. If you can take that first trust fall and realize its going to be OK; You may never go back.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I have been in construction for 15 years now, my business focuses on taking peoples dreams and inspiration for their living spaces and making it reality. So many times we think the solution to our space problems is MORE space. Sometimes that’s true, but usually the space you have is just not being realized to its best potential. I specialize in taking small spaces/ historic houses and making them work beautifully for modern living. So many times in life we already have everything we need it just needs someone to believe in it and give it a bit of polish.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I would say working in warranty for production builder laid the foundation for my problem solving skills, it also beat the fear of cold calling out of me. You should never be scared to pick up the phone and call someone to find relevant answers to your questions. Once you have answers and are able to solve the problem then all you need is good follow up. So many of our issues in life can be solved through good communication, people are so often scared of giving bad news; A person who is given bad news is always a happier person you don’t communicate with at all.
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
I think my next step is to pivot my website and offering to create online packages for people to purchase for their plumbing/electrical/furniture needs. I want to make sure that all the companies I partner with are small businesses/local or in the case of larger companies businesses that I believe in. I am a terrible millennial in that my self marketing skills have always been a bit lack luster. (My business is word of mouth) I probably have 20+ projects I still need to photograph. My little sisters are all over me to do Tik-Tok videos and I just don’t know if I have it in me. Hiring a marketing company to do these things may be in my near future.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://curated-construction.com/
- Instagram: curatedconstruction
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scw00d
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