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This week on the Dream Builder Podcast, we’re interviewing successful businesswoman, Linnea Weikleenget who gives us 3 tips for breakthrough when your back is up agains a wall. She is a former Wells Fargo auto-financing saleswoman who took her dreams and turned them into a booming business called Monster. When the Automotive Industry tanked in 2008, the company Linnea had been working for pulled out of the auto business and left her with a severance package and an opportunity to start something new. She and her husband Aaron decided to start Monster, a business that provides promotional advertising services to car dealerships. She fought her way through debt and make-or-break moments and came out on the other side with an extremely successful business. We’re so excited to have had the opportunity to glean from her experiences this week, as she shares with us her hardships, successes, and what to do when your back is against the wall.

Right before Christmas the year Linnea and Aaron started their business, she took a look at her books and realized that their business’s success was completely hinged on their next sale. She knew that they had employees counting on them and debt to pay. In order to keep the business afloat, they couldn’t just do well on this sale. They would have to do really well. 

When Linnea and Aaron went to tackle that pivotal sale, they found that the team that was to be working alongside them was discouraged and disheartened. But instead of throwing in the towel, she and Aaron charged in. They spread nothing but excitement and positivity, filled everyone’s hearts with visions of success, and knocked it out of the park. The sale was beyond what they had hoped for, and their perseverance and spirit completely turned their business around.

“When you’re faced with something and it seems scary and hard, you can sit there and think about all the reasons why it won’t work, or you can find the next best thing that you can do. When you live in your head, situations play out that aren’t even happening.” – Linnea Weikleenget

We asked Linnea this week to give us some advice about what to do when your back is up against the wall, and she gave us three key tips to remember:

1. “Have faith that you can’t do enough to screw it up. God has your back. He has His hand on you. I think as long as we draw close to God and trust that he’s got our back, when we jump we can trust he will have the parachute there. He’s not going to let us fall so far that we can’t come back up. I move forward knowing that I may mess up, I may make mistakes, but there’s no mistake bad enough that I can’t come back from.”

2. “Do something. Instead of looking at all the piles of things you have to do, break it down and do something. Ask yourself, what is the first thing I can do?  What is the small step I can do? Because you take one step, and the next step will be a reveal to you, and you’ll just keep moving forward.”

3. “Be resourceful. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. We’re all in this together. We’re all learning. Nobody really knows more than the next person, and when we’re starting out, we’re all just doing it. What separates the successful people from the people who don’t move forward on their goals, is that movement forward. Just trusting it’s okay if I make a mistake, I just want to do something. Because if it is a mistake then you learn form it, and change the trajectory.”

Linnea is starting out on a new adventure, where she and her family are going to be blogging on the road with their new business called The Family Muse. She’ll be writing about and promoting hotels, destinations and adventures of all kinds and she wants to use it to teach people how to follow their hearts! She wants to inspire other people to find something they’re really passionate about and monetize it. 

We’re so excited for her to start on this new journey, and we feel so blessed to have hosted her this week!

You can find Linnea Weikleenget and The Family Muse on Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.