Dana Theus helps businesswomen mobilize their most authentic leadership qualities. Her coaching style expands and elevates their natural abilities, enabling them to shine and succeed. With experience working for Fortune 50 companies, tech startups, government agencies, and nonprofits, she offers tools that help established and emerging businesswomen develop lifelong emotional intelligence, relationship management, productivity, and leadership habits. These habits exponentially improve their ability to achieve career and business success.
What were your initial years of growing up like? Tell us about your life before starting your corporate journey/venture/initiative.
I was born on the West Coast of the USA (I now live on the East Coast). While I enjoyed financial privilege in my early years, my parents divorced when I was a teenager, and my high school and college years were marked by difficult times emotionally and financially. I vowed to be financially independent at a young age and have been successful. The hardest time in my professional life was the first ten years of going out on my own as a freelance marketing consultant. The peaks and valleys of my income at that point were scary, and I didn’t plan well enough for it. When I became a coach, I started to understand how to market my business and really make a difference in people’s lives. Things have been much better ever since!
Every industry that is now a large-scale, top-notch business once started as a small idea in the minds of entrepreneurs. What was that idea or motivation that made you start your business/initiative? What motivated you within to say YES, go for it!”
When I became a marketing freelancer, my working title for my business was “Do it right!” I was so tired of making compromises to accommodate corporate politics and inefficient processes for getting technology products to market. My freelancing business evolved to the point where I became an expert at cutting through that stuff to launch successful products for my clients. In becoming a coach, I realized so many women trying to succeed in their careers and businesses had all this untapped power INSIDE them they left unused. I knew if I could help them tap this INpower, they’d be unstoppable. And they are!
Would you like to share with our young budding women entrepreneurs the change you would like to see in the world if given an opportunity?
I truly believe that a person’s relationship with the power inside themselves shapes the world around them. Healthy personal power fuels meaningful lives. The people who intentionally nurture their own personal power lead healthy relationships and amazing businesses that thrive into the future. I want this for everyone.
Women are a growing force in the workplaces worldwide, standing shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. There are cracks in glass ceilings everywhere, with many women breaking through to carve out a space right at the top of the pyramid. What are your thoughts about women leadership today?
So many thoughts! I’ve studied this topic for over a decade and amassed a lot of data on the subject (links below). My basic takeaway is that today’s female leaders are more driven and more capable than many of their male counterparts. They have to be, because being a female leader (with or without a title) is simply harder. You get more pushback. You have to overcome and manage more self-doubt (and female leaders do find ways to manage their self-doubt!). So it’s not surprising that when women lead, good things happen. That said, it’s unfair to require women to perform so spectacularly. We need more opportunities to take risks and even fail in order to reach our full potential. Since the world around us rarely gives us this chance, we have to take it for ourselves and prepare for all kinds of outcomes. When we learn to manage this much risk, the likelihood of our own success is high, and we give younger girls and women more role models for what it looks like to be a successful female leader. I have more data and info here on these topics on my website: https://inpowercoaching.com/inpower-women/ and I write a newsletter on topics for female leaders here: https://inpowerwomen.substack.com/
What’s the most important thing you have learned in your personal life and professional journey? What is your personal motto in life?
“You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.” — Richard Bach
With your grit and determination, you are making a considerable impact, breaking through, and serving as role models for many budding entrepreneurs. What would you want to say to our young women leaders/audience reading this?
If you’re a woman in this world, the culture around you has broken you away from some of your relationship with your own sources of power. Find out where those breaks are. Repair them. Connect to all your personal power (no one can stop you). When you do this, you’ll find it easier to attain the kinds of external power that mean the most to you in your life and business.
