Ludwina Dautovic - A warm voice in the world of women entrepreneurs

I began my business journey around 20 years ago. I originally chose to be self-employed so I could be at home with our children. We then took it one step further when we decided to home educate our son and daughter. That has been a joy in my life that I will always be grateful for.

In order to stay at home during the day, I began in the network marketing arena. Like a lot of mums with small children, this was a great stepping stone for me; particularly in the area of self-discovery. I soon realised that I had a knack for sales and the ability to influence others. This led me to develop my own business.

At the age of 30 I decided I wanted to produce a television show. With no prior experience, I gathered the people I needed and within 8 days we had our pilot episode of ‘Straight Talk’. Optus Vision snapped it up and thus began my television career. Within the next two years I had produced and presented over 60 episodes of television that were aired nationally on Optus.

This led me to develop Media Minds; a range of hand’s on video production workshops that we presented in over 300 schools in Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne. This was before the advent of digital technology, so schools were really hungry for this type of outsourced education.

As you can imagine, by this time, my technology and production skills had increased immensely along with my ability to successfully market my products. I realised that although I loved what I was creating, I wanted to take it one step further and learn more about people and how their minds worked. This took me on another journey of self-discovery. This time the road was NLP and life coaching - with a few other modalities thrown in.

Family Sabbatical

My husband and I then fulfilled a life long dream to travel around Europe with our children. Three months, 12,000 kms and 13 countries later, we were back in Australia. During our trip I realised that I wanted to be a positive influence in the lives of women in Australia.  Thus, The Red Tent Woman was born. The company has flourished into a national women’s business network that supports women with unique events, business coaching services and resources.

During this time I have won a number of business awards and been recognised for my achievements. These include: Australian Home Based Business of the Year for 2009, Australian Coach of the Year Finalist 2010 and Listed in Anthills top 100 most innovative businesses in Australia. I have also been listed in the Who’s Who of Australian women for 2010, 2011 and will be again in 2012. I am also accredited with the highest coaching accreditation in Australia – Master Coach.

Red Tent Radio

The next part of my business journey, Red Tent Radio, was born out of necessity. In June 2010, whilst launching our events in Perth, I was diagnosed with a 14cm renal cell carcinoma on my left kidney; completely out of the blue. I learned two weeks later that I would live but I would lose my kidney. After a massive seven hour surgery with four surgeons, I then spent the next six months recovering. During this time I needed to come up with a strategy to keep my business alive and in the mind’s eye of my market… otherwise I would lose it. However, you could imagine that I was feeling very tired. My body ached and I didn’t feel like getting out and networking. I realised that I still had my voice and my brain and that podcasting would be a very viable solution.

Within six weeks of going to air, we were picked up by a radio station in the USA and now we have over 2500 listeners there per week. We are also listed in iTunes and have anywhere from 500 – 4000 downloads per episode.

The success of Red Tent Radio has brought me back to my media roots. I have had many people asking me to show them how to do the same thing I do with our show. In response to those inquiries, ‘How to Podcast Like a Pro’ was born. That, in turn, extends into ‘The Podcast Masterclass’. Next year will see us creating online new media educational solutions for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

My children are now grown and are fulfilling their own life dreams. It has been a magical journey watching them grow and encouraging them to follow their passions and desires. They have also had the added benefit of experiencing and working within my businesses over the years, which now sees them both confidently self employed in their chosen career paths.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about business is that you need to be innovative. You need to understand what is happening in the market place. Then, you need to grow and change with it. I’ve also learned that ‘Necessity is the mother of Invention’. Sometimes out of a tragedy a pearl of an idea can grow.

www.Facebook.com/TheRedTentWoman
www.Facebook.com/PodcastLikeaPro
www.TheRedTentWoman.com.au
www.HowToPodcastLikeaPro.com
www.VideoMarketingForWomen.com