Why I Pay To Be In My Mastermind Group
July 21, 2010
I’m still reeling from the long day I had yesterday with the Mastermind group I’m in. We’ve been meeting together for about a year now, usually by phone for a quick hour (once a month) but, three times a year, in person. And yesterday was one of those live-in-person-in-your-face days. Down in the bowels of a big hotel in LA we sat down to work together, to discuss the state of the entrepreneurial world we live in, to give each member time to stand up and put a personal business issue on the table, to get the comments, challenges, support, love, and bright ideas for our own businesses. And to give, in equal measure, to each person in the room.
I am a big believer in personal retreats, and I’m a big believer in putting your time and money out on the line to have the opportunity to hear about other people’s businesses, to starkly state what is going on with your own business, to get challenged and called on your stuff, and to get the wonderful amalgamation of ideas, resources, and help from each other. In a good group, there is bare honesty. There is no time for positioning or fakey stuff. In fact, a good group will catch you and call you before you even half-way get the dishonest or fake stuff out of your mouth. I’m blessed many times over to be in this group. We know each other, like each other, trust each other, and love each other too much to let any one of us get away with being less than we are called to be.
So, yesterday, it just happened that we had a magical day. Everyone was thirsty for the day, everyone is facing honking big personal challenges, everyone is stepping up to a much bigger vision of themselves and their business. Let me say that again. In order to step up to the vision you have for your business, you will be challenged to step up and handle your personal stuff. You cannot do one without the other. And a good Mastermind group will hold you to both, knowing that you can’t be half-assed about your growth. It is worth every penny I pay, the time away from business, the plane fare to do this. Seven other people have my back, and at the same time are asking me, “What in heck are you doing THAT for?”
I just love being in a room with people who will put it right out there on the table, no matter what, who have this truly deep commitment to exposing their thoughts and plans and visions and are willing to take the suggestions even if they are rigorously proposed. We all are kind, but we say it as we see it and we challenge each other. There is laughter but there are tears, too.
I’m honored to know these people, to sit in the same room with them. I love their brightness and their willingness to put it out there, to create something out of nothing but their own vision, which is often felt as a calling. It fed me. The more experienced I get in life and in business, the harder it has become to find places that feed me. In this group we get it that when we talk about our work, we talk about our soul at the same time. The two begin to merge until one’s work is literally a part of one’s spiritual practice. This group understands that. And that’s why I pay with my money and my time, and will fly anywhere to sit with these people.
I’m truly excited to be the creator and visionary of my own work, and I love more than anything to sit with others who are creating work from their own inner visions. I see a group of new, energetically savvy, intuitive-based entrepreneurs that is emerging rapidly to help solve the many issues that face us. For me, it was delicious to have a day of talking and listening. Sometimes, words didn’t matter, it was the energy, the vibration, the vibe in the room . This group gets it that there is no standing still and no status quo. Even if it upsets them, or scares them, they step up. Their brightness is amazing. You can hardly get a sentence out and 4 other people are nodding and taking off on the tail of it, enlarging and supplementing and feeding it back with new ideas. There are no blank stares and “let me think about that.” It is quick, lots of movement, energy flying. Everything is noticed.
I pay for what I learn, the support I get, the opportunities I have to support others, the challenges I’m given. I pay to stretch myself and get out of my own head. All truly successful solo professionals do this. We don’t whine about the money, we cough it up and we come out to play. It’s like putting your life and your business on super-oxygen for a day. At the end you have a zillion ideas and resources, but you’re kind of gasping for breath. Those of you reading this post who are in the group, thank you. I can’t wait until September when we see each other again.
How Letting Go Will Make You Money
July 13, 2010
Many of the solo professionals I work with are stuck, and that stuck place (often a limiting belief) is hurting their personal and/or business life. It’s my job to find the stuck place and help that person see the down-stream effects of staying stuck. Sometimes, one experience can impact and confine us in ways we don’t even realize until an “outsider” points it out.
Let’s consider Patty, who had an asthma attack when she was 10 years old after being near some cigar smoke. (This is not a made up story, by the way.) Patty never wanted that to happen again. The feeling of her throat closing up and her muscles straining for oxygen scared Patty, as it would most of us. Way back then, something in herself or in her environment pointed Patty into fear that never has been let go of. She could have been scared over the asthma attack but, with reassurance, let it go. Instead, Patty set out to control her environment and make sure that never happened to her ever again.
By the time Patty was 16, she had opted out of summer camps for fear of being around camp fire smoke. At 17, she decided not to take her senior trip because she knew some of her class would sneak a smoke on the back of the bus. In college, she didn’t join a sorority and she roomed alone, fearful that she would be around sorority sisters who would smoke.
By the time Patty was 30, she had limited herself from ever wearing perfumes, ever having fresh flowers or live plants of any kind in her home, or using candles. Her limiting belief that she would have another asthma attack had spread from fear of smoke to fear of any odor at all, good or bad. Her constant statement was that she was “highly allergic” and had to stay away from people, places, and things that might set off an asthma attack. By now, that attack was 20 years old, but the limiting belief that she could control it ever happening again paralyzed her.
Patty is smart. She earned a college degree and then got a Master’s degree. But she studied for her Master’s online and at home, for fear of being out in the world. She worked for a small firm for many years, limiting her income, because she knew that the other 3
people would cater to her fears, agreeing to forego fresh flowers, perfume, smoking.
I could go on with this story, for Patty is now almost 60 years old and I still see the many ways she has limited her income and her personal life with the limiting belief that smelling any odor at all will set off another attack. She has lived her life for 50 years in fear of something that happened only once, and in the belief that she can control it ever happening again.
Maybe you are shaking your head in disbelief. The thing is that we ALL do this. Perhaps we limit ourselves in more subtle, less dramatic ways. But then again, perhaps not. Here’s a quick exercise for you. Sit down right now and list out all the things you have passed on in your business, for fear they would not work out. Give yourself five full minutes to really think about the things you’ve said no to, and why. I’d bet if you shared this list with a friend or your biz coach you’d realize that your past experiences have limited your current success in ways that you never even realized! The question for you today is this…..how has refusing to let go of old experiences and beliefs cost you money?
In a few weeks, I’m interviewing neuroscientist Sandi Smith, who is an expert at seeing how our fears block our fortunes. You are welcome to join in on the call, to register (it’s free) click here.
Pioneer Marketing For Entrepreneurs
May 28, 2010
When I was a kid living (briefly) in Oklahoma, one of my favorite times was the local “Pioneer Days.” Everyone dressed up in pioneer clothing, old Conestoga wagons were brought out of barns, and re-enactments of the early days of the town were carried out in the town square and at the fairgrounds. Everything was “old-timey” — the way it used to be. Some of the men would even grow their hair long and sport the old fashion handlebar mustache and side lamb chops.
I’m convinced that we are now in the pioneer days for marketing. If I’ve read one article about how push marketing doesn’t work anymore and that it is now all about building relationships with the consumer, I’ve read twenty. And every time I read one I shake my head and wonder why no one writes that this is back to marketing’s pioneer days. We now have “Pioneer Marketing.” It’s what our forebears did in every single city and town, and what the best and wisest businesses still do.
Pioneer Marketing (I think I just coined a new term) has one main tenet, and that tenet is infallible. It works every time because it is based on a law of human nature. What’s the law? “People respond positively and in a timely manner when they are treated with respect, courtesy, honesty, and in a way that has their best interests at heart.” That one law, rigidly adhered to, will win out every time. Your attention may be diverted by aggressive and shiny marketing for a while, but in the end you will go where that law of human nature is adhered to.
Simply put, our prospects and existing customers don’t want to be sold into a product or service that serves the seller and doesn’t serve the buyer. They are tired of push marketing coupled with shoddy goods and lacking customer service. And this is one huge reason that you, as an entrepreneur, have it over the big guys. The big guys have used push marketing, shoddy goods, and lacking customer service for so long that they are scrambling right now to turn huge, bloated, bureaucratic businesses around to save their sales. Meanwhile, you and I can “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” meeting and forming relationships with our prospects, selling our expertise, servicing our customers, and making the transaction into a win-win rather than a win-lose. We have memorable and recognizable faces. Large, bloated businesses give you a new and usually non-caring face every time you walk in their door or buy from them online.
Family-owned businesses, solo professionals, and entrepreneurs can step up and capture market share right now. Most of us have a familiar face to our prospects and customers. Many of the big guys don’t, and now that they realize that, they are all about “relationship marketing,” thinking they have discovered a whole new world. It isn’t a whole new world at all, it’s the world that many small business owners never left, the one that our pioneer forebears lived in. Everyone knew the business owners up and down the street and how they treated customers. Everyone knew who to avoid and who to buy from. Business was good or bad depending on the business owner’s savvy and her ability to form and keep relationships. Reputation was everything, and was based on something real, not something manipulated by copious marketing.
People respond to Pioneer Marketing because it is in our human nature. We are wired for relationships. On the frontier, relationships and trust in others meant survival. In the marketplace, it means survival for you, the business owner. And it is coupled with a sense of trust and satisfaction in our customers, as well.
You don’t have to put on a pioneer costume or grow a mustache to use Pioneer Marketing. Just plaster that one law of human nature up where you can see it, and build your business from that place. Let your marketing, advertising, customer service, and sales be aligned with that law. Couple that with good business skills, and you are good to go. The next time you hear about the new “relationship marketing” just smile. You are already there. So hip, so pioneer. That’s you!
Why Some Entrepreneurs Don’t Make Much Money
May 16, 2010
Here’s a quick test for you…let’s say I hand you a C-note. Close your eyes and feel that hundred dollar bill in your hand. Now, watch your thoughts and see where your mind goes. Just watch, until you get a thought that comes up about this money in your hands. What is the thought?
- A good number of people will have a thought something like “I better put this away, I don’t want to lose this money.”
- Fewer people will get a thought that goes “this is a gift, truly found money. How should I use this, what can I do?”
If your thought was about keeping the money safe, I’ll wager that you think of money as potential loss rather than potential gain. And that mindset isn’t going to help you create a business where money automatically comes in and goes out, just like the tide. You can’t stop the tide. If you constantly try, you still get the inevitable but you are much more miserable over it than if you just let that tide go out and enjoy watching it as it goes. Same with money!
The other day I had someone contact me who was interested, she said, in coaching for her small business. Actually, she had two businesses, had them both for several years. The very first statement out of her mouth was not about her businesses but about her money. “I make less than $100 a month with these businesses,” she said. She didn’t tell me about her businesses, ask me how I might help her, or what she hoped to gain in working with me. Instead, she came at me from a place of lack, focusing on what she doesn’t have. That lack is fear-based, contracted energy. Behind it is a poor-me mentality. That creates a constant story of lack, a negative energy. It literally “pulls” others toward that lack. While we didn’t get far in talking about working together, she right away let me know she had little money and probably could not afford to work with me. Underneath that statement was a subtle pull on me, to join her in her financial lack by cutting a deal to work with her for less money, or to sit there and spend an hour of my time for free while she talked about her financial lack rather than asking me how I could help her go where she wanted to go. Then, we both could lack and she would have a “community of lack” going. Do you see? Very subtle, but very powerful. Watch for that from others, and don’t let that energy go to work on you.
Let’s think about this solopreneur who has two businesses that are both several years old and who makes about $100 a month from both of them together. Does she need to be more profitable? Obviously, yes. She probably needs to focus down on one of the businesses, build that to an ongoing profit, and then bring the second business on-line. She may need to ditch one — I don’t know her well enough to say. I do know, though, that it doesn’t work to approach me about working with you and ask me first thing what I charge. The money isn’t the issue. The issue is what would this $100 a month entrepreneur GAIN in working with me (or someone else) rather than what she would LOSE. If I can’t get her to focus on the gain, she won’t engage in what I suggest to her. She’ll be thinking about that money she’s losing by paying me (or someone else) rather than what she is GETTING in the process.
There are a lot of reasons why many solopreneurs and small business owners are not profitable. Many lack knowledge about the basic tools of business. These things are skills that one can easily get through classes, reading, having a mentor or a coach, or going to workshops. The bigger barrier to making money is your own mind set about money. If you focus on how little you have it will absolutely never grow. If, instead, you focus on what you can gain with the money you have (no matter how little or large that amount) you will be OK.
Here’s what I wrote to this woman. “You know, it’s never about the money, it’s about what will happen if you do NOT change and learn to invest in building your business. When people e-mail me and ask only what it costs to hire me, I know they are trying to decide only on cost. The wiser decision is based on value or what it will cost them if they keep on the road they are on. See, it would benefit you to know more about what we might do for those three months, but instead of asking me that, or asking when we might talk about it, I see that you are asking only what it will cost you, not what you will gain. So there you have a little bit of coaching for free. If you change to put your attention on gain rather than loss, you will begin to shift your thinking and your business from cost to benefit, both for yourself and for those you wish to serve.”
If you are not profitable through lack of focus, bad planning, or lack of business skills you can fix it. It takes risk, self-honesty, willingness to feel a little uncomfortable as you learn new skills and behaviors. It takes faith! But the biggest thing it takes is shifting your mind set from lack to gain. Or, from a poverty mentality to an abundant mentality. Or, from fear to love. Not only will you benefit, but those you serve will benefit. This week, practice not leading with money questions. Practice focusing on what you gain rather than what you lose. It will shift your mind set, and in time it will shift your bank account, too!
Dreaming Up Your Best Life
April 28, 2010
Does Your Self Esteem Need Upleveling?
April 9, 2010
I read an interesting article just the other day about the economic value of self esteem. Not many people would argue the point that having reasonably high self esteem correlates with doing reasonably well as an entrepreneur or as a worker for someone else. But above that, this article pointed out that our rapidly changing world economies, and the way in which people work are also putting a high monetary value on self esteem. Not only that, new models of working demand upleveled self esteem.
- Working from home independently requires more individual responsibility and self-discipline.
- Being self-employed requires more self-management and more individual creativity.
- Self-employed professionals must have a high level of self-direction to be financially successful.
These require a solid self esteem. Not only are companies who hire looking at measures of self esteem, solo professionals and small business owners must check themselves and make sure self esteem issues aren’t standing in their way. Rather than being solely an important psychological need, self esteem is also being seen as an important economic need.
Believe it or not, people with lower self esteem actually can be succesful in business. Sometimes, the drive to cover up low self esteem causes a person to work very hard to be successful to hide what is lacking inside. So, you might ask, why worry about your level of self esteem if you can be successful without it? Here’s why – the type and quality of your actions is changed by your level of self esteem. The higher yours is, the higher the success and scope of your actions. So while you can be successful with low self esteem, you will be more successful and much happier with higher self esteem. You won’t feel like someone is chasing you constantly and if you don’t keep going you will fail in the end. In other words, fear won’t be your driver. With lower self esteem you may be successful, but you will also be anxious and doubtful.
So, in the end, upleveling your self esteem means that you have a better chance of being highly successful, but also more satisfied, calmer, healthier, and freer in your life and your work. Sounds pretty good, huh?
On Wednesday night, April 14th, I’m interviewing serial entrepreneur Adell Heinemann, and we’re talking about why working on your self-esteem boosts yourself and your income. Adell has been through the journey of rebuilding self esteem after financial disaster, and she’s got some pretty interesting points to make. The call is free, to register for it and get the call-in information, go to http://confidentmarketer.com/site/upcoming-teleclasses/adell/. We’ll talk about why low self esteem can spell success but how higher self esteem is even better for your brain and your pocketbook. See you there!
Will You Get Gyped By A Coach?
March 20, 2010
One of the conversations that came up at a retreat I recently attended was a fear of getting ripped off after investing in an expensive coaching program. Of course, “expensive” is in the eyes of the beholder…..but here are my thoughts about this fear and what is behind it, in this video.
Who Is In Your Entrepreneurial Community?
February 6, 2010
For the past few years now I’ve experimented with just about every method of coaching and mentoring that is available to solo professional and entrepreneurs. All of them have their pros and cons. But one thing that I’ve come to know for sure is that if you are in your own business, you need a great community of like-minded entrepreneurs around you. Why?
- Running your own business is a solitary endeavor. Decisions are up to you and you alone. You need the perspective of other business owners to round out your own thoughts. The perspective of your employees (if you have any) isn’t the same thing.
- Your own energy waxes and wanes. I’m not talking about the moon or hormones, either. The best business owners know that their own energy has to attract others to them – good staff, great customers, good deals for rents or whatever else. And it is very hard to keep your own energy up where it needs to be without sometimes drawing from the good energy of others.
- Time inevitably puts you in the box. What do I mean by this? When you created your business you did it to put forward a new, not previously done type of business. You felt what you had to offer was unique and special. In other words, you were out of the box. But as time rocks on, your own thinking gets boxed in by the very dailiness of what you do, by your own fatigue, and by the fact that others will emulate you. To keep on re-creating a business that continually pleases and serves your customers, you need to keep yourself out of the box.
- Your ideas, although they are great, can be sharpened and improved by your entrepreneurial community. Simply put, multiple heads are better than one. Here’s a quick example of this. In one of my own communities, a woman had a deal with a book publisher for her very first book. But she was balking about what the publisher wanted to title the book, taking issue with both the main title and the tagline. She brought it up in our next get together, only to find that her adamant opinion was not shared by a single one of us! We all though the title was good and that, furthermore, the publisher knew what would sell much more than the author did. As I pointed out, the author is the subject matter expert but her publisher is the marketing and sales expert for her book. All but one of the entire community basically told her to suck it up. And after she listened to us, she did! She ended up coming all the way back around to what the publisher had suggested, with only a very minor one-word change. Which leads me to my next point about the benefit of being in an entrepreneurial community….
- It helps you get your own ego out of the way, and think about what you offer from your customer’s point of view. Believe you me, you will ONLY be successful if you offer what your customers want and need, not what you in all your wisdom think they need.
I could probably come up with a few more good reasons, but I think you, smart as you are, get the point. It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a community to foster a solo business. I cannot even begin to list for you all that I have learned from constantly participating in my own communities. I’ve gotten both wonderful, gentle, loving support and a sharp kick in the pants….and both have been beneficial to me. It will be the same for you.
I’m excited to tell you that I’m forming a new community for solo business owners that will offer these benefits ( and more) in just about a month. I’m calling it Private Matters because I’m creating a group to which you can bring your most private thoughts and worries. These deeply affect your business, they matter. So….in a nutshell….Private Matters. It will be small, full of sharp thinkers and dedicated solo business owners, and it will change you and your business in ways that you can only dream of. If you feel you are a good match for Private Matters, you can e-mail me and I’ll make sure you get the application and information.
Meanwhile, keep your business focused on who you serve, what those people need, and how you can best offer products and services that meet those needs. And remember to reach out for community regularly. Both you and your customers will benefit.
(c) Sue Painter
How To Set A Goal And Make It Stick
January 30, 2010
When I speak, I often engage the audience, working interactively. Why? Because I know that the more we engage all our senses (not just our ears) when we hear new material, the more it helps us to anchor that new material within us. I also know that anchored information will more likely be used when we return to our offices. Instructional designers call this “transfer of training.” Proving that what we teach is actually taken and used in someone’s work is the holy grail of professional training.
When you decide to set a new goal for yourself, how do you do it? Do you sit down and make a list? Do you write out an affirmation? Do you simply think to yourself one day while you’re in the car “I need to do thus-and-such” and set out to do it? Whatever your method, you can have a higher degree of sticking to your new goal if you include as many of your senses as you can to help you along.
There are several ways of doing this, and most of the methods I know work pretty well. One that is popular right now is called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT is often used to change our emotional reaction to a certain situation. For instance, if you get nervous speaking in front of people, you can learn to use EFT to say affirmations and tap yourself on specific points of the body. EFT is nicknamed “tapping” because you actually do tap yourself repeatedly at specific spots as you are saying the sentences you construct about your goal — the change you desire. I’ve used EFT more than once and if it is used consistently, it has worked for me. To learn more about EFT, you can contact my friend Annie Wills, at Full Circle Coaching.
I’m going to give you another way to involve your senses and make your new goal stick, though. It is often called VAK, which stands for Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic. I like VAK because it is another way to become an embodied entrepreneur. Simply put, that means that you are engaged in your work with your heart, soul, mind AND body – and you are sure to be quite successful if you can achieve that!
So, to set a goal and put the power of VAK behind it, here’s what you do:
- Write your goal down.
- Close your eyes, and ask yourself “what will you see that will let you know you’ve attained your goal?” Even better, you can give this question and the following ones to a friend and ask them to walk you through this and answer to her, out loud. Take a breath or two, and see what pictures you get, what you’ll see when your goal is met. You will probably get more than one vision. Open your eyes, and write each of them down.
- Again, close your eyes and ask yourself “what will people say to you once you’ve reached the goal?” After you’ve recorded your answer (or had your friend record it for you), try asking yourself “what will people say about you once you’ve reached your goal?” And finally, ask what you would say to yourself when your goal is reached. Record your answers, or have your friend do it for you.
- (This is my favorite part!) Now, close your eyes again. Ask yourself how you will feel when you’ve reached this new goal. Really take some time to let this sink in, and see what feelings arise in you. Once you have a good strong feeling going, ask yourself about the color, shape, texture, and even the temperature of that feeling. Finally, ask yourself where the feeling is located in your body. Record all your answers. Don’t rush yourself, give yourself time to really get into the feeling of reaching this goal.
- Finally, ask yourself what belief you could state about yourself that will help you get this goal. For instance, if you want to lose weight but always snack at night, could you create a belief about yourself that you are able to easily turn your attention from eating after 8:00 PM? Work on this replacing your current belief that it is “impossible not to eat” or “I must eat because I get too fatigued, too bored, or too scared not to eat at night.” In other words, replace your negative self-talk with a positive belief in yourself as someone who is capable of doing what you want to do.
- Be sure to ask yourself if you foresee any reason NOT to reach this goal. If you secretly think that being thinner will be bad in some way you will not reach your goal until you have put that belief to bed. We almost always have a secret reason that we don’t want to do what we say we want to do. I say I want to improve my auditory Spanish skills, but secretly I don’t want to put in the extra half hour a day to do that. So, of course, I don’t! Bring your secret reasons up into your consciousness, and you’ll go a long way to helping yourself get that goal.
The point here is to create a framework around you that helps support you in all your senses. If you have a goal to grow a rose garden, you can close your eyes and envision the layout, the sunshine, the colors, and the smells for sure. The more you can embody your goals, the more you’ll be able to make it stick. Let me know how it works for you.
Does Your Business Suffer From Perfection Syndrome?
January 28, 2010
Perfectionism will kill your business. The goal that you have as a solo professional is to provide a service that solves the problem your customer has. If you do that, you’ll succeed. Notice that I don’t say you have to PERFECTLY solve your customer’s problem. In fact, if you push for a perfect solution you run the risk of putting your customer off, because you will begin to nit pick at tiny little things you are offering, and you’ll lose focus on the big picture.
This thing about perfectionism is controversial to talk about. We are taught to find the “perfect solution” to our customers’ problems. But here’s the thing, and it’s important to remember. Life changes for that customer almost daily. The customer herself can’t really articulate a “perfect” solution. She may think she can, but once her “perfect solution” is in place, things will change and she’ll find that she needs to tweak it a little bit over time.
The big truth is that there IS no ongoing, perfect solution for your own business or for your customer’s business, either. You plan a resolution to an issue and execute it, and after that you see what worked and what didn’t work. You change it around the edges a little bit and go again. Finding what works for yourself or for a customer is not a straight line. It’s a curving line, sometimes curling back on itself, sometimes meandering where you never dreamed it will go. To hold that as true and faithfully watch when changes are needed is the best practice for a solo professional. It’s the best practice for larger businesses, too, but they often become too inflexible and stodgy to execute in that way.
Here are two big problems I see with solo professionals who are trying to establish a business that makes enough money to be viable.
1. Fear of making mistakes, which manifests as failure to take timely action.
2. Trying to decide everything by logic rather than feeling into what might be best for their business or their customer’s business.
I’d much rather see a solo professional try something and fail, and then learn from what went wrong, than to be paralyzed from the fear of failure. Almost all successful business owners have made mistakes, and there’s no sin it in. The sin is in burying the mistake and failing to look at it closely so that one learns. I literally have to re-train a good portion of the clients I work with to actually tell me when something goes wrong! We get into this practice of trying to hide our mistakes, which doesn’t help us in the end.
Additionally, there is a great benefit to using your feeling sense to help make decisions for yourself and your customers. You might also think of this as using your intuitive sense of things rather than depending solely on logic. You can ask yourself a question, close your eyes, and get a gut feel or sense of the best answer. The more you practice this, the better you will get. It is a great addition (and sometimes a replacement) for deciding only by logic alone. In fact, most of the millionaire entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed over the past years tell me that when the chips are down and it’s decision-making time, they trust their gut. Not the figures, but the gut. That’s a great confirmation of using your feeling sense to help you made decisions. Sometimes things will not seem logical at all, but you have a strong sense it is the right path to take.
The truth is that there IS no perfection in this life, so trying to run our businesses from that place will never work. That is the wisdom that successful solo professionals have come to know. the next time you feel yourself fearful over making a business decision, take a breath, check your gut, and move forward. You’ll find that you will do better in the end than waiting for perfection to come.