1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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….
5. 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

Still, like everyone else, I have my limits.  So it was with a great deal of fear, dread, trepidation and tears that I let Bill drive me to a hospital early Monday morning, where in a few short hours my left knee would be amputated out of my leg, and if things went well a new knee would be put in.  There was a chance that my knee was so injured that a new knee would not work.  So I had to let the haze of anesthesia settled over me, not knowing what I would wake up to.  Honestly, this was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life.

Both in business and personal life, there comes time when we need to tear things apart, blow things up, be destructive.  And the truth is that we do not know what the outcome will be at these times.  What we do know is that the current situation and the road we are on is not working.  Plain and simple, we need to stop.

I’ve put together a road map that will help you to know when it’s time to tear things apart, and how best to prepare for it.  Here are some of the rules of the road we are on that simply won’t take us where we want to go.

1. We tend to fear completely deconstructing things so much that we stay on the wrong road far too long.
2. The longer we stay on the wrong road, the more we lessen our chances of a good outcome once we’ve finally torn things up.
3. We spend too much time, energy, and resources trying to make the road we’ve been on work.  We make ridiculous accommodations that do not serve us, and we engage in more wishful and magical thinking.  Denial gains super-sized strength from our fears.
4. We assign fear to those around us, assuming they will dislike what will happen when things are torn completely apart, and using that as an excuse for keeping ourselves on the wrong road.

In both our personal and business worlds, however, we can ruin ourselves and our opportunities to have what we desire by refusing the “blow it up, tear it up, deconstruct it” path.  Our secret ambitions or dreams for ourselves languish.  The outward signs of “living wrong” can include anger, bitterness, depression, constant excuses, wishful thinking (if only), blame, totally buying in to beliefs and stories we tell ourselves about why we can’t do something, being cynical, jealousy, and dishonesty with ourselves and others.  Ugh!

No matter what “it” is, force yourself to have the curiosity and honesty to consider what might happen after deconstructing what you have right now.  Don’t just list the “bad” things you immediately think about.  List all the possibilities you can think of, too.  Energy follows thought, so keep yourself on the possibility side of the list as much as you can. Rule number one?  You don’t have enough foresight and knowledge to deconstruct something alone.  Get help, give it time and attention, and move through the steps without continuing to tell yourself how scary or wrong it is once you’ve made up your mind.

1. Consider the alternatives with at least three people.
2. Find the very best people to help you.
3. Make sure you like the way they approach things and their energy.
4. Enroll your significant others – friends, business partners, family members, support staff.
5. Ask these people to tell you their own fears about the deconstruction.  This helps clear the air and prevent sabotage.
6. Set up a timetable for when you will end the old and what all the steps are for the new.
7. Make it as easy as you can on yourself.  Clear the calendar of other demands.  Whatever else you do, hire it done or stop it for a few days.  Maybe you get someone to shop, cook, and clean for a few weeks so that’s totally off your mind.
8. Gather up your courage, quit listening to the “backtalk” from yourself and others, and  take one step.
9. Keep going through your steps with determination, even when you begin to doubt or run into an unexpected hurdle.
10. Remind yourself that what you have been doing DOES NOT WORK and that you are now creating a new order of things.  You are not reaching for perfection, you’re reaching toward a solution that will actually get you what you want.
11. Be honest to yourself and others when you have “doubt days” – get it out of yourself to prevent self-sabotage.
12. Once a day, look at the big picture.  Remind yourself that the road you have been on DOES NOT WORK.  Give yourself credit for each step along the way.
13. Work diligently on the new road. Don’t go back and wonder if you’ve done the right thing.  Whatever you are doing, it’s probably more right than the wrong thing you were doing.

As I write this, I’m in a rehab hospital learning how to use my new knee.  Yes, I did get one!  It’s been painful and hard, and it’s easy to fall into doubt that I’ll ever get the pain to stop or that I will be able to bend my knee very well.  Like everyone else who goes through this, I’ve had my few days of “hitting the wall” and wondering why in the world I ever did this to myself.  But my surgeon is expert at his craft and at reminding me where this can take me.  My teachers and friends remind me of the truth about how things were just a short week ago.  My new “knee friends” share every setback and success with me over meals and in the hallways.  And the hospital staff support me completely, from helping me get a shower to making sure my pain medications are delivered right on time.  I’m off the road that was getting me nowhere, and would have never gotten me where I want to go.  This road is “more right” than the road I was on.

No matter how big it is in your business or personal life, have the courage to say aloud “this road is over.”  You might find out that tearing something up is actually the way to create what you’ve always wanted.

(c) Sue Painter

This often comes up in networking groups, for instance, when someone feels that they “give” more contacts, resources, information, and leads than others in the group – and it usually arises from a feeling of lack and smallness in the very person who believes she (or he) is giving so generously “without receiving in equal measure.”

The truth is that parity can absolutely never be measured one for one. We don’t know what any one new person added to someone’s mailing list will bring or not bring to that list in terms of value. We can’t go down the road of thinking that way or the group becomes, eventually, a snarky little group whose members all believe that they are of greater value to the group as a whole than the other members. We don’t know this, and once we begin to buy into that belief and philosophy it goes against the universal laws of abundance, openness, and love. One – even one – new person who is added to my list may be a “connector” – a person who forwards my offerings to so many people that that one person is solely responsible for 20 or 30 other new people to my list. And on the other hand, I may get 25 people from someone else who has a huge list but has on it a ton of people who never purchase a single thing. We never know. We cannot honestly nor from a basis of collaboration and abundance judge the value of any one person or any one “collaborative” effort. Entrepreneurs who begin to think and speak and act from that place go down a misguided path. The trouble with that path is that it begins to poison the well that we all drink from. It comes from a ground of scarcity, not abundance. It comes from a ground of fear, not love.

Sometimes the smallest, most quiet person has the longest arm and deepest reach. In my massage clinic I have a “customer” who has never been on my table at all and yet over the past eight years she has referred over twenty people to Touch Therapy Center, and they, in turn, have referred more. That’s just one example of how inexpert and rash it is to judge that we are giving or receiving “more or less” than someone else we have contact with. It’s a great example of the complete unreality of the issue of parity. We just never know where even one person will lead. Sometimes quieter people have much more depth and value than we may think. To start judging that “I give more than you give” is scared, small-minded, contracted, selfish – all lesser energies that do not lead to openness and abundance. Think about the ramifications downstream before you get up in arms about parity and buy into the belief that you give more than you receive.

(c) Sue Painter

Resolve to keep uppermost in your mind that energy follows thought.  When you really get this concept you will understand that working in each moment to create your life as you want it is the highest and best use of your time.  Resolve to keep on this track, and watch your business thrive!

Entrepreneurs who work their business vision get caught in a conundrum fairly early on. What is it?

* We like to control everything from conception to creation in our business. Entrepreneurs are often

perfectionists and we just can’t let go!

* In order for us to succeed at the highest level, we must build support, community, a team. And doing

that means personal growth in — guess what — learning to let go.

I’ve seen many a great business idea flounder and eventually fail because the budding entrepreneur doesn’t get this very basic truth – to succeed in a big way requires power greater than yours alone. It requires stepping out, letting others in, and creating community to support you. The truth is, you cannot go it alone.

One way to measure someone’s commitment to their business is to assess their willingness to grow a team. If I hear “I can’t afford it” I know right away that person’s gut commitment to their own business is weaker than it needs to be. Refusing to get help is a very subtle form of self-sabotage. It usually means that you are based in fear.

Building one’s own business is so much fun, I love it – but it is also hard work. It requires a continual, steady level of energy, the willingness to step out and take risks that make your stomach turn over sometimes, and quick decision making. It’s rare to find an individual who can do all that all alone. We need others. We create synergy and open possibilities when we tap into what others can offer us. We free our own energy to focus on the thing WE do best – the ideas and vision of creating something new. No, 99.9% of the time, you can’t go it alone. Fully commit to your vision, and search for those who will support you, challenge you, and help you. That’s the way to make your business thrive.