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.
How Far Will You Stretch To Grow Your Business?
June 15, 2010
My hubby and I were out on the lake a week or so ago and snapped this picture of a cedar tree that has bent itself way off the shore to grow. It’s probably been hit by lightning in the past, refused to die, and began growing in another direction, toward new light and water and freedom. It may be an unusual shape for a cedar tree, but it’s fully alive, fully a part of the forest around it.
As we were drifting away from “seeking cedar” as we called it, I started thinking about how much we have to be willing to grow, in our own unique way, to create the fully alive life and work we crave. The work I do with others about their business often becomes about their personal life, too. Why? Because we can’t develop into the entrepreneurs we want to be without changing those parts of ourselves that hold us to the normal, everyday life. As solo business owners we have to be adaptable, just like this “seeking cedar” tree. We have to reach for the nutrients we need even if it means growing away from the shore that has supported us, or looking a little different than others who work for themselves. In fact, the more we know ourselves, the more we know our uniqueness, which is, after all, what others buy from us. Just like this tree, we have to stand out to be noticed. If we insist on blending in, we make it much more difficult for people to find us and want our services.
Here’s a quick exercise you can try that will help you understand how much you are willing to stretch to build your business. Get into a quiet spot for about 15 minutes with a pad and pencil (or your laptop if you consider that a thing of the past, LOL). Ask yourself:
- What two things stop me from being all I truly can be in my life and my work?
- Am I the one stopping myself from removing these two things, or is it someone else?
- Am I willing to stretch myself to change or remove these two things?
- What will I gain by stretching in this way?
- What’s the worst thing that might happen? And what happens after the worst thing has happened?
- What’s the best thing that might happen? And what comes after that?
You can use these questions whenever you are scared of an opportunity that presents itself in your business. They will help you to see what you should do, what actions or thoughts will serve you the most in building your business. Just don’t be surprised when you realize that stretching to be the entrepreneur you can be also stretches your personal life. It’s a hand-in-glove proposition – when you stretch one, you stretch the other. You can die in place when you’ve been pushed or shoved, or you can become a seeking cedar and stretch into a brand new space.
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!
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!
How To Fail As An Entrepreneur
March 24, 2010
One of the things that catches up the entrepreneurs I work with is perfectionism. I see this almost every day, an unwillingness to 
launch a product, produce a video, do a live event, publish a book, launch a website unless it is perfectly done. The fear of failure is often immense. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, and I know that it is a peculiarity of American culture much more than in other cultures. We seek to be entrepreneurs who always shine, don’t make mistakes, and look perfectly in control.
The problem is, holding perfectionism as your goal means that you are always chasing your tail. Just like a puppy who goes round and round until exhausted, you chase after yourself. You go round and round, when what you want to do is move forward. I’ve had clients who take months to write perfect copy for a website launch, losing tons of time in building their list. I’ve had more than one mompreneur resolutely stay exactly where she is in her business, because every single time she will chose to service her family rather than her business, indulging in a fantasy of being the perfect mom.
It’s my job to help entrepreneurs lose that habit of chasing perfection. Replace perfection with curiosity. You give yourself much more opportunity for growth. You quit using perfection as your excuse.
- Consider launching your website with the copy you have right now. As the weeks go by, see how it draws people (or not) and change the copy if you need to. Websites are, in fact, never done. It doesn’t matter if your website isn’t perfect. It does matter if your website isn’t launched.
- Consider baking one less set of brownies for your child’s homeroom, or missing one out of hundreds of sports events. Instead, take that hour to complete and launch a new product or service offer, and consider that being a financially successful mompreneur might be just as important a model for your child than the memory of an extra set of brownies. Which serves you and your child more?
In Stephen Mitchell’s The Second Book of the Tao is a verse I often read:
“The mature person is like a good archer;
When he misses the bull’s-eye,
he turns around and seeks
the reason for his failure in himself.”
We have total responsibility for what we do. When we get stuck in seeking perfection, we use it to hide, to keep ourselves from being responsible. Instead of the problem being within us, we look for an outside person or event to blame. It’s much easier to say “I’m just not sure if the web copy says what I want it to say” than it is to to say “I’m scared to move forward.” It’s much easier to say “Oh, I have to cancel our meeting, I have a soccer practice to attend” than it is to say “I’m going to get this done now, it is equally or more important for me and my child.”
If you want to fail as an entrepreneur, practice perfectionism. If you want to make money, practice shooting the archer’s bow, and keep practicing until it hits the mark. Learning from what doesn’t work is just as important as hitting the bull’s eye first time out.
(c) Sue Painter
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.
Add Fun To Your Entrepreneurial Endeavors
January 24, 2010
Lately I’ve run across more than one budding entrepreneur who makes building a business out to be nothing but serious and a lot of 
hard work. I’ve been pondering this a lot. Our energy follows our thoughts. When we hold only serious energy toward anything, it BECOMES hard to us. We fulfill our own expectations. We start believing that there is too much to do, too much to learn, and that we are overwhelmed. Here are just a few examples I’ve run across in the past months:
- It’s no fun to pay attention to weekly income and expenses.
- It’s no fun to carve out the time needed to work on my business, not in it.
The truth is, your business will flourish the more you weave fun into it. When we look forward to learning something new rather than thinking it will be overwhelmingly difficult, we create energy toward our own success. When we hold our work lightly, it feels much less burdensome and hard. We end up with a more positive energy toward the things we have to do. We all know this, but when it comes to our work we sometimes tend to forget it. We think we have to labor at our work, or keep it separate from our fun.
Dread has no place in your life as an entrepreneur. You didn’t set yourself up to be the boss of you just to feel dread toward your work, did you? 
One way to handle feeling too burdened or overwhelmed is to make sure you inject some fun and things you truly enjoy into your business. Tiny pleasures or large ones, they all help you succeed in your work.
Here’s just a small example. I’ve always loved the color turquoise, so to inject a little bit of fun into the work of updating one of my websites, I used it and asked Facebook friends what color to pair it with. I ended up with a dynamic combo of my fav turquoise paired with peach. I love it, and I had fun I had pulling it together. (You can check out the result at suepainter.com.) How fun it was to read the other day that turquoise has been named “color of the year.”
Often I encourage my clients to plan personal retreats to work out their stuck places and to work on their business planning. These are fun despite being productive. Go where you’ve been wanting to go, or return to a place you enjoy. Not only does the prospect of a trip create a welcoming energy, you are so easily able to work on your business rather than in it, getting away from the day-to-day routine. Go by yourself, or pair up with another entrepreneur who also wants to hammer out some work. You can weave breaks into your day, walk on the beach, get a nice dinner, shop. But for the most part, you are giving yourself uninterrupted time to invest in your business. Don’t sabotage yourself by making this a family vacation, either. It’s not – it’s for YOU.
You can also form a small Mastermind group with people you truly enjoy, and meet by phone or in person to help each other with business issues. Make it fun – meet over a good bottle of wine, take a walk, whatever you enjoy. For a while last year, I did this with another entrepreneur by meeting her to water walk and swim together. We’d do that, then get into the warm therapy pool and stretch both our bodies and our views of our businesses.
Do you have staff or employees in your business? In nice weather, try meeting outdoors with a picnic lunch. Just think about ways to bring joy and pleasure into your endeavor. You’ll benefit both in your spirit and your bottom line. Think easy-peasy, not hard. Think mastery, not failure. Think simple steps, not big overwhelming project. You didn’t put yourself in business to feel fearful, down or out. You put yourself in business to serve others and create a world of work that meets your income and lifestyle wishes. Fun will help you get there, even in small doses!
(c) Sue Painter