Do You Have The Courage Of An Entrepreneur?
March 4, 2010
Years ago, I heard the statement “the fastest way to personal growth is to open your own business.” Thirteen years after opening my first business, I can promise that statement is true. Like many people who are self-employed, I came out of the corporate world, where I was used to having support staff, creative people around me to bounce ideas off of, and the big bosses over me to handle the heat. I also had janitorial staff to clean the office and technical support staff to handle an errant computer. When I left all that to open my own business, I soon discovered that my support staff, creative people, big bosses, janitorial staff and technical staff was the person I saw when I stared into my mirror.
My business was brand new and very small, one room in an office building. I had to handle everything, whether I was “trained” to handle it or not. I had to discover what I did well, what I enjoyed the most, what I hated to do, when I could afford to hire help, and what help I needed to hire first. I had to stretch and grow quickly. Fortunately, because I had solid experience in growing a business, the Touch Therapy Center (a massage clinic I own to this day) built itself quickly. Within the year, I could hire help for cleaning and laundry service. Next came a bookkeeper. Now, 13 years later, I manage the business while other staff do most of the therapeutic massage, I’m in a medical office building with multiple treatment rooms, and I have a practice manager to handle the front desk, errands, and most adminstrative tasks.
What I want to point out is the rocky path of personal growth it takes to get from year one to year thirteen, turning a profit the whole way. Here are some of the things I had to learn or consider:
- Watch my operating costs and bottom line – I had to remain profitable even if I was spending more money on getting help with cleaning, laundry service, and so forth. Watching my weekly financial statements was critical, or I could have worked myself crazy and not made a dime.
- Know myself well enough to figure out what I liked to do and was good at versus what I am not so good at and am not fond of doing. One of these in the massage business is laundry. I didn’t enjoy dragging home loads of sheets and spending my evenings sorting, washing, drying, and folding them. And I wasn’t particularly great at it, either. On the other hand, I’m very practiced and skillful at attracting clients. I didn’t need or want to pay anyone to handle marketing for me, other than getting help with a design for my business card. It was easy for me and saved me money to develop my own brochures and press releases.
- I had to find out about my willingness to take risk and how to handle the good and bad that came from that risk. Should I move into larger office space and increase my rent? If so, how much more business would I need to generate to remain at my same level of profit? Could I get larger space, spend more money, and at the same time make even more money? Could I negotiate new lease terms that were favorable to me?
Before long, I had a very busy practice and was ready to hire other staff. Now, I could draw on my past experience as an Executive Director and use my past hiring skills. This time, if I made a bad decision, it was mind and mine alone to deal with, for better or for worse.
And, after about 8 years, I had to make a decision about opening my second business, The Confident Marketer. Other entrepreneurs had been asking me for serveral years how I’d built my business, how I knew what to do when, how I got profitable. I found that I absolutely loved helping other self-employed people be successful. So, about 5 years ago, The Confident Marketer was born. And with it, a whole new level of personal growth and challenge was necessary. It’s one reason I keep myself always working with top coaches who can help me face up to the personal growth and new business skills I need to keep my business successful and innovative.
The point to my story is that it takes courage to be an entrepreneur. You have to be willing to find out what you don’t know, get help with those things you don’t do well, and become expert at a few things that are yours and yours alone. You have to be willing to step up to intimately knowing and watching your financials (something I find many new entrepreneurs don’t want to do). You have to make decisions using both the facts and figures AND your gut feelings — your intuitive skills. And when there is a problem, you have to be willing to meet it and work it through, taking time to consider whether and how much it affects your customer service and your bottom line.
All this takes a great deal of courage and a willingness to grow both personally and professionally. A great business takes three things – a solid biz plan, a creative and well-thought-out marketing plan, and a willingness to do engage in personal growth. And behind those three vital things is courage. Step right up, and see how quickly your business becomes unstoppable!
(c) Sue Painter
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.
Is It Time To Tear Your Business Apart?
December 17, 2009
Change is uncomfortable and scary for most of us. Although we have varying levels of tolerance to change and risk, all of us have 
some point where we avoid these things. I’ve been a risk taker most of my life – I love exploration and adventure, and I know that my willingness to try new things, or do old things in a new way, has brought me much delight and success.
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.
- We tend to fear completely deconstructing things so much that we stay on the wrong road far too long.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Consider the alternatives with at least three people.
- Find the very best people to help you.
- Make sure you like the way they approach things and their energy.
- Enroll your significant others – friends, business partners, family members, support staff.
- Ask these people to tell you their own fears about the deconstruction. This helps clear the air and prevent sabotage.
- Set up a timetable for when you will end the old and what all the steps are for the new.
- 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.
- Gather up your courage, quit listening to the “backtalk” from yourself and others, and take one step.
- Keep going through your steps with determination, even when you begin to doubt or run into an unexpected hurdle.
- 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.
- Be honest to yourself and others when you have “doubt days” – get it out of yourself to prevent self-sabotage.
- 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.
- 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
3 Ways to Become an Entrepreneur Even If You Work for Someone Else
October 10, 2009
I’ll bet you have known people who are very successful in their work, even if they work for someone else. Maybe the person is a hairdresser working in someone else’s salon, but over time that person has created more following than anyone else in the salon and has a good reputation around town. Maybe the person is an administrative assistant and you notice that the office she manages seems to answer requests faster than other offices in the organization. There is finally a name for this type of person, and the name is intrapreneur. Intrapreneurs thrive and are highly successful in an organization. They like and need the structured system, and they don’t want to assume risk. Yet they add value over and above what their job description says. They improve systems, service customers well, or are extremely creative about solving problems within the confines of what the organization will allow.
Many entrepreneurs hone their skills within an organization before going out on their own. I did, and I know hundreds of others who have done the same. The confidence built by working with a structure encourages some entrepreneurs to decide to leave the structure – they become willing to take on the risks themselves. If you are an intrapreneur right now, and you’ve decided you want to leave the organization and do it yourself, here are three ways to make it work.
- Start saving at least 10% of your money so that you’ll be able to monetize your new business when you go out on your own. In other words, tithe to yourself. Keep your job while you build funds to carry you through the opening months of your soon-to-be business.
- Develop a “leave the 9 to 5″ work plan. Set a date and then start working through the details. Build your plan for your new business, for sure, but also build your exit plan. The two plans should be seamless and supportive of each other.
- Start an informal advisory board for yourself and your new business. This can include supportive family members, friends, other successful entrepreneurs, or a coach. Share your plans and get feedback.
There are dozens of other ways to help yourself toward becoming an entrepreneur. But these three things are a great start and will give you structure. As an intrapreneur, you are used to structure. Make it and take it with you, and you’ll be firmly on the path to success.
(c) Sue Painter
Four Things Customers Want From Small Businesses
April 16, 2009
There are few small business owners today who would argue that the way we are transacting business isn’t changing. The list of profound and deep changes is long – here are just a few:
- Growth is coming from small business owners, solo professionals, and entrepreneurs rather than from giant conglomerate industries.
- Consumers are linked together via Internet and willingly share their happiness or discontent with a product or service they purchased.
- Almost half of consumers will go to the Internet to read reviews before purchase.
- Consumers are weary of policies that are inflexible, cold, and always to the benefit of the seller.
There are four key components of successful small businesses and solo professional in today’s marketplace, and these are:
- Transparency
- Authenticity
- Responsibility
- Reputation.
Transparency means that your customers want to know and understand how you do business, staight up, no hidden fees, no half-truths. What you sell and how you sell it need to be completely open and above-board. Some people, including Michael Port, whose newest book The Think Big Manifesto is a great primer for entrepreneurs and business onwers, call this radical transparency.
Authenticity has to do with honesty and being exactly what you say you are. If you design landscapes for residential properties you are honest about what you can do, what you can’t do, and what your experience and training is in landscape design. You’re the real deal.
Responsibility means being accountable for your actions with your customers. Promising one thing and delivering another doesn’t happen. Not meeting a deadline doesn’t happen. Mistakes are owned up to quickly and remedied quickly. You don’t pass the buck to someone else. This characteristic can get your business a long way, for the average consumer does not believe that large businesses are responsible much at all. Demonstrating responsibility will automatically attract business your way.
Reputation is the golden egg for a small business owner. Your customers want to know, like, and trust you before they do busines with you. They will have heard about you, for good or for ill, and it will stick. You can build a reputation over time and you can destroy it quickly. Given a choice between two equally attractive purchases, consumers will give the business with the better reputation the edge.
Think about your own business and how you would score on these four keys. These characteristics are critical for small businesses, keys to your surviving and thriving.
(C) Sue Painter
How to Benefit from Changing Times
November 6, 2008
On Monday, the United States elected a new president and many new members of the U.S. Congress. How
Americans voted brought us to the threshold of change. There was another big change for those connected to the University of Tennessee this week, as its long-time football coach Phil Fulmer resigned from what is no doubt the most visible and highest paid position at that university.
No matter what our preferences and beliefs about these two changes, each brings opportunity to look at ourselves and how we react to large shifts in the environment around us. Our habitual reactions to change and the behaviors we exhibit at these times have enormous impact, not just on us personally but also in our businesses. Here are ways to benefit from changing times.
- Honor the departing person
No matter whether I am very glad to see the person go or not, it benefits me to take stock of what that
person has accomplished or failed to accomplish, the traits I admire or truly detest, the strengths of the person, and the weaknesses that caused the change to occur. Noticing and reflecting on these things teaches me to see good in all beings, to be aware of my own hot buttons, to dissect for myself what I am drawn to and what repels me. Knowing these things strengthens me and helps me to navigate both personal and business relationships with more honestly and clarity.
- Acknowledge that change opens the door for new possibilities
Even when the situation causes anguish, anger, or sadness there is still a different energy and a different situation that absolutely WILL bring new possibilities to all parties – even the departing one! The trick is to step back from our attachment to what we wanted. So long as my energy is bound up in holding on to my preferences and desires, there is little energy free to see the opportunities and possibilities embedded within the change. If you think that there are NO good opportunities in the new order of things, it is a sure sign that you are clinging to your wants. Sometimes, we cling to our point of view for or against the change very strongly, talking about it and trying to prove our point of view over and over again. Often, this is a defense against feeling and letting go of the strong emotions we hold toward someone or something. Our energy is stuck until we are willing to let go.
- Honor the new person
Even when the person is one you don’t like and have not supported, it’s much more beneficial to you to build relationship with the person than to hunker down and refuse to deal. The new person has both good and bad points, same as the previous person and the same as you. Getting to know the new person gives you insight into what these good and bad points are and how to most effectively work together. Assume the positive – that the relationship will be beneficial to you and to the other person. People in new positions are sensitive to how others are reacting – if that person feels your support and interest at the outset, you will set a good foundation. In time, having built on what you can, you might even be able to influence their beliefs and behaviors – perhaps the very ones you do not like! Honoring creates openness and possibility.
Taking stock of your reactions, beliefs, and behaviors during times of change strengthens you and provides the best framework for moving forward. Doesn’t that sound like a good way to help your business thrive?
The Marriage of Vision and Success
October 5, 2008
Right now I’m in California at the International Living’s Live and Invest Overseas conference. Meeting the
250+ people here has reminded me of the relationship of vision to success. The people here fall into three categories:
- Those who dream about living offshore, read about it, but never make a plan.
- Those who are here and have a zillion questions, wanting to make an international move with absolutely no surprises and insure their success ahead of time.
- Those who have, in writing, their criteria for selecting a new country in which to live, have made several trips to check out potential locations, and have created a written budget of what they can afford and how they will live.
As you might imagine, the latter group will be the ones who actually act, who will achieve the goal of trying another country as their home. Why? They have done the work of honing their vision, and that solid vision gives them confidence to act and succeed.
It’s the very same with us as entrepreneurs and business owners. We know what we want to walk away from, but we have not taken on the thoughtful and sometimes tough work of thinking and feeling through to what we want to walk toward. We dream, and share our dreams with others over coffee, but we do not dig in. The more I work with entrepreneurs and home-based business owners the more I find that the unsuccessful ones are half-in, half-out. They have a vague idea of “something different” but their vision isn’t clear. They have not dug in and done the work of taking their current discomfort and vague dreams of something difference into a lively vision. And consequently, they take no actions, or their actions lack focus and energy.
Without taking our dreams into vision we do not bring about success. Working with our dreams and creating a heart-felt, written vision will spin our energy toward action, and action drives success. I sure have seen many examples of this as I meet the conference attendees here. Specific actions work best when married to one’s vision. And vision is more than a vague dream – it is the flesh we put on the bones of a dream.
Here’s to taking dreams into vision, and vision into success!
Sue P.