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.
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.
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
Can You Really Describe Your Ultimate Target Market?
February 7, 2010
One of the real “rookie” mistakes made by new entrepreneurs is to completely fail to know her target market. This is something that is very easy to spot. A few of the signs are:
- Her business is not thriving, meaning she needs more customers and she is not financially successful.
- When asked who she works with, she replies “Oh, I work with just about anyone.”
- If asked to thoroughly and completely describe her target market, she is flustered and can’t give more than a sentence.
The “Oh, I work with just about anyone” response is one I’ve heard from both new and not-so-new entrepreneurs many times. So many times, in fact, that it now drives me a little nuts. When someone says that, they are setting no boundaries for who they work with, which is a deadly thing. Let me ask the “just about anyone” entrepreneurs these questions:
1. Does it matter to you if a customer stiffs you?
2. Are you open 24/7?
3. If you were, for instance, a seller of curtains and blinds, would you drive 400 miles to sell a set of blinds to someone?
Of course, the answer to each of these is almost always NO! And that’s a good, thing, because that entrepreneur has just started on a path of better describing her target market. Her target market are people who have the money to pay for her products or services, she works with those who contact her during specific days and hours of business, and she has a limited geographical area in which to sell her blinds. This isn’t a complete description of her target market, but it is a start.
You can picture the creation of your target market as setting fences and gates around a specific group of people with whom you really want to work. You might not be as blatantly obvious about it as the gatekeepers are at hot night clubs, where one must stand outside on the sidewalk and get personally picked to go inside, but that is one very good example of a business who is very picky about who they want to serve.
I’ve learned about finding your niche and describing your target market from 3 or 4 of my coaches and mentors, but the one who made me work the hardest to describe my market, hands down, was Suzanne Falter-Barnes. She has a very long list of questions that one must answer to get through one of her platform building classes. The first time I saw that fat list of questions I just about fainted. In fact, the document she proposed I fill out to describe my market was 17 pages long! Still, Suzanne knows her stuff and I was there to learn, so I plowed into the questions. At the end, I felt like I’d invented something akin to a kid’s secret playmate. I started getting actual pictures of how my target market person looked, how she dressed, what she spent her money on, and more. I got so familiar with her in that 17 pages of ruthless questioning that I decided I knew her well enough to name her, for Pete’s sake! And that is what I strongly suggest you do, too.
My suggestion is to sit down with your computer or a piece of paper and describe a “sample” person from your target market as if she (or he) is a character in a book you are writing, and it’s up to you to fill your reader’s head with a detailed, specific, colorful image of the character you are writing about. Describe age, education, the kind of work she does, where she lives, her likes and dislikes – anything you can think of that will add to the picture in your head. This may lead you to dig around on the web for demographic or other information.
Spend quality time here, for it pays off in the end. Ask yourself (with pen and paper or keyboard nearby) “who is the most perfect customer for me?” If you have a hard time doing that, prime the pump by listing the characteristics of your most favorite or best customer so far. From there, dream on. Who would be delightful to work with? Who would you dread working with? What characteristics drive you crazy? Who have you worked with who bugs you so much you hope she never calls you again? You get the picture – and that’s whole point. For here is a secret about financially successful entrepreneurs:
Those who describe and visualize their target market well have started the process of manifesting exactly that type of customer for themselves. You now have a vision of who you want to attract, in detail. Put that right on your business vision board and keep it in your mind’s eye, for who you focus on tends to come your way.
Having this vision and description on hand also makes it easier to walk away from business that isn’t right for you, doesn’t truly interest you, and has a downside to it. (The downside being that while you are spending time with uninteresting client A, you cannot very well be also working with or running into very interesting and exciting client B. This is called “opportunity cost.”) Realize that it actually COSTS YOU to work with the wrong customer, for you are giving up the opportunity to work with who is just right for you.
Taking the time to dream up your ideal target market person makes finding that type of person much easier. You now know where to focus your efforts. If you are spending a lot of time and money networking in a group of direct marketers, and these are not your target market, it’s time to make a change. Pull your time and money from the wrong group, and go find the right group. You’ll find more and better business in the new group and waste less of your precious time.
When you are creating marketing plans, writing sales copy, or pulling together a presentation you’ll be able to keep your secret target market person right with you, writing to them. There will be less agony over creating these things.
And finally, when you have the opportunity to build a relationship with a potential customer, you will be much more at ease because, after all, you will pretty much feel as if you know that person in a way. You’ll be confident that you’ve spent time with someone who has a much higher chance of needing what you offer. This will shorten your sales cycle and make you more money faster. I don’t know of any entrepreneur who doesn’t want that!
So, get that blank paper or computer screen and get going. Breath some life into your target market, and you’ll breath new life into your business, as well. It’s a win-win for every entrepreneur.
(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.
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.
Four Great Ways To Keep Your Business On Track
October 29, 2009
Solo professionals need a strong vision of where they’re headed and an internal warning system that tells them when they are getting off their game. Here are four ways to make sure you are keeping on track.
1. Take a look at your to-do list. Put a star by anything that has been on that list for more than two weeks, and look at those starred items with an eagle eye. Chances are, you are procrastinating on those items. Take the starred items and list them out on a separate sheet of paper, and out beside each one note what the very next step is to move that item forward. Now, either schedule it in your calendar for THIS week, or hand it off to an assistant. Often, entrepreneurs procrastinate because they are unsure how to proceed. If that’s the issue, call a friend, talk to your Mastermind group, put it on your coaching agenda – take an action that will get you out of “not knowing how.”
If you get into the habit of regularly scanning your to-do list and noticing what hangs on there for several weeks or more, you’ll develop the strong habit of pushing yourself out of procrastination.
2. Get yourself a timer. As you sit down to work on the task at hand, set the timer for half an hour and pledge to work ONLY on that task, with no interruptions. I often tell my clients that the world actually can live without them for 30 minutes at a time! Don’t check e-mail, answer the phone, Tweet about what you are doing. Stay right on task until the timer goes off. Using a timer to create concentrated periods of work teaches you focus. Entrepreneurs are well-known for having “bright shiny object syndrome” (also called fuzzy focus.) The more you train yourself to focus for short bursts of time, the more productive you will be.
3. Remind yourself of your big vision at least once a day, and tell someone else at least once a week. It’s easy to get discouraged when obstacles get in the way, and discouragement can lead to self-doubt. Regularly reminding yourself that you are doing your business for an important reason, and that you have every capability to succeed is critical. And about once a week, it’s good to hear that from someone else who is a supporter. Creating the habit of keeping your vision in the top of your mind fosters a strong faith in yourself and what you’re doing. It drives self-doubt out the door.
4. Get yourself into a Mastermind group, meet regularly, and don’t skip. You didn’t decide to be in business for yourself to play small, did you? Developing a strong relationship with other solo business owners who can encourage and support you creates a habit of thinking big. And that’s what you want to be doing, thinking big, thinking out of the box, thinking in ways that most people don’t think. A good Mastermind group will both encourage and challenge you to get out of your comfort zone, keeping you from thinking too small about yourself and your business. It’s a safe place to test out your most outrageous business ideas and get help in shaping those into reality. Develop the habit of thinking big and out of the box! It will help ensure that your business flourishes.
Using these four systems fosters four good habits that keep you right on track. And in the end, those habits lead directly to a better bottom line.
(c) Sue Painter
How To Surf To Success in Your Biz
October 18, 2009