How To Avoid An Entrepreneurial Blowup
August 20, 2010
Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who exited his job by way of the emergency chute on the flight he was working, has set a new standard for reacting to a work situation that is tense and, in the moment, unbearable. Slater gots a lot of press, some positive and some negative. Media coverage is good, even when it’s controversial – it will help you find followers and make you sales. But the bottom line for Slater is that his JetBlue job is over.
As an entrepreneur, you can’t afford to pull the emergency chute and escape when a customer has gotten under your skin. Here’s a few ways to avoid “pulling the chute” and blowing up your work with a customer who has gotten on your very last nerve.
- Remove yourself from the on-going drama by stepping away, but don’t go so far as to pull the emergency chute. If you’re in person, excuse yourself and go to the back of the room, the restrooom, or the other end of the table. The key here is to physically move before you feel so threathened that in that moment you literally will do ANYTHING to get away, no matter the consequences. If you are on the phone, you can use your emergency exit script, which should go something like this, “I want to settle this disagreement in a way that is respectful to us both, but I can’t do that right now. I’m going to hang up togive myself time to think objectively, and I’ll be back in touch. Goodbye.”
- Close your mouth. By the time you’re totally over it, what comes out of your mouth won’t be anything worth repeating. I suspect that once Slater held forth, he got to a point that he realized his only way out was the chute. One way to stop talking is to train yourself to take a sharp, deep breath in through your nose, and blow it out through your mouth. You can’t breath like this and talk at the same time. Really, you can’t – try it! When you are appalled and angry, it’s natural to sharply take in your breath. So you’re going to do that anyway. Just train yourself to blow that breath out through your mouth, like a big “ha”. Breathing out a big “ha!” instead of giving voice to a string of words that escalate the situation (no matter they may be well-deserved), protects you. It keeps you from getting to the point that you feel threatened, which is when your reptile brain takes over and common sense goes out the door. Do this, and you’ll find that after the first sharp inhale and “ha” exhale, the second and third are much easier. You probably won’t need more than 3 or 4. Your head will clear, you’ll feel calmer, and your brain will be refreshed by the new and better oxygen supply.
- Decide later where to go from here. It may be that you will want to fire this customer from your business. I don’t preach not to fire customers, although some marketing experts will advise against it. I understand why, because negative word of mouth about an entrepreneur typically spreads faster than positive word of mouth. But I’m hoping that you’ve already carried out the first two steps, and that puts you on an entirely different path. Along with removing yourself and closing your mouth, you’ve created better options than blowing up and disappearing down a sliding chute. You now have time to think objectively about whether to end the relationship. Let’s say that you are so turned off that you never want to sell to this customer again. You’ve now positioned yourself to “save it but end it” rather than blowing it to tiny pieces. You can end it in a way that respects both you and the customer, and that will likely prevent the customer carrying out a negative word of mouth campaign. Your goal is to end the relationship without hurting your business, and deciding later helps you to do that. Everyone cools off, and a space opens up for better possibilities than ending it with drinks in hand, heading southward toward hard concrete and jail time.
It’s wise to have an emergency plan in place in case you’re ever carrying out business in a small space with someone who pushes your button. Remove yourself, close your mouth, and decide later are three actions that keep you in control of your emotions, your actions, and your business. Unlike Slater, you won’t be instantly famous, and your entrepreneurial endeavor will be safe.
Three Ways To Build Your Business on Criticism
August 16, 2010
One of the “aha mom
ents” I’ve had in the past few weeks is that many solo professionals (or entrepreneurs) contract and defend after receiving any question or suggestion about how they do their work. Instead of making the choice to relax, take a breath, and look at what was commented on, they waste their time (and their customer’s time, too!) in defending what they did. It’s such a waste of their time and energy, and such a lost opportunity for growing the best mindset for their own life and their business. And it’s a lost business opportunity, too.
If you get a comment or complaint, and then you choose to defend your actions, you are standing in a place of refusing to consider change. That reaction is always, 100% of the time, fear based. You don’t build a great life or a great business based on fear. And your customer, seeing that you defend instead of look with curiousity and openness about the comment, will simply walk away.
Here are three ways to actually INCREASE your business when you get a comment or flat-out criticism of your work.
- Don’t react with “that’s the way we have always done it.” No one cares about how you’ve always done it, they care that what you did didn’t completely do the job they wanted done. In the moment that the client (or customer) says something you did for her didn’t quite work, prick your ears up like a dog on point. You have someone offering you FREE comments on your own work procedures that, with a little bit of thought, can more than likely improve what you do and increase your customer satisfaction. Try saying, “Oh, I appreciate your comment about that. Can you tell me more?” And listen up! You’ll probably keep that customer, and she’ll be so shocked at your positive reaction to her comment that she’ll tell two others who will do business with you, too.
- Don’t react with a long-winded explanation (or even worse, e-mail) about WHY you did what you did and how long everything you did took. Your customer doesn’t want to listen to your defense of what you did. She wants you to get that she doesn’t completely perceive the value of what she got for the money she invested. There are only two answers to this concern. One is that you actually did charge too much money for her to ever feel she got a good result for what she spent. The second is that you didn’t communicate effectively the full monty (so to speak) of what you actually were going to do, and a part of it is not something your customer values. Your goal is to have your customers saying “that was worth every single penny” not “well, I got the job done but it cost twice what I thought it ought to cost.” Once someone thinks that about your work, making them listen to or read a long explanation about why you did what you did will NOT solve the problem. You’ll lose the customer and the word of mouth referrals.
- Don’t react to a critical comment by building even more policies and operating procedures to further justify the way in which you work. The one big advantage that entrepreneurs and solo professionals have over the big guys is that we are nimble. We can make or break our own rules right in the moment, and sometimes we should do just that. If you try to build a policy or procedure to handle every stinking little thing that ever gets commented on you will soon be spending most of your waking hours either writing the rules, defending the rules, expanding the rules, or explaining the rules. None of this time builds your business.
Once a few years ago I worked with a massage therapist who had a rule that her clients had to show up a full 15 minutes before their massage time. This was a rule she implemented in a foolish attempt to make sure her clients were never late and never impacted her schedule. Notice that I used the word “foolish” just now? The rule came into being because one weekly client always showed up ON TIME but then spent 10 minutes of her hour-long massage hitting the restroom, getting a drink of water, and precisely folding her clothes before hopping on the massage table. In reaction to this ONE client, the foolish “15 minute rule” was implemented on EVERY client. Don’t make a new rule, instead face the problem with the client head on and deal with it only where it makes sense to deal with it. See, not wanting to talk to the offending client was fear. The new “rule” went into effect so that this massage therapist could avoid facing her fear of talking straight out to this client. She could mutely point to “the rule.” Except, as I’m sure you have figured out, it didn’t work. The offender still messed around when she got there and everyone else complained about the new rule and left. Enough said!
When entrepreneurs defend against comments or criticisms they run the risk of leaving thousands of dollars on the table. This makes me sad. Take your customer comments as little gems, go off and sit with them, and evaluate your mindset and your work. Thank your stars that someone cares enough to comment instead of just silently walking away from you and your business. That’s a sure path to success.
Why I Pay To Be In My Mastermind Group
July 21, 2010
I’m still reeling from the long day I had yesterday with the Mastermind group I’m in. We’ve been meeting together for about a year now, usually by phone for a quick hour (once a month) but, three times a year, in person. And yesterday was one of those live-in-person-in-your-face days. Down in the bowels of a big hotel in LA we sat down to work together, to discuss the state of the entrepreneurial world we live in, to give each member time to stand up and put a personal business issue on the table, to get the comments, challenges, support, love, and bright ideas for our own businesses. And to give, in equal measure, to each person in the room.
I am a big believer in personal retreats, and I’m a big believer in putting your time and money out on the line to have the opportunity to hear about other people’s businesses, to starkly state what is going on with your own business, to get challenged and called on your stuff, and to get the wonderful amalgamation of ideas, resources, and help from each other. In a good group, there is bare honesty. There is no time for positioning or fakey stuff. In fact, a good group will catch you and call you before you even half-way get the dishonest or fake stuff out of your mouth. I’m blessed many times over to be in this group. We know each other, like each other, trust each other, and love each other too much to let any one of us get away with being less than we are called to be.
So, yesterday, it just happened that we had a magical day. Everyone was thirsty for the day, everyone is facing honking big personal challenges, everyone is stepping up to a much bigger vision of themselves and their business. Let me say that again. In order to step up to the vision you have for your business, you will be challenged to step up and handle your personal stuff. You cannot do one without the other. And a good Mastermind group will hold you to both, knowing that you can’t be half-assed about your growth. It is worth every penny I pay, the time away from business, the plane fare to do this. Seven other people have my back, and at the same time are asking me, “What in heck are you doing THAT for?”
I just love being in a room with people who will put it right out there on the table, no matter what, who have this truly deep commitment to exposing their thoughts and plans and visions and are willing to take the suggestions even if they are rigorously proposed. We all are kind, but we say it as we see it and we challenge each other. There is laughter but there are tears, too.
I’m honored to know these people, to sit in the same room with them. I love their brightness and their willingness to put it out there, to create something out of nothing but their own vision, which is often felt as a calling. It fed me. The more experienced I get in life and in business, the harder it has become to find places that feed me. In this group we get it that when we talk about our work, we talk about our soul at the same time. The two begin to merge until one’s work is literally a part of one’s spiritual practice. This group understands that. And that’s why I pay with my money and my time, and will fly anywhere to sit with these people.
I’m truly excited to be the creator and visionary of my own work, and I love more than anything to sit with others who are creating work from their own inner visions. I see a group of new, energetically savvy, intuitive-based entrepreneurs that is emerging rapidly to help solve the many issues that face us. For me, it was delicious to have a day of talking and listening. Sometimes, words didn’t matter, it was the energy, the vibration, the vibe in the room . This group gets it that there is no standing still and no status quo. Even if it upsets them, or scares them, they step up. Their brightness is amazing. You can hardly get a sentence out and 4 other people are nodding and taking off on the tail of it, enlarging and supplementing and feeding it back with new ideas. There are no blank stares and “let me think about that.” It is quick, lots of movement, energy flying. Everything is noticed.
I pay for what I learn, the support I get, the opportunities I have to support others, the challenges I’m given. I pay to stretch myself and get out of my own head. All truly successful solo professionals do this. We don’t whine about the money, we cough it up and we come out to play. It’s like putting your life and your business on super-oxygen for a day. At the end you have a zillion ideas and resources, but you’re kind of gasping for breath. Those of you reading this post who are in the group, thank you. I can’t wait until September when we see each other again.
How To Waste Time & Money on Marketing
June 20, 2010
I’m often asked to help solo professionals re-vamp old and never-used marketing plans, but I can’t do it without a mindset check first. Why? Because the surest way to waste your marketing budget and your time is to be unclear about what your business is about, what exactly you offer that benefits your customer, and why anyone would want what you are offering.
A few weeks ago I was listening to a potential client voice her concerns that her accounting firm was not “changing to meet the times.” She wanted her other two partners to get enthusiastic about a new specialty for the firm – adding on accounting services specifically for the elderly and the adult children who often end up having to manage their parent’s finances from another state. She has quite a bit of passion about this idea and feels that the demographics support it. She wanted to hire me to help them come up with a new website and 12-month marketing plan for this new part of the business.
After just a bit of questioning, I found that the other two partners didn’t support it. Older than she, they were nearing retirement and felt they had enough work and enough money. They were past the point in their careers where they wanted to build something new. This fact threw new questions into the pot. Would the woman push forward, putting her own time and money into the effort with only luke-warm support from the rest of the firm’s partners? Would she break off from the firm and establish an entirely new business? If she did that, did she have the money to both establish a new firm and build a new service at thet same time? Would she do some of her old work to give her financial footing, and only work to establish the “geriatric” accounting services part time? Was she positioned well in her personal life to take on breaking away? Could she bring the other partners around to her point of view?
While she was impatient to “get started” I was not! The mindset and marketing required to make such a new endeavor pay off would be very different if she went out on her own as opposed to remaining part of the existing firm, which had been together for many years. My experience is that creating and implementing a marketing plan means that the basics are already in place. Otherwise, it’s too easy to spend time and money only to decide that you must go off in a slightly different direction because of the shifting ground of your business and personal life.
My focus for working with the person became helping her envision how her idea might best work, the structure it would take to support it, assessing if she had the personal and professional ground in place (she was recently divorced, had just lost a parent, and had been ill for months with mono). After that ground is firm, we can build a kick-butt marketing plan. But you gotta answer the deeper questions first. Otherwise, you’re going to waste your entrepreneurial energy. And that’s a precious thing to waste!
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.
Pioneer Marketing For Entrepreneurs
May 28, 2010
When I was a kid living (briefly) in Oklahoma, one of my favorite times was the local “Pioneer Days.” Everyone dressed up in pioneer clothing, old Conestoga wagons were brought out of barns, and re-enactments of the early days of the town were carried out in the town square and at the fairgrounds. Everything was “old-timey” — the way it used to be. Some of the men would even grow their hair long and sport the old fashion handlebar mustache and side lamb chops.
I’m convinced that we are now in the pioneer days for marketing. If I’ve read one article about how push marketing doesn’t work anymore and that it is now all about building relationships with the consumer, I’ve read twenty. And every time I read one I shake my head and wonder why no one writes that this is back to marketing’s pioneer days. We now have “Pioneer Marketing.” It’s what our forebears did in every single city and town, and what the best and wisest businesses still do.
Pioneer Marketing (I think I just coined a new term) has one main tenet, and that tenet is infallible. It works every time because it is based on a law of human nature. What’s the law? “People respond positively and in a timely manner when they are treated with respect, courtesy, honesty, and in a way that has their best interests at heart.” That one law, rigidly adhered to, will win out every time. Your attention may be diverted by aggressive and shiny marketing for a while, but in the end you will go where that law of human nature is adhered to.
Simply put, our prospects and existing customers don’t want to be sold into a product or service that serves the seller and doesn’t serve the buyer. They are tired of push marketing coupled with shoddy goods and lacking customer service. And this is one huge reason that you, as an entrepreneur, have it over the big guys. The big guys have used push marketing, shoddy goods, and lacking customer service for so long that they are scrambling right now to turn huge, bloated, bureaucratic businesses around to save their sales. Meanwhile, you and I can “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” meeting and forming relationships with our prospects, selling our expertise, servicing our customers, and making the transaction into a win-win rather than a win-lose. We have memorable and recognizable faces. Large, bloated businesses give you a new and usually non-caring face every time you walk in their door or buy from them online.
Family-owned businesses, solo professionals, and entrepreneurs can step up and capture market share right now. Most of us have a familiar face to our prospects and customers. Many of the big guys don’t, and now that they realize that, they are all about “relationship marketing,” thinking they have discovered a whole new world. It isn’t a whole new world at all, it’s the world that many small business owners never left, the one that our pioneer forebears lived in. Everyone knew the business owners up and down the street and how they treated customers. Everyone knew who to avoid and who to buy from. Business was good or bad depending on the business owner’s savvy and her ability to form and keep relationships. Reputation was everything, and was based on something real, not something manipulated by copious marketing.
People respond to Pioneer Marketing because it is in our human nature. We are wired for relationships. On the frontier, relationships and trust in others meant survival. In the marketplace, it means survival for you, the business owner. And it is coupled with a sense of trust and satisfaction in our customers, as well.
You don’t have to put on a pioneer costume or grow a mustache to use Pioneer Marketing. Just plaster that one law of human nature up where you can see it, and build your business from that place. Let your marketing, advertising, customer service, and sales be aligned with that law. Couple that with good business skills, and you are good to go. The next time you hear about the new “relationship marketing” just smile. You are already there. So hip, so pioneer. That’s you!
Wish, Hope, Pray Marketing
May 24, 2010
With apologies to one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Gilbert, I want to ask you to assess your marketing with a cold eye and an honest look. Tell me…..is your marketing system based on the wish, hope, and pray method? Here are some signs that it is:
- No one in your organization has a clear mission of responsibility for creating and running a constant marketing system.
- Marketing falls to the back of the list after client services, bookkeeping, scheduling, errands, and dusting the office.
- Networking in the community and on the Internet is catch-as-catch-can and is handed off to the least busiest person.
- You have no idea how many new customers you have gained in the last 30, 60, or 90 days.
- You have no idea how many customers you haven’t heard from in the last 30, 60, or 90 days.
- You don’t really like to market, think it is hard to do, and believe that great customer service alone will do the trick.
- Your marketing system consists of trying to upsell existing clients when they are in (think about the hair salon syndrome….you can’t get out of there without running the gauntlet of hair product, make-up, and spa service suggestions every single time you are there).
If even one of these hits home, you are in the wish, hope, and pray mode and you need to get out of it, fast! Consider your business as a three legged stool, the three legs being marketing, customer service, and expertise. Each of the three legs is completely dependent on the other two, as the stool won’t work without them all.
- Your expertise is what you do, your magic, your passionate purpose.
- Your customer service is all the things you develop and carry out to ensure your customers get 5-star treatment, including how you take care of displeasure and disappointment when it occurs.
- Your marketing is a planned, ongoing, automated system that feeds you a constant flow of potential new customers.
Each leg of the stool is key, and each is as important as the other. If you have sawed off a leg by your disinterest, busyness, or avoidance, I suggest you wish, hope, and pray before you sit yourself on the stool. You may balance for a little while, but in the end you’ll be on the ground. And that’s one place no entrepreneur wants to be.
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!
3 Reasons Why Solo Professionals Often Don’t Use A Business Plan
May 5, 2010
Here’s a little insider secret about solo professionals – less than 1 in 5 have a written business plan. Are you shocked? I’ve worked with smart self-employed solopreneurs for nearly six years now, and in that time I’ve come to understand why you don’t. Here are three of the top reasons:
- Business plan templates often ask for information not relevant to your business, such as detailed plans for capitalization through “old-business” mechanisms such as bank loans and venture capital.
- Commonly used biz plan templates often do not support newer business models such as Internet-only businesses, those with little or no physical inventory, or direct marketed businesses.
- The templates also often short-change the marketing and customer service aspects of the business, arguably the most vital parts of business activity for micro-businesses.
Even though commonly used business plan templates or outlines don’t serve solo professionals particularly well, you still will do better in your business if you have a written business plan. So if the dirty little secret of your business is that you’ve done no formal planning, listen up! You need a plan! Here are just a few reasons why.
- Completing a solopreneur biz plan forces you to become clearer and more succinct about what you offer, and that enables you to talk to prospects (potential customers) in a way that attracts them to your services.
- A completed plan gives you specific goals to hit at specific times, which allows you to review and reflect how you are doing up against what you said you could do 3 months, 6 months, or a year ago.
- Often even more valuable than both of the above, having a plan helps you avoid the “bright, shiny object syndrome” that so many of us have. It gives you a quick way to judge whether the opportunity is a distraction or something that will actually help you hit your goals.
There’s much more that proper business planning can do for solo professionals. And by proper, I mean planning that is crafted specifically for a small, solo business that operates out of the home (or a small solo office). Next Monday, May 10th, I’m doing a totally free one hour teleclass about easy-peasy business planning for solo professionals. I suggest you register for the teleclass and call in. You might be surprised at how simple yet helpful completing a business plan for solo professionals can be. To register, go to http://confidentmarketer.com/site/upcoming-teleclasses/simple-business-plan/. You’ll get good content about what you do need in a solo professional plan, and how to make it usable just for you. See you then!
Is Your Business At The Bottom Of Your To-Do List?
April 25, 2010
If you are a female solo professional, chances are that your business is not making as much money as you’d like it to. Perhaps when you got the thought to go out on your own you held a vision of more flexibility, a freer schedule, and making at least as much money as you were making working for someone else. Perhaps you even secretly thought that you had the chance to make it big, pulling in much more money, paying off your mortgage, easily paying for a child’s college education.
Let me ask you…..where is your business now, compared to that vision? Where is it compared to your secret thought of making it big? Have you given up on that dream?
I read a story about makeovers in a recent edition of O magazine that made me think about how women so often put their business at the bottom of their to-do list. We do it to ourselves and our businesses, actually. We think we’re being unselfish and giving, taking care of others before ourselves. But are we, really? Listen to one comment from the O makeover article:
“With the new looks came a new attitude. What a makeover does for all of us is point out that there are BIG possibilites for us all. Maybe we’ll get the idea that from a makeover, we can take another step toward change in other areas of our lives.”
Lack of attention to one’s self is no way to teach our children to stand up and be counted, is it? Making sure that everyone else has new clothes while we schlep around in last year’s sweats only makes us both look and feel at the bottom of the barrel. Paying for private lessons for our children while refusing to spend the money to take a workshop for ourselves sells ourselves and our business short.
Think about it. If you fail to give yourself and your business the nurturing you both deserve, you send a silent message that you are not worth your own time and care, and that your business isn’t important enough to make a difference in anyone’s life. Is that the truth? I doubt it. But you are showing how little you believe you can make it really big when you continue to play safe and small. You are refusing to serve others with your business, in a way that only you can uniquely serve.
When you really tune in to your business vision what does it look like? Have you forgotten about your early enthusiasm? How can you get it back? And if you did, how much cleaner and better would you see the way to that secret vision you have? How much more freedom would you have to be with your friends and family? How much less worry over financial matters would you have? What kind of example would you set for family and friends and other entrepreneurs if you kick-started your business again and made it provide for you at a high level? It would be a powerful message, wouldn’t it?
That’s just not going to happen if you take care of everyone else’s current needs first. Take care of yourself and your business, so that you have the wealth needed to take care of those you love. You aren’t here to serve your family and friends everything on a platter. In fact, if you do, they will learn directly from you to lean on others rather than themselves. Is that what you want? I heard a quote last week that really made me stop and think. “A strong focus now creates a different future later.”
How do you focus now on your business, so that you can have that different future? Here are three ways:
- Change your lifestyle and your schedule around so that you are spending at least two hours every single day building your business. No excuses. You are in business for yourself, right? Two hours a day is a bare minimum. Otherwise, your business is nothing more than a hobby. You can work part time, but you can’t work no time. Two hours, minimum, every day.
- Create a calendar for the entire year. Plan in your vacation weeks, at least three long weekend retreat times for yourself to focus solely on your business, and time for learning what you don’t know and need to know in order to build your income. If you are running out of hours in the week, get help for the low-level stuff and keep your eye on the stuff that creates future income.
- Get a mentor or a coach. Do I say that because I am one? Nope! Virtually every single wealthy business owner works with someone who can pull them out of the weeds when they need it, give them perspective, and save them a lot of time in mastering new tasks. No excuses. Don’t tell yourself you can’t afford it, tell yourself the cost of doing without is much higher than what you’ll pay. Think return on investment, not cost. That’s how a business owner thinks, after all. Are you one, or not?