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.
Add Fun To Your Entrepreneurial Endeavors
January 24, 2010
Lately I’ve run across more than one budding entrepreneur who makes building a business out to be nothing but serious and a lot of 
hard work. I’ve been pondering this a lot. Our energy follows our thoughts. When we hold only serious energy toward anything, it BECOMES hard to us. We fulfill our own expectations. We start believing that there is too much to do, too much to learn, and that we are overwhelmed. Here are just a few examples I’ve run across in the past months:
- It’s no fun to pay attention to weekly income and expenses.
- It’s no fun to carve out the time needed to work on my business, not in it.
The truth is, your business will flourish the more you weave fun into it. When we look forward to learning something new rather than thinking it will be overwhelmingly difficult, we create energy toward our own success. When we hold our work lightly, it feels much less burdensome and hard. We end up with a more positive energy toward the things we have to do. We all know this, but when it comes to our work we sometimes tend to forget it. We think we have to labor at our work, or keep it separate from our fun.
Dread has no place in your life as an entrepreneur. You didn’t set yourself up to be the boss of you just to feel dread toward your work, did you? 
One way to handle feeling too burdened or overwhelmed is to make sure you inject some fun and things you truly enjoy into your business. Tiny pleasures or large ones, they all help you succeed in your work.
Here’s just a small example. I’ve always loved the color turquoise, so to inject a little bit of fun into the work of updating one of my websites, I used it and asked Facebook friends what color to pair it with. I ended up with a dynamic combo of my fav turquoise paired with peach. I love it, and I had fun I had pulling it together. (You can check out the result at suepainter.com.) How fun it was to read the other day that turquoise has been named “color of the year.”
Often I encourage my clients to plan personal retreats to work out their stuck places and to work on their business planning. These are fun despite being productive. Go where you’ve been wanting to go, or return to a place you enjoy. Not only does the prospect of a trip create a welcoming energy, you are so easily able to work on your business rather than in it, getting away from the day-to-day routine. Go by yourself, or pair up with another entrepreneur who also wants to hammer out some work. You can weave breaks into your day, walk on the beach, get a nice dinner, shop. But for the most part, you are giving yourself uninterrupted time to invest in your business. Don’t sabotage yourself by making this a family vacation, either. It’s not – it’s for YOU.
You can also form a small Mastermind group with people you truly enjoy, and meet by phone or in person to help each other with business issues. Make it fun – meet over a good bottle of wine, take a walk, whatever you enjoy. For a while last year, I did this with another entrepreneur by meeting her to water walk and swim together. We’d do that, then get into the warm therapy pool and stretch both our bodies and our views of our businesses.
Do you have staff or employees in your business? In nice weather, try meeting outdoors with a picnic lunch. Just think about ways to bring joy and pleasure into your endeavor. You’ll benefit both in your spirit and your bottom line. Think easy-peasy, not hard. Think mastery, not failure. Think simple steps, not big overwhelming project. You didn’t put yourself in business to feel fearful, down or out. You put yourself in business to serve others and create a world of work that meets your income and lifestyle wishes. Fun will help you get there, even in small doses!
(c) Sue Painter
Why Retreats For Entrepreneurs Help To Build Business Success
December 2, 2009
Entrepreneurs are “on” just about all the time. We’re the business owners who juggle more than one role in the business. We often wake up with new ideas swimming in our heads. We see possibilities where others don’t. In fact, we often have too many ideas for our own good! It’s widely known that solo professionals and entrepreneurs suffer from what is called “bright shiny object syndrome” – that is, we have so many ideas that it it sometimes hard to keep our focus on the one we’re working on right now.
Most of us are busy not only within our business, but also have roles in family and community, as well. As our business begins to take off, we have less of the quiet time we need to work “on” the business rather than “in” the business. And, because we expend a high degree of energy, we need respite. In fact, where we get our new ideas and renew our energy is often while we are on retreat.
My formula for fantastic business success is to regularly pull myself away from my business. This stretches me in several ways.
- It forces me to train employees and trust them to run day-to-day operations while I am away.
- It forces me to clear my calendar and budget for personal business retreat time.
- It helps me keep my own ego out of the business and put my attention on the present and future possibilities.
- It forces me to change my daily environment, literally getting a fresh perspective for myself and my business.
In fact, one mark of an entrepreneur who thinks too small is one who insists he cannot get away from his own business. This a sure sign of overwhelm, fatigue, and over-control. Here are five tips for how to do quarterly business retreats that will refuel you and your business.
- Decide what is really nurturing for you, and select accordingly. Your body and spirit may need anything from physical exertion to sunshine.
- Stay within your budget. Retreat centers range from free (monasteries) to the ultimate luxurious destination. Don’t stress yourself more by going into debt.
- Plan far ahead. Clear your calendar 3 to 4 months ahead of time. This gives you plenty of time to make travel arrangements and a bit of time put away some money. It also gives you something to look forward to, a time you know you’ll rest.
- Put away the guilty feelings. It is a gift to model self-care and nurturing to those you care for.
- Enter and come back lightly. Schedule a lighter day before you go and when you come back. You’ll reap more benefits if you are not pressed to the last minute before you leave, and have a day to acclimate when you return.
Think about your work style and take what you need with you. A few pads of paper, pencils or pens, a computer, a list of ideas you’ve had and need to assess, a list of problem areas you need to think clearly about should all be in your briefcase. Because I work on computer, I will only go places where I can get Internet access. Which, these days, is just about anywhere!
Make your retreat a combination of rest, daydreaming, good food, activity, and work time. Your mind will clear and you will gain instant focus on things that have been bugging you as your mind, body, emotions, and spirit relax and renew. Things that seem truly frustrating and unending will suddenly become clear. You’ll find yourself making decisions you’ve wallowed on about and wondering why you thought it was so hard!
I recommend quarterly retreats, a week at a time. At the least, get away for 4 days. Stay away from e-mail and the phone as much as you can, and at the most check it only once a day. Take a break from social media, too. Your business issues will lessen and juicy new possibilities will flow. You’ll get back home enthused and renewed, and that alone boosts your business success.
(c) Sue Painter
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
Are You Focused or Farting Around?
July 21, 2009
The number one reason solo professionals fail is lack of consistent focus. We are creative, courageous, and sometimes bold. But many solopreneurs can’t stay on track, and every single time it dilutes their effectiveness, reach, and success.
If you are focused you can overcome just about anything you lack on the way to solid financial success as a self-employed professional. Don’t know your chosen topic? Study, attend workshops, get certifications – stay focused on the prize. Can’t stand to do the paperwork that goes along with self-employment? Focus on building a good team around you and you’ll be successful in spite of rarely touching the papers. Don’t so much like to market? Focus on simply meeting people and educating them about what you do and why you do it. Suddenly you are marketing in a natural way, no longer in a big angst about “having to market.”
Focus means that you give your business (which is, after all, an important vision you hold for yourself) time and attention in a consistent manner. It means commitment even though half a dozen people would really prefer it if you quit doing what you need to do and instead do things that make their life easier. It means consistency of action even though your family may not support you and seems to always have ideas about what you could be/should be doing instead. Focus means you says no to “not feeling like it today.” Focus means facing the absolute certainty that you can be great, successful, in service to others, create what is in your heart and mind, have that which drove you to be an entrepreneur in the first place. It means you put your vision for your life first, not last.
Here are 3 tips to staying focused that will work for you every time:
- Stay away from those who doubt your abilities, who don’t want you to succeed because that means THEY could have done the same thing if only they’d quit farting around and get to it.
- Know your demons. Social media is useful and fun, but you don’t need to monitor it all day long. Whatever breaks your focus make sure you give it designated time and discipline yourself to stick to it.
- Be a model of focused, consistent action for others. I can’t think of anything else that serves you and your loved ones better. What better model could you give your children? What better joy could you share with your friends?
In short, if you have a secret desire to get out there and create a financially successful business that solves a problem, gives you a wonderful feeling of accomplishment, and supports you financially it is entirely possible to do. Stop farting around, sabotaging your own success and letting others pull you off your game. Find out what helps you stay motivated and invest in it. Play to your strengths and get help for your weaknesses. What you desire will come your way when you focus your energy in this way.
(c) Sue Painter
Do You Retreat?
October 28, 2008
This past we
ekend my business partner and I took a small group on a creative retreat. From Friday afternoon through Sunday noon we talked, created a small photo album, napped in front of the fireplace, ate, walked, and listened to music. We tucked our participants away in two B&Bs in Granville, Tennessee – away from the Internet, cell phones, family, business, and TV. It brought home to me the constant information overload we have become addicted to, think we absolutely must have – an information overload that can serve at times to increase our anxieties, fears, and sense that we are in control. (We aren’t!)
I watched as each participant relaxed and realized that it was really just fine not to know what was going on back at home every single hour of the day. Giving up constant control is an exercise in delegation and trusting others – two thing most small business owners have a hard time doing. Giving up instant access to information flow is an exercise in focusing on the true thing rather than the minutia.
Faced with uncharacteristic freedom to breathe and be, our group dove into the fresh air of a slower pace, a small community of listeners, and a supportive group. As we occupied our hands with paper, glue, and ink our hearts opened to share our current stories. We strategized on topics from growing new employees to facing health problems to tax reduction strategies to delegating. We practiced collaboration (the best business model there is for today’s business owner) as we shared supplies and creative ideas. We deepened our knowledge of each other’s characteristics and skills – things we can draw on now that we are back into our normal world. We learned that quiet and space is necessary for our sharpest thinking on key issues. We fed our body, minds, and souls in ways that benefit us both personally and in business.
No matter how busy and involved you are, the world actually will function without your oversight and input. It is a good growth experience for you and for those you leave behind. Quarterly retreats are a part of my business plan, and I strongly suggest them to you. Give yourself (and everyone else) a break. Plan a few days away, and watch your focus sharpen as you relax. Just another tool to help your business thrive!
Sue P.