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
Could Your Business Withstand A Disaster?
January 18, 2010
The plight of the Haitian people and their country is on everyone’s mind. The images we see on the news are horrific, pulling at my heart. Literally, Haiti will have to rise from the ashes like a Phoenix. Even with massive aid from many countries, getting the country set up and the people well will take much time.
Disaster visits without warning and quickly. On a personal level, it could be unexpected illness or the death of someone dear. For your business, it might be flood, fire, or an employee who causes harm. Think about the small business owners in Haiti right now. If their business is in rubble they have no way to make money even if they could offer what their customers need most. If their business was left standing there is no security to protect it. Already, many shops have been looted for their goods. Some shop owners have simply opened their doors and emptied out their shop, giving away everything they have.
Your business will withstand disaster only to the extent that you have systems in place that you can lean on when something goes wrong without warning. While this isn’t a comprehensive list, here are your main concerns.
- Are your business’s assets insured? What would happen if a disaster caused you to lose your office or the equipment you need to carry out your business? You can either buy insurance or self insure, meaning that you have set aside money that could immediately be used to replace your lost equipment and get your doors open again.
- Do you have back-up systems in place, and do you use them regularly? Could you recreate your financial records easily? Are your customer records secure and backed up either physically or electronically?
- Have you thought about how to handle the sudden loss of a key employee? Do you have a comprehensive list of what that person does and how she does it? Do you have a way to get additional help quickly if you lose someone to illness or accident? The more you have your work systems documented in an operations manual, the quicker you can get up and running, back to making income.
- Have you planned how to handle your business if you become unable to work for a while? Is there someone who knows enough about what you do to step up and fill in until you can work again?
If you are a business owner who truly depends on the money you make, it is vital to have answers to these questions. What I see for many solo business owners is that even the slightest disaster shuts them down completely. These owners ARE their business. When they can’t work, there is no income at all. Even an illness like the flu effectively shuts them down. They’ve never thought about alternatives. Often, the loss of momentum creates a negative spiral that the solo business owner never recovers from. Their business just slowly winnows away.
One of my own businesses suffered a mini-disaster over the past few months, in fact. In early December I had major surgery that I knew would keep me away from the massage clinic I own. Plans were fully in place for my staff to take over my own work with clients. My practice manager was prepped and ready to take care of management and administrative work that I normally handle. My start date to come back to the clinic was set. My clients were all informed and taken care of. Well, while I was still in the hospital, the practice manager’s father was found to be terminally ill. She left town and even now has not returned to work. Four weeks after my surgery, I unexpectedly had to have a second surgery due to complications from the first, making it impossible for me to meet my return to work date. One staff member left unexpectedly. Suddenly, I was down to one hard-working staff member and what I could administratively handle by phone. The systems I’ve put in place for that business saved my bacon, and allowed us to continue to serve clients, make money, and handle at least the bare minimum of administrative work. While I used to chaff over the time it took to put operations manuals and back up plans in place, now I am very grateful that I had them.
Disaster don’t have to be as large as the Haitian earthquake to effectively shut your business down. If you want to recover quickly and continue to make money, get your plans and systems in place and review them at least once a year. Your bank account will show the results and your business will suffer far less than those with no planning at all.
(c) Sue Painter
Are You The Block That Keeps Your Business From Succeeding?
November 5, 2009
To make your business profitable, you must have two critical things in place. The first is a business model that adds up. In other words, what you offer and how you offer it will generate the amount of money you need, minus all your expenses. Your business plan and projected financial statements prove that your plan will take you where you want to go.
The second critical thing you must have is a creative marketing strategy that is comprehensive and hits your target market. As Ali Brown and many others have said, you can be the best at what you do in the whole wide world, but if you can’t market yourself you will go broke. You have to master marketing even more than you master your expertise.
If you have these two in place and you are faithfully working them, wonderful things are sure to happen. And when they don’t happen, a third thing is coming into play, something I often see in the bright, capable solo professionals I work with. That third thing is you – the resistances, denials, limiting beliefs and energetic blocks you hold that keep you from fully implementing your biz model and your marketing strategy. These are the inner blocks that are keeping you from being profitable. In other words, if it isn’t a bad business plan or a weak marketing strategy, the problem is right within you!
I often tell budding entrepreneurs and solo professionals that the best way to engage in a rigorous path of self-growth is to open your own business. It will push every button you have, and challenge you to develop yourself both personally and in business skills. It takes a courageous combination of inner work and outer work (skill building) to support fantastic success in business.
A mathematician might say that my formula for success is P + BP + MS + RIB = DCT. That translates to passion plus business planning, plus marketing strategy plus removing inner blocks equals dreams come true. It is a formula that works every time. Find the weak link, fix it, and you are on your way.
Solo professionals must have a true passion for what they offer. Working on your own requires high energy, so if you are not enthusiastic about what you do, forget about it! You will more than likely burn out before you get where you want to go. So, that P in the formula is critical.
However, you can’t build a business on passion alone – you have to know and work your business plan. What is your model of doing business? How much income is it realistic to think you will generate? How do you measure that? What is your overhead, or operating cost? If you don’t watch the money in and money out, your overhead costs can go out the roof very quickly.
Marketing strategy is the formula’s next part. Are your actions gaining you top of mind awareness with your target market? Are you getting a return on investment with marketing, publicity, events, social media, and advertising? A plan will keep you on track, marketing in a consistent manner rather than piecemeal.
If you have those pieces done well and in place and your business is not creating DCT (dreams come true) then the place to look is RIB (removing inner blocks). Blocks show up in dozens of ways, but the bottom line is fear. Fear is behind every excuse and every failure to implement. Fear creates dark and murky underplaces, which show up as resistance, avoidance, passivity, or denial. How do these show up? Here are a few things to check.
1) Look at your to-do list, and put a star beside anything that has been on your list longer than a week. You are avoiding the starred items, and that’s a good sign of an inner block.
2) Look at your calendar and find the last time you carved out at least two days for a personal retreat. Never? Three months or longer? You have an inner block about working on your business versus in your business. There’s probably also a block about control and delegating.
There are dozens of others ways to look for blocks. The point is, a willingness to look combined with a willingness to change will serve you over and over again, both in business and personal life. I have a great deal of respect for solo professionals who are willing to do that. They grow both inside and out, and they take off in their businesses.
(c) Sue Painter
How To Talk About What You Do
October 15, 2009
Two quick tips that will help you succinctly describe the benefits you offer to potential customers. Enjoy!
How to Find the Right Price for Your Services
March 9, 2009
Pricing services reminds me of The Three Bears. You want your price point to be “not too hot and not too cold, but just right.” The best and quickest way to find out what your customer will pay for a particular service is to ask. That’s right, ask! Offer your customers a survey (always brief), give the list of benefits and then give several ways to purchase and several price points. You will soon find out what most of your customers are willing to do, and you can then go with that offer.
Here’s a simple example. A few weeks ago I held a half-day visioning workshop for a small group. At the end, everyone there asked about following up, something I had not thought about doing. After the workshop I put together a simple, two-question survey (I like to use Survey Monkey) and sent it to each person. I had 4 choices for follow-up, each with a different price point. When the survey results were in, it was very clear what the vast majority of that group wanted to do and the price they were willing to pay.
Another way to survey is to do a split test. Offer the exact same service to your client base, but split the clients in half and offer it at one price to group A and a second price to group B. One offer will outsell the other, that’s your best performing price point.
No matter how you go about it, though, one rule always holds true. Be sure to write copy that highlights the benefits to the buyer. I see many small businesses get stuck in describing all the features rather than benefits. Benefits are sellers. Make sure your client knows what is in it for them, the good the service will do, the problem it will solve, how it will make them feel. Good copy bolsters and supports the price you are asking for your service. It will help you be the bear whose porridge is “just right.”
© Sue Painter
When Dreams Come True
January 14, 2009
There’s a lot in the workshop world these days about abundance and visioning. It isn’t something really new, as teenagers many of us made collages of things we loved. But there’s a lot more talk these days about the importance of visioning – the importance of looking deeply into ourselves, having the courage to write about and picture what we secretly most want. I’ve decided to share my story about dreams coming true, on the theory that it just might help someone else who is doubting that they can have what they want.
About 13 years ago now I became a member of a Quest group. One of the first things the group’s leader had us do was to answer, in writing, a series of questions about our clearest vision of our life – how we would be living it in the coming years, what would feel the most satisfying and truest life for each of us, how our relationships would be, what our work would look like. When I got this set of questions and was told to write an essay about them I was working in a very high-powered, high-stress position. I was not happy doing it, but the money was very good and I had made the decision to do this work for a while so that my husband and I could buy lake property and build a house. I worked 60 to 80 hours a week, travelled all the time, and managed a large group of people. While I was very successful, I was also very exhausted. So, to get this long writing assignment thrown into the mix didn’t make me very happy. I was stressed out, pissed off at working so hard, and already lugging around a bulging briefcase as I flew back and forth to D.C. I really DIDN’T want to spend time answering these questions.
So, in my best “I really don’t agree with doing this” manner, I answered – truthfully but also in a peeved tone. I started the essay by saying that “I had no idea how I would ever get there, but what I really wanted was” — and I held forth for three solid, single spaced typed pages. I folded it up, took it to the next group meeting, and read it aloud, unsmiling, when my turn came. Then, I efficiently folded it into thirds, popped it into the back of my daily planner, and promptly forgot it was there.
Fast forward 10 years later. The exhausting job was long gone. I was home one day, bored, and decided to clean out my now-defunct daily planner (I was on computer now!). I thought the planner was empty, and before throwing it into the trash I held it by the spine and shook it hard. And, out from the last, back, hard to reach pocket fell that 3 typed pages that I had long ago forgotten. I wondered what it was, and opened it up – and to my absolute and total amazement I read three pages of “what I really wanted” – and, point by point, every single one of my wants had come true! It was and is crazy, unbelievable, ridiculous. I sat there next to the trash can, holding what was my most precious possession – my vision for myself, my life on a page, my deepest heart’s desires. And I realized in that moment how wise and special the leader of our little Quest group was. How indebted to him I was. How grateful, fortunate, and lucky I was to have secretly carried my dreams with me for all those years, and how writing them and speaking them aloud to that group had taught me that energy follows thought.
Yes, dreams do come true. And as they do, we add more dreams. There is always forward movement until the moment we give up, and begin to die. One of the reasons I so believe in and support people in visioning is the lesson I learned myself – the one that took me a decade to learn. My small group Visioning fron the Heart workshops are my own way of helping others to Quest now. And my sincere belief is that the same dream coming true will happen to you.
(Credits: With many thanks to my friend BJ Ryan for the use of her painting “Sunset in the Desert.”)