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May 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

How easy should things be?

girl blowing dandelionAhhhhh … easy, easy like Sunday morning …

How easy are things for you right now? Are you cruising along, enjoying the view and feeling the wind blowing in your hair?

Or are things kind of chaotic, tough, grinding?

Clients sometime ask me – how easy should things be?

Good question. 

How easy do you want it to be?

I am reminded of a conversation a few years ago with a mentor of mine.  We were sipping tea while she listened to a long list of things I was working on.  At the end of me spilling my guts, she said “Felicia, you know how in university, sometimes you take hard courses, and you want to make sure that not ALL your courses are hard?  You know that it’s okay to take a few courses that is easy, right?”

Hmm.  I didn’t know.  I took Electrical Engineering.  Everything seemed hard, and I assumed everything would be hard.  No?

She smiled, and then gave me permission to take a few easy courses when it comes to my business.  “Felicia, you’re not in Electrical Engineering anymore.”  Oh, I forgot.

So, how easy should things be?  Here is what I learned from Electrical Engineering:

  • there are bound to be hard courses, especially if you sign up for Electrical Engineering
  • you want to make sure that you are not taking all the hard courses in the same semester
  • it’s okay to pick courses that are easy and fun (like Japanese 101.  So cute.)
  • it’s also okay to take hard courses, and they don’t even seem so hard when you are prepared for them
  • A hard course isn’t so hard when you befriend a smart guy in class to help you out (bonus too if he’s really good lookin’ … but I digress)
  • You actually learn very cool things in hard courses, and you only appreciate it after the exam is over

So, the goal isn’t really to make things really easy, all of the time. The key is about knowing when you’re going to hit a new challenge, prepare for it, and grow from it.  We didn’t learn to walk in one day, nor should we expect to cruise in our business overnight.

How do you want to design your course load?

 

Filed Under: Business Coaching, Business Tips, Motivation
May 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Shake hands with me, shake hands with my network

network behind doorHere’s a subtle but important thing to remember about why it’s important to continue to grow your network: you are not only meeting someone for the first time, but you are potentially meeting their entire network.

So, if you meet one person, and they know 300 people, you are also potentially meeting those 300 people in that very same meeting.

I say potentially, because if you don’t take the time to prepare and don’t genuinely take an interest in them, they become the gatekeeper that filters you out from their network.

Even if someone that you meet (at a networking event, in a grocery line, at school waiting to pick up your kids, etc) may not directly be a customer of yours, they likely have a network of people that they can introduce you to.

I have a large network of contacts, and can likely make intro’s and connections for business opportunities, synergistic alliances, or if nothing else, share resources and provide contacts to trusted service providers.  But I’ll only do so if the following conditions are met:

  1. Don’t pitch me or ask me to refer people to you in the first 5 minutes of our conversation
  2. Be a real human being and taking an interest in us getting to know each other (If you don’t make an effort to get to know me, I won’t make an effort to get to know you)
  3. Be able to explain what you do, clearly (I can’t introduce you to my contacts if I’m confused about what you offer)
  4. Explain who your ideal clients are (If you don’t know, then I don’t know either)
  5. Take intro’s seriously and follow up promptly and courteously

How often are you writing someone off because they don’t seem like a potential client immediately?  Remember that your ideal client might just be one introduction away from someone that you’ve met.

 

 

Filed Under: Business Coaching, Networking
April 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Taking Ownership

Learning_ToolA nice young gentleman approached me after a speaking engagement and asked “Felicia, may I ask you, since I know you are a licensee of GhostCEO … I want to know, do they give you leads?”  I said “No, I get my own leads based on GhostCEO business development tools, these same tools that I share with my clients are the same tools that I use for my own business development”.  And then he asked “Do you think that’s right?”

Yes, I think that’s right.  Why?  Because instead of being given fish, I’d rather learn to fish.

If you are transitioning from corporate employment to self employment, this is the first mindset that has to change.  Perhaps you are now a franchisee, or a licensee, or an associate of a larger brand (like a mortgage broker, realtor, or insurance broker), where you are given some intellectual property and/or branding to build your business.

Don’t rely on your franchisor or licensor or corporate headoffice to give you everything.  Obviously you would have done the research to make sure that what they give you is worth the price you have paid to be associated with them, but after that, take the ownership and responsibility for your own success.

After all, even if you are given the tools to build your dream house, it is still up to you to pick up the hammer and the drill to learn how to use them well.  Don’t expect someone else to build your own house for you, and certainly don’t become a victim of excuses.  And if you are missing a tool or a skill that wasn’t provided?  Take the ownership to identify it, figure out where and how to get it, and then go get it.

 

Filed Under: Business Coaching, Motivation Tagged With: ,
April 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Why You?

“Don’t worry about your competition.”

When a client brings up competitors, and how upset they are that someone just entered their market offering the same product/service, that’s what I reply with.  I also say the same thing when a client wants to go into a new market where they are worried about incumbent or existing businesses having a large market share.

Why?

Because similarities only exist on the surface, and when you dig deep enough, each business is as unique as one’s fingerprint.  Every company and its owner ultimately offers something quite different, even if the labeling of the products is similar.  So the only people that should worry about competition are those that haven’t done their homework in figuring out how different they are.

Consider your skills.  Consider your education.  Consider your passion.  Consider your background.  Consider your style.  I can bet that if you spent some time thinking about what makes you uniquely you, and how to use these unique qualities in what you offer, no one can really offer the same thing as you do.

Even if your competitor sells the same widget that you do, it’s likely that how you package it, who you market it to, how you service your customers, how you communicate, and your style of doing business can be (and should be) considerably different.

Don’t discount your background.  Don’t hide your previous experiences.  Embrace your personality.  Be bold about your passion.  Incorporate “you” into your business.  After all, YOU are the advantage and the reason why someone would buy from you!

 

Filed Under: Blog, Business Coaching, Business Tips Tagged With: ,
March 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Build Your Business Through Building Your Energy

The issue of time management often comes up in client coaching sessions.  It’s true that, especially for clients that have moved beyond building a profitable business, their most immediate issue becomes how to deal with having too much business and not going into burnout mode.

I love it when clients are at this stage of their business.  It means they’ve been doing the business development work to get to the point of having too much business, and now we move from building visibility, credibility, and profitability, to building a sustainable business.

Sometimes the answer is about managing time and outsourcing tasks that they can do but shouldn’t be doing.  Other times it’s about being more efficient in the work processes.  Yet, the key in all of this is not really about managing time, but managing ENERGY.

I’ve benefited much from studying the book “The Power Of Full Engagement” by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in my corporate days, and find that this is very applicable to entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint.

It doesn’t matter how much you focus on time management, if you are not managing your energy well, you ultimately burn out.  Here is a summary of the four different areas one must manage to sustain long-term, high performance.  Successful business leaders aren’t just great in one dimension.  They work on their physical energy (through eating and exercise), emotional connections (through building great relationships with self and others), mental focus (through building creativity, effective time management, and developing positive mindset), and spiritual alignment (through connecting with their core purpose and values).

The book offers development plans and more detail then I can cover here in a blog.  My hope is that if you are struggling with managing time or feeling burned out, this might be a good resource for you to check out (and no I don’t get paid anything if you buy the book).

 

Filed Under: Business Coaching, Time Management Tagged With: ,