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?

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.

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.

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!

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).

Unless you are a sound engineer, the words cardioid, stereo, omnidirectional, or bidirectional might mean nothing to you.  How are you supposed to figure out what the heck each means?

Blue doesn’t assume that their customers are sound engineers.  So they provide a chart to correlate each mic setting to the various types of recording applications.  Doing a voiceover or a podcast?  Pick the cardioid setting.  Doing an interview with someone?  Pick bi-directional.  Brilliant, isn’t it?

Question:  Do you know if your customers are understanding your terminology or language?  If not, how can you make it easier for them?

The answer depends on the stage your business is in, what your business goals are, and where you have the biggest gap.

If you are struggling to bring in consistent revenues and want more sales (or more predictable sales), you need to have a system for business development.  A business development system should give you a methodology to tie in your marketing and sales efforts to your revenue  goals.  It should bring clarity about what to market, where to market, and how to market to achieve a desired target, financially or otherwise.  Your biz dev system should let you know what’s working and what’s not, and enable you to know exactly what to focus on to bring more business in.  Every successful business has a business development system that is a well-oiled engine , and it is usually the first system I work on with my clients.

Once you have figured out how to build business and are profitable, you may find that you are now dealing with having too much business (a good problem).  Entrepreneurs at this stage often have to deal with being able to manage time effectively, and ensuring that quality of their service and product is consistent.  At this phase, it makes sense to take a look at your operations (how you deliver your service, or how you make your product and deliver it) to see if there are ways to make processes more effective.  You might need to delegate tasks to staff or outsource to contractors, so you can focus on the more important tasks in your business.  At this stage, it’s all about having a system for managing your time and having efficient administrative and operational systems in place.

Owners that have moved beyond building profitability, and have also created a business that they can sustain without working crazy hours, should then think next about how to scale.  How will you replicate your offerings to service a wider market?  You may consider different expansion options such as going into new markets or offering new products, or leveraging franchising or licensing as a means to grow.  Of course, in a mature business, sometimes the focus is on maximizing value through creating systems so that the company can be positioned for a sale.

Here are three questions that you can ask yourself to determine what to focus on:

1. What stage of business are you in? (striving for profitability?  sustainability? or scalability?)
2. What are your business and financial goals?
3. What systems do you need to achieve those goals?
4. What are the biggest gaps you need to fill to reach those goals?

The answers to your questions should give you a glimpse on your next steps.

I’m curious to know: what systems are you working on in your business?

Her sessions affirm what I have always known to be true, but just didn’t know there was so much scientific evidence behind it:

• How you think and what you think have a profound impact on your life
• You don’t have to remain a victim of your past.  You can choose to design your future through renewing of your mind
• Happiness is something that you choose  (they say “happiness is not about what happens to you, but how you react to what happens to you)
• Your physical health, your success in life, your ability to manage stress, etc, are all connected to your thoughts

Dr Leaf speaks at lightning speed and there were so many nuggets to be had.  I encourage you to check out this article on her blog to become more aware of how your thoughts are impacting you.  Do you have a healthy thought life?  Or does your thought life need some detoxing?