Tag Archives: self-employed

So You Want to Start a Business.

mother and daughter working on laptopDo you ever wish you could go back in time and tell yourself something important about the future? If I had the chance to go back about four years here’s what I’d tell myself about starting a business from home:

Dear Me,
This is the best opportunity of your life!

  1. Don’t worry about what others will think because they’re not! If they are and they think you’re nuts or making a fool of yourself know they are merely projecting their own fears. When you succeed (and you will) some of them will come around. Some will even tell you they wish they had the courage to do what you did. You’re doing this for you and your family, not for them.
  2. This is not going to be easy – simple, yes, easy, no. It is going to take work, effort, and you’ll be on a sharp learning curve. You have what it takes. What you don’t know you’ll learn. It’s much, much easier than dropping your kids off at daycare and going to a job. You won’t miss out on all the kids’ firsts.
  3. You don’t know what you don’t know but you’ll learn! There are resources and people with wisdom and expertise willing to help you succeed. Take advantage of as much of it as you can. Read books. Listen to training series. Read white papers. Join webinars and attend seminars. Put what you learn into practice.
  4. Your family will figure it out. There will be adjustments for everyone. As you carve out time away from home to build your business there will be pushback, but you’ll all figure it out. Your spouse and family just want to know that they are more important to you than your business. Keep them first on your priority list. Love on them. Reserve your best time for them and they’ll be more than willing to cheer you on.
  5. Your business is what you do. It’s not who you are! Yes it’s exciting and fulfilling, but you are not the company nor the product you represent. You are you: an individual with roles, responsibilities, dreams, skills, talents, abilities and a heart that beats intensely for the people and things that matter to you.  The business could disappear tomorrow, but you would still remain. Work in such a way that the relationships you build would also remain. Make sure to keep growing as a person.

So go build. Always keep the end in mind. There will be adjustments along the way. It’s not a straight line, but it is an amazing journey. You’ll get to where you want to go. Dream bigger. Start sooner. Enjoy the journey.

Signed,

Me, 4 years later

PS You can’t even begin to imagine how well it will turn out.

Becoming

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Stock Images: Reading the contract. Image: 71764
© Photographer: Dreamstime Agency | Agency: Dreamstime.com

The other day my friend Alison posted a link to a blog and I was leery about reading it – the language was a little bit harsh. Okay the language was more than a little bit harsh but I pushed past it and I have to say the message was more than a little refreshing. (Read the original post here, but I warn you the language is not for the faint of heart).

David Wong basically drove home the point that its not about how kind or nice or interesting you are, it’s about what you have to offer that makes things happen in your life. His analogy was that if you have a loved one bleeding after an accident and someone is ready to help by performing a medical procedure on the spot you don’t care if he’s a nice guy, kind to his mother, remembers his girlfriend’s birthday, does his own laundry. What you care about is whether or not he has the medical expertise and skill to perform the medical procedure. All the other stuff doesn’t count.

Hmmmm, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in our personal development that we forget to develop our skills and let’s face it, no one pays you to be nice. You get paid because you bring a skill to the situation that can fix a problem. The better your skills the bigger the problems you can help fix. The bigger the problems the more you get paid to fix them. Yes, of course if you have great inter-personal skills (you’re nice and play well with others) you have an even bigger winning combination.

In my industry (direct sales or network marketing) not long ago you could come in with a basic set of skills and be wildly successful as long as you were persistent and consistent. Today the industry is changing. It’s not only becoming more main stream (Harvard and Yale teach courses on Network Marketing I’m told) but with the novelty of direct sales/network marketing wearing off if you come with basic skills you will create a basic income. To create a great income you need great skills. To be wildly successful you need to create superior skills.

The good news is this is still one industry in which you can come in with basic skills and with a willingness to learn, grow, and develop them you can create superior professional skills and become wildly successful. There is no other industry that I know of where you can truly get your professional training on the job and succeed at such a quick pace. After all you can’t start on the job training as a doctor with just a first aid certificate.

The challenge is if you don’t have professional skills yet are you willing to learn?

Teaching an Old-er Dog New Tricks

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I’m a recovering perfectionist. Yes I admit it, I have this internal need for things to be just right. Nothing less will do. And yes, you’ve guessed it, the standard I measure things by is my own. I love clean lines, finished edges, precise angles and uncluttered spaces. I love order and function. And if you know me at all you know that my life looks NOTHING like the precision I crave.

What my life actually looks like is functional but utilized. The desk is covered with bits of paper that I mean to address in an hour, but never get around to. The filing that sits beside the files and not in them. The laundry that is folded, but not put away. The dishwasher that is clean, but still full! The floor is covered with little bits of train tracks and miniature horses. There are about a dozen notebooks lying around my work space and throughout my home. Each one started but not completed. Each one intended to be finished from one end to the other before the next one was begun. There are drawings and charts and graphs scattered throughout.

Don’t get me wrong, the house is not a complete mess but rather very lived in if you will. You see there is another side to me that craves creativity and must create solutions, systems and discover new possibilities and that side of me could care less about order, neatness and precision. That side wants to take bunny trails in every direction. That side wants to pursue a possibility and capture its every nuance. That side can’t see what’s around me until it notices a moodiness and anxiety rising with me that prevents it from focusing on the latest train of thought. When I stop and notice those signals I realize that the perfectionist in me is feeling overwhelmed by the chaos the creative side of me has made. And so the dance continues.

I take time away from creating to reorganize my space, my life and my things. I determine I will stay on top of it this time. I promise my perfectionist self that I will not allow paper to pile up, but will file it immediately. I will not let laundry stay folded in the basket, I’ll put it away as I’m doing it. I promise my perfectionist self I will finally finish the profiles on all my social media accounts and I will plan out and prepare my blog. I do my best for a few days to stay on top of those tasks and then I notice a sadness and lack of energy and I realize I’ve been maintaining everything, but creating nothing. And the cycle begins again.

But I’m learning. I’m learning to identify those signals before they become so loud they drown out everything else. I’m learning not to let the perfectionist side of me dictate long to-do lists that prevent me from accomplishing them. I am learning to actually enjoy my children and not just plan their daily tasks (we home school). I’m also learning to not let the creative side of me get so engrossed in every bunny trail that nothing gets accomplished. In other words I’m learning to be a peace keeper between the two sides of me.

This old-er (not old) dog is learning some new tricks and giving both intense sides of who I am come out and play. I’m trying to give both sides equal billing and you know what, its kinda starting to work!

Am I the only one who feels like I’m at war within myself?

It’s the Journey.

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I haven’t blogged in a while (obviously). I felt I didn’t have anything to say. Well that’s not true, I’ve had lots to say I just wasn’t sure I should say it. I wasn’t sure what my voice should be. I know, it’s my blog so my voice is my voice, but what did that mean? I finally decided that I wasn’t going to wait any longer to figure it out. I was just going to figure it out in the process.

Process. Now there’s a word that seems straight forward enough and yet it holds so many challenges. In this day of instant access, instant gratification and instant everything I guess I expected that if I dream something, visualize it, believe it, start out toward it I should arrive at the destination in one or two simple and easy steps. Then I found out there is a process. “Lots of small actions over time create amazing results,” my coach told me today. I don’t know if this statement is originally yours, but it’s a good one Michelle.

Four years ago I became a word-from-home entrepreneur mom. I started because the other option was to put my kiddos in daycare and go back to a “real job” full-time. I would rather do just about anything than put my little ones in daycare so working from home seemed the reasonable choice.  My goal was simply to help make the family budget stretch a little further. No goals of conquering the world, becoming a celebrity or creating immeasurable wealth. Yet one of the gifts I discovered very quickly was that I could dream bigger, wider and a little audaciously if I was willing to work.

I was willing to work. Hard. Just because I was willing to work hard didn’t ensure success. I soon discovered that I didn’t know what I didn’t know and I needed to learn. I needed to figure out how to ride this roller-coaster of business. I needed to know how to break things down into small actions over time.

Thankfully accessing amazing minds in business, social media, sales and so much more is as simple as point and click! If ever there was an age where information was easily accessible it would be now. If ever there was amazing access to great thinkers, leaders and trailblazers it would be today. And yet, with all this access so few people choose to learn from those who know what it takes to succeed. Most choose to listen to their family, friends, coworkers and the guy at the doughnut shop who all say it can’t be done and have proven that they wholeheartedly believe that.

The first part of the process to success is to choose to listen to those who know how to succeed and have the track record to prove it.”What you believe you can achieve.” I don’t know who the quote belongs to (though I know its actual source). In order to believe you can succeed you need to start listening to the voices of those who know how. Once you listen to them you’ll need to do differently, but that’s another post…