Small Business Life

Think about the many things you do every day when you own your own business. When you wrap your mind around the staggering array of tasks to be done and the various skill sets necessary, it can seem like a miracle you’re successful at all. In the years I’ve been coaching small business owners it’s become evident that upwards of 90% of you are not in business because you love business for business sake, or have a MBA. You’re in business because you love to make candles, build websites, help people, or what ever your business offers. Read More

“For every mountain there is a miracle.” - Robert H. Schuller

Last week I was facilitating my monthly entrepreneur group. This is an impressive group of bright, inspired business folk who truly are committed to making their business a success. They apply what they learn, they continuously work on honing their skills, and they are generous and supportive with each other as they collectively move through the typical challenges all growing business owners face. They’re pretty much doing things right. What struck me however, in this particular session, was regardless of how committed and willing each owner is to learn and grow, each owner seems to have their own personal obstacle to success. An obstacle that could ultimately be their undoing!

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The other day I was coaching Emily, a bright and self aware woman who’s recently stepped up to a very big plate - she wants to take her business to the next level. Her decision holds the potential for many rich and fulfilling rewards, but also contains a rather steep learning curve, an increase in pressure and of course much higher stakes. Interestingly enough, as she meets her days with passion and excitement, she also notices an increase in how easily she gets triggered and upset by seemingly mundane events that throw her off and make her constantly question her ability to succeed.

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It bothers me that most conversations I have at this time of year contain some level of stress and anxiety about the upcoming holiday season. I’m not immune myself - every year I swing on a pendulum between being caught up in a frenzy of materialism or feeling the urge to back away and becoming cynical about the entire season. What is up with that? Shouldn’t this time of year be about peace, joy and celebration?

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I’ve seen it over and over - small business owners who get nervous and uncomfortable when it’s time to assume the role of salesperson. Sales are the backbone of your company’s health, and most entrepreneurs are not trained sales professionals. In fact, most business owners are reluctant, resistant sales people, worried about being perceived as pushy, or worse yet, sleazy. As a result, they don’t get out and sell.

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Whether you consider yourself an occasional procrastinator or a terminal one, getting stuck in the mud - paralyzing your ability to act - sometimes happens. While it’s certainly useful to explore the reasons behind persistent procrastination patterns and resolve them, this article is intended to offer you 8 smart reminders to free you up and get you moving again. Here they are:

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“It is not how much you do, but how much love you put in the doing.” Mother Teresa

Business owners are trained to gauge the success of their business according to the health of their “bottom line” - that is - the last line on a profit and loss statement that tells you what remains (if anything) after all your costs of doing business. This makes perfect sense - if you don’t show a profit, you don’t stay in business. But, I’m interested in what - beyond the traditional bottom line - keeps you motivated and creates that deeper and more sustaining measure of success I believe we are all seeking?

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I’m going to resist the temptation to jump on the New Years resolution bandwagon. Frankly, I don’t believe resolutions endure and I’d venture a guess you are saturated with messages, to tempt you to make the changes you want to make for this coming year. Instead of dangling a stale carrot in front of you, making it sound easy to succeed by resolution, I’m going to offer you something juicy. Forget resolutions. This year, LEARN to change your life.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month socializing at holiday parties and catching up with people I don’t see but once a year. It’s astonishing how many people muse about unfulfilled dreams and express hopefulness about making more money, or improving their lifestyle, yet their lives stay the same from year to year. As a coach I can’t help but see the glaring gaps in peoples lives (that feel to them like the Grand Canyon) - simply as opportunities to learn the new skills necessary to change their lives.

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“An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… The truly wise person is color- blind.” Albert Schweitzer

I learned a very difficult life lesson this month. Me, the eternal optimist and consummate positive thinker was blinded by my own medicine. It’s a powerful personal story and it dawned on me in the midst of recounting it to my entrepreneur group that its lesson is incredibly applicable to business.

Here goes. My husband and I just built a house. At the final accounting meeting with our builder, it came to light that we were a significant amount over budget. More than is typically expected. While I won’t go into detail about how we came to learn this so late in the game (that is a separate issue that we also had to deal with) you can imagine the impact this costly news had upon us. After our initial panicked reaction, and process with our builder something suddenly became very clear to me. The house actually cost us exactly what a house of this size and specification should cost. How could this have happened I wondered? Read More

Stress is high, your energy is low. Sound familiar? This is the common experience of most small business owners I know. Owning a business can be like running a marathon. You know you’re in it for the long haul, there’s not much time to catch your breath, yet you push on. You can easily see how this scenario can lead quickly to an out of balance life.

Despite everything you know (in theory) about taking time to care for yourself, how important it is to “pay yourself first” for some reason you don’t. You create a million reasons not to take your own good advice. Why is this? I suggest it’s because you have conflicting needs. One of your needs is to take care of business, it’s your livelihood - you need to handle details, regardless of how many hours you’ve already worked. It goes with the territory of being a business owner. It’s like getting up in the middle of the night to care for a sick child - you just do it. Read More

Overwhelm is one of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs experience on a daily basis. The definition of overwhelm, according to The Brainy Dictionary is, “To cover over completely, as by a great wave; to overflow and bury beneath; to engulf; hence, figuratively, to immerse and bear down; to overpower; to crush; to bury; to oppress, etc., overpoweringly.” Whew…sound familiar? I’ve been there, too, so I understand -it’s not a fun place to be.

As a business owner, with a full personal life as well, you don’t have to look very far to understand why it’s easy to often feel over the edge. It’s not just that you’re simply juggling a lot - as an entrepreneur, you are also risking a lot - your money, your reputation, your future. Being an entrepreneur is a commendable pair of shoes to step into. And, if you don’t get a handle on understanding overwhelm you might as well buy stock in Band-Aids to deal with the painful blisters on your feet.

Believe it or not, it is possible to change your relationship with overwhelm enabling you to experience a better quality of day to day life. Here are my 10 tips for turning overwhelm around. If you want them to work - you will need to carve out the time to practice them, that’s if you agree with the adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Read More

I am either incredibly foolish or very fortunate. Last year my husband and I ventured to go against well meaning advice and decided to build a house. Not just any house, but a completely custom straw bale house. For those of you new to alternative building - straw bale is an incredibly efficient, well proven, green method of insulating a traditional timber frame house. Read More

Sex, death and money are three topics guaranteed to get attention. You don’t have to think about it for long to realize why. They all hold a fundamental, primal link with being human; we can’t live without any of them. Clearly, as a species, sex is how we get here; it secures the future of our kind. Understandably it occupies a good part of our western culture mind. Death, on the other hand, is inescapable and mysterious –the inevitability of it provides the grist for living, the urge for purpose and meaning.

Money on the other hand seems to trump both sex and death in terms of our obsessive relationship to it and our confusion about what it is. While necessary for survival as a participant in society, it’s not directly linked with life and death, yet, many of us relate to it as if our lives depend on it. Here’s a news flash – it’s not. Read More

Your life as an entrepreneur - hard work, dedication, taking risks, being fearless - you know what I’m talking about. It takes inspiration, willingness to be out of the comfort zone and lots and lots of energy to keep your businesses going day after day, week after week.

My life has been turned upside down this spring. In addition to building a house (which is enough excitement and stress for a lifetime) I lost a loved one, had a family member diagnosed with cancer, and have been nursing my entire family, including myself through a zapping dose of spring illness for almost a month now. Read More

I’m going to share a very personal story. My sister-in-law (who was a devoted entrepreneur herself) was recently killed in an automobile accident - clearly a tragic event that has changed me forever. As part of the healing process I’d like to share with you some of the valuable lessons I’m learning as both as a business owner and as a human being. Read More