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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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’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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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? (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)