Self Employed Success

There appears to be two types of small business owners: people who jump right into running their business and marketing their products and services with little or no planning, and those who plan a strategy — and a service or product design — before they ever dream of offering it to the public.

Is one better than the other? Yes and no.

Planning often allows you the time to brainstorm and think through possible scenarios before you commit your time, energy and money into your business idea. Ninety-five percent of the time, I advocate planning, especially if you’re starting a new business or launching a new product or service. The time you spend with research and working through possible alternatives, as well as the time you spend thinking about how you might handle worse-case scenarios, will reap huge rewards later on.

On the other hand, over-planning often leads to inaction. A phrase I love that sums it up is, “Analysis Paralysis” — the inability to move forward on a project because you feel you don’t have all the facts, and the unwillingness to move forward until you’re 100% sure of success. Every self-employed person will tell you that there’s no such thing as being 100% sure of anything.

There is a place for jumping in the world of small business. Jumping allows you to be flexible, and to ride the wave of enthusiasm and passion. Jumping allows you to be 85% sure and then go for it. Good Jumping is action, combined with knowledge, courage and trust.

So when is jumping okay? Jumping is okay if you’ve already got a solid business foundation underneath you. This means that your finances are in order, you’ve already got a working business model that brings in reliable income and steady administrative processes that support your next great adventure. Jumping is okay if you’ve done as much research as you can and have a good sense that your project is advisable, even if you’re not 100% certain of its success.

In the end analysis, a combination of planning and jumping is required of all self employed people. The key is to find a balance point.

Jackie asks, “How can I control the time monster? I have so much to do in my business, I never seem to have enough time to get it all done.”

Watch this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjhn-0q-oYQ

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http://www.AskKarynAnything.com

New videos will be posted each Tuesday.

Aly and I spent the day at the beach on Sunday. Having been to the NJ Shore many times before, I had a sort of sixth-sense about which waves would come up higher on the beach and soak our feet, and when it was safe to walk on the hard-pack sand near the water’s edge. But Aly wasn’t used to walking on the Atlantic Coast beach and he couldn’t gauge the waves.
 
I tried to explain it to him and found that something I thought I was doing naturally and almost intuitively, really did come from experience and pattern-matching. I had to make a conscious effort to try to decipher the “rules” about how I knew which waves were safe and which waves needed to be scampered away from, before our feet got wet. I looked for patterns so I could explain it to Aly. Once he got it, he became quite proficient at spotting foot-soaker waves.
 
I think we do know the “rules” or “clues” about what works in our lives and businesses, and what doesn’t. But from time-to-time, we have to make a conscious effort to pay attention to the clues and their consequences.

One of the women in my mastermind group, Susan, tells a story about how she sensed that a new employee wasn’t going to work out, but still kept training her and hoping that the new employee would change. Finally Susan paid attention to the pattern of her own feelings (hoping that someone would change, hoping that training and guidance would help) and the results she was getting in her business (the real-life actions of the new employee), she was able to let her new employee go, even though she didn’t have a replacement. And guess what? A new, perfect employee showed up from an unexpected source within a few weeks!
 
Sometimes we first realize that we’re not paying attention to the clues when we notice that we’re not getting what we want (we already have wet feet or a poor business relationship). Then we can work backwards, figuring out what caused that unpleasant feeling/situation, and make a decision to change in another direction. If we do this often enough, the clues and pattern-matching becomes internalized and we recognize much more quickly when something isn’t right in our world – and make a change sooner and more skillfully.
 
And when someone shares their story with us (thank you, Susan, for sharing your story), we can refresh our memory of the lessons inherent in the story, remembering the clues again. For me, next time I come across a person who is “not quite a good fit” in my life or business, I’ll be less likely to believe (hope) they will eventually change, and instead seek to find a more compatible friend/colleague/client/employee.

Where do you pay close attention to the patterns in your thoughts, feelings and perceptions? And where have you been avoiding paying attention to patterns and trends that need revisiting?

Are you getting everything done on your To Do list?

No?

Join the crowd.

More and more self-employed entrepreneurs are complaining that email, phone calls and their beeping and buzzing BlackBerry are constantly causing interruptions, increasing stress and reducing productivity.

These constant interruptions are costing you productivity — and ultimately income.

In my blog post Choose One Project, I talk about the myth of multitasking. Talking on the phone and answering emails at the same time decreases your overall productivity. So does answering emails while you’re trying to focus on an important project or task. It causes twice the number of errors when you multitask or allow interruptions to your task.

By allowing all these interruptions, you are losing TWO hours a day of productive time.

The Solution

Many large corporations like Intel, IBM, and Deloitte & Touche are instituting something called Quiet Time: a block of time in which you cannot send or read emails, and may not make or receive phone calls (unless they are related to the specific project you’re working on).

I started to do this last year:

• Core Productivity times are 9AM – 2:30 PM. All client calls and project work are done during these hours.
• Every Friday was “class design and book writing day.” No client or prospect appointments, no emails from 9:00 – 2:30, no phone calls at all.
• Emails are handled twice a day – 8:00 and 2:30.
• Each day, return phone calls are handled after 2:30 PM (which is great because of the time zone differences between East and West coast).
• When I really, really needed to work on a project in a deeply focused way, I’d bring my laptop to the lake, park or library, taking my work to a quiet environment without possible distractions.

My Results

In a 12-month period, I designed and launched THREE new classes (including a 9-week class which was a whopper to design), wrote one new ebook, designed two new websites, and overall had a much happier and more satisfied lifestyle and work environment. Awesome!

Lest you think that you will be less productive in getting through your emails and phone calls if you institute Quiet Time in your business, think again. Having fixed times each day for email and phone calls increases your productivity, actually reducing the amount of time you spend on emails and phone calls. (I found I could get through 30-40 emails in a solid, planned hour, which would have taken me two hours if I had answered them in a scattered fashion throughout the day.)

If you are frustrated because you’re not accomplishing your projects and tasks, you need to schedule Quiet Time into each day. You will be happier and feel more fulfilled by your work if you do.

Two days after celebrating my mother’s 70th birthday in late October, my throat got that tell-tale scratchy feeling. You know the one. It’s predicts the advent of the dreaded November Bronchitis season for me.

I seemed to be able to fight off this first round in early November before it became full-blown, but the dry cough lingered all month, making for some very interesting teleclasses. “What would you do if <cough> your email campaign results <cough, cough> returned less than a one percent click-through rate <cough>?”

But my energy was up and I was lulled into a false sense of security, taking walks by the canal and visiting the new BJ’s Wholesale Club in town to take a gander at the high-def TVs. Big mistake. By last Wednesday, I had fever and chills, the lungs clogged up like a beaver dam, and I was forced to the doctor’s office once again. I had to miss the family Thanksgiving dinner, cancel a new class that was to have started on Tuesday, and cancel a speech I was to give at the ICF Conference in Orlando this week.

This happens to a lot of small business owners. We work hard, our adrenaline is up, and colds and flu seem to avoid us. But the minute you relax, the minute you take a vacation or end a big project, POW…you get sick. I used to think my annual bronchitis was tied to my airplane trips to England (my husband is from England and we visit his parents once a year). But I began to realize it wasn’t the airplane’s fault, per se, but it was because I was relaxed and on vacation — typically after working like a crazy person the week before to “catch up” before vacation started.

Now that I’m flat on my back this week, I’m going to ponder a new routine, a new way of both working and relaxing that keeps my equilibrium and my immune system in balance. First thing I did was take my six-page To Do list and reduce it to three pages. (Boy, that felt GREAT!)

If you’re like me, you get very excited about the projects you work on and enthusiastic about working with your clients and students, and your mind is always going a mile-a-minute with ideas. But there’s a price to pay for trying to do it all.

P.S. I’ll miss everyone at the ICF Conference! I hope you have a great time!

P.P.S Does this happen to you? What advice do you have for me?