Time to nuke your Plan B

I'm currently coaching a group of solo-professionals through the Book Yourself Solid system, and this morning I received an e-mail from one of the participants.

She is making progress but is concerned because the results are not happening fast enough, and her financial resources are running out.

Here is the note I wrote back to her:

(name withheld) -

Great to hear about your progress.

And congratulations for sharing what you're experiencing right now.

If you are open to it, here are my thoughts:

When you work at a job, you put one hour in and you get paid one hour. The feedback is quick, because you know exactly how much and when you will be paid. However your income is limited by the number of hours you can work, and usually your hourly rate is limited according to some arbitrary valuation of your time.

In business, you have to invest many hours, lots of effort, and some money up front to have it pay off (maybe) some time in the future... The link between effort and payoff is much looser. The benefit is that as you build your business, you can leverage your efforts so that you can get paid many times over for the time you put in now. And you are now paid proportional to the impact you create for your clients. The sky can be the limit, if you are willing to do the work now.

In my own coaching practice, my rule of thumb is that the marketing activities I do now are mainly to create new clients 90 days from now. If I want clients and income sooner, I have to be accelerate the pace of my networking efforts: more direct outreach to influencers, make more referrals to others, being more visible in networking events and making more offers more often (especially the low-barrier entry level offers).

Now here's the straight talk: If you cling to a Plan B of getting a job, then it will be that much harder to make the transition from employee to entrepreneur. To get full-time results, your business has to be a full-time obsession.

I suggest you read "The Dip" by Seth Godin (Amazon link). He talks about how to get through the "long slog between starting and mastery": by leaning into it, putting all of your energy into overcoming it. You will become a very different person as you go through the process, and you will have very different people around you as a result. It's going to hurt, you will cry, you will get angry. You will also experience an amazing sense of self-discovery, the pride of creating something from nothing, connecting with fascinating and energizing people, taking control of your destiny: living an adventure that has no equal. But all of these great things can only happen if you choose to nuke your Plan B.

That said, do what you can to plug the financial holes right now. As another person mentioned, check out what you can do in terms of govt support. Also, strengthen your emotional support system. Connect with your colleagues on this course. Get involved in the calls. Make requests of your coaches, including yours truly.

You have six more weeks [until the end of this course] to shift your progress into high gear. If you wait until after this course ends it will be a lot more difficult, because you will no longer have the same kind of support as you have now.

The decision is yours. Which outcome will you choose: the status-quo or success?

No more excuses!

success
-davender



p.s.: Another great book is "The Accidental Entrepreneur: The 50 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Starting a Business" by Susan Urquart-Brown (Amazon link)