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)

Pump it! Pump it good!

Here is your thought of the moment:

"Courage is a muscle that requires exercise. Just as weight training builds muscle by pushing it to the point of failure, build your courage by pushing yourself to the edge of your comfort zone. It's there you will find your true strength."
- Coach Davender

I read recently that most people "live their lives like they are in endgame. They think they know everything they need to know, they don't have the time nor inclination to learn anything new, and are quite happy about it". (Peggy Dolane, http://is.gd/htDd ).

Sticking your head in the sand and refusing to be open to new ideas, techniques or data may work if you are in a secure job, but in the world of the entrepreneur, it is a recipe for disaster. (And, as recent news demonstrates, it's not so great for the wage-earner either.)

I'm living my 15th year as a solopreneur, and I've lost count of the number of times I've changed my direction, my mind or my focus because of new information or new opportunities. And I'm so glad I did. It is a fiction that when you create a plan, you need to be a slave to it. Look where the famous five-year plans led the old Soviet Union. The moment you set a goal and act on a plan, you challenge the status-quo as you knew it. Move one step forward, your perspective changes, eventually you can see around that tree or over that hill to discover something new that you hadn't counted on. So continuously re-evaluate where you are and where you are going. Be open to new ideas, people and situations.

Challenge and discovery are vitamins for the entrepreneurial soul. It is our nature to create something that did not exist before: which means we need to be continously testing the edges of our comfort zone. The fun part about this adventure is finding that our walls are not made of hard brick, but rather of sweet, soft, gooey marshmallow!

How will you live at the edge of your comfort zone today?

There has to be more to life than just money...isn't there?

About the thought of the week:

"To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intellingent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is too easy, as a solopreneur, to lose sight of why we do what we do, putting in insane hours, willingly investing our life energy into chasing a dream... The danger is that the grind of the survival cycle can also wear down our passion for what we are doing... while we focus on simply bringing in enough revenue to hang on another week, or month, or day...

There are many easier ways to earn a living. However, in my humble opinion, none are as rewarding as creating a livelihood from one's passion.

The calling of the solopreneur is to live life to the limit, to love every aspect of being, and to return this love to others in the form of the benefit we are creating from transforming the vision from passion to profit. "Profit" in its grandest sense - the tangible and intangible positive benefit that all stakeholders can share in to further their own experience of life.

In this "Valentine's week", this is the thought that I send to you. As says another person I truly admire, Dr Myron Wentz: "Love life and live it to its fullest, in happiness and health."