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)

Climbing to success

I guess being a solopreneur is like free-climbing. It takes strength, balance, determination and a bit of disregard for what's "safe", all while looking for the smallest hand-holds and tiny ledges that can support us on the climb up the wall. No belay ropes, pitons and other hardware to make the climb any safer!

After all, being in business for oneself is not "logical"... there are far easier ways to make a living!

Found this breathtaking video about the freeclimber Alain Robert through a Facebook link from Jeff Osborne.



YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0wmLzS3dt4

You gotta be a bit crazy...

"Go around asking a lot of damfool questions and taking chances. Only through curiosity can we discover opportunities, and only by gambling can we take advantage of them."
-- Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956)
Inventor of the frozen food preservation process

You gotta be a bit crazy to be in business. Entrepreneurship is not logical. If your goal is to make money, there are ways that pay much better and for far longer, than starting your own business. If you want to be your own boss, you'll discover you work for one of the most demanding and least generous ones. If it is stability and balance you are looking for, you will discover that each day throws you a curveball. If it is the freedom you crave, you'll quickly become a slave to the daily demands of keeping your business alive...

Because to succeed in business, you must be able to see things as you want them to be, not as they are, but at the same time, take action based on the reality of the present moment, not reality as you would like it to be. Most of the problems that entrepreneurs endure happen because they reverse their contexts of vision and action, only seeing reality but acting in a dreamworld.

Being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle that I would not trade for anything, not even a lottery jackpot. Reaching for the stars while keeping my feet on the ground, for me it's the only way to grow to my full potential ...