by Jason R Owens | May 19, 2013 | High Attrition, Self-Employed Sweet Spot
How Managing Your Emotions Can Put You Ahead
This Means You
For some of my male readers out there, this article might seem easy to dismiss. The topic of emotions seems just too touchy-feely. Rest assured — this article is for all of us. We are all creatures of emotion. Just look at some of the things that our emotions affect:
- the relationships we form
- the car we choose to drive
- how we feel when someone cuts us off
- the clothes we wear
- what neighborhood we live in
- the employer we choose to work for
- the kind of business we start
- the relationships we choose to end
Emotions and Small Business Owners
Emotions can cause us small business owners to quit long before we should. It is a form of self-sabotage. Unless we break out of these endless circles we’ve created, we are bound to keep our light from the world. We won’t be able to create more jobs, and we won’t be able to help clients with our unique contributions. Here are just a few examples of self-defeating behavior I have witnessed in small business owners:
- You don’t go to the business networking function because they “never amount to anything.” Instead you sit at home under some level of anxiety as you wonder how you are ever going to find the “one thing” that is going to make a difference in your marketing efforts.
- You compare your 2-year old business to Rebecca’s 6-month old business and get the impression she is doing better than you. Afterwords you sulk at home for the rest of the evening wondering why you “just aren’t any good at this.”
- Your competitor’s website makes you feel like you are using finger paint and crayons when you do yours. Then you beat yourself up for not hiring it done. This beating session causes you lost time from wanting to start on the speech you have to give next week.
How to Break the Cycle
Addressing this could take an entire book. Here I’m going to focus only on breaking the cycle of negative self-talk. It takes a certain level of self-awareness to begin the process of keeping yourself in good head space. Here’s the simple test I use.
Pick a thought or a feeling you are having right now about your business. Ask yourself this question:
Is what I am thinking right now making me feel better or worse about myself?
Just follow the thought for a moment and you will become very aware of where it is leading you. If the thought is building you up and making you feel more confident about where you are, then you are in good shape. If the thought is wearing you down and making you feel diminished, then it is time to get it out of your head. Time to give yourself a mental reboot. I have literally developed the habit of not dwelling on things.
No Longer a Dweller
In the past I used to get really worked up about things that were not going according to my plan, which means I was worked up most of the time. I spent so much time on “if only”, “what if”, and “woulda, shoulda, coulda” that I nearly dwelled myself into exhaustion. I was spinning my wheels yet going nowhere. It took me a LONG time to realize how much time I was wasting. What’s worse is that dwelling is a double whammy. Dwelling usually puts you in an emotional hole that you have to climb from, AND it keeps you from spending time on reaching your goals.
The Payoff
Managing your emotions means that you stop losing time. You are not digging your self a hole that takes time to fill. Managing your emotions means that you believe in yourself. You care enough about yourself to invest only the best thoughts and feelings.
Remember this: If you wouldn’t let someone else treat you badly, then don’t treat yourself badly.
by Jason R Owens | May 18, 2013 | Self-Employed Sweet Spot
Small Business Startups & Time Management
You have made the commitment. You decided to start your own business. You may have left a full-time job and decided to jump in full tilt, or you may have decided to start a pet project on the side. You are truly taking your first steps into a greater world. It is perfectly normal at this point to get overwhelmed with what to do next.
You could spend your time on any of the following:
- Getting business cards printed
- Putting up your web site
- Designing a Facebook ad
- Writing a newsletter
- Going to a networking meeting
- Buying office supplies
- Figuring out why your printer stopped working
The list seems endless. This is the very area where I have seen many a business owner get overwhelmed. “I’m just not getting enough stuff done!”
Forget Discouragement
The reason I bring up time management is because it is such a self-defeating topic. I have not met a single person who feels they are accomplishing enough with their time. This even includes the workaholics. Time management is a deep pit with no bottom, a chasing after the horizon. No matter how hard you try, there is always more you could have done. “I should have put in a little more effort. If I was thinking straight I could have spent less time by going through the drive-thru.” You see? It never ends.
Instead of managing your time, manage your emotions.
How I Prioritize my Day
I have two rules of thumb that help me prioritize what I do
- Of all the items on my To-Do list, which ones are most likely to help me get the next sale?
- See number 1.
Once I apply this filter to my world, I can see clearly what opportunities make the most sense to pursue and what opportunities fit in that “nice to have” category. Why is Sales my most important category? Because it keeps me alive. It puts bread on the table and gives me the chance to do this business for one more day. Selling tells me that I have a product the market wants, and gives me the chance to help more and more people. When my Sales are in check, my emotions are in check. When sales go in the tank, my mind starts thinking of all kinds of reasons to quit, and my negative self-talk kicks in. “You should have stayed at your desk job, Jason.”
Biggest Time Wasters (and Emotion Eaters)
For most people I think the biggest time waster has to be troubleshooting some type of technical problem.
- People might complain about not getting emails that you know you have sent.
- Your computer is running slowly and you’ve already run the super extensive virus scan 5 times in the past week.
- Finding just the right font for your blog.
If technology just isn’t your thing, find a way to delegate these situations to one of your suppliers. Yes, hire someone to do this. You probably won’t like the price, but here’s what you gain:
- You don’t have to beat up yourself for making the wrong choice. “If had had picked Gmail instead of this second rate email system, I wouldn’t be having this problem.
- You get to focus on what you do best, which boosts your confidence and allows you to produce great work.
by Jason R Owens | May 17, 2013 | Self-Employed Sweet Spot
The Best Way Small Business Owners Can Generate Immediate Revenue
Say you just lost your largest client, or you want to get your new business off to a great start.
The point is that you want (need) new revenue quickly.
Here’s how to get it.
This is going to take a bit of moxy — you will need to get out of your shell to do this face-to-face.
Get out in your community right now. I’m not talking about a networking meeting. Attending a typical networking meeting can work quite well over the longer term, however, they are not a feast of grab-and-go revenue.
Instead, start visiting businesses. Go to a business park and open every door that you can find. Yes, I am serious. The front doors are typically unlocked, and there is usually someone there who can help you. I did this recently with a client and was amazed to see how many times the person behind the front desk said things such as, “Your timing is pretty good. We were just talking about this yesterday.” This door-to-door tactic works well if you sell to other businesses AND for those of you who sell directly to consumers.
Just last week I visited with a new food business that was just at the first few weeks of getting launched. The owners were flying high from just having canvassed their business park. “We just got finished going door-to-door collecting names of people here who might be interested in our sandwiches. We send out an email in the morning telling them about our special of the day. They reply telling us how many they want.” When I visited only 4 days later they were counting a stack of cash from sales to the very people they had signed up.
Want to know what other business should do door-to-door canvassing? Dog trainers! I was surprised to see how many people take their dogs to work. Sometimes the dog greeted us before the owners did.
If things are running tight, and you need the extra boost to get over the mental defeat of loosing a big client, do not expect to get over the hump while hiding behind email. Sure, I like doing business via email as much as anyone else, but it is hard to establish new, solid relationships this way. My motto is “Establish relationships face-to-face; Maintain them electronically.
by Jason R Owens | Apr 29, 2013 | Self-Employed Sweet Spot
The setbacks you expeirence when chasing your dreams are perhaps the most painful of all. Let’s face it. We’ve all blown it at times. We’ve made a bad choice, a wrong turn or stepped in a hole we didn’t see. But some mistakes just hurt more than others.
Compare these two
- You get home from a long trip to the grocery store and realize that you bought 2% milk instead of skim.
- You submitted two of your best paintings to be entered in a local art show. Both get rejected.
Which setback stings more? The second one, of course. There is a lot more of a person’s heart (and personal identity) wrapped up in their work. Art is a form of self expression. For that matter, any act of chasing a dream, following your passion or starting a business is a form of self-expression.
Let’s continue with the artist scenario for a moment. What is likely to happen here? It would be really easy for the artist to catastrophize, to assume that this is the end, to think that she does not have any real talent. The artist may begin to feel that she should give up painting in favor of getting “a real” job. She may go throught the cycle of despair. A business owner who has suffered a similar defeat may end up back in a cubicle, never to try self-employment again.
What if there were a better way? What if we could reframe our missetps so that we could see them in their proper light? What if we could start to see oursleves in the proper light?
Failure isn’t failure.
In over a dozen years of chasing my passion (to own my own business) I have never had one single person tell me what I am about to tell you — you are probably not going to get it right the first time. In fact, there are very few who do.
You are probably not going to get it right the first time; there are very few who do.
What took me years to learn is that it really is ok to fall down, to make bad choices. You see, I had placed a phenomenal amount of pressure on myself to figure out all the answers on my own. I didn’t have money to hire a coach for everything, and I certainly didn’t have time to take classes every time I felt I didn’t know enough.
I also had to learn NOT to beat myself up when something didn’t work. While my heart was completely in my work, I was not doing a good job of guarding my heart from defeat. I took it pretty hard. With each defeat I found myself rethinking and re-evaluating my place in life.
- “Is this not my calling?”
- “Am I really not any good at this?”
- “Is God trying to tell me something?”
I was in my own spin cycle. My confidence would go in the tank, and I had to start over every time I made a misstep. I had to recommit to somehow finding a way that I could own my own business. It was only after going through this emotional spin cycle that I realized most successful entrepreneurs I know landed in their space only after several tries. Some even discovered their current niche while diligently working on something else. I had to find a way to stop myself from entering the spin cycle.
For most of you out there who are chasing your dream, at some point you will have to embrace self-promotion in the form of marketing and selling your goods. This is true of artists, writers, church planters, dog trainers and hundreds of other professions. If you have never…
- been in a formal sales role
- done a fair amount of public speaking
- had experience in marketing
…there is a lot to learn. It just isn’t reasonable to think that you will get all this right the first time, so take it easy on yourself.
A Life-Long Pursuit
Chasing your passion and realizing your dreams is a life-long pursuit. You have to be in this for the long haul. For some of us, this journey takes months. For the rest of us, like me, it takes years.
Failure isn’t failure if
- You are able to take the knowledge and experience with you to use next time.
- You commit that there will be a next time.
- You’ve made the conscious decision NOT to beat yourself up for taking the risk.
When you are able to keep your heart intact after a setback, it completely changes what you can accomplish.
Four Things You Can Do
Here are 4 things you can do to ensure that failure isn’t failure.
- Remind yourself that you had the guts to go for it when so many others would not.
- Remember, or even write down, all the times when you did win. Especially the times when someone paid you for your product or service.
- Start a file on the compliments you received on your journey. This includes Facebook comments, emails, recommendations you received on LinkedIn, etc. Print them and put them in a folder. These are proof that you can do good work, work that people love. Refer back to this folder when you need a boost in the future.
- Take a few minutes to write down what you would do differently. Would you advertise more? To a different audience? Would you choose a different location for your business? Was your offer compelling? Do you feel that people “get” you? Are enough people coming into your booth or website?
by Jason R Owens | Apr 26, 2013 | Self-Employed Sweet Spot
Mastering Your Journey at Any Age
Michael Hyatt wrote a review on Jon Acuff’s new book titled Start. In Michael’s review he called out 5 major phases we all go through in our, as Jon calls it, road to awesome. The steps are as follows:
- Learning
- Editing
- Mastering
- Harvesting
- Guiding
What struck me most about the review is that Jon does not appear to link these steps to a person’s age. The old maxim “Learn in your 20’s and earn in your 30’s” is out of date according to Acuff.
This breaks the tradition that those who have not found their way by a certain stage in life are doomed to obscurity.
What I find refreshing about Jon’s admonition and Michael’s ensuing comments is that learning can happen in one’s 60’s just as easily as it can in one’s 20’s. The same goes for all the other steps including Harvesting. So, for those of you who feel that life has beaten you down, or that you are in a continual loop of learning and editing without ever reaching the harvesting stage, let those chains of “I’m never going to make it” fall away. You can achieve success.
Another thing that struck me about Hyatt’s review is the comment section beneath the article. There are dozens and dozens of comments from people who describe being in the Learning, Editing and Mastering phases. Lots of people who are just starting out. Many who are restarting after failure or setbacks. Read through these posts and you will see where people report:
- “I’m now 61 years old…”
- “I decided to go back to school at 62.”
- “I’m now 36 and undergoing a complete career change.”
- “…I think I’ll start over at 50…”
- “At the beginning of my 40’s I am filtering out the fluff…”
- “I turned 40 this year.”
Most of these respondents really resonated with the Editing and Mastering phases of the journey. There are a LOT of us out here who are trying new things, learning, willing to take risk, and willing to keep at it to reach Mastery.
by Jason R Owens | Apr 8, 2013 | High Attrition
Your Employees Rule (or at least they should)
A bit of warning before we go any further: on the surface this is going to look like an ordinary get-some-support-staff-for-your-salespeople letter. Resist the urge to go there as I unpack how autonomy is the most powerful force you have in your business.
The answer to getting the most out of your employees is the easiest, yet scariest thing you will ever do — let them decide.
Here’s what a traditional sales role typically looks like:
- Rep is expected to develop relationships with key accounts, identify sales opportunities, and put together deals.
- Also responsible for entering all weekly activities, i.e., meetings, phone calls and all respective notes into company’s customer relationship management (CRM) software.
There is only one problem with this scenario — most sales people can’t stand documentation. It is the bane of their existence. After come cajoling and back-and-forth with leadership, the sales team gets a support person to help with the data entry part of the job.
Here is what the revised roles look like:
- Sales reps – see people and write deals.
- Support personnel – enter meeting notes, track details and handle paperwork.
From here let’s introduce two of the company’s top salespeople – let’s call them Frank and Michelle. Frank fits well into the new system because he hates anything that looks like paperwork. Frank would rather be out on the golf course with a big prospect any day rather than being trapped behind a desk. Frank actually lobbied heavily for the new support person, so, of course, he’s loving the new arrangement. Michelle, is a different story, however.
Michelle came into sales after having spent 5+ years in marketing, so she knows what customers want. Michelle likes the pressure of performing and keeps her own score card. After the sales jobs were redesigned to account for the new support staff, Michelle now feels like she has less time to track her own score. Just last week she decided to take time to do her own numbers, but was caught by one of the members of the sales management team. She was reminded of the investment in the new support person and encouraged to hand off to her score tracker to the new support person. Michelle now gets her scores, but they are at least a week behind, half the data she wants is missing and the report is no longer in a format that she likes. The new system appears to be working well for Frank, but Michelle is quite demotivated because her touchstone — her own version of the score tracker — is gone. Not only is it gone, she is actively dissuaded from doing the work herself. Without this touchstone, Michelle’s work started to slide to a point where she was no longer a top performer.
Let Them Do What They Want
Autonomy is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. This isn’t about designing jobs for a department. It is about designing jobs for individual people. People who bring their own likes, dislikes and preferences to a role. In order for Frank to do his best work he really needs to have a support person handle the details. Michelle needs to have her hands on her score tracker every day. Once Michelle was able to break the ice with her leadership team, she was able to get control of her sales tracker. Less than a month after the change, her numbers started to climb and her performance has fully recovered.
by Jason R Owens | Mar 29, 2013 | Uncategorized
Light on Selling, Heavy on Operations
In my last article in the series I mentioned that many self-employed individuals go to market under the banner of a larger company. One path to success here could very well lie in the selling system that the company has put together for you. I advised readers to explore every last inch of whatever system the parent company provided. Do what they recommend.
I have found situations where the parent company is really good at providing advice and guidance on operations. Things like
- These are three choices of signs for your location
- Here’s how long to cook the fries
- This is a list of our preferred suppliers
While getting tips and keys on operations is fantastic, you, the entrepreneur, can’t get to operations until you sell something.
Without sales there is no need for operations.
Being that the need to generate revenue is so deep, I have found, comparably, that most systems appear to be very thin on telling you how to generate revenue.
How is a person with bills to pay supposed to find his or her own way?
Know Thyself
So much of my sales coaching relies on the client really knowing herself, and being willing to learn more.
- Do you enjoy meeting with people one-on-one?
- Do you like to speak in front of groups of people?
- Are you comfortable leading a small class?
- Can you envision yourself selling products through home parties?
- What was your experience selling cookies or raffle tickets for your school fundraisers when you were a kid?
- Do you like communicating to people by email?
- Recall the last trade show you worked. Was it draining or energizing?
- Do you like talking to people about what you do?
All this “knowing yourself” tends to come easier for those with more life experience. Looking back on my early 20’s I would not have made a great salesperson. I grew into becoming a better salesperson in my early 30’s and eventually won a sales award from the company I was representing. But this all took time. If you have patience for it, there is a tremendous amount of growth ahead for you.
by Jason R Owens | Mar 29, 2013 | Uncategorized
A Proven System
It is pretty common for people to start their own business under the name of an established company. You see this all the time in direct selling companies that sell their wares through home parties or through a persons network of family and friends. You find it in financial services companies who hire agents to sell insurance policies. You taste it in when eating a sandwich in a franchised restaurant.
All these have some type of system — rules, tips, guidelines, best practices — to make you successful. The implied message is “Do this and you will make money! Your risk will pay off, and all this will be worth it.”
For the most part, they are right.
Somewhere in each of these companies is a team of people who have combed through all the data, listened to all the stories and come up with what tends to work best.
The first and best piece of advice I can give you here is to throw yourself into whatever system you have been given.
- Work the phones like they recommend
- Put ads in the paper like they recommend
- Send emails like they recommend
- Talk to prospective clients like they recommend
Until you have gone through the width and breadth of their system, you will have no right to say, “This isn’t working for me.”
I was having a meeting at Panera earlier this week and I sat a few tables away from an older, well polished individual who was offering an industrial version of a be-your-own-boss position (probably as a manufacturer’s rep) to a guy in his mid-30’s. No doubt the guy offering the opportunity had some type of proven system to offer the prospective salesman.
- Here’s how we find prospects for our products
- Here’s what we say on the phone to get an in-person meeting
- Here is how we quote our products
The new guy would do well to listen to the voice of experience.
The Rest of the Story
Some of you are saying, “Jason, I’ve been there and done that. Their system does not really work for me.”
- Maybe you were sold a bill of goods on how fantastic the system was.
- It could be that the system works well for others, but just does not work for you.
- Perhaps you don’t have a system at all because you are not working under the banner of another company.
Either way, you find yourself at a crossroads.
“Do I stick with it, or do I bail?”
In my next article in the series I will cover how to find your voice in selling.
by Jason R Owens | Mar 29, 2013 | Faith and Work, Uncategorized
Take stock of how full, good and rich your life really is. For just a moment to count all the things that make your life a little easier. Consider the simple things such as:
- indoor plumbing
- hot water for your shower
- a refrigerator / kitchen/ pantry stocked with food
- grocery stores
- paved roads
- family
- friends
- heat
My in-laws are in town today for my daughter’s birthday. Before I went to work my wife and her mother had gone to get groceries at a specialty health-conscious store across town. Note that the local big box store which is designed to meet the needs of a wide mass of consumers, does not carry exactly what my wife needs. She drives, in one of our two cars, on roads that are paved, to the speciality store across town.
I sit here in a coffee store (an entire store devoted to coffee?) writing on a computer that I can carry anywhere. I have the time to do this because I am not washing a week’s worth of clothes by hand, and I’m not having to plow a field with a team of 2 horses. This amount of “free time” I have would have been unfathomable 100 years ago.
My father-in-law volunteered to watch my daughter while I work in my “office” just a few miles from the house. Thinking about things from his vantage point, how amazing is it to live so long that you get to spend time with your grandkids? As I was pulling out of the driveway on my way to write I realized that we live very long, full lives. We have so many conveniences compared to what was available in the past. These conveniences wash our dishes, dry our clothes and give us, well, more. More time, more availability, more room to give. As a whole, we are better equipped to meet the needs of others than perhaps any other time in history.
We have full, wonderful, productive lives. Today, take time to notice how good you have it.
