Not So Crazy Advice for New Business Owners

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I grew up in a self-employed family. My father built his business through years of physically and mentally demanding work. As a contractor doing mainly commercial work, he travelled a lot and was gone for weeks at a time working in remote locations in northern Canada.

My dad did not have a privileged upbringing. He quit school and moved out before most kids nowadays get their first car. He created his own success and he worked very hard to attain it. He also worked hard to hold on to it when the recession of the 1970s hit, interest rates jumped through the roof, and people abandoned homes and building projects because they could not pay for them. He built it back up again and worked hard to hold on to it when the stock markets crashed, not once but twice.

So coming from a self-employed family, you may think that I was encouraged to start a business. The truth is most of my family and many friends thought I was crazy to walk away from a highly paid and coveted job.

You see, I was the first person in my entire extended family to get post secondary education. I climbed the corporate ladder quickly and earned double my age before I was 30 years old. I had benefits, lots of holidays and all the trappings of the “good life”.

So when I would get restless and dissatisfied in my career, I convinced myself I must be crazy. It was the only reasonable answer to explain why I wasn’t happy with what everyone seemed to think was the American (and Canadian) Dream.

This went on for 20 years. I quit a government job for a corporate job, then a corporate job for a non-profit job, and so on. To make a long story short, I accepted a position at an international company. I very much enjoyed it, but physically and emotionally, I felt drained. I became very sick with pneumonia, and it wasn’t the first time.

I realized something shocking. I felt relieved to be at home instead of at work. So two months later – a very long, painful two months – I summoned up to courage to tell my husband, and then my boss, that I wanted to quit. I didn’t tell my parents right away, that’s a whole other topic! Ironically this was the first time in a long time that I didn’t feel crazy, but everyone else seemed to think so.

When you quit, you’re making an unexpected and uncommon choice. Most people would rather stay in jobs that consume their souls than take a chance on their futures.

This risk is what stops other people from making the same choice, and what makes them fear for you. So expect that your closest family and friends may be less than thrilled by your decision. Give them time to understand and don’t take it personally if they don’t throw their 110% support behind you.  Most importantly don’t let their doubts become your burden.

Here are my personal tips for coping with this transition.

Be Yourself – If you are thinking of quitting your job, never do it on impulse or based on strong emotion. Take the time to explore what you really and truly want. As Escape from Cubicle Nation author Pam Slim wisely reminds us, “hating your job intensely is not a business plan”. Once you have quit, allow yourself to detox and don’t expect to be a rockstar business owner overnight. Do use the time to think about what your passion is, who you’re ideally suited to serve, what your ideal business could look like, and then put practical structure around it.

Be Realistic – Rome was not built in a day, and contrary to popular Internet myth, neither was any successful or sustainable business. It takes time and planning to create a business and to get clients and make a profit. There are steps you can take to make this happen more quickly, like getting help and professional advice, but most people are not likely to replace their previous income for several months. There are certainly exceptions, however it is more realistic to expect a cash flow trickle for a while until you can build the foundation of a solid business. 

Be Prepared -  I have yet to meet a corporate fugitive who has followed the totally impractical advice spouted by the mostly employed of saving up six months’ worth of living expenses. But it’s good to have some game plan. This is why it’s not smart to make any rash decisions. In my case, once I knew I was going to quit, I was able to quietly look for potential contracts, put out some feelers and plan financially. To borrow the Scout and Brownie motto of “Be prepared in mind and in body”, do what you can to plan for potential scenarios, prepare a strategy to grow your business, and have the discipline to stick with it. Being prepared in mind is a little trickier.  If you’re like most of us, you’ll alternate between wild exhilaration and gut wrenching fear.  You may feel, as one Corporate Fugitive subscriber described it, “optimistic with a shade of anxiety” akin to a low-grade fever.  Another client described it as a rollercoaster ride alternating between “abject terror and excitement” that requires her to “hold on to her dreams with a death grip!”

Whatever you do, don’t give up. There’s a whole world out there and with time and skill you will attract and provide value to that first ideal client, followed by many more.

Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success System^TM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and  live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.

How to do a quick marketing or business strategy

Five Reasons to Create Your Signature System

Many business owners have the makings of a memorable product or service but don’t quite manage to put all of the ingredients together. They struggle, and so do their potential customers – because it isn’t clear what’s being offered.

One of the best ways to stand out and to take your business from “ok” to extraordinary is to create a signature system that only you provide. This can be a certain process or approach you use when you work with clients, a single product that you want to be known for (even though you’ll also have others) or even your unique variation of a familiar theme.

When you create a system around how you work with your clients, and how you deliver your services or products, you’re doing many things:

• You’re creating consistency in how you deliver your work – so that all clients receive the same standard of service
• You’re making it possible for others on your team to give consistent service based on the system you created
• You’re elevating your status as an expert – because you’re going to be perceived as having a higher value than someone who doesn’t present themselves in this way
• You’re building a brand – one that your customers can understand and experience, and tell other people about
• You’re making it easier on yourself – because you have a consistent approach to follow – and you have a foundation of content that you can package into multiple revenue streams
• You’re making it easier to market your services – because you have a way to describe them,  and you will use this message again and again

If you’re just starting out, you’re in the ideal place to create a system. You have the benefit of being able to establish an overall system, and then developing products or services that follow the same overarching content. You can design all of your marketing to feature your signature system.

If you’ve been in business for a while and you don’t have one stand-out system, you will more than likely have a patchwork of products and services that have evolved over time. You have the benefit of experience and being able to measure what has worked and what hasn’t. Now is the time to look for a common theme or way of working with your clients that you can call your very own.

 No matter where you are in your business life, creating a signature system is one of the very best strategies you can use to accelerate your business and get more mileage out of your most valuable asset – you!

Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success System^TM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and  unlock their business potential for greater  personal freedom and prosperity. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful entrepreneurial adventure. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for free tips on how to go from overwhelmed employee and business owner to extraordinary entrepreneur.

Break Free! Tip: Quitting Lasts Forever

In life as in business, there are going to be times when it is easier to quit than to keep going. One of my favourite mottos comes from fitness trainer Paul Plakas, who says “pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever.” When you’re facing a business challenge, you may be looking all over the place for excuses or explanations. Sometimes, there may be valid reasons or factors outside of your control. Other times, you can trace back the cause to a decision or lack of decision that you made. Either way, making excuses is really just a form of giving yourself a rational reason to quit trying. If you are truly committed to your business, you need to be able to get past this point. Remember that obstacles are temporary, but if you give up, it lasts forever!

If you’re struggling, ask yourself one question: What opportunities are before me right now?

How to create a landslide success

Early on as an entrepreneur I realized that I could not achieve the level of success I desired by doing everything by myself. It’s like pushing multiple boulders up a very slippery hill.

The first thing I did was get help, as in hired help, to take over tasks I was not particularly good or fast at, or that cost me less to have someone else do than the money I could be earning by spending my time on income generating activities.

But getting help with workload only removes the strain of pushing SOME of the boulders. We all have our own personal boulders – doubts, fears, self criticism, negative attitudes – and these are the ones that are the heaviest. The harder we work and the more we put ourselves out there, the more it can feel like we’re in the middle of a landslide.

This is why so many successful entrepreneurs invest in coaching and mentoring. Having an objective expert look at your business as well as provide you with support is invaluable. I have invested a lot of emotional and financial dollars in coaching and professional resources because I have seen the value first hand.

One of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned came from one of my business coaches. Before each discussion she asks you to fill out a form and one of the questions is “What opportunities do I have available to me right now?”

This question smacked me right in the middle of the forehead. It forces you to stop and think about all of the opportunities you have in front of you at this very moment. Some of them may be in progress, but I would hazard a guess that for most of us, many more are in the “to do” pile.

When I work with business owners and I am looking at the current state of their business, versus where they say they’d like to be, I often find they already have the bits and pieces of an extraordinary business. They have great ideas. They have existing clients. They have built in networks.

But, there are usually two areas that are holding them back.

• One, they can’t see the potential in its entirety and also can’t see a way to pull all of the pieces together. This is the value I can offer them.
• Two, they haven’t followed through on opportunities they have right in front of them. So I help them identify and create a plan to capitalize on them.

The truth is that most of us fail to follow through for any multitude of reasons. However, we place limits on ourselves by doing lower return activity, focusing on the day-to-day busy-ness, trying to do everything on our own or find other ways to sabotage our own success.

The next time you find yourself saying that your business isn’t going as well as you’d like, or you’re not getting enough clients or making enough money, the very first question you should be asking yourself is if there are any unharvested opportunities before you right now.

I bet you’ll find there are lots of half-dones that are just waiting for you to follow up, that can make you money and build your business.

So dust off those ideas and take outward action on them. Do more than plan and think about them – make a phone call, follow up with a lead, get in touch with someone you’d like to do business with. Blast those boulders up and over the other side of the hill!

And don’t wait too long before you do this again. Set aside time to do this at least part of every week. Or take a day out of the month to do the bigger planning, and do smaller follow throughs each week.

The point is, don’t let those opportunities pass you by. You can create a landslide – of success.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:  Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success System for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and  unlock their business potential for greater  personal freedom and prosperity. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful entrepreneurial adventure. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for free tips on how to unlock the business in you.

Virtual events from virtually anywhere

Creating virtual events using your phone and the internet is a strategy that allows you to attract potential clients, get visibility and raise your profile as an expert and business owner to take seriously.

You can even use them as a platform to launch a new business venture or product. Join me on Thursday, July 16 when I interview Gina Bell. We’re going to discuss how to create events – even if you feel like you’re from virtually nowhere — no list, no visibility and no business. Sign up here for this free call.

How to repurpose anything

If you’ve followed me for a while you know my double duty rule. I don’t say yes to any opportunity unless I know I can get more than a one-time use out of it. Leveraging work you’ve already done is a huge profit maker and time saver, and it’s just so much easier!

For example, if I have written a presentation, I pitch it to organizations who might be interested. Right now for example, I am repackaging a presentation I began as a speaking group assignment to deliver to community organizations and business owners in my area.

I also take the key points from lessons I teach and rework them (in less detail of course) as future weekly articles or blog posts. These are all examples of how you can get more mileage out of work when you’ve already done the heavy lifting.

Lest you think you don’t have anything old worth repurposing, I challenge you to go back through materials you’ve created in the past. In my previous consulting work, I created many documents related to staff communications, public relations and fundraising. Recently I was going through them again, and was amazed to see how much of the information was equally applicable to small business owners. With a little editing, this material I’ve written and gathered over the years will also be useful to you.

Summer is a great time to tackle these kinds of projects. Direct marketing expert Dan Kennedy says there is really nothing new under the sun – but he offers some useful tips to give you new perspective on the old. Try these to see how much double duty you can do.

1. If you can’t change the product, change the package.
2. Make it bigger.
3. Make it smaller.
4. Add to it.
5. Subtract from it.
6. Do it faster.
7. Do it slower.
8. Do it cheaper.
9. Do it more expensively.

 

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:  Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success System for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and  unlock their business potential for greater  personal freedom and prosperity. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful entrepreneurial adventure. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for free tips on how to unlock the business in you.