In a couple of days, my calendar is going to ping me with a reminder. It’s going to say “One month in – how’s it going, Heather?” This reminder is for me to review the new business strategies I intended to integrate into my business this year.
Each year, I list out a bunch of strategies I want to integrate into my business. Some are marketing strategies, some are productivity strategies, some are customer service strategies; that kind of thing. I always have a really bold and vibrant vision of the year ahead and it’s easy for me to actually create so many strategies that I simply can’t implement them all effectively.
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The transition from working for someone else to working for yourself is not an easy transition. There are lots of people who dream of making that switch but, when it comes right down to it, they can’t. (Or, they do and then they switch back).
The reason is simple: Even though you might have good days and bad days working as an employee, your job is generally predictable: You show up and do your work and you go home at the end of the day.
It’s not like that for entrepreneurs. Here are three skills that aspiring entrepreneurs need in order to be successful:
Embrace the unknown. Small business ownership is not predictable. Some days will be quiet, other days will be insane. For many businesses, the question mark of “where do I get the next client” always seems just around the corner and it never goes away. I have one colleague who has been a successful consultant for years and tells me that it took him years to accept the fact that he was only two weeks away from having no clients. That means he needs to keep an ongoing marketing system in place to make sure that there are always clients who “appear” regularly in order to mitigate that two week cliff.
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I had my first day today at an attempt of a Polyphasic Sleep Cycle. Unfortunately it is going to be very short lived. 
However, not for the reasons I originally thought.
Everything I had read spoke about the crash and burn, the crankiness, the inability to begin sleeping when you first try, the difficulty of waking up, the being worn out and tired.
That was not the issue for me for the most part.
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It has been awhile and I have been a bit sick with the flu, but I wanted to update my readers on my home office (post 1 here and post 2 here). We are about 50% completed.
The new AC has been installed.
The new desk has been installed.
The two 24″ monitors were swapped out for two 27″ monitors (and a beefier video card and power supply to boot – thanks @dszp).
The curtains were installed.
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Just a really short note to let you know that the Ductless A/C unit got installed today. A colleague of mine is coming to take the portable unit off my hands tomorrow
If you don’t know ‘what’ I am talking about, check out my earlier blog post here.
Otherwise – this is just a quick update to let you know where we are at. This may all get done much quicker than the three months I thought it would. Thanks to great readers like Erson, Leo and David, I have all my technical questions sorted out and am ordering my Video card and new power supply (evidently it is better to be safe with a more robust power supply with the new video card) tomorrow!
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Perfectionism sounds like a great ideal to strive for in business and in project management but it is a mirage – a hazy image on the horizon that will never be achieved.
It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a large business, a small business, a start-up, a department, or a project that is being managed within an organization – businesses need to work towards high quality completion but NOT perfectionism.
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“A business without meetings is… an enjoyable place to work”.
Haha, okay that might be a serious anti-meeting sentiment but I know that most of you chuckled because deep down you feel the same way. Meetings are rarely an enjoyable experience. And yet, we have them and can’t imagine doing business without them.
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When entrepreneurs start a business they hope and pray that their business grows. Of course! They should! And as a consultant, I take my role very seriously in helping them see growth in their businesses.
But in my last post I mentioned that not all business growth is good. Growth that happens too fast, for example, without any warning, can cause financial, manufacturing, warehousing, and customer service problems galore. Click here to read more »
