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.
Click here to read more »
Business owners work hard to create a business that hopefully will become a valuable, revenue-generating asset for them. IF a business survives, that is a tribute to the entrepreneur. But IF a business thrives, that is even better.
So, how does a business get from “survive” to “thrive”? I suggest that the clue is in the title: Are you managing? Or managing? Yes, it sounds strange so let me explain:
Click here to read more »
Great discussion today on #businesslunchclub (on Twitter; but see BusinessLunchClub.com for more details).
The conversation today centered around delegation, and specifically around something that @IAC_Heather calls “the 3 Strikes, You’re Out” rule. The conversation was primarily between @IAC_Heather, @askleo, and myself (@AaronHoos), with @Hazewalker chiming in towards the end.
You can read our entire conversation on BusinessLunchClub (If you’re not reading this on the day it’s posted, go to BusinessLunchClub.com/users/archive and select July 13 from the calendar).
Click here to read more »
With the coaching I do here and the services that IAC Professionals offers, it’s no secret that I’m a believer in delegation. It makes good business sense to delegate, especially when the person you’re delegating to costs less to do the task than the equivalent of your own hourly rate.
A small business owner might contract with a virtual assistant to take on some of the administrative work, and a large business might delegate its day-to-day functions down from the executive to middle management (or its sales functions to a sales team or its manufacturing functions to the factory, etc.), however, there remains one function that cannot be delegated; it MUST be done by the business leader:
Click here to read more »
“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.
Click here to read more »
Recently, my family moved out of our condo into a house. This isn’t the first move I’ve made, but it’s the first one in a while and I was struck by how much project management the entire effort required to pull off successfully. So I jotted down these 5 project management lessons that moving reminded me of:
1. The best laid plans will go awry. Project management is equal parts “keeping the project on track” and “getting the project back on track”. There are so many factors involved and you can have a well-detailed plan but something will send the whole thing off the rails. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have plan. Instead, it means that you should have a great plan and a plan B and a plan C and a flexible attitude and a bottle of wine. Things will go wrong. A project manager is there to minimize what will go wrong and to pick up the pieces and get most of it going right.. Click here to read more »
My friend and her husband are renovating their home. It’s not my idea of a good time but they’re both fairly handy and the results are beautiful. But the one aspect of renovating that they confess great frustration over is the definition of the job being “done”.
They might drywall then tape then plaster then paint over a period of a week or so. Once they’ve applied that last coat of paint, they can stand back and “ooh” and “ahh” over how good the room looks… but that doesn’t mean the job is done! In fact, some might say that painting is the easy part and what is still to come is the real work! Click here to read more »
Funny thing is we all have a job… and whether we are landscaping, building a website or filing taxes… the job can get redundant or boring.
However, there are always those projects that are stimulating and exciting – and that is typically when it is all about the love.
Do you love the client? Click here to read more »
