StartupNation Home-Based 100 Contestant

When I’m not coaching, I’m a small business entrepreneur. I started the business in 2002, around the same time I started coaching. I had no idea that those two career paths would intersect. But now I coach executives who are, or want to become, entrepreneurs. I entered a contest sponsored by StartupNation and I think I have a shot at winning. So if you’re reading this, please click and vote for me!

 

The Softer Side of Entrepreneurship

For many entrepreneurs and executives, emotions don’t have a place at work. I have met and worked for many senior managers who expect employees to show up in uniform, ready to play, with their game face on. I have also been that manager at times—the one with his own problems who just wishes everyone would do their jobs without complaint and let me do mine.

If only people-management were that simple! In fact, emotions rule in the workplace, whether you want to admit it or not. You think the fight your controller had last night with her husband doesn’t affect you? That you can turn your back when one of your salespeople tells you he’s being ridden so hard by his sales manager that he can’t focus? That it’s not your problem when a customer made your customer service manager break into tears?

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the impact of emotions at work as I go through the process of becoming certified as an Emotional Intelligence coach. There are a variety of emotional intelligence skills noted by Genos America, an expert in the field. They are emotional self-awareness, emotional expression, emotional awareness of others, emotional reasoning, emotional self-management, emotional management of others, and emotional self-control.

The other day I was working with a client on emotional awareness of others–the skill of perceiving and understanding others’ emotions. After taking a self-assessment and having several people from her organization take the assessment to score her, she found that while her self-score was high, the score given to her by her raters was quite low. The ratings were based on how frequently she identifies the way people feel about issues at work, understands what causes people to feel specific emotions, and demonstrates an understanding of others’ feelings at work.

She said something interesting when reflecting on her results. “I care really deeply about my people, but I guess I don’t always show it.”  Wow, you don’t hear management types show that degree of self-assessment very often! She’s now doing a fieldwork assignment to think about a situation where emotional awareness was important to a business outcome, what she could have done better, actions she can take to develop her skill and how she’ll be able to measure her progress.

Have you had an interesting Emotional Intelligence experience in the workplace? Let me know.

 

Enterpreneurs: Don’t Take the Call from the Office Copier Guy

I do most of my entrepreneur coaching by phone and often I never meet my clients. When they’re located in the New York metro area though, I like to get together at least once to put a face to a name. Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing that with one of my terrific clients who heads up a fast-growing consulting firm with a staff of about eight people. As we were talking she was interrupted when her assistant buzzed her on the phone. The office copier rep wanted to talk to her. She declined the call and we resume talking. Our conversation went something like this:

ME: Why was the office copier guy calling you?

HER:We need a better machine with more capacity.

ME: Who’s the heaviest user of the machine in the office?

HER: My assistant, Sheila.

ME: Why isn’t Sheila responsible for working with the copier rep on finding the right machine?

(Long pause)

HER: I guess it’s question of trust. Sheila’s great within her skill set, but I’m not sure she can do some things outside of it.

ME: Well, let’s assume she can, under your guidance, get all the information needed to make a decision, and then together you and she decide what to do? Wouldn’t that be a better use of your time? And wouldn’t Sheila feel more empowered with some extra responsibility?

And that’s the course of action my client decided to pursue. We spent about 15 minutes of our hour talking about the copier machine, which may seem silly. But it turned out to be a metaphor for where the business tends to get stuck. The CEO of a really fast-growing eight-person company just cannot evaluate copiers. Or peel stamps for correspondence. Or make lunch reservations. Or file documents. Every action that is not moving the business forward strategically is wasted motion and is the enemy!

One of my favorite extreme examples of delegation was my old boss, the president of a $500 million publishing company. He delegated everything. He didn’t even read or respond to his own email. He had a special assistant who would print out a stack of emails, get on a plane with him, read him the emails, and he would tell her how to respond. I always chuckled at his extreme-delegation techniques, but he was smart. Any activity that wasn’t about increasing the value of the company was forbidden work for him. And so it should be for any entrepreneur, even if your company’s sales are $5 million or $500,000.

 

Entrepreneurial Keys to Success

Last week I got together with a group of executives from a company based here on Long Island to discuss entrepreneurship. A number of them already have side businesses going on and therefore I won’t name the company. These are people really itching to bust out and succeed on their own. I took some notes from our flip-chart sheets that I thought would be interesting for any entrepreneurs in the making. Here they are:

What is Entrepreneurship?

We wrote down some ideas about what entrepreneurship means to us, including:

· Freedom
· Making our own rules
· Having courage and determination to see our plans through to success
· Being able to exercise creativity in a way that is not possible in the traditional workplace
· Having an unlimited potential for income (and other things)

What are some of the negatives of business ownership?

Interesting that all of our initial ideas were idealistic – that’s the way it should be. But we also discussed the less rosy side of business ownership:

· Uneven income streams
· Lots of hours per day, and a long time to reach goals
· Lots of stress
· Difficult to manage family concerns
· Feelings of isolation

Key Success Factors

We then discussed the key factors for success of our entrepreneurial ambitions. They included:

· Getting Started: This part is hard, especially when you are fuzzy about what it is that you are starting, or your business starts by itself with you along in the passenger seat. How to address that: see next item.

· Having a plan: several of us have started businesses and aren’t sure where to take them. Coincidentally (NOT!) we generally had no written plan and vision for our destination. As the saying goes, when you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. We therefore agreed that a plan – which does not have to be elaborate and can in fact be a page or two, at least to begin – is a precondition to success.

· Having courage: If entrepreneurship were easy, everyone would do it. It’s not easy. It takes courage and determination to ignore the forces of gravity and nature which want you to fail; to keep your Gremlin (i.e. the negative voice in your head) in check, and to realize that even when things are dire you can push on.
· Failing Forward: Speaking of courage, you have to be able to embrace failure and keep going. Without failure we’d have none of the medicines that immunize and cure most of the diseases that used to kill most people before the age of 40. If you’re not failing, you’re doing entrepreneurship wrong.

· Running toward vs. running away: Many people are running away from something when they decide to start a business. If you are running away from difficulty at work, from midlife anxiety, from personal/family issues or other factors that are left unresolved, you create weakness in your Personal Foundation. You have to go into business looking forward, with a vision and a plan (see earlier item). It’s important to look inside yourself for what may need shoring up before you launch too far into entrepreneurship.

· Liquidity: Most businesses fail because they run out of money. It’s very tempting when you start a business to fall victim to the Law of Big Checks. (I made up this law but it’s true.) You make the decision to invest in your startup and write a big check to get started. After the dry heaves subside, you find it’s easier than you thought to write other and more checks (or more likely, credit card charges). You may well need a Money Buddy: someone who you call every time you are about to make a purchase of $500 (pick a number) or more to decide if that expense is one you absolutely must do now, or can possibly be deferred without negative consequence.

· Standards, Values, Personal Foundation: We agreed that if you are going to start a business, it has to be one that reinforces the things that are important in your life. You need to be conscious of what types of clients, business partners and employees you want to have and make sure you create an environment in which you aren’t creating new conflict within yourself through a mismatch of business strategy and who you are as a person.

· Support: Sooooooo important. Your self-organized group is a fantastic element of the support every entrepreneur needs so you don’t feel you are walking the factory floor alone. You also need the support of your family. If your spouse/significant other isn’t on the bus, either you will not be successful or you stand a good chance of hurting your relationship(s).

 

If you Want to Become an Entrepreneur, Change your Relationship with Money

If you’re an executive who has become an entrepreneur in the last few years, you will relate to this post. If you are thinking of giving up your pinstripe suit, you’ll want to read this closely.

Once you become an entrepreneur your relationship with money changes dramatically. Back in my executive days I had a very impersonal relationship with money. My paychecks and commission checks were direct-deposited. I never opened the stubs the company handed out twice a month, and never checked to see if my commissions were accurate. They were large numbers, and that was nice. Every two weeks for the paycheck, every month for the commission check. Predictable. Never changing.

Fast-forward. I am in business. No paycheck. No commission check. Bank balance going down instead of up as I spend wildly on–I mean, invest in–my new business. At first I spend as if my paychecks and commission checks will somehow keep coming even though I am no longer employed. Just out of momentum.

After a while a funny thing happened. I started to notice how very beautiful $20 bills are, especially when there are a bunch of them all together in a nice pile. What craftsmanship, what art! Why, that’s Andrew Jackson on the front. A great president, got a bit of a bum wrap after the war. I started to think I’d like to hold on to my Andys a while longer. Andy, what do ya say we cook dinner tonight instead of going out? Name your dish. Beef stew? I make a great beef stew! What wine do you want to go with that, Andy? What’s that you say? A $7 bottle is often as good as a $14 bottle? Can’t be…well, if you say so. HEY! You know, this ain’t bad! Say Andy, the kids’ spring vacation is coming up. We usually go to Club Med. Say what? You never heard of Club Med? Maybe we should do what? Stay at home and play games together and do other things close to home to bond as a family? Wow, that’s a 19th century idea, but I guess I can give it a try. Hey Andy, Scrabble is really fun!

Wake up and clip the coupons, people. As an entrepreneur, you need to learn the Zen-like joy that will come from saving money and postponing gratification. When you finally fix that hole in the ceiling and remodel the bathroom, you will admire sheet-rock like you never have before. So here you go, executives who are turning entrepreneurial–the start of a list of ways to improve your relationship with money. (More will be coming in future posts.)

1. Have a Money Buddy: Before you spend more than $500 on anything for your business or home, consult a buddy. Do you have to spend it today, or can you wait six months? Get a reality check.

2. While You are Spending Less, Work on Making More: Like a Fortune 100 business, your small business can’t cost-cut and save its way to growth. You have to create more sales for the business even as you think frugally. Skip Amazon.com and go to the library (the building with all the books in it–and they let you borrow them for free!) and check out The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. If Rhonda were an ice cream flavor she’d be tutti frutti, but she has an important message. While I can’t promise that if you close your eyes and imagine checks arriving in the mail your wishes will be answered, I do think that you can behave in a way that promotes sales even while you are sober about spending. Get the audio tape rather than the book, and listen to it twice. The first time you will be put off by her strange Australian accent and even stranger ideas. The second time (I’ve listened to it about eight times) it starts to have meaning.

3. You Don’t Need to Have it All Right Now: Our front door was a mess. The lock was busted, the paint was chipped all over. I hated the front door! I wanted a new front door. A contractor said we could have one for $6,000. It was really nice in the catalog. A few years ago, new door! Now….a can of paint cost $20 and a locksmith was $200. And you know what, I really like that new color. I love our front door! For the Boomer generation that is used to having it all, it can be a hard turn to fix rather than replace. But try it. That applies to home repair, cars, appliances, any big ticket item. Get just one more year out of them and you will be thinking like an entrepreneur.

 

Focusing on Small Stuff

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a fascinating piece this week in which he talks about a book called The Mental ABC’s of Pitching by H.A. Dorfman. The article, and the book, are about the importance of focus and reducing extraneous thoughts when you are working toward an objective. It’s incredibly important for entrepreneurs to read Brooks’s article (ignoring his concluding paragraph).

The biggest problem I see in entrepreneurs is a short attention span and a propensity to get into the weeds. And I include myself in that group. It takes real concentration to focus smaller, like a good pitcher does. Brooks says, “When a pitcher is on the pitching rubber, Dorfman writes, he should only think about three things: pitch selection, pitch location and the catcher’s glove, his target. If he finds himself thinking about something else, he should step off the rubber.” A great metaphor for how to get things done as a business owner.

Another excellent book on the subject of focused thinking is S.C.O.R.E. for Life: The Five Keys to Optimum Achievement by Jim Fannin.The acronym stands for Self-Discipline, Concentration, Optimism, Relaxation and Enjoyment. Fannin has coached sports superstars and corporate executives on a system that has to do with reducing the thousands of thoughts that clutter our minds and training ourselves to visualize and focus on a few specific things. He calls this championship thinking. It’s a very powerful book and while I believe that the only system people can truly follow is one they invent themselves, you can pick and choose exercises from what Fannin offers and incorporate them into your life. Anyone thinking of undertaking an entrepreneurial venture is going to have to master being in the “zone” Fannin talks about, so if you’re possibly headed in that direction, check out the book.

Speaking of Fannin and his concept of championship thinking, the kind all leaders and business owners need, here’s a perfect example. In this year’s NFC championship game between the Giants and Packers, the game was decided by place kicker Lawrence Tynes, who kicked a 47-yard field goal in overtime to win the game for the Giants.

He did so after missing two other opportunities in the final quarter, either of which would have provided the game-winning points. So how did he feel going into the third attempt in the most important game of his life after missing two? “I felt good about all the kicks,” he said. “The operation on the second one obviously was not what it was supposed to be and I didn’t make a very good attempt at it.” Wow, he felt good about kicks that nearly lost the game! And notice how distanced he sounds, almost like he was looking at it from above. That objectivity and ability to distance himself from the immediate outcome, plus his ability to put a bad performance behind him when most mortals would have broken down sobbing, defines championship thinking. Think about that when you have your next difficult day in your business.

 

The Catch-22 for Entrepreneur Do-It-Yourselfers

Here’s a brief story about an age-old entrepreneurial conundrum brought to my attention by Coach Leah. I started using WordPress a few weeks ago and have been messing around and tweaking this blog. I plan to integrate the blog and my coaching website into one in the next few months. I am thinking about how best to do it. Do I do it myself, using a WordPress Revolution template recommended by my friend Newt? Do I hire someone to do it for me from scratch? Leah says: Don’t spend time doing/learning things that are not going to become a repeatable skill that you can resell to your clients and customers. Makes perfect sense. So I go about getting a proposal from a great web developer that will cost $4000-$8000. This makes me perspire and have trouble swallowing. I continue messing around and tweaking with WordPress tools on my own and another few hours go by but I kind of like the results and the experience. I talk to Newt again and he recommends another developer who helped with his blog/site, which is really excellent. So should an entrepreneur work on activities that are potentially “low value” and not marketable to other clients? The pro argument is that entrepreneurs need to develop a wide range of skills, and technology is so interwoven into small business today that learning more about blogging technology, as an example, is hardly a waste of time. At this very moment I’m more inclined to heed Leah’s advice…but it’s still early in the day; talk to me after lunch, the answer could be different.