How much baggage are you carrying? Have you created a business that looks just like the corporate world that you escaped from? When I was dreaming of going out on my own, I envisioned having time and freedom to do whatever I wanted. It may seem silly now, but I didn't consider how much money I wanted to make. All I really wanted was to have time for myself. You see, I was in IT for over 15 years and during that time I worked weekends, nights and holidays. I was one of those people who could be relied on to drop everything and give her all for the team.
As the years passed, I realized that though I was giving my all, my paycheck wasn't reflecting it. Not mention that I was frequently sick and had little or no social life - other than the occasional Happy Hour. Not that drinking cheap drinks at a chain restaurant is such a happy event.
What I never considered was that I would end up recreating my work life in my business - long hours, low pay and the occasional Happy Hour. Most of my friends in business do the same thing, so why would I think it anything was wrong?
Yes, when you get started it does require work and often much longer hours than the regular 9-to-5. But sitting at a desk all day and all night is not productive if it does not bring you any income. Back in my job, I was used to just spending hours at the desk, whether my work was productive or not. So, I simply recreated that world. It took me the longest time to feel okay about running errands or doing chores during "work hours." However, I couldn't blame my work environment for keeping me confined - I'd done it to myself.
Recently my coach asked me what I'd really rather be focusing on in my business. I answered, "If it was up to me..." She said, "It IS up to you!" That really hit me.
It was up to me to decide - but in my mind I was still the employee waiting to be told what to do next. I've often heard that starting a business will bring up all sorts of issues inside of a person. You will discover things about yourself that you never realized was there. I totally agree. It does bring up stuff. Though some of it can be hard to look at, it's necessary. If you're struggling to find that freedom you thought you'd have in your business, drop that baggage and free your mind first.
About the Author:
Transition coach and radio host Deborah A. Bailey is a sought after expert to discuss today's most pressing workplace issues. Deborah helps her clients transition from employees to entrepreneurs as they eliminate limiting beliefs and connect with their passion.
After several years with various companies such as AT&T, Lucent and Johnson & Johnson, Deborah Bailey successfully transitioned to career consultant and coach by founding her company Deb Bailey Coaching (a division of DBC Communications, LLC). Her extensive experience in the employee to entrepreneur transition has made her the partner of choice for many successful entrepreneurs and career professionals. Deborah is the host of the internet radio show, "Women Entrepreneurs - The Secrets of Success"
For more information about Deborah, visit her website http://www.dbaileycoach.com
Here is the scenario: Your house is on fire. The smoke alarm has awakened you from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, but you are fine. The fire is currently far enough on the other side of your house that you can easily make your way out of a safe exit and away from danger. So you can get yourself to safety.
You can also fairly easily take a little bit of time to check on family members, get them up, and out of the house. Or, you could grab your important documents that you took the time to put in an easy to transport container, or maybe grab your laptop and a few flash drives with critical information. Or possibly some fairly portable family heirlooms, like a jewelry box or shoebox of old photos.
You do not have time to pack a suitcase and coordinate your wardrobe for the next couple of days. You do not have time to take that old mirror that your grandmother gave you off the wall and carry it to the car. You cannot get the grand piano out the front door in time.
Your crisis is here. It doesn’t matter how long you spent waiting for the right time to prepare for this crisis. Your time to act is now. You will have to be as prepared to handle this crisis as you are right now.
Are you truly prepared?
In the case of a home fire it is fairly easy to prepare for. And if you do happen to suffer through one, the priorities are clear: save yourself, then save others, then possibly save a few things that you are already prepared ahead of time as important.
But let’s take the ‘fire scenario’ and use it as a metaphor. A fight with your spouse has escalated into a possible ending involving lawyers. A close friend has just been given a terminal diagnosis from a doctor. You’ve just been laid off from a major corporation. Your personal business is failing financially. That is your ‘fire,’ your dilemma, your crisis.
First, make sure you don’t get consumed with fear and panic, and find yourself stuck in your ‘house’ and consumed by the ‘fire.’ You can always rebuild or move elsewhere if you can just live through the experience. If you can escape the building before the flames get dangerous, do it.
Next, make sure that important people and things are taken care of and not consumed by the ‘flames,’ if you can help it. Make sure friends and family members are okay, and if the dilemma is really about you, make sure they are okay with you. Make sure your assets are protected from whatever is attacking you.
Now you can deal with the fire...but let’s change the scenario so that it is not as serious, and take a fresh look at it.
The smoke alarm goes off, you awaken from a deep sleep and you see the source of the problem is relatively small appliance has shorted out. You grab a nearby fire extinguisher and vanquish the flames, and then you awaken the family and get them out of the house and call the fire department to come by and check the rest of the house to make sure that the house is safe and no other surprise fires will spring up. You still have a crisis to face, but not a major one.
But you don’t just let the whole house burn down because the coffee pot shorts out, you deal with the very minor fire and then find out what the source really is: bad wiring in the coffee pot versus bad house wiring that is bound to set something else a blaze.
A minor crisis can be handled with minor and relatively painless solutions. They will help you avoid the major crisis that can actually take a physical, financial, or emotional toll that will take much more effort to recover from. But just like the evacuation of the house about to reach fully involved fire status, it helps to do a little preparation and to keep your cool in the situation.
In what is essentially another variation of asking "What Would Jesus Do," I have come up with a not exactly original concept called ‘The Next Effects.’
The Next Effects is a system that will help you think ahead to any action you might deem risky (good or bad risk is not important) and determine the potential consequences that may come from making that choose.
All you do is when you are faced with the choice to make an action, ask yourself:
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few minutes?
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few hours?
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few days?
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few months?
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few years?
For those who want to swap out the verb ‘affect’ meaning "to influence" for the noun ‘effect’ meaning "result," feel free. I prefer effect, but spell check suggested otherwise. Not wanting to miss the point or lose the moment of creativity, I offer you the creative license to pick a favorite or ridicule me for not grasping 8th grade grammar.
For a more detailed and well thought out model of this line of thinking, pick up the new book 10-10-10 : A Life-Transforming Idea by Suzy Welch. Or, you can follow the model I just laid out for free. Its no Bubble Friday, but The Next Effects is one of my favorite current creations.
UPDATE: I'm going to count it as a fine example of great minds thinking alike, and then dare to compare my feeble brain to Michael Wade's over at Execupundit.com, who put my rambling thesis in perfect business perspective with his post The Next 30 Minutes.
Rush Limbaugh makes a lot of money to talk to people everyday. But he talks to A LOT of people. And they listen intently—whether they really want to or not.
Say what you want about his politics, opinions, and sometimes flat out non-truths. If Rush were still just a radio DJ, and could take his following with him to any local metro, someone would figure out how to pay him even more money.
As the apparent voice of ‘The True Conservative,’ Rush had the chance to speak at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC 2009), and based mostly on people’s idea of the talk show host coming in, he gave either an amazing or pathetic speech.
But as far as I can tell, he was the only speaker covered live by Fox News Channel and CNN last night, with plenty of other Republican superstars set to step up to the podium. And he was definitely the most analyzed (I think over analyzed) speaker of the weekend.
It has taken him twenty years on the radio in the talk format to truly develop his powerbase, a dozen years before that to get him into talk radio, and although his detractors will quickly point out the missteps and failures he’s made up to this point, they will quickly use his message as the best way to shore up their opposing message. That is power, and truly ironic, as Rush is using President Barack Obama’s messages and policy decision to produce the opposing view so popular to his listeners, whether he is truly right 99% of the time or not.
If you like him, Rush Limbaugh is an effective communicator and great for rallying his troops. If you don’t like him, Rush Limbaugh is an outstanding communicator with the ability to spin webs of words that draw in masses of people to follow in lock step with his paranoid ideology.
Ether way, you can not deny Rush’s ability to get a message across effectively.
As a person whose business is about getting the message across effectively, its easy to see the tools and techniques used by Rush Limbaugh and to attempt to emulate and teach the ones that are most effective to the others...even is the end user is far from a fan and thinks that Limbaugh’s tactics are over the top and used unfairly. They are not. They are used in the medium in which they are most effective, and they work, even when they don’t get the expected response.
What seems like an army of blowtorches and bazookas in Limbaugh’s arsenal hide the ultra effective sniper riffle. The ability to shotgun blast the mainstream message while simultaneously pinpoint target the right people to perform the desired action, sometimes in his favor, sometimes against him, is where Rush has truly mastered the medium. No other media figure gets so much coverage on other media outlets than Limbaugh, a man who effectively only has a three hour syndicated talks show, a newsletter, and a website.
Rush Limbaugh is a classic case of the messenger with guns pointed at him by his opponents and his supposed allies because of the message he has chosen to deliver. But the message gets delivered every time. It’s what the masses do with the message that gets a little weird.
When Rush talks, people hear him speaking. They may then cheer or complain, they may misinterpret unintentionally or intentionally, or the may just hear him talking and do their best to drown out the noise and not listen, but a message gets sent.
Think about what lengths you go through to ensure your message gets sent, and what the receivers do with the message from that point on. If your method isn’t working, you might consider using a few tools from the Limbaugh tool box. It’s not about liking his message, it’s about knowing that his methods work.
Three common fears that plague small business owners (and Type-A people in general) are the fear to dream big, the fear of accepting baby steps to success, and the fear of admitting you’re having a down day.
Dreaming big becomes a problem when your big dreams fizzle out somewhere along the way. Have enough big dreams that don’t come to pass, and you’ll stop dreaming altogether. You face this fear by dreaming big anyway, although you first set some realistic goals that you should be able to meet with just a fair amount of effort. Then you are free to set your dream goals at an insanely obscene level that truly surpasses your conventional thinking goal. Publicize you lower goals, prioritize the big goals, and you may find that your performance projections will consistently hit somewhere in the middle.
To explain the need to accept baby steps and small victories toward your success, I’m going to use two American sport analogies from baseball and football. Businesses want to see home runs, because they mean instant results and a big lift in spirits. But the reason why a home run is so exciting is that they don’t happen for every at bat. Their scarcity makes them so exciting and motivational, helpings the teams move along through the mundane art of single and doubles to just get on base (and in business to just get things done daily). A business should operative on the mindset of a football team. A football team has to move the length of the field, 100 yards, to score. But to keep the offense on the field, the team just has to advance 10 yards in 4 tries. That’s baby steps and small victories daily, not home runs and hail marys.
And nobody ever wants to feel down, and when they are, they don’t want to admit in. But you usually don’t have much of a choice if your personal energy is visibly waning or you business is showing public signs of decline. Man up and admit your not doing so well at the moment, then do something to improve your situation. And do it immediately. There is no shame in being knocked down, but staying down or lying down are inexcusable.
Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will chronicle the next phase of mis-adventures of my life. Thank you for staying on the ride, and for you newcomers to the inside of my mental mania, I will do my best to make sure the trip is both entertaining and educational.
Life In Fast Forward: The Blog is still a bit of a work in progress. Keep checking in for new posts and site updates.
About Blog
This blog supports some of the thoughts and interjections from the folks at Fast Forward Business Properties. Our ideas, things we test, and a few random thoughts will show up here.
Name: J. Cleveland Payne
Home: Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
About Me: News is my profession, so it only fits that I am a news junkie. I'm a radio show/segment producer for a news/talk radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
