If you’ve been in business a while you are more than likely aware that being your own boss is a very revealing personal journey. I liken it to being a hero in an adventure story, because business can, and does, bring to the surface challenges  we have to face, be they emotional, physical, spiritual, financial or mental.

Below are 10 things I’ve learnt from being my own boss. I should point out that this list isn’t everything and it’s not in any particular order.

In writing this list what I’ve noticed is how much I’ve learnt down the years.

1. Do it well whatever the cost – If you were on a mission and you could  hire a guide that knows the territory at £50 an hour or a guide who doesn’t know any better than you for a tenner, which would you go for?

In business you get what you pay for. A good example of this is when we had a new opening in our team. We thought it was a simple job a student could do. Even so, we checked in with an expert in the field before going ahead. She came back with some top draw questions which resulted in subtle changes to our strategy (and subtle changes make big differences – ask any golfer who hits the tree when they want to hit the green). This goes for assistants, coaches, web designers, marketing people. I’m not advocating: “Go to the highest bidder”. What I am saying is go to who can do the job you want doing the best and pay their fee.

2. Avoid isolation – Any business adventure will probably mean you coming face-to-face with things you don’t know, don’t understand or don’t know how to get round. At times like this it’s a blessing to have a network of informed people!

I used to try to do it alone. Not now. We now have a small team who are experts in web technology, coding, various shopping carts, admin, sales, project management, marketing and social media. Beyond that we have 2 mentors. We mastermind with 6 people who think like us. We meet up with other friends who are like us. We have a drink or lunch now and again with people we respect in our field. We have 60 partners – we help them, they help us and we have several thousand CommunitySoulers who are a lot like us and who we learn from as well as share with. A successful business in this era needs to build a tribe, so start to build one and stop trying to do it all alone.

3. Never fear spending on growth – We get one shot at this life adventure. Don’t spend it complaining you can’t afford this or that. If the best in the industry invest in their development then it’s arrogant to think you don’t need it. It took me too many years to discover this one!

It’s simple. To grow you must invest. To think you can grow a business without investing some money into your business development would be naïve. I realised I’d been lying to myself on this one a couple of years back. Never again! On your adventure if you work in isolation and don’t invest in yourself, it’s hard to know what to do when you meet a challenge, yet if you have a mentor who has done what you want to do, you don’t get stuck, you flow past the obstacle. When it comes to investment it’s NOT what a coach or mentor asks you to pay, it’s about what it will cost you if you don’t pay.

4. It’s never over… till it’s over – In the past I gave up on my intentions too soon. I remember when that changed. We would set a goal and with just 28 days left we still had 82% left to achieve. In the past I would give up. These days I do what it takes to achieve a goal. There’s always something else you can do to pull a result out of the bag – if the goal means enough to you. If it doesn’t you have to find a bigger why.

5. Know where your wealth value is -  I used to try to do it all – marketing, delivery, product creation, finances, websites, admin… and that was a big mistake. We all make money in various ways. This is the key to how we create our wealth. I’m into writing and speaking and opening doors for partners and clients who are developing to make a difference and a profit. My value comes from squeezing my time down into these projects and not getting involved in the other things that are not my area.

6. Start with what you want to earn – Sometimes someone new to business looks at how much to charge by looking at what the competition charges. I used to do this too. Not any more.

I now decide what I’d like to earn and then charge that. One thing you have to do with this approach is of course ensure your client gets up to 10 times the return on their investment. I enjoy this approach. It’s much more inspiring. When I changed how I did this my clients improved their results and our income rose.

7. Gather and keep momentum – Momentum is so important. Set a rhythm for your business to grow at. Many years ago I grew my business by spending 8 hours each week marketing it and the rest of the week delivering the service and managing my team. These days it’s a lot easier to market yourself as you have the Internet and lots of processes and systems available. So we automate many processes and I now spend maybe an hour a week on marketing, working with my team.

8. Income growth means just 3 things – To increase your income it simply comes down to getting new clients, having clients return and buy, and increasing your prices. The business hero just needs to know this and keep asking what needs to be done to achieve the goal. For too long I kept low prices thinking I was helping people, but if something is too cheap it has no value and is not respected. I learnt I was doing people more of a favour by charging a higher price, because people made sure they squeezed every drop out of something they paid a lot for.

9. Know you’re the enemy – Often we mascarade as the hero when we are really the villain. What I’ve learnt is that sometimes I’m the bottleneck or I’m the one resisting  changes that needs to happen. Many times, such as when you need to increase your prices, the first person you will need to convince is yourself. I can remember I once hung out for 6 months too long before cutting an income stream, when I finally agreed to cut it, our income doubled in 6 months! So holding on to a small income stream, had cost our business £1000′s.

10. Give yourself clear boundaries – I used to rush from a client meeting to marketing, from marketing to accounts and then back to working with a client, then back to marketing… Don’t do this. Block out time. I usually use afternoons for clients and block book them. Mornings are my creative times when I develop CommunitySoul.  Block book time for meetings and arrange them back-to-back. Put in buffers between home life and business. I’ll have 30 minutes to transition between the end of the day and being at home with the family. Sometimes when I’m working full out, I’ll make sure I have a day off in the week.

Please feel free to share your experiences in the comments box on the blog. We want to hear from you! Your age, sex, income or experiences don’t matter!

——-

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. Visit our website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

I don’t know if this happens to you, but it certainly happens to me.

Life is going along – happy, wonderful, good things happening – then suddenly it can all change and you can’t figure out why.

A couple of years ago I remember it was all good fun, everything was just going magically, then in the space of 15 minutes it transformed. It stayed that way for two glum weeks.

While, of course, this felt horrible, there is a silver lining. And it’s that silver lining that I want to share with you today.

While trying to find my way out of all this nasty negative stuff, I had a moment of profanity. It allowed me to flip negativity in general on its head.

I’d just had a long day – sixteen hours to be more or less precise, several of which had been splattered with unpleasantness. I had just flicked the kettle on and was just considering comfort eating anything that looked like food while running through the worst of the day.

Now I don’t know about you, but I have this little voice in the back of my mind that sometimes whispers a gem of wisdom – it also whispers quite a bit of old tosh too – but I like to think I have a talent for filtering that out!

So, there I was, looking at the light of my life – the glow of the refrigerator at this moment – when the gem of wisdom came out of the blue.

“What if all this negative stuff isn’t negative?”

Strange?

I thought for a moment. Can negative really be positive?

That’s when the little voice said, “It’s not positive or negative. It just is.”

“Marvelous”, I thought, “A Zen Buddhist has hijacked my grey matter”. I shut the fridge door, poured my drink and pondered…

True enough when things happen, they are what they are. We know this because, you and I could be in the same room, experience the same thing, and interpret it in completely different ways. What makes one person sad or angry can make another laugh or smile.

But when you’re in this negative pool, how do you get out of it? How can you just see it for the positive?

I believe it begins just there (with your awareness open) – at the moment where you realise you don’t have to react (re-act) to the situation in a conditioned way; at the moment you know you don’t have to look at the situation as negative. If you’re not attached to your feeling you can let it go. If you don’t want to feel that way, you can release it.

When you lose the attachment to the feeling, it begins to lose power. When you start to look for the good in the experience, you start to increase your energy and resourcefulness in handling it. As a result answers come.

In coaching this happens time and again. A client recently told me they had lost a contract. They also had a legal issue on the go and it was draining the business finances.

When we reframed the experience, the legal matter no longer presented as a problem – in fact it resolved quickly. The lost contract presented an opportunity to look for new business. As a result the client found four new contracts that now pay him more than the one he lost.

In a family situation, when children (or partners) feel tired, they tend to take it out on the closest person to them. You could take this on as being negativity or you could see it for what it is – they feel under the weather. To heal the situation, they may need some help. If you feel resourceful and able, you can help them – return them to the love they feel disconnected from. The negativity will then evaporate sooner rather than later.

Easier said than done? Maybe.

But it’s far more rewarding than getting sucked in to the negative.

Why not give it a go?

Love and best wishes

Neil

—

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. To find out more, visit his website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk