The PETA people aren’t going to like this.

The Times reports today that the growing armies of the unemployed are sick and tired of sending out resumes and are starting their own businesses in droves. One laid-off biologist is making–and taking orders for, thank you very much– $25,000 jelly fish tanks. An entrepreneurship professor at the University of San Francisco coined this phenomenon “forced entrepreneurship.” It’s what you do when you can’t find a job and you have to pay the bills.

What I like about the forced entrepreneurs is that they tend to do things on the cheap, which is exactly the right way to get going. When I launched a new service to my catering business, I didn’t buy any equipment or product before I’d made my first sale. The equipment paid for itself after two jobs. Starting up with less definitely helps focus the mind.

Many forced entrepreneurs would be happier if they could only get another job in their field after a layoff. But most of them use poor methods for finding a job so they conclude they have no choice but to start a business. The typical mistakes of job hunters include not having prioritized, multiple targets for their job search; spending the majority of their time answering Internet job listings, which account for perhaps 15% of available jobs; not targeting enough positions (not jobs, but positions that are currently filled but which they’d be eligible for); and falsely believing that their job-search objective is to get a job, rather than to get dozens of meetings. For people who really would like a job rather than forced entrepreneurship, I recommend you visit The Five O’Clock Club. It has the best process for job search I have ever come across. Not that you shouldn’t do your entrepreneurial thing if that’s really your passion. Just be careful–those jellyfish stings are wicked.

Tags: entrepreneurship, Five O'Clock Club, job search

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I was just updating my LinkedIn page and there was a quick poll that asked, “What is your ideal workday attire?” I answered and it brought me to the results page. Of 820 LinkedIn members who have answered the poll, 74% said jeans and a t-shirt would be their ideal work clothes, followed by 17% for a suit and tie; 6% for a driving suit and helmet; and 1% for a hardhat and steel-toed boots.

The results were largely the same regardless of company size.  There was some variation by management level: 89% of business owners were jeans/t-shirt and only 61% of the C-Level and VPs were, while 28% percent of that group like their suits and ties, thanks very much. Eighty-four percent of women prefer jeans and 71% of men do. And when it comes to age, people age 25-54 answered jeans about 71%-76% of the time while people over 55 said jeans 65% of the time.

So what’s going on here?

Business certainly is more casual than years ago, but not jeans/t-shirt casual by and large. Is there a pent-up desire for more freedom, more entrepreneurship, more home-based business? Or is everyone just dreaming about changing their lives as they suit up in pin stripes? I think it could well be true that we’re seeing the early indicators of another wave of self-employment and business startups. With Detroit hanging by its fingernails and Wall Street in shambles, it’s no wonder.

Tags: entrepreneurship, LinkedIn

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A great inspiration came today, as it so often does, from one of my entrepreneur coaching clients: How do you make sure you reach an important goal–in this case doubling sales in the second half of the year vs. the first half?

If you are moving up in the world, getting higher-value clients all the time, but still driving a six-year-old Honda Civic, the answer may be the one he came up with: Reach the goal and give yourself a reward that fits the accomplishment and where it takes you and your business.

My client’s reward: the 4.0-liter, V-8, 414 horsepower BMW M3 Convertible above. This goal and the car are not an abstraction. I am completely convinced he as good as owns this car right now. He regularly calls his dealer salesperson to ask him, “How’s my new car doing?” even though he won’t be “picking it up” until January. I’ve already reserved a cruise on the first sunny day after he’s got it.

This is the same client who recently needed to reach a particular business objective and wrote a check for $1500 to a political candidate he detested; gave the check to his best friend and told him to mail it if he didn’t reach his goal within a specified time period. He reached the goal and the money went to buy a new wardrobe.

A great by-product of setting an ambitious sales goal is that is forces the entrepreneur to evaluate all aspects of the business. Driving top-line sales is obviously the most important objective. But speeding up accounts receivable, building an active and efficient referral network, engaging in new business development activities that will spur revenue growth, getting clients to use new automated systems and tools to manage projects–all go a long way to making it possible to reach a stretch sales goal.

Have any other creative ideas for entrepreneurial self-rewards? Send them my way.

Tags: Entrepreneur, incentives, motivation, rewards, success

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Sometimes entrepreneurs can be the victims of their own success. Here’s a situation that may sound familiar: your own a service-oriented business with one full-time employee—you. You have had hundreds of clients over the years. You use subcontractors to do certain jobs that you don’t have time for. You are really busy and business is very good. But you feel overwhelmed. There are a couple of problems you’ve identified.

1. The Tail Wagging the Dog: Your have a subcontractor to whom you give a great deal of work. But he’s mercurial. Sometimes he’s prompt and communicative, other times he vanishes. Sometimes he makes you feel like you work for him. Every time you take on a job he’s your go-to guy and it makes you queasy.
2. This Business Would Be Great if It Weren’t for the Customers: You have clients who love you and come back to you again and again. But they are constantly late meeting deadlines for feedback that will enable you to get to the next stage of the project. This costs you money and adds to your stress level.
3. Small Potatoes: To paraphrase one of my least favorite figures from American history, you go to war with the customers you have, not the customers you wish you had. You have lots of smallish customers who are price sensitive. You wish you had big customers who were less penny-pinching.

Despite the problems, business is good. You feel successful. Just not as successful as you’d like to be. And the level of success you have creates inertia: You don’t want to rock the boat for fear of capsizing. Well, to paraphrase that dreadful American once more, small business is messy. But it can be cleaned up! Corresponding to each problem above, do these things and your effectiveness in, and enjoyment of, your business will soar:

1. Show ‘Em Who’s Boss: If you use subs, you must have a locked-down, no-nonsense, no-exception, written and iron-clad contract they sign and live up to. Sounds complex but isn’t. Write down in plain English exactly what you want and expect from your subs, and give that document to a lawyer. She will turn it into a contract. Best $750 you ever spent. (If it costs more than that, get another lawyer.)
2. Be a Client-Whisperer. Clients will stop bucking you in the head if you train them! Give them a process for working with you and lay it out at the start of a project. Make sure they understand their responsibility and accountability to the project and its outcomes. Create deadlines that are real. Think about building in incentives for meeting deadlines, or disincentives for failing to meet them (a rebate or a penalty). They will respect your taking a disciplined approach.
3. Go Big-Game Hunting: It’s as difficult to service a small account as a big one, so you may as well have the big ones. If you don’t have them right now, is it because you feel unqualified to handle them, or just fearful? Do you honestly believe you can handle bigger clients and service them better than anyone else? If so, the only thing stopping you is, perhaps, not having a locked-down, bolted-in process for managing your business. Get that done and the rest will follow.

Tags: customer service, Entrepreneur, success

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The single most important success factor for entrepreneurs is choosing the right business. Many entrepreneurs make their choice based on what they have done successfully in the past or what they are naturally good at. Those are important considerations but there’s one thing that’s much more critical—and easy to overlook: the lifestyle you want. I know–how un-American! We’re supposed to pick a business by the scale of the opportunity, the size of the payoff, the hockey-stick curve of the spreadsheet, the number of toys!

Try putting lifestyle first as a filter for possibilities you will consider. Say you love the excitement of a retail environment, and you also love gourmet coffee. So, perhaps you want to open a café. Except….the hours are 6 am to 10 pm weekdays and 6 am to midnight weekends. Are you up for that lifestyle? You think you’ll hire a manager to work the non-lifestyle hours? Nah. You gotta make the donuts! You won’t manage yourself out of the underlying lifestyle, not for a few years, if all goes well.

Another example: you are a superstar salesman but got fed up with all the travel so you left your corporate job. You’re thinking of launching your own media rep firm. Wait a sec! Didn’t like travel then? It’s going to be worse now, because you’re paying. No more favorite airline. (Does anyone still have a favorite airline? Not to mention the only flying perk left is a free can of soda and a big helping of attitude from your flight attendant.) If you really were sick of business travel, no matter how many clients you might have on Day One of your new startup, you are getting into the wrong business.

How do you identify lifestyle considerations first? Honestly answer these questions for yourself and then use your responses as an absolute, totally fortified boundary for what you will or won’t do:

1. How many hours a week do I want to work?
2. What kind of people (customers, employees, co-workers) do I want/not want to have around me all day?
3. Do I want to travel for business and if so, how much?
4. What are five family events I missed because of a current or previous job that I will make a commitment not to miss again? And how will I choose a business that ensures this?
5. What kind of person am I?

On the last point, it’s a good idea to take an assessment test like DISC or Myers-Briggs. They are inexpensive and interesting. I’ve taken DISC many times and my independence score comes up aberrantly high every time—which means I have a big problem with authority, as most of my former employers will attest. It helps to know yourself and seek out business opportunities that fit well into your personality type. For example, if you’re super-independent, franchises may be a bad idea because you may have trouble following a system–and that’s what you are buying with a franchise.

Have I missed important questions to ask yourself to figure out the right business for you? Do tell!

Tags: Entrepreneur, lifestyle, success

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Has this happened to you? You have a client who has been doing business with you for years. One day she calls up and says she’s been told by another business partner that your prices are too high. She wants to meet soon to discuss the future of the relationship. What range of emotions do you feel when you get a call like that? How about: anger, betrayal, shock, anxiety? After a while you regain your composure and prepare for the meeting to come. You compile stacks of reports detailing all the work you’ve done for her over the years and the great results you’ve produced. You research industry average pricing to show her that your prices are in line with competition. You get ready to do battle and keep the business.

If this sounds like you, you are far from alone. When we feel attacked, we get defensive—that’s human nature. But if you want to be successful and happy as an entrepreneur, you can start thinking about situations like in a non-toxic way. Here are some alternative ways of thinking and dealing with Yipes-The-Customer-Might-Fire-Me issues.

Hey, It’s Good She Called! She could have just fired you and given her business to someone else. But instead she called and asked for a meeting. That means she acknowledges the investment you both have in the relationship and understands there is a cost to switching vendors.

Keep the Paper in the Briefcase: While it’s fine to have all the research and reports ready to go for the meeting, my advice is to keep your ammo off the table unless she asks specific questions that can be answered by your documentation. What she really wants is to talk and be listened to. Which leads to the next suggestion.

Ask Lots of Open-Ended Questions: Don’t ask, “Are you happy/unhappy with the service we’ve been providing?” A better question is, “Tell me how you feel about the service we’ve been providing. Where have we been the most on target with your needs? Where can we improve?”

Listen, and Listen Good: Really hear what your customer has to say. Rephrase and repeat back the most important points to make sure you heard it right.

Stop Caring So Much about the Outcome: You know what’s really unattractive? When you plead to keep someone’s business because they’re a really important customer. When you offer to do anything it takes. Reduce prices? No problem! Better payment terms? OK! Can I do your grocery shopping and wash your car, too? If you are less attached to the outcome of this one meeting and more secure in yourself, you are so much more attractive and more likely to have the result you want and deserve.

Focus on the Relationship: If you have been listening to your customer all along, if you have been true to your business values and those of your customer, if you focus on building the integrity of the relationship—you will keep the business. If you don’t keep it, something fundamental was out of alignment and you can learn from it.

Learn to Lose Gracefully and Come Back Another Day: When you go down swinging, learn how to be a graceful loser. Yeah, it’s okay to lose sometimes. In fact losing can be good for the soul. Just don’t tell my former employers I said that—not much tolerance in corporate America for people who tolerate losing! But you are an entrepreneur, so reality doesn’t bother you. We’ll keep this our little secret.

Tags: Entrepreneur, sales, success

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I had a dream last night. It was one of “those” dreams. The premise isn’t important (I don’t even remember it). I just remember walking down a crowded street in Manhattan in my BVDs. At first thinking it was normal and then, with increasing dread, realizing it was anything but (unless you are this guy). And then I had a second dream last night. My brother was there. We were in college. It was around finals time. I asked him if he knew when our history class was meeting, because I can’t remember ever going this term. I don’t even know where the classroom is, and I haven’t done any homework–and the final is tomorrow!

While many people have dreams like these, perhaps as nature’s way of helping us work out our insecurities, we also take our fears into the world and give them lots of fresh air and exercise. I know many entrepreneurs who are their own worst enemies. Some of the things we do:

We’re not worthy. A financial planner I know wants to acquire clients with at least $500,000 in assets to invest. When she asks for a referral, she hedges the amount by saying that if the prospect does not have $500,000 but has the potential to get there, that is also a good referral for her. But what she really wants are clients with $1 million to invest. So why doesn’t she ask for those referrals? Is it because she thinks she’s not worthy of those clients? Absolutely not! Quite the contrary, she knows she can bring enormous value to people with that level of assets. So why doesn’t she ask for referrals of people with $1 million…or $2 million…or $5 million in assets?

We wallow in it. When we screw up, we often beat ourselves up to an extent that would make a Singaporean policeman blush. How did I not catch that typo? Why didn’t I know that customer was going to give the business to my competitor? Why did I have to open my mouth in that meeting? Why didn’t I say something in that meeting? How did she get that promotion–I should have gotten it. Why did I get the promotion–I didn’t deserve it. Instead of forgetting about mistakes and defeats and moving on quickly, we are likely to re-play in our minds whatever the bad episode was. If only we could get royalties for all that mental syndication, we could retire, at least in our BVD dreams.

Don’t ask, don’t tell. We have great trepidation about asking customers to tell us the truth as they experience it. Many entrepreneurs are uncomfortable asking for business because they don’t want to risk being rejected. So they make their presentation, they finish, they ask if there are any questions, and then….they leave the building. DOH! I should have asked for the order! After a sale, they get nervous about following up to see how the customer liked their product or service, out of fear the client may have hated it.

What should entrepreneurs do about facing their fears and insecurities? It’s such an individual and idiosyncratic problem that there are no one-size-fits-all answers. But there are worthwhile books on the subject. Some of my favorites are: Taming Your Gremlin, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, and The Four Agreements. The first book asks you to recognize that you have some irrational thoughts that are part of your DNA–and there is no sense trying to eliminate them because you can’t. But you can put these “gremlins” in their place. The second book gives tips on working through fears because the reality of doing what you are afraid of is less painful than the paralysis that fear causes. The last book gives you core guiding principles that, if you really internalize them, make it possible for you to walk into fire in the business world with no fear at all.

I don’t think there is any way to completely overcome the human problem of being our own worst enemies, but if you are going to be successful in business, you have to make it a priority to beat back your insecurity gremlin whenever he gets out of the trunk, slithers into the back seat, then into the seat beside you, and then puts a slimy finger on the wheel. Oh geez, I feel another bad dream coming!

Tags: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, success, Taming Your Gremlin, The Four Agreements

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You can’t be a great entrepreneur without having a great salesperson’s DNA. What separates the great sales DNA from the so-so?

Great salespeople aren’t fearless–they just don’t show it. I was talking to Jeff, one of my coaching clients, about his presentation at a major prospect’s headquarters to a group of senior decision-makers. Rather than making it a reserved, run-of-the-mill affair, he decided to channel Tom Cruise into his performance: A cup of Top Gun, an ounce of Jerry Maguire, a clove of An Officer and a Gentleman, and two pounds of Oprah’s couch. He happens to love Cruise movies so he quoted lines and scenes liberally with the attitude, physicality and volume to go with it. It added up to a performance in which you either think this sales guy is totally nuts, or you buy in. And he doesn’t care which it is as long as you’re not on the fence.

When he told me about the meeting, I said, “Man, you are fearless!” He responded, “Are you kidding, I was scared to death–I just didn’t let them know it!” The result for Jeff: he will be talked about for weeks or months to come. He will be remembered out of a sea of faces selling similar products and services. The message: As an entrepreneur, you have to have the guts to take a risk and stand out.

Making a decision: I learn about theatre technique from my actress daughter Jane, and have picked up on some interesting parallels between theatre and sales/entrepreneurship. Sales and acting are both performance. When an actor decides to perform a scene a certain way, she talks about her character “making a decision” and then must be committed to how the scene plays out. You can’t change your mind about your character’s motivations as the curtain goes up. The same is true in a sales performance. If you waffle from your decision, your audience knows. They no longer want to play along, and your show closes out of town. That’s show biz!

So if you are an entrepreneur looking to sell something big — you have to play it big, and loud, and with intention. You can collapse in a heap when the elevator door closes behind you but when you are in front of your customers, all you can let them see is the magic of your show.

Tags: sales training, success, Tom Cruise

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Recently, I wrote about the importance of having reserves–that virtual storehouse of tangible and intangible items that no entrepreneur can do without. When you have abundant reserves, you can make decisions more thoughtfully and strategically, as opposed to desperately and irrationally. Tangible reserves are things like money, clothes that fit you, a home you like to be in; intangible reserves include support, love from family, and boundaries of personal integrity. In the last post, I promised to add to the Reserves list, so here are some more items you need to stockpile as you build your entrepreneurial empire.

1. Reserves of Self-Care & Energy: This is very tangible and you can tell instantly if you have enough reserves in this area. Here are some signs that your reserves are lacking: You feel wiped out at the end of a work day with no energy left for fun; you feel like someone has their boot on your chest (or on/in some other place on your person); you crave sugar, fat, caffeine and carbs; you have aches and pains galore; people say, “You look like you been rode hard and put away wet.”

On the other hand, if people are saying to you: “Darling, you look mah-velous“; if you can’t remember the last time you were sick; if your last vacation was less than six months ago; if you get a massage, manicure, pedicure (you too, guys–you have not lived until you have had a pedicure) on a regular basis; if you tolerate nothing negative in your life (that goes for people, your surroundings, everything); then you have lots of reserves of self-care and energy.

This makes complete sense, does it not?

One of my role models of abundant reserves is my daughter, Jane, who is an actress. She doesn’t have reserves of everything yet (like money, for example) but she has most of the intangibles down. She needs to or she can’t do her job. Imagine Jane having a ton of internal conflict, physical pain and anxiety coursing through her body as the curtain goes up on a stage play she is starring in. The audience will see it in a millisecond. The same is true for you in your business and your entrepreneurial life. If you are not where you want to be in your building reserves in this area, sit down and write 10 things you can do–will do–before the week is out to fix the problem.

2. Reserves of Time. Is time tangible or intangible? Don’t know! Don’t care! But you need plenty of reserves of time, and space. How do you know if you’re deficient in this area? Are you the guy 10 feet behind me doing 70 MPH? Are you always late for appointments? Do you have a closet full of clothes you haven’t worn in five years? Do you allow yourself to be interrupted all day rather than staying on task with your agenda? All of these are symptoms that you don’t have the time and space you need to be an effective entrepreneur. How can you be creative, reflective and relaxed when you are scrambling? You can’t!

What can you do to fix the Time/Space Reserve problem? A lot. How about coming up with a daily routine you love to do, and doing it every day. In fact, come up with 10 Delicious Daily Habits that you do, every day! Start with what you eat for breakfast. I eat the same breakfast every morning (banana, organic peanut butter, honey and Grape Nuts in a whole wheat wrap–messy and yummy). It gives me real pleasure and I take my time with it…even though it grosses out my wife. That’s one of my daily rituals that helps me slow down and gives me a sense of abundant time/space reserves. If your breakfast is a Bavarian Cream donut, think of a healthier delicious daily habit to get you started.

Tags: coaching, Reserves, success

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