Do You Have Entrepreneurial Grit?

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Dodging a bull as a metaphor for the entrepreneurial mindsetWhat would you do if you needed several new clients right now? That’s the dilemma a business owner I know faced last week. Two of her best long-term clients unexpectedly needed to cut back, and she was suddenly facing a cash-flow crisis. Luckily, she’s resourceful … and her solution is something you can replicate.

It can be tough being an entrepreneur/small business owner/solopreneur. But what sets us apart is our entrepreneurial grit. That’s why the solopreneur mentioned above set a goal of calling everyone she has exchanged business cards with in the last 3 months. She’s not begging them for business, but she is listening when the person she calls tells her what they do, making connections when she can, and explaining what she does. And, very importantly, asking if they know someone she should contact who could use her services.

Picking up the phone and asking for business does not come easily to her. And she sometimes forgets that crucial last step: asking for business or a referral. But I’m betting she finds the new clients she needs. Last night, I stumbled on a Forbes article that reinforces the point:

…salespeople who make more calls will almost always outperform salespeople who make fewer calls. That’s no surprise, but here’s the key point: This doesn’t happen just because the act of making more calls mathematically raises the chances of success. There’s much more to it. By facing up to the task of making a call, frequent callers put themselves on a faster learning curve. They discover more rapidly what works and what doesn’t. They’re quicker to learn techniques that overcome rejection. Thus, their success yield will improve–i.e., double the calls, triple the sales.  [Smarts in Business Is Not About IQ]

The concluding sentence of the article says it all:

In the real world it’s grit that makes us smart.

Let’s end with an entrepreneurial call to action:

Create a plan for the next time you need new clients right now. 

Filed Under: business management, entrepreneurial mindset, Getting Stuff Done

Small Business Hiring Tips: Employee, Contractor, or VA?

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How do I know when I'm ready to hire for my business? Small business hiring tips. Image of post-its .When you start to think about hiring help for your small business, you may ask ‘What is the difference between an employee, independent contractor and a virtual assistant (VA)?’. There are websites that give you a legal and IRS definition, but I want to give you a different perspective: What would help you the most?

First, let’s define the terms.

An employee takes direction from you. You tell them what hours to work , and may even train them. You pay them either hourly or a salary, and are also responsible for payroll taxes and worker’s compensation insurance. If you require them to work from your office, they are most likely an employee.

An independent contractor does work you request, but set their own hours, and use their own tools. You can give them a deadline and work specs, but they decide how to get the work done. They set their own rates and bill you.

A Virtual Assistant (VA) is an independent contractor who does their work for you remotely. I differentiate VA’s because I think of independent contractors as often being hired per project, whereas a VA is usually hired to work on an ongoing basis, typically  in increments of 5 hours a month.

Many solopreneurs start by hiring independent contractors on a project basis, like an accountant or graphic designer. As the business owner’s workload grows, they often hire a VA to take care of repetitive tasks.

Hiring a VA can be more cost-effective than hiring an employee. I remember considering hiring a part-time employee for office help, then finding out that, even though I only wanted someone 2-4 hours/week, the worker’s comp insurance had a hefty minimum and it was non-refundable; even if my one employee quit, I had to pay a year’s premium. It would have been fine if I needed someone for 20 hours a week or more, and knew I would replace that person if they left, but I was ‘testing the waters’, so a VA was a much better choice for me.

The downside is that I had to let go of some tasks I would like done by someone else. I would love for someone else to enter and update my contacts. Easy to direct an onsite employee to do this, but not worth the time it would take for me to scan cards or put them in an envelope and mail them to a VA, with directions. At that point, it is the same effort as me just doing it myself. Luckily social media & automation tools (see my post Keep Your Contacts Up-to-Date Without Ever Entering a Business Card Again) make keeping track of contacts much easier now. And sharing information and files already on your computer is a breeze.

What frustrations have you faced in outsourcing work? I’m working on an e-book to help solopreneurs hire smart, and would love your comments.

Filed Under: business management, Delegation, Getting Stuff Done, time management, working with a virtual assistant Tagged With:

Think and Grow Rich Book Review

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Think and Grow Rich Book Review - book coverThink and Grow Rich is one of those books you read because everyone says you should. It has been enormously influential. Originally published in 1937, it has never been out of print. In 2007, BusinessWeek Magazine’s Best-Seller List ranked it the sixth best-selling paperback business book 70 years after it was published.

What I find most interesting about the book are the chapters dealing with affirmations (his term is autosuggestion), the importance of planning & persistence, and the 28 question personal inventory in Chapter 7. I also appreciated that women were not ignored, which I was not expecting in a book written in 1937.

The 13 “steps” listed in the book are: 1. Desire 2. Faith 3. Autosuggestion 4. Specialized Knowledge 5. Imagination 6. Organized Planning 7. Decision 8. Persistence 9. Power of the Master Mind 10. The Mystery of Sex Transmutation 11. The Subconscious Mind 12. The Brain 13. The Sixth Sense.

Notice that step 9 is the Power of the Master Mind. Napoleon Hill is often credited with popularizing the concept of being part of a master mind group to foster success.

Do I recommend reading this book? Not necessarily. If you are motivated by personal success books, then you will probably enjoy it. If you have heard people you admire rave about the difference it made in their lives, it is worth at least a quick scan. If you need a boost in confidence, the affirmations could be useful.

Unlike many recent popular business books, it is not a quick read, so if you are not up for reading the entire book, I think the most useful chapters are 1-4; 6-9, and 15.

If you have read the book, I would love to read your comments! Would you recommend this book to others? Has it been useful to you? Do you agree or disagree with my review?

Want to win this book? Enter the free raffle!

Filed Under: Getting Stuff Done Tagged With: , ,

The 4-Hour Workweek Book Review

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Book cover for The 4-Hour Workweek book reviewWho isn’t enticed with the promise of the 4-hour workweek?  The book has sold more than 1,350,000 copies worldwide [Wikipedia], and has remained on the Amazon Best Seller’s list from the year it was first published. Just for the marketing savvy of the title alone, this book deserves a read.*

And the book does have good points entrepreneurs can implement about outsourcing and automating, making it worth a read. The problem comes from Ferriss’s definition of ‘work’. It’s obvious from any article written about him that he works almost non-stop. As this The New York Times article noted,  Ferriss spends far more than 4 hours per week in blogging, speaking and self-promotion, which Ferriss describes as “evangelizing.”

‘Work’, to Ferriss, is doing something you don’t like to do, solely for the purpose of making money. While it is perfectly reasonable that you would want to minimize the time you spend on disagreeable tasks (and certainly something I train my clients to do), the entrepreneurs I work with like their business, in much the same way Ferriss must like the blogging, speaking and self-promotion he refuses to call ‘work’.

And those regular “mini retirements,” ideally a month off for every two months of work, that Ferriss touts in The 4-Hour Workweek are alluring. But evidently more of a goal than a reality; a 2013 Inc. article reports that Ferriss hadn’t had ‘a proper mini retirement in more than a year now.’ [Inc. April 2013]

What you can take away from The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich is the basic idea of creating some form of passive income to serve as a base for the things you enjoy doing in your business and life, and outsourcing the things you don’t like to do.

On a personal note: His policy on outsourcing felt a bit ‘icky’ to me. Not because there is anything wrong with outsourcing to someone in another country, but because his motivation seemed to be to take advantage of their financial insecurity and pay them a pittance. Reminded me of a WalMart mentality – and that’s not how I want to run my business.  I have outsourced work occasionally (through ODesk, now called Upwork) to other countries, but I paid what I felt was a competitive rate. The majority of my outsourced work now is to a Virtual Assistant in the United States.

Bottom line: Read The 4-Hour Workweek, use it as an inspiration for what you can outsource, and consider what you can do to create passive income as an income base.

* Ferriss used Facebook polls to test title ideas

Filed Under: business management, Delegation, Getting Stuff Done, personal organization, System Development, time management, working with a virtual assistant Tagged With: ,
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