Archive for the ‘Mindset’ Category

As an entrepreneur, you can create any lifestyle you want for yourself and your family. It all starts with your dream. You can create, choose or tailor your business to accommodate your vision for your life. You start by figuring out what you are good at and then use those passions to fulfill your life purpose to help others.

After you identify your skills, you then need to identify what you want to avoid doing. You need to know what you are NOT good at and should NOT be spending your time on. These are things you either don’t want in your business or elements that you can outsource. When I worked at Microsoft we tended to outsource anything that was not a core business function. If the need for the service may be short-lived, it was outsourced.

How does this translate to your dream lifestyle? You want to build a business that utilizes your passions while minimizing your weaknesses and gives you the lifestyle of your dreams.

So, what is your ideal lifestyle?

Identify your desired lifestyle.

You need to take some time to define the lifestyle you want for yourself. As an entrepreneur you can choose how many hours you want to work or how many days of the week. You can choose what income level you want. You can choose who you want to work with. You can work alone or you can have employees. It’s all up to you.

I have some friends that take one weekend a year alone without the kids to get away, reconnect and set their goals as a couple for the following year. It is at this time that they reevaluate where they are and where they want to go. Then every month they take one afternoon to check in and evaluate where they are. And every week, they share their goals for that week.

How’s it working?

Well, they are on their 3^rd million in income and they aren’t even 40 yet. They have 2 very successful businesses and they work from home. They have 3 young children and they have the time they want to spend with them.

Unlike my friends, I don’t have the opportunity to leave my kids with family for the weekend while I escape for some goal setting time. However, I was able to book a weekend at my brother-in-law’s cabin in the mountains where my kids could run around in the fields while my husband and I reconnected on our vision and life’s purpose, both alone and together.

The point is to make the time to connect with your life vision and make corrections to your course to keep you on the right track.

17 Ways to Determine What You Should NOT be Doing as an Entrepreneur!

Exercise: Identify what you don’t want.

Part of living your passion and fulfilling your life’s purpose is to know what you do NOT like doing and are NOT good at. You want to identify your weaknesses, things you avoid and things you dislike so as to prevent you from draining your energy.

Let me give you an example. I discovered that I really did love the process of marketing. Now how do I turn that into a business that fulfills my life purpose? Well, I knew I didn’t want to ship products anymore, at least not durable goods. I didn’t want a lot of logistics. I didn’t want shipping damage, manufacturing delays and extensive customer service. I just wanted to focus on marketing and idea creation. Knowing what I didn’t want to do helped me to focus in on a business model that fit me best.

Now’s the time to make a list of everything you don’t like to do and are not good at. This next exercise is going to be the opposite of the last one you did. Again, don’t analyze, just dump out your thoughts and keep moving.

The answers to these questions will give you a clear idea of what areas of your business you will want to outsource or automate so as to minimize your involvement with them. Remember, our goal is to keep you focused on your passion. In order to do this you need to know what activities zap your energy.

• Think about the activities that you are NOT good at. Write them down.

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• What skills do you NOT have?

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• What are your weaknesses?

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• What tasks do you avoid?

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• What characteristics would your friends, family and colleagues use to describe your faults or weaknesses?

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• What do you hate to do? What makes you sad or frustrated? What causes you stress?

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• What do NOT like to do for play or leisure? What about that do you NOT enjoy?

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• What do you NOT like to read about?

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• What have you secretly hoped would never happen?

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• If you could avoid one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

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• What would you never do, even if you got paid millions of dollars for it?

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• When you have spare time, what do you avoid?

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• What do you not like to talk about?

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• What do you hate doing for others?

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• At the end of your life, what would be the one thing you never want to have done?

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• Who do you NOT want to help, enable, or reach?

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• What five life experiences have given you the least sense of fulfillment or growth?

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Now that you know what you are good at and what you want to avoid, how can you use those passions to fulfill your life purpose as an entrepreneur? What is the business that utilizes your passions while minimizing your weaknesses? Are you able to outsource these items to someone else, like a virtual assistant?

How to Find your Entrepreneurial Passion

You went into business for yourself so you could do what you love and live in your passion. Have you found the demands of running a business take you away from that? Are you spending all your time searching for customers?

I know, because I followed mine, or did I?

While my business career was in marketing, my passion and escape from the world was interior design. I was obsessed. I had every magazine and book I could get a hold of. You know how they say go back to your childhood and think about what you dreamed about?

Well, when I was a kid I would rearrange my room incessantly. I was the only kids I knew with wallpaper on the ceiling (thanks mom for supporting my creative side).  It was lime-green and blue patchwork. We made a quilt for my bed to match.

In high school, I studied architectural drawing with the hopes of becoming an architect. I loved designing the floor plans of buildings, and picking out the finishes. What I didn’t like was calculating the size and number of beams required to hold up the roof.

The next thing I know I was in college studying optical engineering. In my junior and senior year, when things got tough I used to dream about dropping out and being a fashion designer.

When I bought my first house, I could not stop remodeling, decorating and landscaping. I was an addict. I enrolled in Interior Design classes and eventually, decided to follow my obsession.

I decided to merge my passion for interior design with my experience in Internet marketing. Sounds like a match made in heaven, right? Wrong!

You see, other than the occasional trip to shop for inventory, I rarely got to do any “design”. All my time was spent running the business and getting customers.

So what was my passion?

When I closed my home furnishings business I once again reevaluated my true passion. I knew I didn’t love all aspects of running the business. I loved designing the interiors, the creativity of solving the customer’s problem in a visual way.

I asked my self how interior design related to marketing. Why was I so convinced that interior design was my life purpose?

I discovered that interior design followed the same mechanics of marketing. With both you have a customer and you need to assess their needs. Then you need to find a way to meet their needs, solve their problems and transform their lives. The difference is that interior design is done in a three-dimensional visual way.

The discovery of this correlation gave me the permission I needed to delve back into marketing with no regrets. It shares similar tasks to interior design. You have a customer who has a need. You have constraints. You need to solve a problem. (Actually, its very similar to engineering as well). I’ve started to do it in a visual way as I can now map out visually for each customer what is and what is not working for them and where the holes are.

What I’m suggesting is that have you looked at your passion from the perspective of the tasks involved? How does it relate to other things you are very good at?

I know marketing is my passion because I can sit for hours all day, everyday without leaving my desk, and still feel energized when I get up. Can you say that?

If not, then what is your passion? Do you know? Do you know how to find out?

Over the weekend I was reading an article on MSNBC about a Muslim TV Executive who was charged for murder for beheading his wife. He pleaded guilty by reason of insanity due to spousal abuse.

The reason I felt compelled to even mentioned it here is that the article states that,

Hassan, 45, is charged with one count of second-degree murder in the Feb. 12 death of 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan at the offices of Bridges TV, the station the Pakistan-born couple established in 2004 to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims.

Does anyone else see the irony?

Hassan establishes a TV station in NY to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims and then proceeds to chop off the head of his wife. Hello? What are you thinking Hassan? If you weren’t going to jail for the rest of your life I’d say you need a new PR strategy!

You can read more about the situation at MSNBC.