OK, so it’s not that easy.  But it’s not that hard either.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

OK, maybe not.   Run your own business and destroy your life savings.

How do you decide?

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

The Career You’ll Love

Sponsored by Carl Dierschow’s career blog at www.Dierschow.com Welcome to my career tips newsletter! I encourage you to pass this to anyone who might have an interest in revitalizing their career – instructions for subscribing are at the bottom.

Spending money to make money

Now that I’ve moved out of the corporate world and am running my own business, I’ve experienced a huge mindset shift.  Quite simply, I now look at my life decisions – not just business – in a Return On Investment (ROI) frame.

Growing up, my schooling and activities were paid for by my parents.  When I got to college, they helped me out with the first year and a half, and I paid for the rest.

But I wasn’t thinking of this as an investment of my money that would give me great returns – I wasn’t that sophisticated.  To be honest, I went through college because it was expected, because I was good at it, and I looked forward to the kind of work that would give me after I graduated.

When I moved into the corporate world, any work-related expenses were generally paid by my employer.  If my boss said we could afford it, great, and if not, I’d get annoyed but would comply with the constraints.

This is a dangerous mindset.  You’re giving up responsibility for key decisions to other people.

When it came to personal expenses, I adopted a frugal savings philosophy taught to me by my parents, and combined with a great-paying job, we’ve done very well.  I was never challenged very deeply.

Then I lost my job.

It was hard to know how to make decisions in this environment.  With no income, everything was more than I could afford.  So I had to switch to a different way of thinking about it:  What would give me the greatest return on what I spent?

Here’s an example:  I recently signed up to have a booth at a local business expo.  $400.  I need to have a big sign that will make a professional impression, $325.  Other bits of necessary marketing paraphernalia, another $100 or so.  All things considered, this is actually quite cheap – it would have been trivial for me to spend $3000 on this.

But here’s the return:

• I’m making a significant impression with my target clientele that I’ve had some trouble reaching.
• It looks professional and substantial, reinforcing the value I provide to clients.
• If I sign just one new client out of this, I’ll pay for this entire investment in just the first month.

Of course, I have to make sure I’m not kidding myself about getting a client.  But I’ve done my homework and I’d say the probability is well over 50%.

In the past, what would have held me back from this?

• This is something new I’ve never done before.
• There’s a risk associated with getting the return, it’s not a sure thing.
• I’d be looking for other authorities to make the decision to spend money.

Here’s the challenge I’ll give to you, then:  When you’re working on your next job change or career transition, what’s it worth to YOU?  Not to your current employer. Not to your future employer.  To you.

If you’re going to get value – in having a better life, achieving your goals, increasing your possibilities – then go ahead and spend the money and time.  Don’t look for permission or help from your boss.  OK, go ahead and ask for some assistance, that might help.  But don’t let that hold you up.

  Carl Dierschow is a Certified Small Fish Business Coach and author of the career management guide, Mondays Stink! 23 Secrets to Rediscover Delight and Fulfillment in Your Work. He is a career coach for those going through interesting transitions, and works with small business owners who need to create breakthroughs in achieving their business goals. Find out more at www.Dierschow.com and www.SmallFish.us.

If you are interested in individual career coaching, group coaching, or other resources which might help you with difficult choices, please contact Carl at carl@dierschow.com.

Connect with Carl on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to get timely updates and connections to a broader range of professionals. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this newsletter, send an e-mail to newsletter@Dierschow.com

© 2011 Possibilities Partnership LLC ]]> http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/spending-money-to-make-money/feed 0 http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/starting-your-own-company http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/starting-your-own-company#comments Mon, 11 Oct 2010 01:34:30 +0000 Carl http://dierschow.com/wordpress/?p=928 You might have been dreaming about starting your own company. Since I now have some experience with this, and worked with others who have launched out in this direction, I thought it might be good to let you know what I’ve learned.

The logistics of starting a company are fairly straightforward, and there’s lots of help you can get. Do your homework, hook up with seasoned advisors, and you’re set.

Read the rest on my Workbloom blog»

I have just signed up with a coaching services firm, Small Fish Business Coaching, based in Australia. This is a huge leap forward for me and my business, because I’m moving away from working totally on my own, to being in partnership with a rapidly growing group that is intent on improving the plight of small business owners, one at a time.

It also means that I’ve tightened my focus from being all businesses – really much too broad – to be on small businesses. That would typically be smaller than 50 employees or $20M in revenue.

I completed my training, I’m getting my business cards printed later today, I’m now listed on the Small Fish websites in both Australia and the US, I took care of state registration and other logistics, and I’m cranking away on spreading the word.

There’s a lot to do, but I can already see progress. This is a new, exciting phase to my career!

There’s a couple of requests I’d like to make to you:

If you’re a small business owner in Northern Colorado, or know small business owners who really want to improve the state of their business, please let me know. I have a powerful process which can help a business owner improve profits, customer satisfaction, employee motivation, and personal balance.

If you’re a business coach, and you’re looking to team up with people who have a powerful process and great marketing, then you might want to check out Small Fish. They’re looking for great coaches in the US, especially. I’d be happy to provide you an introduction and answer any questions you might have about how I selected them.

And if you want to get a copy of the Small Fish e-mail newsletter, just let me know.

It’s scary, but it’s so wonderful to be doing what feels to be such useful activity.

It’s interesting how this switch happened inside my head.  Before Christmas, I had all kinds of great excuses for not making the leap:

• “I’m still investing in my professional development.”
• “My plans aren’t clear yet.”
• “People are going to be off on vacation.”

All true, of course, but I knew that the fundamental issue was that they were stalling techniques to give myself an “out” for not moving to action.

What changed since New Year’s is that I decided to announce to my supporters and coaches (so wonderful to be able to call upon several!) that I wanted to work on switching from planning into action.  After each conversation, I came away with some concrete actions to take - that I was motivated to work on.  That last part is key, because it’s what helps me to get over my fears and inertia.

This is part of the magic of coaching – that the client creates and owns the action items, it’s not about the coach giving the client things to do.  Therefore, the client is motivated to follow through, and the coach can help close the loop of accountability and celebration.

I might also mention that I had my first evaluation as a coach this week – an expert listened in while I coached a colleague for half an hour, then gave a verbal and written evaluation of what I had done.

Boy, that was scary.

But in the end, my fears were much larger than the reality.  I got some wonderful and supportive feedback, and had the chance to really jump in and coach at my absolute best.  I’m much less scared about the second evaluation in a couple of weeks.

Are you scared to jump in and actually do what you know you need to do?  Have courage, my friend!

Read more on my Partnering in Possibilities blog »

Here’s the idea:  People will formulate ideas about who you are and why you might be valuable to know (or employ).  What happens if you drive that intentionally, rather than just have it happen at random?

I’ve been focusing on this idea myself for about five years now.  Actually, now that I think about it, there’s been three distinct contexts that I was working on:

• As a highly experienced strategic planner in the corporate environment;
• As a leader of coaching inside and outside my previous employer; and
• As a spiritual leader at my church.

No, I didn’t develop a fancy logo or great marketing brochure, I didn’t take out ads on TV.  Instead, I became extremely clear on who I wanted to be in each of these contexts, and developed strategies for building up an image consistent with the perception I wanted to give.  For example, I volunteered for a number of roles in leading coaching in the community and within my employer, and made sure that people knew my name in connection with that.

This blog, actually, is an outgrowth of that brand-building exercise, but reaching out to a much broader audience.

This “brand” had huge value for me in that company, and gives me great value for building my new business.  I have a whole bunch of people who know me and their image tends to be positive.  A lot of people are very generous with their help.

Do you have continuing strategies that you use for building your “brand image” to certain people, driven by a particular goal?

Fortunately, this isn’t a totally new experience for me, so I have some aids to help me navigate through this swamp.

The most important thing I do, first, is to admit that I have a big gap in my knowledge and abilities.  Trying to fake it isn’t going to work.  So next is to line up resources that I have available to me:

• Books, websites, and other static resources
• Other coaches I know who appear to have worked past this stage
• Communities that I can connect to where I can learn from other experts

I started organizing my work by going to a class at the local Small Business Development Center and writing down my thoughts in my business plan.  Even though it’s sketchy, it’s helping me to get a feel for how large this area is.

More on a whim than anything else, I’ve started reading a book on B2B marketing.  I love reading, but oddly enough, I seem to learn more from discussions with people.  So I’ve started making a number of contacts with others who can share their expertise with me.  I also went to a couple of networking meetings last week, one of which was for small business owners in the area.

But finally, in the end, I have to put some trust in myself to just get started.  Learning and planning are great, but I need to move into DOING marketing and sales.  That’s what I’ll be focusing on this week.

Why is it so difficult?

I think it’s because I know I’ll have to live with this name for a long time.  In a way, I’m getting “married” to the name and don’t want to make the wrong choice.  And there’s a number of relatively vague criteria for this, a mixture of logical and emotional, thinking and feeling, even with legal ramifications thrown in.  That’s not unlike many big choices that we’re faced with, on the job or In Real Life.

In the end, the way I moved to a decision was:

• I set a deadline for myself.  An arbitrary choice, really, but I decided that yesterday was the day to finally get it done.
• I gathered all my data together, in my head and on paper.  That way I could feel like I had all the requirements and possibilities in hand.
• I created some space.  My wife and I had a wonderful trip to the mountains yesterday and we had a nice relaxed chat about this.  I had no other meetings scheduled, no other distractions.
• I balanced my head and my heart.  After all, this needs to be a name that meets all the logical requirements, but also one that I can feel good growing into.  That’s very much an emotional choice.

My final decision?  Possibilities Partnership LLC.  No, it’s not stunningly clever, but I didn’t want that.  This name is built on the fundamental philosophy of working in partnership with my customers to build their best future based on the possibilities which exist.  I’ll be moving my coaching style away from focusing on fixing problems, toward creating and designing.  It helped that I had captured some of these ideas in my business planning, but the name also helps me to make them more concrete.

And yes, being a technoid, I immediately went out and grabbed the www.PossibilitiesPartnership.com website URL.  That in fact was a primary criteria for the name – so many other two-word combinations are already taken by legitimate companies and less savory URL parkers.

How do you get yourself through tough decisions?