Microbusiness Mentor

My fellow microbusiness entrepreneur Dawn Rivers Baker has been a long time advocate in the area of microbusiness enterprises here in the United States.

Recently we had an opportunity to talk about an aspect of microbusiness entrepreneurship that many of us rely on but can probably reflect more often on: the mental game of business.

This is a Blog Talk radio interview where I spoke about carving your own road and swimming down your own path as a microbusiness entrepreneur, even if most others seem to be swimming in the opposite direction. It is about being truly “free” and designing your business in a way that supports both your personal growth and your life.

“…Jane has gone through all sorts of business and personal challenges and nothing can change the fact that she is one of the most brilliant, creative, and mindful people I know…”

I’m in the process of entering a new market and am writing a book in the niche relating to leadership development and having it commercially published, rather than self-published as part of my initial marketing strategy. This is an extremely resource/time intensive approach. But at least I get help on the marketing of the marketing approach – the publisher will play a part in promoting the book.

I have self-published books and ebooks as part of my offerings and marketing. This gives me greater control over time and format, but again, find this to be extremely time and resource demanding, especially when I am solely responsible for marketing the marketing approach itself – I have to market the ebooks/books!

Of course, I also have blogs. For small business entrepreneurship, I write in blogs like this one. I also keep blogs in other topical areas like healthcare and mental health. I also participate in many social network discussion groups, and many of my responses are the length of small articles.

So you can see how quickly all these writing activities suck up my time!

How do you efficiently build up a content-driven web presence when you feel like you have no time left?

1) You can re-purpose your content. This article you are reading started out as a discussion on another website.

This is a great way to save time and build your credibility online – but it can only work IF and ONLY IF the content is aligned with your audience expectations on your site. For example, if I talked about this on my mental health website, I would confuse my readers.

If you find that you cannot re-purpose a lot of what you share online for your blog that is meant to also build your online presence, then you need to ask yourself why you are spending so much time on diverging activities. Is it time to evaluate how you spend your time?

2) if you find that you have gained good visibility doing what you have done, to the point where you are turning away more business than you can handle – then keep doing what you are doing because it works!

There is no reason to “blog just because everyone and their grandma are blogging”. I used to blog prolifically, and I am talking about a dozen blogs. I even ran my own blog network. But it was time consuming, and I did not have a sound strategy of how I was going to generate returns on the time i was investing in writing. Now I barely / rarely blog – and when I do finally add a post – it is in my currently active areas of interest, like this one.

3) That said, my blogs collectively earn enough to pay the bills on a monthly basis, so I haven’t axed ALL of my blogs yet.

Again, if something is working for you and you don’t have to keep working at it to get it working for you – then you do not necessarily have to get rid of it unless you feel it is distracting your personal brand.

Of course, you can also keep a blog for personal reasons. I started my mental health website in 1998 when I was suffering from clinical depression. I no longer suffer from clinical depression but I keep this website because it is dear to me, and its presence continues to help a lot of people.

There are many ways to become efficient at writing as a strategy for branding yourself, but that is only the first step. Once you wrote it, you then have to still market your brand strategically.

What this means is that you need to be very careful about using written material as your marketing – and whether these end up requiring you to market your marketing if the marketing material happens to also be one of your products.

David Troy tells us how entrepreneurship really works, and I am especially pleased at how he strips down the phenomenal successes of mega celebrity entrepreneurs (Gates, Branson, Buffet) into the reality and the hype!

This also explains a few paradoxes that I have observed in my own entrepreneurship path, for example:

I take risks – yet I see myself as risk-averse.

OK, quitting a $100,000+ job without a solid Plan B is taking a risk. This was what I did in 2004, when I could not sit back and watch the industry I worked in (pharmaceuticals) conduct itself in questionable business practices.

Not having a completely written out business plan is a big risk. Not having customers already lined up (well… I wasn’t sure WHEN I would be quitting, or even IF I would be quitting, to be fair) – that is a big risk.

Yet I had taken a calculated risk, by saving up enough money where if I made absolutely nothing for 365 days, our financial position would not be dramatically affected. We’d be delayed a bit – we were saving up to buy a house and this was during the astronomically priced housing bubble years – but our lifestyle would not be affected much.

I dislike the uncertainty of not knowing what the future holds – yet I love the freedom to design my own future.

I can’t say that I have gotten used to the revenue flux, especially when I drive a lot of the changes in this flux, by restructuring my business model and testing entry to markets, etc.

Not to mention my stubbornness to expect to generate a 6-figure revenue by working no more than 10-20 hours a week so I do not miss out on my son’s newborn – now toddler – years. I made a 6-figure business by working 40+ hours a week – but can I do it in half – less than half – that amount of work time?

Yes, I face uncertainty as an entrepreneur, but I am also responsible for deliberately creating “controlled adversity” for myself.

Maybe it’s because I keep thinking that I can be like a microorganism (I was a microbiology undergraduate major in college) – if I push my limits and plunk myself into a hostile environment – I might just pick up a few plasmids (skills, adaptations) that allow me to grow where and when others cannot.

I learn from the best – yet I am the person who makes it happen with my personal best.

I have worked with many business coaches and have enough “data points” to know this:

If you want to make incredible things happen – you’d better learn from the best – people who have skills or insights that you need to make incredible things happen with your talents…. But this is not enough!

I know so many people who boast about investing a ton of money in their own education and professional development, like that says something about their results. It does say something about their commitment to learning and improving themselves – and this is all.

(Then I begin to wonder if they are using learning as a procrastination device against actually doing.)

Your results is what speaks for your ability to make incredible things happen using the tools, skills, insights you’ve gained.

I have had 4 different coaches using diverse coaching approaches who have worked with me and told me that the results I have demonstrated ranked in the upper 1-5% of their clients’ results.

I thought maybe I was “just lucky” after the 1st or 2nd time. But now I think it’s less mystical than that – I simply DO things with what I had learned.

If these coaches’ clients all DO things at the level that I had done, they may very well experience just as much – maybe even more – results and success as I had experienced.

What entrepreneurship “paradoxes” have you seen along your journey?

This is the post-seminar slide deck of Dr. Jane Chin’s live session on Personal Branding in Redondo Beach, California (USA) as part of Leaders Cafe Foundation’s (LCF) 9/9/2009 World Interconnectedness Day event.

The actual live session was facilitated free of slides to maximize participant engagement.

This session was also live-streamed on the web to UK, Australia, United Kingdom, and USA as part of LCF’s USA launch event at the Neighborhood Grinds cafe.

Jane’s note to entrepreneurs & microbusiness owners: Unfortunately I did not have enough time to delve deeply into the various elemental pairs of my personal branding “model”. For the talent/generosity pair, for example, if I had more time, I’d want to be very clear that I am not advocating the practice of “free consulting”, for that would be a gross injustice to one’s talent as a function of reciprocal value.

If you have truly identified your talent, that is the first step. The second step is to then identify which channels you would choose to exercise your talent for reciprocal value for the purpose of surviving in the social mechanism (i.e. make money, pay mortgage, save for retirement) such that you continue to remain a self reliant human being and not become a burden to others. The third step is to then choose the outlets whereby you practice acts of ‘generosity’ – without regard for immediate self gain – but rather for a higher ideal that eventually replenishes you in a way that can be described as “soul replenishing”.

Building Powerful Personal Brands – Presentation Transcript Read the rest of this entry →

Jane’s note: I originally published in September 2008 on another website. I made some updates in April 2009 so it can be relevant to my readers here.

I’ve decided to share my story here based on Kwai Yu’s call for members within his Leadership Foundation Cafe to share their personal stories of “doing” in leadership. This “Liberation Story” illustrates two major crossroads in life where I had to make a leadership-level decision and execute on the decision. The stakes are greater each time.

I never saw myself as an entrepreneur (or Leader in the truest sense, for that matter). At one point in my career, I said that I could never imagine NOT working for someone else.

I liked the steady paychecks, especially from a six-figure job with annual bonuses. I liked the paid vacation days and ability to call in sick when I got sick. I was field-based and operated out of a home office, which meant I had tremendous autonomy over my schedule. I had a cool sounding job title (Medical Science Liaison or MSL). Travel was part of my job and I would pay my my husband’s plane ticket so he could travel with me to places like Hawaii and New York. He could explore places like Hawaii during the day when I was in medical meetings and we’d have some personal time in the evenings. If the meetings ended on a Friday, we’d stay over the weekend and return to Los Angeles Sunday evening. In many ways, I already had the “dream job”, and in fact, CNN Money ranked the medical science liaison career #1 in healthcare in 2007.

I Quit My Six Figure Job With No Business Idea or Backup Plan

I can imagine people thinking I was nuts when I quit this six-figure job in January of 2004. I had no “back-up plan”. I didn’t even have a “business idea”.

I only knew that I was troubled by the way the pharmaceutical industry used – and sometimes abused – these field medical functions in a way that may ultimately put patients at risk.

I only knew that I could no longer sleep at night because I was not sure if what I was doing on the job was ethical or even legal.

I only knew that many of my colleagues warned me against speaking out and becoming labeled as a troublemaker, thereby jeopardizing my future promotions.

I only knew that my efforts to change company policy from within the company had failed.

I decided that if I wanted to commit career suicide, it should be for a cause that was consuming me.

I wanted to increase awareness of what the medical science liaison role is, and the potential uses and abuses of this function. This way, opportunistic executives could no longer hide behind an open secret.

My decision to quit my job was not a trivial one. My husband Cass and I had been living in a small apartment; we were saving up to buy our first home. By quitting, I had effectively reduced our total household income by more than half. My husband’s unfaltering support for, and belief in my mission is a significant factor in my success as an entrepreneur. He knew the risks we were taking, including the reality that I didn’t have a business plan. I couldn’t even tell him what exactly my business “model” would be, because I didn’t know either. I only knew what I wanted to accomplish and that my goals were aligned with the values and beliefs I held about my former profession.

The Birth of My Business

I created my company to be a platform where dialog can begin. Simple as that. I wrote articles. I spoke at industry conferences.

Being able to take total ownership of my thoughts and express my ideas allowed me to catalyze discussions at the industry level that I could only dream of as an employee.

What amazed me was that my passion for this mission to open a can of worms had many supporters, including my peers and pharmaceutical executives who genuinely cared about the profession. When you are genuinely passionate about a cause, people notice. Many industry executives and professionals who believed in me showed up to give me business and new ideas.

Things Started Taking Off

In less than two years, I was earning more than the six-figure salary that I was so afraid to lose. We found the house we loved and were able to buy our first house even though this was during the height of the California real estate boom. We’re less than 10 minutes drive from the beaches and the Pacific Ocean. We had plenty of room now to consider starting a family. Cass is only 4 miles from work so he can have a quality of life as well, instead of spending 3 hours every day in L.A. traffic. Within 5 years of creating my business, I had established a solid reputation in the pharmaceutical industry as an advocate for field-medical professionals. I opted to accept one or two significant projects per year so that I may spend the rest of my time speaking, educating, writing, and thinking.

It Wasn’t Easy and Worry Free

You may be reading this and thinking, “How Awesome! She put action behind passion and became successful!”

Well, hold on a second.

I want to tell you about the countless moments when I wondered if I had lost my grip on reality.

Or the many times when I wondered if I should go look for another job. Or the tremendous pressure I had put on myself to be an advocate when no one was calling for me to be one. Don’t even get me started on self-confidence. If I plotted my self-confidence on a graph, it would look like a roller coaster ride, oscillating between highs and lows on a daily basis.

What kept me going? What got me through doubt and fear?

I can identify 3 assets:

(1) the intensity I felt for my mission,

(2) Cass’s confidence in me even when I was not always confident in myself, and

(3) perseverance to see through my mission to make a specific difference in the pharmaceutical industry. If I did not have any one of these 3 assets, I’d have probably given up a few months into my new role as an “accidental entrepreneur”.

This was why in 2007, I felt I had accomplished my original mission, I began to feel restless.

I had a gut feeling that I needed to move in a new direction, where I may connect with an audience outside of a narrow niche, so that I may use what I had learned to help more people. I also became a new mom: our son Jaden was born in December 2007.

I Began 2008 With A Decision and a Crazy Idea

I began 2008 with a decision and a crazy idea. We had waited 9 years to have a baby, because I was too busy building my career, and later, my business. Now that we’re finally parents, I wanted to fully participate in my baby’s first year of life.

Being an entrepreneur was supposed to give me options, not limit me.

I decided to exercise my option!

I cut back 90% of my business activities to be a stay at home mom for Jaden’s first year of life. I wanted to be there for his first smile, his first crawl, and his first words. One late evening, when Jaden was 2 months old and feeding every two hours, I suddenly realized how little time I had left to myself.

366 Day Doing Only Things I Love to Do

I may have been deliriously exhausted or divinely inspired (or both) because I had a crazy idea to spend 366 days – one full year – “doing only things that I loved to do”. Since I no longer had the luxury of time while taking care of a newborn baby, I was going to spend what little I had to do what I love to do. From January 2008 to January 2009, this is what I committed to doing.

Obviously, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had never been this physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted, and at the same time, spiritually engaged. This was a living meditation on so many levels.

For one, I experienced what it feels like to be at total service to another human being without regard for reciprocation, where service was my reward.

When newborn babies aren’t feeding, they’re usually sleeping; their main interactions are to let you know they’re hungry or sleepy. I discovered I had been embedding my “external roles” into my identity, and when my decision changed my roles overnight, I felt as if I lost grip of the person I used to be.

Finally, I was surprised at how difficult it was to “do what I love to do”, because I had long perfected the art of self deprivation.

My Ulterior Motive

I had an ulterior motive for getting into this crazy idea: I had my fill of self improvement books and programs where I’m encouraged to do what I love, because success would follow. I wanted to know if I can replicate my success, but in a different field, and while adventuring along the path by doing what I enjoy the most: expressing myself through writing, and sharing my experiences and insight to help someone who is going through what I had gone through.

My decision to change course is not a trivial one, and now more is at stake. We now have a huge mortgage and a baby. By changing course, I had effectively reduced our household income by more than two-thirds.

Like the first time, I don’t have a “business idea”. Like the first time, Cass listened to why I believed this path was important for me to explore, and again, he supported my decision.

What Makes life Life

We focus way too much on Where we’re going and How we look while getting there,

When the Secret to Life is

Knowing how to steer, Who we travel with, and What we’ll do

When We Arrive.

What Makes leaders Leaders

Is Leadership easier Discussed than Done? Of course it is. That’s why leadership is mostly common sense but less common on the “doing / execution” scale.

Nobody said leading would be easy.

Most of us don’t realize how lonely “leading” actually is.

The true responsibility of a leader is a lot less glamorous than all the stuff we read about leadership.

But once we follow our initial act of courage to THINK like a leader, with additional acts of courage to BEHAVE like a leader… the reward is a sweet nectar that fills my soul.

Images by Lynne Lancaster