Microbusiness Mentor

You have probably heard sayings about how successful people have mentors and coaches and are members of mastermind (MM) groups.

But I wonder – just as coaches and mentors should come with a label that says “results may vary!” (or even “results not typical” like those infomercial program fine print at the bottom of the screen) – mastermind groups vary in quality and effectiveness as well.

Mastermind groups are often misunderstood and not created optimally – as I have learned from personal experience!

The people who are selected for masterminds must be at a comparable caliber of business achievement with slight deviations in business result. Members should have similar drive and goal standards. If these pieces are missing, the mastermind will not work to the members’ benefit. It’s a bit like playing tennis – you improve when you play with someone slightly better or much better than you – not someone who is a beginner, even if you are a beginner.

If you are a pro and you want to help others, then you can be a great mentor or coach. If you are a beginner, you want to learn from people who have done what you want to do, so you do not have to make the same mistakes!

In the past when I have been in similar groups I was often one who had already created a successful business, and other members were at the step of creating one or still figuring out what their business idea was. Even if I was looking to start a new business, I want to be amongst people who are starting their 2nd or 3rd of even 5th business – not 1st.

As a result, I found the meetings informative (I can always learn something from others) – but not truly educational for me to move forward in a meaningful way. When I have to pay money for it, then it becomes a waste of my hard earned dollars. Even if I didn’t have to pay for it, I do not want to waste precious time!

Another factor of a mastermind group is the facilitator’s skills. There are some who do not know how to run a mastermind group, and they appear to let the meeting wander in whatever direction the members move the meeting. Again, if this is the set-up of the mastermind (“we are here for creative brainstorming, so we are going to let ourselves wander and see where the conversation takes us”), then this is expected. On the other hand, I doubt that time-limited entrepreneurs like myself will have the patience to attend a meeting we thought had a clear agenda with defined goals, and we show up for a meeting where anything goes.

This is one of the reasons why I create mastermind groups with a specific “revenue achievement” pre-requisite. It is not so much about the dollar amount, as the amount of skill, drive, experience, and resourcefulness behind that revenue achievement. Someone who has a $500 a month business is at a different level than someone who has built a $5000 a month business, or someone who has taken a $5000 a month business to a $50,000 a month business.

If you have been a MM member – what makes the group work? What makes the group not work?

If you haven’t been a MM members – what would make you want to join one?

Image by Rodolfo Clix

One of my long time industry colleagues Steve Woodruff wrote an article he had kept hidden in his heart until recently, called “Building a human network”. Well, he actually called it, “The Post I Keep Wanting to Write (but haven’t…yet)” but it’s all about the human network.

This is something that I’ve been thinking more about recently, in light of my increased involvement in various social networks, some of which have gathered momentum, and others that have either faded naturally or I had pulled the plug of my participation from.

I’ve found that most of the time people are very intent on building the network membership itself by virtue of measuring numbers. How many contacts, how many followers, how many leads.

I know that as a microbusiness entrepreneur, part of this is a numbers game. The bigger your list, the better your odds of getting buying customers, or viable business partners, or productive affiliates.

I think that my friend Steve have built a formidable network, but what makes him different from others who have formidable networks, is that Steve not only has the numbers – he has depth of relationships AND (more importantly) a focused vector of action.

The bigger your network, the more time consuming it is to maintain that network. It is like having a thousand (or more) friends who all need a bit of your energy to stay connected in some way. Yes, we all have voyeurs and fans who are happy to get periodic emails from us to see what we’re up to, who do not require us to personally reach out and touch them with a phone call or even face to face visit.

But for the most part, the relationships that have strong energy – the business partnerships – the buying customers – these people need more than just being added to your network or contact list.

I have a pretty small network. In fact, yesterday I went through my LinkedIn profile and eliminated some people whom I’ve added, but I don’t know them at all and have very little overlap in business interest. I am not trying to win the LinkedIn contacts race and I would like to keep my contacts below 500.

My network depth is good with some, and can improve with others. I tend to focus my energy on a very small handful of personal trusted advisers and engage in actual business undertaking with them. So I tie my depth of contact with an immediate vector of action. This is my style, but it also means I sacrifice a wide network with more deep relationships that may not immediately vest.

But I am doing what works best for me, rather than blindly playing a numbers game. I would rather convert 50% of my 100 contacts into paying customers and business partners, than focusing on getting 1,000 contacts and then hoping to convert 10% of those into paying customers and business partners. It all depends on where I want to spend my energy on.

I learned this very early in my entrepreneurial journey – 2005, in fact – when I was in a business development mastermind group. I looked at my track record of business deals, and saw that every single one of my 6-figure ($100,000 and above) contracts came through.

On the other hand, the 2 or 3 of my smaller contracts (under $10,000) fell apart, and caused me much stress even when the stakes were so small (or perhaps it was BECAUSE the stakes were so small that there is so much fighting). It made me realize that my entrepreneurial personality is geared toward a certain type of network building, and it requires extreme depth of relationship and decisive action.

Many people who collect networks think they are building an inner circle, and they are equating their networks with the inner circle. Sometimes this happens when they do most of the talking, and the other person spends 25 of the 30 minutes allotted in the appointment listening to the person “data dump” rather than having a true conversation where ideas are built by 2 engaged individuals.

But the proof is usually in the outcomes.

At the end of the long string of promises:

- how many individuals have you formed a true business relationship where money (actual dollars, NOT promises of money) was at stake?

- how many individuals helped you create a true revenue channel or extended your business brand?

Now, Steve is someone who has built a business literally on creating results from his network – for his network, and he knows the difference between audience, network, and inner circle. Because of this, he does not waste time or fritter away viable opportunities against fantastic promises that have yet to live up to their potential.

What about you? What type of network have you built?

Image by Sigurd Decroos

Twitter is a power tool to help you share what your business is about or offers and a way to connect in real time with prospects and customers of your business.

Decide what you want to use as your Twitter username, which usually is preceded by the symbol @, for example, my twitter username is @janechin.

Your username is not a trivial matter when you’re looking to leverage Twitter as a business tool: this is the “face” that others see.

If your presence is an integral part of a business brand (a reason why I tweet with my real name) or if your name IS a business brand, use your real name as the username; otherwise, use your company name or product name as the username.

At the beginning, you may worry about how many followers you have and stare ruefully at your following of “0″.

For business owners, leveraging Twitter and any social media as your marketing or PR strategy is more dependent on what happens AS A RESULT OF gaining a new follower than simply gaining followers,

…unless your end goal is to make this a game of getting a million followers like some Hollywood celebs. Ask yourself why you’re twittering to begin with – and how you want the time you spend on Twitter to translate into real business returns.

Personally, I’d rather have 50 followers whose engagement gives me new business ideas or real business, than 50,000 followers who purely play the “I follow you, you follow me” numbers game and don’t care less what I offer.

(that said, if those 50,000 people don’t mind promotional tweets that businesses broadcast OR if I’m looking to build broad reach as part of my thought leadership/influencing strategy, then I’m perfectly agreeable to obsessing about the number of followers I have.)

You should see your activity as literally building your business brand and presence one tweet at a time.

Pay attention to what you tweet and retweet (when you share other people’s tweets). What you retweet says a lot about what you find interesting and valuable, and further gives your followers insight about you as a person or company. I like retweeting thought provoking questions, blog entries I find inspiring, or leadership quotes I like.

Tweeting frequency can be a hot debate, some may recommend that you tweet as often as possible every single day. I do not have a high daily tweeting “average” because I choose to share what I find interesting or inspiring, or use Twitter to ask questions about different topics. I have a policy to follow only those people whose tweets I find intriguing and useful, and I do go through my list and periodically unfollow those whose interests have diverged from mine to make room for new people I’d like to add.

I recommend that you focus more on the “connecting” than on any “broadcasting” or “promoting”.

You’re given only 140 characters per Twitter entry or “tweet”. This means you can turn people off with blatant promotion faster than ever. Tweet wisely!

Nat Bourre asked, “Has your involvement in LinkedIn and other social networks helped you improve your marketing skills? Are there some social networks that you find more helpful than others?”

Truthfully I haven’t looked at LinkedIn or social networks to improve my marketing skills, or to create “reach” for potential marketing leverage. I use LinkedIn mainly to connect with professionals whose profile intrigue me or whose interests regardless of industry are common with mine. One of the results has been increased “reach” (as defined by # of followers), for example, of my @janechin twitter account, from diverse professions both within and outside healthcare.

Recently I’ve become extremely active in leadership-related LinkedIn groups and have created a leadership specific group of my own, specific to personal leadership. These have been the groups where I’ve seen deep sharing from diverse thinkers on various areas of leadership and leadership development. As a result, I decided to tailor a personal discovery / development program that I’ve been developing over the past 1.25 years to have a personal leadership component to it. Had I not been a part of those leadership groups, I’d not have thought of adding this dimension to this product.

Thus my take-away lesson is:

be clear about your intention of participating in any social network, and why you choose to spend how much of your precious time in which places.

It’s easy for these social networks to become a time-sucker otherwise.

Jane Chin

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