Lesson One: Purpose

Premise: You can learn to enjoy, and even love, the other half of your business.

You: Person who loves doing the work in your business: the massage, the haircutting, the coaching, the consulting, etc. BUT, you don’t love the “other half,” of the work: marketing, numbers, business planning, etc. AND you have an open mind; you’re willing to entertain the idea that you might be able to love the other half of your business, if somebody showed you how; if you got a little help.

That’s what this is: a little help.

These next seven blog posts are implementation lessons, taken from my two books: Passion, Plan, Profit: 12 Simple Steps to Convert Your Passion into a Solid Business and Your Marketing Personality: Marketing You Like is Marketing that Sells (this book will be on Amazon in July, 2011).

My purpose is to help small businesses and solo entrepreneurs understand and enjoy (and handle) the other half of their businesses. Getting to this point will require change on your part, dear reader. This change requirement is the primary reason that, although all the information you need is already available, you (and countless others like you, including me), don’t take advantage of it. We don’t know how, are too afraid, or think we can’t, change. We all need hand-holding.

Because my purpose is to help you, small and solo business owners, enjoy the other half of your businesses, I’m going to give you different ways to get the hand-holding you need.

This is the free way. It requires you to face and overcome your fear by yourself, or to recruit a friend to help (which I strongly recommend). You can get more accountability and structure from me  (cmsclaritytobusinesscom)  , but it isn’t free.

Lesson One

Here we go. This is Lesson One, and it is about understanding your Purpose.

Answer this question: Why are you in business?

There can be many answers, and you should list everything that comes to mind, including “funding kids’ (or your own) college education,” or “keep a roof over my head and food on the table,” if these things are true for you.

Here are some possibilities:

1. Change the way clients are handled in your industry. (How?)
2. Freedom. (For yourself? For the clients?)
3. Foster world peace (no kidding—this is on my list).
4. Make a lot of money. (How much?)
5. Help people. (Do what? Which people?)
6. Get experience owning my own business. (What specific experiences do you want to have?)
7. Create jobs. (For whom?)
8. Introduce something new into the world. (What? How will it help?)
9. Some other reason?

Do These Questions Look Familiar?

You’ve probably seen these questions before, in some form or other. But you haven’t answered them. Why? Because they are challenging, and difficult, and they make you have to stop and think.

What Will Help You Answer Them?

Here are a couple of suggestions:

1. Set a timer for ten minutes and work on this. After the bell rings, if you want to spend more time, you can, but you don’t have to. Ask yourself “why am I in business?” five days in a row, first thing in the morning (or after your coffee).
2. Call a business friend and see if they would meet you for coffee or a meal. Instead of chatting, work on the answers to these questions together.

What Do You Do With Your Answers?

Start a document somewhere—on your computer or in a notebook, and call it My Business Plan. I saved this information for last, after you’ve already done some work, so you wouldn’t get scared. But what you will be doing by reading and taking these Seven Lessons is writing a business plan.

Don’t worry about whether you’re doing it right, or if you think you know how to do a business plan already, or should know how, or that you have some other fear or judgment about this process. Put that all aside. When you simply follow the directions in each lesson, in order, at the end, you’ll have a plan, and a way to start enjoying the other half of your business.