Georgia Dudley, founder of Empowering Women Network, and I were recently speakers at a businesswomen’s event. We got into a conversation and found that we agreed that one of our biggest pet peeves is the habit many professional and business women have of putting the cart before the horse. That is, worrying about and making plans to spend money on projects for their businesses before they have income from existing clients. Georgia expressed this well when she said, “It’s not a business unless you have a client!”
Both of us, having started our own businesses and being in the business of counseling professional and business women on growing their businesses or careers, know that investment is necessary in most cases to start a business. However, unnecessary investment is ill-advised. Also, I am all for planning and I advocate having a business plan, a financial plan, a marketing plan, a sales plan, and probably other plans when starting a business. However, a doctoral thesis is definitely not required. To borrow a well-known acronym, KISS.
In my opinion, there are three main forces operating that create this behavior. First is women’s penchant to be perfect. Second is the buy-in that you have to have the pretty packages before you can go to market. The third is the fear of getting off one’s duff.
These are pretty related so let me clarify the fine differences.
1. Penchant to be perfect – we all have heard and most of us have come to realize that because of something to do with how we women are raised, we come to feel, most often unconsciously, that we have to be perfect. Even though intellectually I know the futility of this so well, because of habit and ingrained social messages, at times I still fall prey to this silliness. It is silly because – as we all know – no one can be perfect. What an utter waste of time trying to accomplish what cannot be done. Women will stay up all night, bite their nails, hover in corners, research until their minds are numb and their fingers ache from tapping their keyboards in order to have the perfect document. Your business plans do not have to be pretty like prom dresses and wedding plans. They have to make sense and be doable – that’s it. If you are using that business plan to secure a loan, that is different. You do not have to have your perfect target prospect profile; just start out with your best ball park estimate. You don’t have to have a perfect vision or vision statement; it will likely change anyway as you grow your business. I will go so far as to say, you don’t have to have the perfect logo; you can change that as well (once that set of business cards or letterhead and envelopes has been used up.) I changed the name of my company after being in business about five years. I didn’t have the perfect company name at first. It’s okay.
2. Buy-in that you need the pretty package before you can go to market - I cannot begin to count the number of women in Optimal Level and other associates who want to spend money on marketers and marketing materials, website optimization, and other services and products their networking buddies want to sell them without having a single client or business income. Forget the ideal presentation materials; you don’t need them to start a business.
3. The fear of getting off one’s duff – You say you want to be in business, then you research, contemplate, re-do your plans and documents, go nuts about having the perfect message, the right branding, etc., etc. I say no; what you really want to do is do what you are doing and not really be in business. If you can spend endless hours chewing your cud, you avoid the risk of failure or success; whichever frightens you the most. You do not have to test yourself; you can stay right where you are, network and exchange business cards, and feel sorry for yourself because you just can’t seem to get the answers you need.
Would you like the solution that will end this torturous behavior, solve your dilemma, and put you into business? Here it is: Act! That’s right –take action. My experience has taught me that simple concept can take me to heights unimagined. Aha, you might then quickly ask, “but, how do I do that?” Fair question…here is my answer:
1. Take whatever plans and documents you have and leave them alone. Pick what for the moment seems the best and use them as they are. Quick decision – the best at this moment! No further deliberation!
2. Let go of the concept that there is something you don’t know that someone else or several others know that you don’t know. There is no secret and if there is whoever has it doesn’t want to give it to you. Go forward; proceed with what you currently know.
3. Spend not one nickel more.
4. Do the following:
i. Pick up the phone, call as many probable prospects as possible and ask for business. (If you don’t know where to find these names…oh well, that’s a topic for a future blog.)
ii. Go to where you already belong or where you can go for free where there are possible prospects and ask for business. (This happens best when you discover who has a need for your product or service; the way to do that is to ask.)
iii. Read the top sales books, put the books down, go somewhere or make a call and ask for business.
iv. Join a business support or advisory group and discover other ways to ask for business. (Well, you are allowed to borrow from mom, dad, hubby, best friend, or mailman for this.)
v. Talk to everyone you know, everyone within the sound of your voice, anyone who will listen and ask for names of people you can call or go to see and ask those people for business.
The result will be a client. Then repeat the five steps above, and the result will be another client. Once you have accumulated several clients, then, and only then will you have the money you need to get prettier packages, refine your original ideas and plans, get more advisors or experts, and get fancier business tools.
Now, doesn’t that sound like more fun than contemplating those lint-catchers?
Note: Being scared to ask for business has nothing to do with anything. We are all scared of something at sometime and we do it anyway. You are scared – so what? I am sure you did something at some time you were afraid to do. You lived. If being scared stops you from acting to get business – get a job where you are not responsible for getting business.
Another note: When acting, you may fail. That’s okay. We learn from our failures. They are only the battles – not the wars. We may get bruised or scraped (not literally; figuratively) and that’s okay. Antidote for bruising and scraping: pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.
