Big Thinking
I started my business with about $80 that I put on my personal credit card so that my husband wouldn’t see the bill.
That was what it cost for my first web hosting plan. I don’t think I spent another dime on the business for a few months. Nothing more substantial than a fiver here or a ten spot there, that’s for sure.
By necessity, I did everything myself. What I didn’t know how to do, I learned or ignored. It was about 5 months until I started to bring in more that a few dollars per week.
That was the summer I bought Scoutie Girl with a loan from our local credit union. The 2 block walk with the check from my house to Jan‘s was exhilarating. I felt like I walked there a wannabe and walked back a real business owner.
That very real exchange of money kick-started my drive to grow the business. This wasn’t about some cash on the side anymore. It was about profit. Passion-driven, profit-earning business building.
The very first month the site was under my management, I brought in more ad revenue than ever before. I also created a fall advertising package that earned more in a month than I had at my previous full-time job. I was making a profit!
Of course, that was the first time I felt uneasy about the money appearing in my PayPal account. It was the first time I really questioned whether it was okay for me to be pulling in a profit in a way that was just so much fun! I got really uneasy about “me” and my skills.
That initial exchange was also a dive into the deep end of collaborative business relationships. You see, my business is not an island. Nor is yours.
Over time, I came to understand that making a hefty profit isn’t about “me,” it’s really about the “we.”
My profit is part of the community’s profit. My growth is part of the community’s growth. My success is part of the community’s success.
There is no room in microbusiness for a business that is not part of the greater whole.
You’ve heard it said that “you gotta spend money to make money.” I would argue that the flip side is true as well:
You gotta spend money because you make money.
The more money I make, the more I can let flow back out to other businesses that support me: my assistant, my coaches, my technologies, my designers. The more I profit the more sustainable those other businesses are.
I increase my expenses as my profit increases because, each time I do, I gain freedom, security, and support. My business no longer relies upon my ability to get stuff done – now I have a team to fall back on, to trust.
Without profit, there is no team. Without the team, I can’t profit.
If I try to hoard my profits, I end up becoming overwhelmed & disillusioned. And I owe a ridiculous tax bill.
You can’t DIY yourself to sustainability. And you can’t DIY yourself to freedom.
The road between passion & profit can feel like a greedy one.
Who am I to earn money from something that comes so naturally?
Yet, earning a substantial living from your passion allows you to support others in their own passions. The cycle is generous and unending.
Profit isn’t only about “me” – profit works best when you consider the “we.”
{image credit: emdot}
Big Thinking
I started by business to be a work at home mom. You know, the kind that goes to play group, teaches their 18 month old to read, and then works for an hour or two in the afternoon while the little one naps.
Bliss.
But I changed my mind. I got a taste for entrepreneurship, passion-filled work, and truly stepping into my potential and I changed my mind. Suddenly, when posed with a choice between full-time motherhood and full-time mother-of-business-hood. I chose to mother my business.
It was a big change, done gradually. Yet the transformation as I see it today is startling.
I often catch my breath realizing just how different things are – how little I see my little girl, how routines have evolved, how my husband has changed.
When I started my business, nearly 2 and a half years ago, I set out blogging about craft culture in Pennsylvania. I wrote & created for other blogs. Then I learned as much about web design as I could. I bought a business and changed my focus again. I changed and evolved. Changed and evolved.
I’ve changed my editorial style at Scoutie Girl more times than I can count.
I’ve changed how frequently and about what I blog here.
I’ve changed my job title so many times that I have about a thousand unusable business cards in my office.
My only constant is that a new change is right around the corner.
I’m unapologetic about the number of times I’ve changed course in the last 5 years. Let alone the last 28.
The first paradox is that growing up is about rejecting the past and then promptly reclaiming it.
— Courtney Martin, TED talk
We are always rejecting & reclaiming, in what is often both a beautiful & ugly cycle. We resist change and then embrace it. We are open to possibility and then make up our minds.
Change is inevitable.
But how do you know when to change?
You don’t and you do.
A change is always a gamble. It can go right and it can go wrong. But you don’t know until you pull the lever.
A change will always feel like an abandonment and a warm embrace. You will always be letting go of one thing while birthing another.
It’s time to change when what you’re doing isn’t meeting your goals, when you can envision a different path getting you closer to your destination. It’s time to change when your heart or life throws you a curve ball.
It’s time to change, well, when you want to.
Changing your [mind, business, life, circumstances] doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
It’s not a sign of personal weakness.
It takes courage to do something different. To turn the corner.
What really matters when you make a change is that you are stripping away one – tiny, even – piece of what doesn’t work for you. That’s how you know you’re making a “right” decision.
The thing about change is that you can [almost] always change back.
What have you been dying to change? What’s keeping you from doing the deed?
Big Thinking, personal
This piece originally appeared as an exclusive for my subscribers… but I couldn’t bare to not share it with you as well.
There are naysayers in our lives who reinforce our own fear of action & creation.
These aren’t people who live on the periphery or hang out in the shadows; they’re our husbands, wives, sisters, friends, parents…
They mean well – they’re not trying to squash our dreams or ridicule our ideas. They just don’t want to see us get hurt, they don’t want to see us fail.
They’ve been taught over & over again that “doing something different” doesn’t get rewarded, it gets punished.
When I first started blogging, my husband didn’t get it. I told him I was building a business, that I was working, that I was trying to contribute to the family.
Each time I opened the laptop, I could feel his disapproval. It weighed on me. I felt guilty for researching artists while breastfeeding (what the heck else was I supposed to do?). I rushed through writing in the evening so that he could putz around on Facebook.
I made every accommodation I could while still working towards my goal.
Little by little, things started to change.
“Working” went from a euphemistic put down to a legitimate call to arms. Small victories brought larger ones.
I’m going to tell you that it wasn’t easy to change his mind. In fact, I never really did.
His support doesn’t come from understanding the work – it comes from seeing the results.
In fact, I asked him, “What advice would you have for someone who’s struggling with getting started or keeping momentum because of unsupportive people around her?”
He said, “Tell her to just keep going. And leave a trail.”
Wow! Sometimes I DO remember why I married him. Yes! Leave a trail of results. Leave a trail of ideas initiated. Leave a trail of breadcrumbs so your naysayers can come find you in the forest of success.
If you are waiting to start until you have the approval of others, even those closest to you, you will be waiting forever.
You need to start so that you can show results. Results matter.
It doesn’t mean you need to succeed at everything you do. In fact, I’ve failed a lot on this path. You can fail and still have results that mean something.
In fact, failing gives you an incredibly valuable result. It’s one thing you no longer have to try, one thing not weighing on your consciousness of ideas.
When I work with a client or compose an email to send you, it’s always with results in mind. It’s not enough for me to communicate a message. I need to say something that creates a result for you.
The goals I have, the blog posts I write, the projects I start – it’s all to create a result. Sometimes the results are financial. Sometimes they’re mental. Sometimes they mean my family doesn’t see me for awhile and sometimes it means they get sick of me.
The result is the key.
People – yes, even that cantankerous person you’re thinking of right now – respect results.
Even if they don’t understand how the result was achieved. Even if they disapprove of the process. Even if they can’t imagine living that way or never imagined you’d live that way.
The result is what lasts.
But you have to get started to get a result.
{image by Erin Tyner}
Big Thinking, Business Brainstorm, Questions
This morning, Aycee asked me, “How can I juggle 2 creative businesses?”
It’s a question I get asked a lot. We’re people of varied interests, with a slew of talents. We don’t want to get pinned down to any particular thang.
So instead of specializing, we branch out. Every new idea has a new name, a new domain, a new blog, and a new Twitter handle. And somewhere along the line, we get dazed and confused. And despite having the much-coveted “multiple streams of income,” we have no money.
My title is misleading. I’m not going to explain how to manage multiple businesses. I’m going to show you how your business is all one.
Bold statement: Your business, no matter how diverse, if run [almost] entirely by you, is one business. Not many. Solopreneurs have solo businesses.
“Now, hold on there one crazy minute,” you might say. “Tara, it sure looks like you have multiple businesses.”
Let the showing commence.
I have multiple products. I have ebooks, teaching programs, a digital zine called Scoutie Girl, a business forum in partnership with Megan Auman, and coaching services. I talk about everything from productivity to better blogging to designing a website to email marketing to being a mom to being a breadwinner.
But when it comes down to it, I sell artist-entrepreneur support programs.
I have one business, around one central character (me!), and one grounding mission:
I work with big thinking artists-of-all-sorts who struggle with how to earn a good living from their art. I riff, strategize, and conceive of fresh ways of doing business that leave my clients feeling rejuvenated, their businesses revolutionized. I arm artists with confidence & freedom while removing their fears & stagnation.
You might have a blog here, an Etsy shop there, and a service business around the corner but they are all products of your central mission. Think of them that way and your job as entrepreneur suddenly becomes clear.
And those things that just don’t fit? No matter how hard you cram them into your mission box? Maybe it’s time to reevaluate.
If you have multiple businesses, your task for today isn’t to figure out a new way to market one of them or to write a new blog post for the other, it’s to discover, deep down, what it is that ties these “businesses” together as “products.” What is your overall message & mission that allows your products to function independently?
Need a hand? Book a session with me or try Dyana Valentine’s Pitch Perfect program.
Big Thinking
Are you up for a challenge?
Are you willing to try something that’s never been done? Are you willing to think what’s never been thought? Speak what’s never been spoken?
One of the greatest challenges of being an entrepreneur is that there is no one left telling you what to do. No one. You’ll hear whispers from clients. You’ll receive ideas from coaches. You’ll get inspired by research.
But no one will really tell you what to do.
Or dictate how you do it.
Or schedule it for you.
That part is up to you.
Indeed, it’s not even so much what you do as much as it is pushing the envelope. Are you willing to try a fresh strategy? A crazy idea?
But we end up allowing research to pass as an action item, we search for endless tutorials instead of giving it a go, we walk in others foot steps instead of forging our own trail. Entrepreneurs can’t afford (quite literally) to be followers. Sure, you can borrow from others success – but if you’re unwilling to lead with some small part of your business, it’s time to stop kidding yourself about what you’re trying to achieve.
Are you willing to challenge yourself further than you’ve ever been challenged before?
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. But you could try. I bet you’d learn something in the process.
Look at it as an opportunity to try stuff out. “Ask yourself, ‘What do I get to do?’ not ‘What do I have to do?'” Good advice for any DIY pursuit, actually.
— Mark Frauenfelder, Made by Hand (quoting Steve Gerischer)
It’s our privilege as entrepreneurs, movers & shakers, up & comers, big-thinking power people to create tasks that we don’t know how to do right now. It’s our joy to stretch our skills & ideas beyond recognition. It’s our entitlement to make mistakes while we’re learning.
We must challenge ourselves.
If you don’t challenge yourself, who will?
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Find me elsewhere:
Big Thinking, society & culture
Your definition of balance is overrated.
Okay, I don’t know for sure that your definition is overrated.
But if it has anything to do with weighing out equal quantities of gold while a Lady Justice-esque woman looks on unknowingly, it is.
We have been programmed for strive for balance: family/work balance, give/take balance, eat your veggies/have your cake balance. We want to make sure each dangling tray carries the right amount of weight to keep the scale from tipping.
Phoey.
Contentment – nay, passion & joy – is about defying an equal-handed approach.
We indulge in work when we should be resting, we keep on giving when it’s time to take, we sneak a fork full of goey chocolate lava cake for breakfast. And we feel good about it.
We don’t feel off balance. We feel good.
The pursuit of balance makes us juggle. It puts us behind (always behind,) makes us guilty, neglectful, imbalanced. It’s as useful a concept as original sin. You can never get it right.
— Danielle LaPorte
Tipping the scales isn’t a matter of too much weight here, to little there. In order to maintain balance, you have to gently hold the focus of your passion, purpose, and values.
- If being a great mom & raising engaged children is important to you, do you need to fear the joy of working hard at your business?
- If serving others through your words & actions is your purpose, do you need to fear the need to make a living from what you do?
- If creating art & expressing yourself visually is your passion, do you need to fear the desire to have others love what you make?
We’ve created these false dichotomies. We’ve manifested dualities where none exist. We’ve set ourselves up for failure.
Your joy is whole. There is no need to balance the weight of what is demanded of you. Instead, honor all that you have to give.
{image via lululemon athletica}
