It's that time of year again; the grand month of renewal and resolutions. I like to watch people floundering to change, be better, and promise to be different, you know, the same old New Year BS we all put ourselves through. To put it bluntly: It will be a new year, but it will still be an old you. There is no magic New Year’s pill that will make you wealthy, healthy and happy, but that doesn't stop us from wishing and hoping. Delulu is the...
Today's post is both closure on a year that was loaded with lessons and a recap of the one thing that got better during that time, my coaching practice. I have gone from dedicated homebody and geeky insomniac to a thriving full-time entrepreneur.
Here is a normal day for me now: I wake up at 5 o'clock to make breakfast and help my husband get ready for work. I workout for an hour or two then clean the house before I sit at my makeshift office to start working. I contact potential clients, write a portion of my book, post on my blog, coach four to six clients, and craft several social media posts. I may step out for journal deliveries and some shopping before I begin dinner preparation. I also do some reading, catch up on my favorite dramas and more clearing and cleaning but really, there is no finish line. That’s how adulthood works. At least for me.
Like everyone who gets a lot done, I do have a few productivity tricks; but the real secret is hustle. I have learnt (the hard way) that I can only do one thing at a time. So my motto regarding time is: “Get that one thing done as soon as possible. Then hustle to the next best thing.”
Recently however, I felt a little unmotivated at a very unfortunate time. It could have been spring fever or the season finale of Adim Farah, but I felt stuck although there was quite a bit I needed to accomplish. And Auto here, was being a welcome distraction. Isn't he cute?
I talk to people and they say, “I want to build a business and not have a job. I don’t want to go back to corporate, so I have to build my business.” That conclusion is unfortunately ass-backwards. You don’t build a business because you don’t want a job. You don’t build a business because you can’t and don’t want to go back to corporate. You don’t build a business because you want freedom. You build a business because you have an idea that you are so enthusiastic about you have to build it.
The goal of building a business isn’t to not have a job. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It’s about making your job your entire life—and having so much enthusiasm that you would work two jobs to make it happen.
That said, I will be the first to tell you that business is overwhelming and it can suck. I mean really suck, sometimes—especially if you are sensitive like I am. Underneath this strong and resilient exterior is someone who cares too much at times, and I often take things personally. When someone leaves or doesn’t value my program or work, it hurts. It may even dampen my spirit and affect my motivation, like it did yesterday.
I procrastinated for a while until I reminded myself of something: Why do I have to do everything? Why not do just a little something? Why not choose one small task, and go from there.
I firmly believe that action breeds action, and when I first started my business, this is what I lived by: Do one thing a day. It can be huge or it can be tiny, but do one thing. I revisited that and committed to doing one small thing. And wouldn’t you know, it snowballed. I journaled, got a session done, started on a new blog post, updated my accounting books, edited old blog posts and so much more.
I started my business like most people: confused but optimistic. I read, listened, and learned as much as I could. There were days when I was so overwhelmed and confused that I essentially closed my eyes and chose one action item to do, wildly ignoring any sense of intelligent order. Sometimes I did nothing and called it rest. But eventually, I got back to it.
Also, there was something a little dangerous and very frightening about asking people to work with me, because even though I was smart and capable, I wasn’t totally clear on what the hell I was doing. I was willing but hesitant. I could feel it. I could talk about my business openly and freely with people I knew well, but froze up around people I didn’t already know.
These days, a lot of books and a lot of talk focus on not having a job, escaping the corporate world, and finding the freedom of your own business. Don’t get me wrong; I agree. I think entrepreneurship is the way to build your ultimate lifestyle and your ultimate legacy. It is why we are all in this. But there is a point where things go wrong.
All business owners will have ups and downs and highs and lows in business. There is always quite a bit of emotional energy swirling. You have a success, a client leaves, you get a joint venture, you endure some personal hiccups, you get an email from an unhappy customer, you go to an amazing seminar, and so on. Nothing is constant; there are peaks and valleys, and sometimes the income reflects these highs and lows as well.I chose to be enthusiastic about it all—even the total disasters.
Entrepreneurship can be crazy and overwhelming, especially when you’re just starting out. Unless you are a software startup with $50 million in funding, you have to bootstrap—and bootstrapping can look, well, embarrassing. Take me, for example: I started out with 100 business cards, less than Ksh10,000 left on my debit card, and a dream. When this happens you have no choice but to go big, go wild, go strong, and possibly… maybe… definitely look cringe.
If you are afraid of looking cringe when taking that first step, take a moment to look around the room in which you are reading this. Just for a second, see the effort that went into not only what you see, but the centuries of progress leading to the inventions surrounding you. Start with your shoes, and then move to the phone in your hand, then look to the machines and devices grinding and beeping in every corner of your life—the toaster, the computer, the ambulance wailing down a street far away. Contemplate, before we get down to business, how amazing it is humans have solved so many problems, constructed so much in all the places where people linger. Buildings and cars, electricity and language—what a piece of work is man, right? If you really take it all in, you can become enamored with a smug belief about how smart you and the rest of the human race have become. Yet you lock your keys in the car. You forget what it was you were about to say. You get fat. You go broke. Get depressed. Loose friends. Others do it too. From bank crises to sexual escapades, we can all be really stupid sometimes.
The lesson? Forget perfection and just hustle, a step at a time. Be the wildly passionate, committed, enthusiastic, and a little bit crazy.
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