Mistake Mondays

Marvelous Mistake Monday #3: Mission Creep

Date: February 13, 2011  Author: Marlynn Leave a comment

Every entrepreneur I know is guilty of this, and if there were one person to be appointed a Queen of Mission Creep, it would be me. It’s not a crown I wear proudly.

Mission creep is the annoyingly-named term (probably by some equally annoying “marketing guru” no less) for stretching your services and goods outside of your original mission’s boundaries to the point that it becomes detrimental to your brand and business. There is a difference between expanding your services to create multiple revenue streams that make sense for your business (smart move), and taking on additional roles that your business neither has the time nor the staff to manage effectively (not-so-smart move). The latter is mission creep.

There are many reasons entrepreneurs fall into the trap of mission creep. A few of them might be:
1. You’re becoming successful and you want to expand out of fear for falling behind the competition
2. You’re becoming successful and being bombarded with “you should really start offering XYZ as well” by clients/customers
3. You’re not making enough money and think that you’ll reach a greater number of customers by starting to offer a host of new services/goods.

In most cases, mission creep comes from panic. In my case, it came from an honest passion for wanting to better serve my customers. Urban Bliss started out as a custom event stationery business, that morphed into graphic design, web design, then public relations & communications strategy when I combined my PR studio into it, and eventually social media and small business strategy. These expansions make perfect sense for a creative studio — if I had the staff to back up my grand plans. Yet I don’t, and while my kids are young, I don’t plan to staff up because it’s not a business model that I find particularly family-friendly.

The same happened with The Power MOB. My inbox was flooded every week with personal pleas from women who would just love it if we offered this service, or that service, if we held meetings closer to their home, if we held meetings at times more convenient for them, if we focused more on this type of business owner or that type of industry.

In both cases, I forgot the one key ingredient that makes a business run: the business owner. I started listening to too many squeaky wheels and started letting them run the businesses. When you have a personality like mine, where you have no problem trying new things and you in fact truly love to do a million different things, it can be damaging. So I started listening to the one who actually does the work and can see the business from an overarching view: myself. I’m still in the process of paring down and I know it will be a while before I get back to that solid ground of laser-sharp focus, but I’m now cutting off squeaky wheels as soon as they pipe up, and I’m learning the most important word to people-pleasing entrepreneurs: “No.”

In many cases, mission creep can be better kept at bay by doing one simple thing: taking the time to write out and stick to a very specific mission that encompasses your biggest passion, your greatest money maker, and the thing that makes you stand out above all the rest. When a new opportunity to expand comes your way, check it against your mission, and if it doesn’t 100% support your mission and your target audience, politely decline and move on. If it does, then figure out a way to incorporate it into your existing system versus creating a whole new system built around the new service/goods.

Marvelous Mistake Monday: Complacency

Date: January 3, 2011  Author: Marlynn Leave a comment

The first Monday of the new year. Let’s kick it off right by kicking to the curb a marvelous mistake of 2010: complacency.

In my five years of being a small business owner, I have been fortunate to have gained client after client almost solely on referrals and word-of-mouth. I’ve heard from many of you who have had the same sort of luck with your businesses, and last year I held the same conversations with many of you: what’s happening to our clients? Why are they no longer flocking to our doors? Why is the phone ringing less?

Then as soon as we heard ourselves asking those questions, we immediately smacked ourselves in the head. If you are asking those questions, then you have probably fallen to the same entrepreneur error: you’ve become complacent in your business.

It’s not that business has never been easy – far from it. It’s that we get into our grooves and do business as usual during a time when business is at its most unusual. We simply failed to prepare for and imagine the worst:
What if our biggest client suddenly shut its doors?
What if our second biggest client suddenly lost funding for the five-year project we were hired on to help with?
What if suddenly our smaller clients decided they couldn’t pay because of financial changes in their personal lives?

It’s not that we got lazy, we just kept doing the same old, same old. When you do that during a tough recession, you may survive, but you certainly can’t thrive.

And we should all aim to thrive, not just survive.

Here are a few things that my fellow complacent colleagues and I have been doing and/or will be doing to revive the flow of work for 2011:

1. Innovate from within. This means something different to each entrepreneur. For me, it means developing my own projects that challenge my skills and test my abilities. When you stretch your mind, you tap into new areas you are able to bring to your business. The good ones will inspire you; the best ones will inspire you and help bring in more business.

2. Do a better job of reaching out to past and current clients on a regular basis. Whether it’s a monthly newsletter or setting aside one morning each month to touch base, it’s vital as you are seeking new clients to remember to take care of your old ones, and to serve them well.

3. Go to more networking events. I admit: for me, it was easy to get complacent in this area because I run a networking organization. And I detest networking in its traditional sense. But it’s important to participate in more than one networking organization, to not only reach potential clients in every possible appropriate venue, but to expand your vision of what could be by learning from new people and being motivated by their work.

4. Get rid of the time sucks and get down to business. When you realize you’ve been complacent in your business, you need to break down your time by the minute and rebuild a schedule that weeds out the ineffective activities and people and opens up more time to do the first three activities mentioned. Maybe you spend too much time on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe you spend too much time playing Words With Friends and Angry Birds. Maybe you participate in too many book clubs by obligation to your friends. Whatever is adding stress to your life more than it is adding emotional, professional, or personal benefit, cut it out or cut it down and re-prioritize. Now is as good a time as any to take charge of your time again.

I’m personally in the process of doing all of these items. Even if you feel you’ve been turbocharged and ten steps ahead in your business this past year, it never hurts to remember to do these things throughout the year.

Here’s to a pro-active, vibrant 2011 business year for all of you entrepreneurs out there!

Mistake Monday: Forgetting To Do Pro Bono Work

Date: December 13, 2010  Author: Marlynn 2 Comments

For the first two years of my career as an entrepreneur, I made a conscious effort to remember to do one pro bono project a quarter. It could be something as small as designing a web ad for a non-profit or as time consuming as redesigning an outdated logo. Whatever it was, I did it for free, and because I believed in the cause, the people working tirelessly behind the scenes, and I knew I needed it to not only feed my creative soul but the soul that yearned to do more good in the world, for the world.

Soon it became too difficult to do pro bono projects quarterly, so I moved to twice a year. Then once a year. Then…

What happened? Was it the economy? Was it that I was too busy with paying work to notice? Was it that I wasn’t getting as many requests from non-profits as I had in the past?

To be honest, I’m not quite sure. I think it’s a little combination of all of the above. One thing is for sure: I’ve missed it. I miss donating my time & services.

We all know the good that non-profits get out of having services donated, but do you know what happens to you as an entrepreneur when you do work for free for good causes? You are able to create, to innovate, freely. You step out of your everyday worker bee shoes and put on your Super Genius hat and pull rabbit tricks out of hats that didn’t exist. You get better at managing your time because you have to in order to keep up with paying work (most of us can’t work for free completely, after all). You learn a million new things about the way the world works through the non-profit world. You gain good friends and help good people. Your heart grows a thousand times bigger, your smile widens, your step gains a little lift.

I need it. I really, really do. Pro-bono work is my crack.

A fantastic non-profit in NYC contacted me last month to work with them on a fun project and I was SO excited! I gladly said my time would be donated, but in the end, they unfortunately had to hold off due to lack of funding for the other components of the project. Yet the excitement I felt once again reminded me that for the sake of my work, I need to make a conscious effort to do more pro bono projects.

The other benefit that impatient worker bees who shun pro-bono work often overlook? After pro-bono projects end, you usually get paying work out of it. Somehow, through three or four degrees of separation, it comes back to you.

So here’s what I’m doing: I’m working on a system to launch in February 2011, where I actively seek non-profit pro-bono projects twice per year. I’m still working out the details, but I know it’s going to help me stay focused so I can get back on track and do the work that I love, for the causes I love, so that I can continue to love -and thus thrive- in my work. It’s the circle of the entrepreneurial spirit.

When is the last time you did pro-bono work for a great cause?

Marvelous Mistake Monday: Entrepreneurs & “Real” Vacations

Date: November 22, 2010  Author: Marlynn 2 Comments

If you are a fellow entrepreneur, answer this: when was the last REAL vacation that you took? Now I know everyone’s definition of vacation is different, but in my mind a vacation is more than just a long weekend trip, it’s at least a week, preferably two. It is NOT a staycation. A vacation is definitely not going out of town for a conference, no matter how many evening parties are involved. I personally think it’s fine if you work a little on vacation, but that’s because I get it: it’s not a job that you are escaping, it’s a full-blown business that you are running and taking time away from.

That’s where I have found a lot of the lack of understanding lies between my W-2 friends and my fellow business owners: when you’re in a job, you take a vacation away from your boss, your responsibilities, your annoying co-workers, and you can actually, truly, walk away and business as usual goes on without you (even if you don’t think your boss could possibly live without you). When you are an entrepreneur, you’re not just stepping away from “the office” for a week or two – you’re the mama or the papa who is leaving your business baby behind in the hands of someone other than yourself, or, in no one’s hands. You may be away, but you are still ultimately responsible for EVERY facet of operation that occurs – or doesn’t occur – in your absence.

For many of us solo practitioners, time away means money lost. As much as we may plan ahead, we still can’t allot for the lack of business that doesn’t happen while we’re away. In today’s economy, that’s not just a hard thing to ask of someone: that’s potentially a life or death decision for a business.

And so we work. And work. And work. We love it! We achieve work/life balance through our ability to choose our work hours and take mini breaks throughout the week. But we seem a little crazy to W-2ers. Your W-2 pals probably tell you that you work too hard, you work too much, and why don’t you just take a vacation? You need one, buddy! As if it were the easiest thing in the world to do…

{A photo of me at a DC airport wine bar en route to Switzerland for vacation in 2009, with my Blackberry, netbook & iPod.}

{A photo my hubby took of me at a DC airport wine bar en route to Switzerland for vacation in 2009, with my Blackberry, netbook & iPod.}

Here are some vacation prep suggestions I know have worked for me in the past to make it easier to take time away:

* Plan well in advance and hire & train appropriate staff for your leave.
* Prepare your lawyers, bookkeepers and accountants for your leave. Make sure they apprise you of, and you handle, any potential financial or legal issues in advance.
* Develop training manuals with policies, procedures, contact lists, etc. even if you’re the only person in the company, so that you can pass along the info to someone “just in case” while you are gone.
* Prepare your clients well in advance for your leave, so that nobody feels left out to dry while you’re gone.
* Outline clear instructions in your auto response email and your outgoing voice mail message so that clients know exactly where, how and when to contact you as needed during your leave.

I’ll be honest: those suggestions I actually enacted for past vacations? The thought of doing all that stresses me out more right now.

This post stems from a conversation with one of my dearest friends. We were talking about Thanksgiving and I had mentioned I was looking forward to taking a couple of days off. She countered, unconvinced, “But, are you REALLY taking time off?” To which I totally lied and replied “Yes, really!” Of course, I meant it at the time. But now, as I see the pile of work before me during this crazy busy holiday season, I am both excited and thrilled at the thought of tackling it all (because it’s WHY I went into business for myself), and I’m realizing that indeed, I will be doing a little bit of work during the holidays. And you know what? I’m ok with that. I chose this path for a reason. It’s not for everyone, and not everyone gets it, but that’s ok.

Soon enough, my family will have our traditional, W-2-like vacation. We have at least a couple of weeks planned for next year, and I have several months to plan ahead for that.

What about you? How do you manage vacations if you are a solo entrepreneur? What constitutes a “real” vacation for you?

Marvelous Mistake Monday: Not Setting Boundaries

Date: November 15, 2010  Author: Marlynn Leave a comment

My work is my life, my life is my work. When you’re a solo practitioner, and you run a family-focused business or two, it’s easy to blur the lines. I’m clear about separating the personal from the professional in business, yet when I first started out I made all of the rookie mistakes that created a super crazy, somewhat imbalanced work/life situation with few boundaries. If you’re a work-at-home parent, I’m going to guess that you sometimes find yourself getting tangled up between your many roles as well. See if this list of my former habits resonates with you:

* I answered work emails around the clock, including on weekends and late at night.
* I used my cell phone as my business line.
* I met clients over the weekend (when it wasn’t required for the job).
* With my clients’ approval (and sometimes suggestion), I brought my kids with me to almost every meeting.
* I rarely hired a babysitter to watch the kids, therefore limiting my high quality focused work time.

While these tactics worked fine when I was first starting out — and, at times, they were what I needed to do in order to survive the early days — they didn’t help me get to the next level. In fact, I had to completely revise the boundaries I set for my business and my personal life. Now, I not only attract higher quality clients, but more importantly, I feel much more confident that the time I spend with my family is indeed ample quality time while my business also gets the focused attention it deserves.

Recently I had the pleasure of sharing three of my main tips for setting boundaries as a work-at-home-mom in a short video for Dr Lynne Kenney. You can visit her site to view the video on WAHM Boundary Setting, but I am also embedding the video below. Dr. Kenney is an incredible resource for parents who are entrepreneurs and are seeking some sanity in the midst of mompreneur/dadpreneur madness. You can follow her on Twitter as well.

Please leave a comment here to let me know what you think. Do you set similar boundaries? These are just three very brief tips out of hundreds I could recommend. What else would you add to the list?

ABOUT MARVELOUS MISTAKE MONDAYS
Because I believe in sharing business experiences fully — the good and the oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-I-did-that-bad– I happily share examples of mistakes I’ve made in business with weekly Marvelous Mistake Mondays. My goal is simply to remind every entrepreneur out there that we all make mistakes, and we can all grow from these mistakes. I fully believe I am a much better business person with every mistake I make and I hope you find these little tips useful.

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