3 Reasons Why You Absolutely Need a Partner

Americans are pretty obsessed with independence. Almost all of our famous entrepreneurs are presented as individuals, with a few exceptions. But this book, Powers of Two by Joshua Wolf Shenk, says that actually some of the most powerful and world-changing creativity came from pairs of two people.

He points to famous pairs John Lennon and Paul McCartney,  Marie and Pierre Curie, and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who were more powerful together than they were apart.

The classic entrepreneurial personality is naturally independent. Aside from anything else, your brain is moving at light speed, and it can be hard for others to keep up most of the time. But could you benefit from a partner?

Consider these three reasons for having a partner:

1. Challenge: You have to have a strong sense of self and belief in your ideas to become an entrepreneurs. It can also be really tempting to only surround yourself who reflect the best parts of yourself, and who support your ideas without much challenge. But you will never be awesome if you don't have some one who will kick your butt sometimes. Someone who will expose your weaknesses and force you to face the brutal facts that can weight down even the best businesses. A feisty partner will challenge you to look deeper and the results will be 10x stronger as a result.

2. Follow-Through: Entrepreneurs run fast. Like cheetahs, they tent to sprint while chasing down an idea, and then have periods of rest, during which they don't do much at all. A strategic partner will follow you while you're sprinting, making sure that the millions of ideas and initiatives that you start during the sprint are captured. Then they will pick up the ball and take the lead when you are resting, making sure that those ideas and initiatives are actually realized.

3. Confidence: Even the most brash, outgoing entrepreneur has moments of nagging doubt. Did you make the right decision? Did you consider all of the outcomes? What impact will your choices have on your future success? A partner can help you flesh out your ideas and put more meat on the bone, so that when you pull the trigger you have confidence in your decisions. They will never work out exactly as planned, but you will know that you took the time to think them through.

There are many reasons to find a good partner as you build your business. But just remember that I'm not speaking here of a traditional business partner who shares a part of your business. In fact, business partnerships need to be carefully managed as they frequently fail. Consider alternative methods of partnership, including mentors, coaches, consultants, and peers.

Stop Doing Everything Yourself: A 5-Step Recovery Program

Everyone has to start somewhere, and most entrepreneurs start out by doing everything themselves. From buying supplies to sweeping floors to paying bills, there's a good chance that you can do everything in your business. But continuing to do everything yourself is like treading water instead of swimming - it won't get you anywhere.

At least 80% of your time should be spent moving your business forward. This includes motivating your people to do great things, hiring awesome new people, and dreaming up new ideas.

The other 20% of your time will likely always be spent doing less important things that you really can't delegate to others. This is the equivalent of "Treading Water" or just keeping things afloat.

"Doing stuff" is a personality trait common among successful entrepreneurs. While many people have great ideas, only a few actually have the drive to get things done and build a viable business. Eventually, you capacity for "doing stuff" turns from an asset to a liability, and it's an addiction you have to break.

Here is an Entrepreneur's 5-Step Recovery Program to stop doing everything yourself:

1.  Assess your value:
What are you actually good at? What is your primary value to the business? Think about the part of you that you really can't hire someone else to do for you. Your greatest value is probably your creativity, and your ability to inspire others to believe in your vision. I promise that you can find other people to keep the lights on and the floors clean, but you can't replace your core value to the company.

2. Assess your time:
Where are you currently spending your time? You don't have to go all crazy with this, but take a hard look at where you are spending your time over the course of a week. For example, you might spend 34% of your time on bookkeeping functions, 36% of your time on office management functions, 15% of your time managing employees, and 15% of your time working with customers. Most likely, you are spending most of your time treading water, and very little time moving your business forward.

3. Hire someone:
Figure out the area that is taking up most of your time that can be handled by someone else, and invest in finding someone to take it over for you. For example, if you spend a lot of your time bookkeeping, then hire a freelancer, consultant, or full-time employee to help. I know it will be hard to find just the right person, but you have to bite the bullet and make the commitment to trust someone else to do the work for you.

4. Reassign your time: 
Sure, it will take you a few weeks to hire someone, and then a few weeks to get them on board, but as soon as that happens, go back to your time assessment. Remember the 34% that you were spending on bookkeping? Well, now you may need to save 10% of that to manage the bookkeping process for a while, but you should have at least 24% of your time now free to work on value-driven projects to move your company forward. Resist the urge to fill that 24% with more water-treading. Make the commitment now to use your extra time moving the company forward.

5. Repeat
I know that this process will be hard. It will take more time, and make you feel overwhelmed and frustrated. But now you have to push yourself to do it again. What is the next major chunk of your time that is wasted? Hire someone and reassign your time. If you go through this on a constant basis, you will eventually get to the point at which you working at your maximum value level 70-90% of the time.

It is only when you are investing your maximum value in your business regularly that your business will get out of the treading water stage and move forward fluidly into growth and expansion. Dive in!

  

4 Crazy Tips for Awesome Brainstorms

As an entrepreneur, you most likely began your business based primiarily on your own thoughts and ideas. Even if you asked others for their opinions, most entrepreneurs are pretty committed to their own vision.

As you grow your business, you will most likely make the shift from being the entrepreneur as the sole creative contributor to developing a team of creative thinkers who can help propel your business forward.

Taking in different perspectives through regular brainstorming allows small business owners to:

1. Increase growth rates
2. Increase in-house creativity
3. Recognize new opportunities
4. Capitalize on untapped skills
5. Engage team members 

Brainstorming has great value to the entrepreneurial business, but conducting great brainstorms requires trying different ways of tapping into your team's creativity. Here are some non-traditional ways to improve your brainstorming sessions:

1. Go for a Walk - when you are literally facing the same direction together, focusing your body on something external, you tend to get a better flow. Some of the most creative entrepreneurs regularly take their meetings outdoors while walking. Team members quickly learn to wear comfortable shoes, and a lot of work gets done while circling the office or street block.

2. Get Out of the Office - often when we meet consistently in the same room or location, we get stuck on the same ideas. Many business owners conduct all brainstorming sessions in the same conference room in which they meet clients, discuss employee reviews, and meet with their lawyers. The conference room itself becomes associated with "doing business," but what you actually want is for the people with whom you're brainstorming to think in a totally different way. Rent someone else's conference room, go to a park, or meet in a clients' conference room to stimulate new ideas.

3. Bring in an Outsider - it's impossible to avoid the groupthink that develops within any organization. Bringing in an outsider ensures different ideas. Entrepreneurs, with their strong personalities, are at high risk of engendering groupthink in their organizations. The employees decide they can turn off original thought because the entrepreneur has so many of her own. To tap into your employees' creativity, bring in an outsider who will challenge them (and you!) to think in fresh, new ways.

4. Welcome Discomfort - the really good ideas feel really uncomfortable. They often elicit feelings like "we can't possibly do that!" Those are the ideas that we really need to sit with to see if we are rejecting them simply because they are uncomfortable vs. genuinely impossible. Next time you hold a brainstorm, assign someone to pay attention to every time the group shuts down an unconventional idea. Take special note of the "sacred cows" that team members vociferously assert should absolutely not be changed. There is usually gold (not always the obvious kind) in there.

Virginia Ginsburg is founder and chief consultant at Swell Strategies. She is passionate about supporting small business owners and entrepreneurs in starting and running successful enterprises. An avid reader, in this blog she reviews books and articles and relates specific learning points back to entrepreneurial businesses.

How Right-Brained Entrepreneurs Can Mix Business with Pleasure

by Deborah A. Bailey

It can be a challenge to take a right-brained person and drop them into a left-brained endeavor like running a business. Spreadsheets, accounting programs, business plans – just thinking about those things can send a creative person into a tailspin.

What drives a lot of creative people into self employment is that they are stifled in structured work environments. I’m a business coach but I’m also a writer, a photographer and a musician (if my years in the high school band count).

After working as a copywriter in the fashion industry, I changed careers and went into information technology. It may seem like I made a huge leap from the right brain to the left, but actually it wasn’t as big as it sounds. Learning a computer programming language was similar to learning any other language. In fact, when I met with the computer school’s counselor I was told that people who had a background in music or languages actually had an advantage in learning computer programming.

Who’d have thought it? Most people believe that there’s a firm line between the two worlds, but it is possible to cross from one to the other when necessary.

As a right-brained entrepreneur, are you dealing with any of these challenges?

• When you are creative and you want to be self-employed, you will have to deal with schedules, structure and systems. Otherwise, you’ll either start a lot of projects and never finish anything, or spend a lot of time thinking about what you’re going to do, but never starting.

• Putting a price on your creations can be challenge, especially if you feel that money doesn’t mix with creative expression. Pricing is a challenge for most business owners, but you should never feel guilty about asking to be paid. On the other side of the coin, you’ll work against yourself if you feel that being paid equals selling out.

• A lot of the time creative people are expected to give their work away for the “exposure.” Well, at what point have you been exposed enough? When do you start asking for compensation? If you don’t have an answer to that, it’s time to take an honest look at things. Are you running a charity or a business?

• Have you ever been told that you’ll never make any money making art? Were you discouraged from becoming a writer because “books don’t make any money?” When those messages are in the back of your mind, it will be difficult to build a successful business.

Being a creative entrepreneur comes with a built-in set of challenges, such as how to deal with structure when it feels totally uncomfortable.  

Here are a few tips:

• Make a schedule for yourself – nothing fancy. Just write down what you have to accomplish each day. When get distracted, it’ll help to have your list of tasks to refer to.

• Hire help if you can. You may have a lot of interests, but some things are better left to the experts. Rather than struggle with an accounting program, you can have a bookkeeper handle things much quicker.

• Be honest about what you’re good at, and what you’re not so good at. Delegation is not a dirty word. If you can hand off administrative tasks to a VA or an assistant, you will have even more time to work on the things that you do best.

• Get a coach. No, I’m not suggesting that because I am a coach. I’m saying it because no one needs accountability like a right-brained entrepreneur. There’s always a new idea that seems so much better than the idea you had yesterday. When you’re always chasing the next new thing you’re going to leave a trail of things undone. A coach will keep you honest by providing the feedback, direction and accountability that you require to stay on track.

If you’re a right-brained entrepreneur you are a visionary. But every vision requires action so that you can bring it to life. It is possible to stop struggling and manage your creativity and your business.

Deborah A. Bailey is author of two non-fiction books including, “Think Like an Entrepreneur: Transforming Your Career and Taking Charge of Your Life.” She's also the creator and host of Women Entrepreneurs Radio, a weekly internet talk show. Her fiction work includes a short story collection and a novel, available on Amazon.com. 

For more information, visit http://www.BrightStreetBooks.com.