| Curious? |
|
There's no standard coaching session. Some businesspeople prefer to integrate coaching with ongoing technology and accounting assistance. Other clients prefer to work exclusively on coaching. A relationship focused on coaching lends itself to working over the phone and is a great opportunity for those not in the San Francisco area. The first step to begin a coaching relationship is to set up a free introductory session. This free introductory session works just like a regular coaching session; feel free to bring real problems and real questions. After this session you decide if coaching is something that would work for you. Curious? Want to find out more? Contact us today to set up a sample session! |
| Know Your Style |
|
Are you data oriented and do you rely upon principles? Innovation is often the key to successful entrepreneurship. Take this simple questionnaire to learn more about your innovation style. |
| Know Yourself |
|
The Enneagram shows nine basic types of human nature. This typing is useful in entrepreneurial coaching as a way of knowing yourself and how you interact with others. It's also important to be aware of your strengths and your blind spots. |
| Learn From Failure |
|
We're afraid of failure. Many of us structure our lives to avoid failure at all costs. Failure also gives us lessons. View an amazing commencement address by J. K. Rowling. Failure strips away the unessential. At her Harvard University commencement speech, Harry Potter author JK Rowling offers some powerful, heartening advice to dreamers and overachievers, including one hard-won lesson that she deems "worth more than any qualification I ever earned." |
Great entrepreneurs have a vision of their lives that they work on every day. Rather than just letting life happen to them, they are actively involved in their life. Great entrepreneurs have a vision - a vision not only about their business, but also about their life. They not only go to work on their businesses, but they go to work on their lives.
Everyone else ends up being created by their life, passively waiting to see what happens next. This isn't to say that great entrepreneurs don't have unexpected bumps in the road. Quite the contrary - life is filled with these bumps. What these people have in common is a remarkable ability to steer their lives and recover from these bumps.
Entrepreneurial coaching helps you craft your life from your vision. It allows the vision of your life to be in alignment with the vision for your work. This allows your work to support your life. A good metaphor is a river. A river has parts that are swift and unsteady and parts that are slow and easy. Life is the same way. Coaching helps you successfully navigate the swift parts and completely take in and enjoy all the parts of the river. Coaching further helps keep you from being sidelined in the river going nowhere.
All entrepreneurs are different. Each has his or her own dreams, vision and goals. An important element of being a successful entrepreneur is the ability to work in an environment without structure. This is especially important for those making the transition from working for someone else. When we're in a corporate environment there's a lot of structure; entrepreneurs learn to thrive without structure.
We've also noticed some other important elements shared by most successful entrepreneurs:
Live With Intention
We don't believe that the most important item on your agenda is your business. We believe that the most important item is you. Yes, your business is a significant part of your life - it is not the sum of your life. As an entrepreneur you are about to enter or are already in a significant relationship. That relationship is your business.
Successful entrepreneurs create the role between themselves and their business. They have intention about their life plans. They know what they want their life to look like and to feel like. They actively participate in their life rather than letting it go on autopilot. These people are the creators of their own stories rather than just a participant in that story.
They take their life seriously! They live their life as if it were important.
A life with intention has vision. It has a plan. When you live with intention you know where you want to go and have some idea of how you're getting there. No, it's not perfect and yes, there are unknowns. But there is a plan and active progress toward that plan.
A life with intention is all about conscious choice. People who live with intention choose. They know when they're stuck in habits that no longer serve and take an active role in getting unstuck from those habits. A life with intention is also about reflection; these people look back and learn from their mistakes and celebrate their successes. They take time to enjoy all life has to offer while staying focused on their vision.
Know Yourself
Have you ever noticed how some people seem so much at ease in the world? There people bring many qualities to their lives but the most common element is that they know who they are. They know their strengths and their weaknesses. That know how other people see them and they know what prevents them from being their strong and confident self. Most importantly, they know how to get beyond their self imposed limitations and are able to move beyond these limits.
Successful entrepreneurs know about failure. They're not afraid of failure. They face failure head on. Rather than letting failure take them off their path, they know how to learn from failure and become more resilient from the experience. Think about it - many entrepreneurs hear no so many times. Everyone tells them what they can't do. However, they may hear 99 no's but relish in that one yes! We need to experience failure and learn a different way of being from it.
Coaching helps us into those essential qualities that make us uniquely who we are. Subjected to social pressure to behave in certain ways, we can gradually lose touch with our innate strengths, gifts and even our purpose. We learn to blend in at the cost of knowing ourselves.
When you know yourself, you know your gifts. You know how to be alive and expressive. That sense of aliveness is infectious. Others feel it too and, as an entrepreneur, your aliveness and strong belief in yourself attracts others to your efforts.
Know What You Want
Knowing what you want sounds so simple on the surface, but it's often so hard to realize. Most of the time we're not focused on what we want; instead, we're focused on what we think we can have. We focus on what we think is realistic - we settle for less. We lost sight of our dreams.
Coaching helps you pay attention to what gets you jazzed. It helps you become aware of what you really want. So many of us answer the question of "What do I want" with "I don't really know." Coaching helps you answer this vitally important question.
So, how do you find what you really want?
Find your passion! What makes you feel good? What are you doing when all seems right with the world? What would your life look like if you were completely fulfilled?
We all settle for less than what we want. Notice when you settle, compromise, or start “yes butting” or thinking that you need to be realistic. You can feel when you do this in your body, you can hear it in your words, and you often notice your attention turn to what you think others think about you and your ideas. You may find yourself wanting to eliminate all risks. These are clues that your fears are present and compromising your dreams.
Don’t ask others to justify your want. This just shows that you're really more concerned about how others think about you than what you actually feel. That’s a sure way of second guessing yourself.
Dare yourself to be bold - beyond what you think you're capable of. Give yourself a magic wand that give you any power you need. Think big! There's time to be realistic later; but your wants aren't supposed to be realistic. They are your dreams. Feel your body resonate with your energy. If it feels good and inspiring, go for more. If it doesn't, then you are not in your passion.
When people don't spend time with finding out what they really want, they get distracted by other things. We say yes to things that don't meet our needs and then wonder why we're not really happy. Successful entrepreneurs know what they want and are able to enroll others in their dreams!
Understand the Difference between an Entrepreneur and a Technician
Most people start their own business because they're really good at something - a skill or craft. They're great technicians. You can make the best widget in the world. You may be a great cook. Everyone raves about your food and all your friends suggest that you open a restaurant.
However, there's a huge difference between being a great cook and being a successful restaurateur. The chef focuses on the food. The restaurateur not only focuses on the food, but also the location, the marketing, the decor, the pricing, the competition, the cost of supplies. The restaurateur hires and fires employees. The restaurateur manages the books and pays the taxes. The restaurateur negotiates with suppliers. The restaurateur makes sure that the janitors are doing their job and that the bathrooms are clean.
Technicians usually are most comfortable doing the job themselves. They do this because they know how to get things done right the first time. Unfortunately, technicians can't do it all. Entrepreneurs know when to delegate. Entrepreneurs know that there's lots of hard work, but they also know that it's not just hard work. It's using your time in the most productive way for your business that separates happy, successful entrepreneurs from unhappy people.
Trust Yourself
We all have that committee in our head. You know, the group that not only tells us what we can't do but also second guesses every decision we make. Successful entrepreneurs know how to deal with the committee. They understand the difference between doing solid research to support a great idea and the need for getting approval. Successful entrepreneurs know that building a business takes a lot of hard work but they've reconciled with their internal committees. They trust themselves.
Trusting yourself isn't arrogance. When you trust yourself you learn that you don't need approval from others; you are confident in your idea and your approach. You've done the legwork needed. So when it comes time to pitch your idea you do so from a place of confidence. Your excitement is transmitted to those around you and the excitement about your venture builds. People who trust themselves know the difference between being loved and being liked. People who are confident yet vulnerable enough to not have to look good are being loved. People who need to look good are being liked.
We become stilted and stiff unless we learn to let go of looking good, let go of being perfect, let go of getting it right, and be OK with being wrong – whatever that is. When you let go of looking good and trust in your idea or your stake, your true, genuine self comes out. This is what inspires others! Being your true, genuine and vulnerable self enrolls others. They want to see you and your ideas.
Most of the time, when we look at our core fear, it is fear of failure. When we look at failure as an opportunity to learn we often learn that failure really isn't so bad. Of course, this doesn't mean that we welcome failure; instead, we don't become paralyzed by our fear of it. Trusting yourself means recognizing challenges for what they are and knowing that the vast majority of challenges are surmountable. Think back on challenges in your past. Sure, facing those challenges was daunting; however, as you look back at what you learned from working through them you probably realized that, in many cases, you made those challenges much more than they really were.
Listen
Most of us like to talk a lot. When we're listening most of the time we're listening to the committee in our head. The power of listening comes when you start listening to others - listening to what they have to say. Listening also means listening to the space - what's the energy like between us? What's the energy like in this room? Have you ever heard someone speak and the room was falling asleep? The speaker was paying so much attention to what they were saying that they didn't notice or didn't care to respond to the lack of energy in the room.
Listening is about taking responsibility for the impact of what we're saying or what we're doing. It's about paying attention to the impact and recovering when the impact isn't what we desired. Stay confident, stay sure and stay out, even though you may not know why something is happening. Trust in yourself that at this moment you’re unclear, but in the next you’re not going to be. You will recover; something’s going to happen. In fact, many successful entrepreneurs are transparent - they acknowledge the uncertainty and work with it. They acknowledge the elephant in the room. That confidence, that staying out, that being totally present creates answers, solutions, what to say or do next, or the next idea. It’s OK to be unclear, just stay confident in it. Allow your inner successful entrepreneur to choose to stay rather than choosing doubt.
Listening includes listening to your body. Notice the subtle feelings in your body. Where are you tight? Where are you relaxed? If our body is in ease, the task at hand becomes easy. If your body is tight and tense, the tasks get more difficult. Think back to childhood when you climbed a tree. Your body just knew where to place your hands and feet. You probably didn't think too much about it - you just climbed. When we over analyze and try to figure it out, things get more difficult. Listen to and trust your body and your hands and feet will find just the right places to hang on.
Ask for Help
The final quality we've noticed with successful entrepreneurs is that they know when and how to ask for help. No one can go it alone. When you know yourself you also know your weaknesses. Find people to help you who can offset your personal weaknesses. For example, if you know that you're not too relationship focused in your work team up with someone who really values relationships. Together the sum is definitely greater than the parts and, as a team, you'll start seeing your blind spots.
Although it's tempting and easy, avoid surrounding yourself with people just like you. At the same time, surround yourself with people in your league - people who inspire and push you to be better than you are. If you have a blind spot (and we all do) when you surround yourself with other just like you your entire team will have the same blind spot. Diversity ensures a well rounded team. Diversity is much more than the usual things we think of when mentioning diversity. Diversity in personality, diversity in thought, diversity in style. These qualities are sometimes more important.