Multiple Profit Centers

If I had to choose one idea from all my self-employment research that has had the most influence on my thinking, it would have to be Barbara Winter’s discussion of Multiple Profit Centers.  In her wonderful book, Making a Living Without a Job, she says,

"Rather than thinking in terms of having a single source of income (as we are trained to do when we see our income tied to a job), the savvy entrepreneur thinks about developing several income sources.  With planning – and an openness to additional opportunities as they come along – you can create as many income streams as you desire."

Diversifying my income streams has been on my mind a lot this week.  While not wishing to detract from my efforts at building my freelance paralegal business, two important things are true.  First, I don't fill up 10 hours of every day on my freelance business; there are days that I spend that much time on it and more, but there are other days when I don’t have  client work, I’m caught up on my marketing projects, and I don’t have a networking event to attend.  Second, I embarked upon this entrepreneurial journey with a number of other dreams I wanted to pursue in addition to freelancing as a paralegal.  My passions for food, wine, cooking, entertaining were big determiners of my choice of location; these and other passions are things I would love to turn into a series of businesses some day.  Hence, I’ve devoted a lot of time this week to laying plans for the Multiple Profit Centers Barbara Winter talks about.

For example, I’m looking for a  local part time job.  One obvious reason is supplemental income, but there’s another even more important reason.  I want an arena in which I can interact with people in the community (outside of the legal field), provide customer service, learn as much as I can about an angle of business I haven’t had an opportunity to experience yet, having spent most of my working life in big law firms.  I want a chance to closely observe another successful business owner, and see what lessons I can apply to my own future businesses.  I’m the first to admit that there is a big learning curve for me in being an entrepreneur.  I believe that any part-time employment experience in a field other than law will be invaluable as I seek to build a series of successful home businesses for myself.

I also have another small business idea I’ve been toying with for a while now.  It’s too new and nebulous to discuss much yet, but it involves my passion for food and wine pairing.  So I’ve been bouncing this idea off of my foodie and wine-loving friends, and putting plans in place for some practice runs for my idea.  I realize that I will need to develop a sound business model through trial and error, and develop both the skills I will need and some expertise in the field before I can hope to earn income from it.  Fortunately, I can’t think of anything more enjoyable than putting on “practice” food and wine events with friends.  It’s quite energizing to me to think about and plan this, and having an ultimate goal of turning something I love so much into an income stream gives a sense of urgency to the project.  (Look for future blog posts about this on my sister blog, Sonoma Sip.)
 
And just yesterday morning, I dreamed up another idea for a possible small business involving another of my long-term passions for plants and gardening.  Who knows where that idea eventually will go, but I’m enjoying the creativity of the brainstorming process.

I didn't set off on this journey merely to create an income for myself.  I want to create a lifestyle, one in which I am doing what I love, utilizing all my skills (paralegal skills to be sure, but not only those), enjoying my life.  I look forward to seeing where it will all lead me.

Sunday Six Word Memoir

You will recall that I was recently challenged to begin a project of distilling a memoir of my life - or a segment of my life - into six words.  Here is the next in my series of Six Word Memoirs - a memoir to encapsulate my week:

Many interests means many possible businesses.

What does this mean, you ask?  Tune in to my upcoming blog post on Multiple Profit Centers to find out.

Meanwhile, got your own Six Word Memoir?  Feel free to share it in the Comments! 

Being Goals vs. Doing Goals

Paul Hawken in his book, Growing a Business, describes a concept that stimulated a lot of thought for me.  He tells the story of a large oil company that undertook a study of companies that had endured for centuries, even though their main business had changed over those years.  One of the conclusions they drew “was that these companies survived the upheavals of the marketplace and the world-at-large because they had ‘being’ goals instead of ‘doing’ goals.  Their business was centered on a way of interacting with the work, not on providing one specific product or service.”  

Hawken goes on to provide an example of a given company’s goals involving either “doing” – such as providing white diapers – or “being” – such as providing excellent assistance to mothers of newborns.  The “being” goal is so much more open-ended and versatile; such a goal will enable a business to morph with the needs of mothers over time and to change as technology changes.  It enables a business to last, because it can continue to find new means and mechanisms of meeting its primary goal.
 

I find this concept fascinating and challenging when I think about my own fledgling business.  I’ve begun to rethink both my marketing copy, and my so-called “elevator speech.”  What is the most open-ended, versatile business goal I can state?  I want to be able to provide any type of assistance litigators need over time, even as the technology of meeting those needs is changing rapidly right now.  I don’t want to think of my role too narrowly.  These differences may be subtle, but I’m finding it helpful to refocus the way I think and speak about my business, from “doing” language about tasks I’m capable of performing to “being” language about excellence and competency and reliability.  

What's your "being" goal?

Growing A Business, by Paul Hawken.  New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1988.

Sunday Six Word Memoir

It was a slow and silent week for me.  I fought off a little cold bug, resulting in more rest and less activity.  I canceled a couple of social engagements due to not feeling quite well.  I worked on a marketing project, but did little writing.

However, in looking back over the few recent social interactions I've had, a theme has emerged.  I've noticed that when I speak too negatively about a feeling of frustration or discouragement I am having over slow progress in my business, or shortness of cash, or an idea that won't gel, or just about anything else, I elicit unexpected - and perhaps unwelcome - responses.  Well-meaning friends either cluck sympathetically, or try to cheer me up, or pepper me with suggestions.  Rather than helping, this actually results in my doubting myself and what I'm attempting to do, which isn't helpful.  Much more important, I've realized that I engender this result myself by the manner in which I speak.

So the theme which has emerged this week is that it matters what I say.  The language I use to describe to others the projects I'm working on, or the challenges I'm wrestling with, or the emotions I'm experiencing is tremendously significant.  It isn't just that my words are important toward being understood by others (although that's true too), but that my words are important for me.  The language I use to describe a thing has an impact upon how I experience it, how I feel about it, and how optimistic I feel about my progress.  It isn't a matter of deluding myself about the reality of my choices or circumstances; rather, it's about taking responsibility for the manner in which I describe that reality.

So here is another in my series of Six Word Memoirs - a memoir to encapsulate my week:

Speaking optimistically creates a hopeful outlook.

Got your own Six Word Memoir?  Feel free to share it in the Comments!

Sunday Six Word Memoir

(One of the many lovely things about Saturday and Sunday is that they both begin with the letter S.  Which means I can post a Six Word Memoir on either day.)

This week was characterized by a lot of thought given to fine-tuning a strategy for my business, and a resulting prioritization of the activities I spent time on.  I made a huge effort to spend the bulk of my time on activities I hope will make the most marketing sense, and tried to minimize activities which, however interesting, weren’t geared toward garnering me clients in the short term.  I think this was a beneficial focus for the week, and I was much more productive.
 

So here is the next in my series of Six Word Memoirs – a memoir to encapsulate my week:
 

Every activity targets visibility to clients.

Got your own Six Word Memoir?  Feel free to share it in the Comments!

Confessions of a Lurker

I have been - and for the most part continue to be – an internet “lurker.”  I have a Facebook account, a LinkedIn account, a Twitter account.  I read a lot (a lot) of other bloggers.  But I’m just not much of a participant.  I do sometimes comment on other people’s blogs.  Obviously, I blog myself.  But I’m fairly silent in these other forums.

Folks who write a lot about building business through participation in online communities say this is precisely what one must not do.  They say the only way to become visible to people who might benefit from your business is to participate, make connections, communicate, be helpful.  Put yourself out there.  Talk.  And I’ve no doubt that’s true.
 

And yet it all goes against my nature. 
 

Throughout my life, I’ve been so very private.  I’ve valued intense one-on-one conversation over group communication; I’ve preferred small groups of close friends over large gatherings of acquaintances.  I don’t think in sound bites.  I listen intently and then respond, and my responses are rarely brief.
 

It’s not that I think these social media mechanisms of communication are a waste of time – far from it.  I’m very interested in what all my friends and family are saying on Facebook.  I read Twitter and my RSS feed avidly, devouring content as though famished.  In fact, I must limit the time I spend on these, lest the day slip away from me.  But I’m intimidated by the notion of sharing my own thoughts through these channels.   What if anyone linked to or following me finds my comments boring?  What if they roll their eyes and sigh over someone having the temerity to clog up their feeds with such drivel?  Add to this the oft heard advice from the social media gurus that you must have valuable things to say.  You must add to the conversation.  Your comments must be insightful.  Frankly, I find these admonitions chilling.  Much better to be silent than to risk being perceived as uninteresting.
 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the possible sources of this anxiety.  After all, I have a lot of friends in the “actual” - as opposed to “virtual” - world.  These friends, with whom I converse with my voice rather than my keyboard, don’t appear to find me boring.  They seek my company and my input.  They listen when I speak.  They frequently even laugh.  So why the fear that those “reading” instead of “hearing” my voice might react differently?
 

I crave a response that I can measure, an expression on the face, an inflection in the voice.  These responses aren’t available in the virtual, on-line world.  Moreover, it all just feels new to me.  After all, I am old enough to remember Life Before Home Computers, never mind Life Before The Internet.  I formed my sense of self through in-person interaction.  “Virtual” interaction still feels a little untrustworthy, a little shallow to me, even while I have “met” a number of very sincere and interesting people through on-line channels. 
 

Yet there is probably a sense in which the sources of my intimidation or the excuses I might pose don’t matter; what matters is slowly moving past them.  So I’m working on that.  I’m working on being a bit more vocal on Facebook – and lo and behold, my friends actually comment back, as though they’re glad to hear from me.  I’m working on commenting more on blogs I find interesting or moving – and lo and behold, sometimes people write back nice things (and even if not, they certainly don’t comment back telling me I’m an idiot).  And if I don’t Tweet a lot yet, I’m thinking about it more.  When an idea or story or blog post or article arrests my thinking, I roll over in my mind ways of expressing those thoughts concisely.  I ponder sharing my musings with others.  I compose new blog posts in my head.  And it is my hope that one day, some of those ruminations will actually find their way out of my head and into those on-line channels.  I’m starting to trust that people will be welcoming.
 

Bear with me.  I’m working up to it.

Saturday Six Word Memoir

On a recent early afternoon, my brother phoned me excitedly to tell me to listen to the day’s “Talk of the Nation” on NPR, for an interesting segment called, “What’s Your ‘Six-Word Memoir?’”  The story is that Smith Magazine began inviting people from all walks of life, some famous, most not, to distill a memoir of their lives into six words, and began publishing these in a series of collections.  The most recent of these collections is, “It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure,” by Larry Smith & Rachel Fershleiser. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010.

I took my brother’s advice (a wise thing for a kid sister to do, no?) and listened to the segment.  You should too!  Not because my brother said so, but because the segment, and the six word memoirs you’ll hear from the book and the call-in listeners, are quite simply wonderful.  I found myself in turn amused, amazed and moved by many of the Six Word Memoirs I heard.

And I was inspired to write my own!

So here is the first of what I hope will be a series of Saturday Six Word Memoirs – a memoir to encapsulate my week:

New Business: Less Earned Than Spent

Got your own Six Word Memoir? Feel free to share it in the Comments!