#leadership #nevergiveup
Many have experienced the frustration that comes from starting a business at a high note and then falling into a dry patch with no contracts. You get the first big contract, then maybe another one and you think you are on your way to success. Then suddenly everything comes to a stop. Then it is time to reassess instead of panicking or giving up.
Ask yourself a few questions:
- Look at what went well
- Reflect on what did your client see as your strength?
- What didn’t go well? How can you make it better?
- An objective analyses why you didn’t win a contract, what was different for the one who did win?
This kind of Lessons Learned analysis is essential and can help you really improve. Get a mentor, someone with more experience than you, to help you analyze and help point you into the right direction. Mentorship is an important tool to help you grow faster in your profession. You need guidance. Mentorship is not instruction, a mentor will not tell you what to do, but share how s/he handled similar situations and how things can be done. Then s/he will give you some homework, so that you can come up with your own unique solutions. That way you learn more by working your own way through a problem, while receiving guidance. Look for a professional mentor, who will work with you for your growth.
A few more tips
When starting your business you should make sure of a few things first:
- Start it as a side business. Create some steady income here first before you resign from your job.
- Discuss with your boss if you can continue part time with them while you set up your business. If you are a reliable and trusted worked and your business is not in direct competition, often your bosses will agree. Yes even here in Kenya!
- Save enough money to at least support yourself for about 6months to 1 year fully
- Remember a business will NEVER break even immediately. Even if you get this first lucrative deal
- If you take on full time commitments with your clients, remember that you may not have another contract lined up immediately after on finishes
- Professional Consultants spend 30-40% of their time looking for future business! Think about this for a minute. Let it sink in! I learned this from my first professional Coach! Yes you need to spend that much time to look for more business. So take that into consideration. If you sign contracts that occupy your 100% of your work time, then you will need to spend your evenings and lunch times looking for new business. This also means you will not have time to rest, socialize, network etc.
- Schedule time to reflect every week – 2hrs or so. Use this time to reflect on what you are doing, what you want to change and how to move forward.
- Networking is key for business. But networking takes time and diligence. You do not get business straight out of it. Dorie Clark in her book “The Long Game” explains that networking is all about building deep relationships based on something that connects you. You should actually not even talk about business in the first year of a new connection.
- Have several legs to stand on, but not too many. This means you are not putting all eggs in one basket, but you are also not overstretching yourself. For example I have 4 main streams of income that I am building on. Some will bring business earlier than others.
Surviving Bad Times
We will all face bad patches from a business point of view. Prepare yourself mentally for it! And then get ready to make the most of it. Yes there is good in these times of low business.
You have time at your hand, so use it effectively. This is the time to re-strategize. Take time to reflect and then make decisions. Should you use this time to do some training? Is it more important right now to build more relationships? Is the market changing? Once you have looked at all these points, you can not make a plan and move forward. Set yourself SMART goals.
Lessons Learned
I think the main lessons we can learn here are, to get prepared and not jumped into running your own company with closed eyes. Be prepared that business has it’s up and downs. We will have good months and bad months. The most important thing is to stay positive and use the bad patches as opportunities to develop and move forward