I've mentioned my cleaning lady, Kelli, before. She and I regularly have interesting conversations about running a small service-oriented business.
The last time I saw her, she was pretty agitated. The January floods have done a job on her business. She has both corporate and home clients. A lot of her home clients dropped her as they focused on repairs. The corporate clients have been in transition as well, facing mergers and new management that focuses strictly on the cheapest option, without taking quality of work into account.
She has other women working for her and worries about keeping them employed. She needs to re-coup the lost clients. She wants to move her business "up" a level but that means asking for more money (and being comfortable with that in her gut) and "buffing up" her image. She's thinking of adding a new revenue stream by purchasing a some property management contracts.
Sound familiar? Maybe not literally but if you've been in practice long enough, these are the kinds of questions and worries we often face.
The last time she was here, we talked about the process of making all these decisions. She, like many of us, frequently finds herself in conflict with herself. Her head says one thing and her intuition says another.
My advice? Never ever ignore your intuition. Your brain/mind only knows facts and data. Your intuition, your gut knows you. In the end, as small (micro) business owners, we have to be at peace with our choices. They have to work for us because we're frequently all there really is. We're staff and product!
When you think back on the major decisions you've made in your life, have you ever chosen your "head" over your "gut"? How did it turn out?
I'll find out how it's working for her when I see her later this week.
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