One of the challenges facing us as small (micro) business owners in a service profession is finding good business role models. It may have become cliched but when you are stumped, it can help to ask WWxD (What Would [insert role model's name here] Do)?
What should you look for in a role model?
They have to do business with values you have or would like to have.
It's fine if they are in the same profession but you can learn a lot from people in different professions as well (though it helps if they are operating in a similar environment to you).
They don't have to be everything you want to be; you can have multiple role models for different aspects of your business.
The better you know them personally, the better a role model they are. Lots of us list Oprah Winfrey as a role model for all the good works she's known for and for her popularity. However, I'm betting that few of you reading this have a good understanding of how her organization works and what it takes for her to do those good works and have that popularity. It's more valuable to have a role model who's more immediate.
I have a few myself.
Kitty Southworth LMT: Kitty is my business partner, friend, and for many years we were each others MTs. I'm impressed by Kitty's natural inclination to work a deal. Her instinct with her business dealings with her clients is "how can we make this work?" and she's as flexible as she can be without losing herself.
Jaime Bernardo LMT: Jaime has a true gift for coming up with new ideas and new endeavors and attracting people to join him. He never seems to sweat the small stuff and seems to walk through his business life with a "hey, it'll all work out" attitude. And it frequently does!
Stephanie Bernardo LAC: Yes, Jaime's wife. She is an acupuncturist with a really solid vision of what she wants to grow, what kind of numbers will help her get there, when she can afford to grow, what kind of people she works best with, etc. Plus, she is a truly gifted acupuncturist.
Margo Bowman, CPA, LMT: First and foremost, Margo is my go-to person for accounting, bookkeeping, and taxes. She is sooooo patient when it comes to teaching MTs about these things because she truly understands how scary it can be for us. She is also beautifully generous with her time and expertise. She is a superb example of the "abundance" mentality.
Adriana DiFranco, copywriter: Adriana is not in the healing arts, she's in advertising. Over the 15 years I've known her, I've seen her throw her creativity into her work and get laid off way too many times because the kind of small companies she likes to work for can be unstable. But every time it happens, she picks herself off, dusts herself (and her resume) off, and keeps on plugging. She's built a pretty good freelance base that has come in handy between gigs. That's resiliance.
Clare Reece-Glore, living-with-dogs coach: Clare owns and operates YAYdog to help people choose well and live well with dogs. This is a second....third...fourth? career for her but dogs have always been a passionate part of her life. I admire her imagination for new business opportunities and her ability to get into the down and dirty of getting her businesses set up, making contacts and building relationships, and seeing connections everywhere she turns. I also am impressed by her ability to recognize an unserved niche -- working with people to integrate dogs into their lives, not just train their dogs to "behave".
These are some of my role models. These are people I go to sometimes and say "help me think this through". Who serves as role models for you as a business owner?
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
Different Values In Different Rooms?
When I talk about the business of massage, I often talk of a house with two rooms. One room is a massage room. The other is an office. Held together by their common ceiling, floor, and walls they are one house, one home.
And yet.....
We often treat them as two different houses rather than two rooms. We may -- consciously or not -- believe that the standards, values, rules, and priorities we use in one room can't apply to the other room. Many any of us are living with a split personality -- our massage selves and our business selves. This doesn't work very well. Split personalities so rarely do!
What words do you use to describe your values as a massage therapist?
How do you reconcile these two lists? If I said "make the biz list match the massage list", would you think I was crazy? Is that totally impractical? Can business be done from a heart-centered place? Can it be wise and compassionate? Can it be done with presence and intent? Can it be a partnership with your client?
Not just "yes" but "hell yes!"
If that still seems utterly insane to you, I'm going to ask you to make sure you know exactly what you mean by those words in your "massage" list. Oh, sure, we all know what "heart-centered" means.....don't we? Doesn't it mean being all squishy and warm and easy? Doesn't it mean always putting the client's needs before our own?
If that starts to capture what "heart-centered" means to you, I'm inviting you here and now to write a better, real-world definition of "heart-centered". Be very specific. Ask others to look at it. And do that with all the words in your massage list that you think can never be used on the business owner side.
Do the same thing with the words on your business owner side. Can you be tough in the massage room (I've had to be a few times)? Can I be driven? Is that a good thing? If it isn't, why is it one of your values?
The change of the year is a good time to step back for a moment and re-visit our core values, motivations, and perspectives. Do they still work for us? Is it time to move in a different direction? A time to reconcile things that appear to be in opposition to each other? This is the right time of the year to go in, to go deep, to ruminate.
Want to be part of a conversation about whether the values of these two rooms can be in synch with each other? I'll be giving a free talk (yes, I used an MTs favorite word: free) in January.
Share the word. I want to continue this conversation with the healing arts community far and wide.
And yet.....
We often treat them as two different houses rather than two rooms. We may -- consciously or not -- believe that the standards, values, rules, and priorities we use in one room can't apply to the other room. Many any of us are living with a split personality -- our massage selves and our business selves. This doesn't work very well. Split personalities so rarely do!
What words do you use to describe your values as a massage therapist?
- heart-centered
- well-educated
- wise
- smart
- compassionate
- presence
- intent
- partnership
- more?
- tough
- smart
- savvy
- quick
- driven
- focused
- more?
How do you reconcile these two lists? If I said "make the biz list match the massage list", would you think I was crazy? Is that totally impractical? Can business be done from a heart-centered place? Can it be wise and compassionate? Can it be done with presence and intent? Can it be a partnership with your client?
Not just "yes" but "hell yes!"
If that still seems utterly insane to you, I'm going to ask you to make sure you know exactly what you mean by those words in your "massage" list. Oh, sure, we all know what "heart-centered" means.....don't we? Doesn't it mean being all squishy and warm and easy? Doesn't it mean always putting the client's needs before our own?
If that starts to capture what "heart-centered" means to you, I'm inviting you here and now to write a better, real-world definition of "heart-centered". Be very specific. Ask others to look at it. And do that with all the words in your massage list that you think can never be used on the business owner side.
Do the same thing with the words on your business owner side. Can you be tough in the massage room (I've had to be a few times)? Can I be driven? Is that a good thing? If it isn't, why is it one of your values?
The change of the year is a good time to step back for a moment and re-visit our core values, motivations, and perspectives. Do they still work for us? Is it time to move in a different direction? A time to reconcile things that appear to be in opposition to each other? This is the right time of the year to go in, to go deep, to ruminate.
Want to be part of a conversation about whether the values of these two rooms can be in synch with each other? I'll be giving a free talk (yes, I used an MTs favorite word: free) in January.
Doing Business With A Compassionate Heart
Friday, January 11 2013
PMTI (Washington DC)
6:30 - 8 pm
Share the word. I want to continue this conversation with the healing arts community far and wide.
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