With A Little Help From A Friend

Spent all of last week on a business retreat. Went to the home place in WV for the first 7 days before the heat wave drove me home (no working a/c and even in the mountains it was too hot to sleep, think, or breathe!). While I was in WV I worked on putting the finishing touches on the business plan course I'll be teaching at the AMTA convention in September.

Spent the remainder of the week (this past weekend) working with my business partner Kitty doing our mid-year review. In my massage room, which is air-conditioned!

I'm blown away by how far Kitty and I have come in running our little business. It was only two years ago (next month) that we began going for walks on Friday afternoons and talking about whether we  could build a training company. It's been 18 months since we started. We're small but it's working!

Two years ago Kitty was full-on numbers-phobic. This past weekend she became the company bookkeeper. We also spent time analyzing how we were actually doing financially and she was the one suggesting how we could work with our bookkeeping to get our answers. We were able to make an important business decision about finding an alternative to one of our fixed costs.

We spent a few hours on exercises to help us further refine our business plan. It's been somewhat skeletal up to now, based on what we knew and could reasonably say about ourselves. We added more meat to that skeleton and have a much more robust picture of our values, goals, and purpose.

I have felt for a while that I was carrying the lion's share of responsibilities on my shoulders. Kitty was feeling the same way but also feeling helpless (useless?). We couldn't grow because I was worn out. So we listed all the responsibilities and activities required to keep us going. We found ways we could re-distribute the load. I felt lighter, Kitty felt more engaged, and we can grow.

Our company offers courses in bite-sized fundamentals of business and of the energetic body. We've focused on the business courses this year. We want to add the energy courses next year. Together we figured out how to re-work a weekend energetic body course into four "bite-sized" courses. We wrestled with the material together and came up with something we think will be attractive to our client base. Neither one of us would have come up with a good answer on our own.

We looked at our business course offerings for 2014 -- what to repeat, what to add. I have a powerful imagination and am strongly prone to over-committing myself. I get excited by the idea of doing something and forget to weigh the cost in time and energy. I pitched some new ideas for next year and Kitty refused to agree to any of it until I could show her how I would have the time and energy to do them.

Kitty was adamant that we change our name. We are called The Healing Core because Kitty already had that name (website, logo, bank account, etc.) and she wasn't using it. It was quick and easy to re-purpose it but it doesn't really say anything about who we are and what we do. We planned a "baby naming" day, came up with a long list of creative people (both MTs and not) to invite to help us re-name our company, and sent out the first invitations.

We decided we need to meet like this quarterly, not just semi-annually. We scheduled a one-day quarterly biz retreat for October as well as our next semi-annual weekend biz retreat for January 2014.

There was more; it was a very productive weekend. I learned (re-learned?) a few things:

It is incredibly valuable to set time aside at least once a year -- more often if you can -- to step away and just think about your business. It can't be done (at least not well) in the dribs and drabs of time you have between clients / courses.

It makes such a difference that I've got a partner in these endeavors. I've known for years that I wanted to offer continuing education but I had the good sense not to try to do it by myself. Frankly, I talked Kitty into this adventure and she has gamely followed me. However, we are turning ourselves into great business partners and it makes such a huge difference to not do it alone.

Numbers are the muscle and bones of your business. If you want to know your business, you have to be able to look at your numbers. Which means you have to keep up with your bookkeeping. You don't have to be an accountant or an MBA but you do have to be able to answer questions like "are we actually making a profit?", "where are we spending money and is there a way to spend less of it?", and "how much money do we really need -- and want -- to make?"

You can grow into being a business owner. In fact, for most of us there really isn't any other way. You don't have to know everything when you start out but you've got to be willing to learn as you go.

A good business partnership is a lot like a good romantic relationship.

• Speak up when things aren't working for you.
• Wrestle problems to the ground together (not just your way or his/her way).
• Be with someone you trust.
• Be with someone you respect.
• Be open about your own shortcomings.
• Ask for help.
• It helps enormously to actually like the person!
• Make time for the relationship.
• Commit to the work necessary to keep your relationship afloat.

I can't tell you how excited I am for the year to come and for the potential our little business has! Thank you Kitty for being an awesome business partner and, still, an amazing friend.