No Decisions Based on Fear

About the time I left the corporate world, I had to make some big decisions. How to run my business. What my core principles would be. I decided to use the same principles I use for my personal life. When you own the business, it looks a lot like you anyway.

Some of the values were easy to choose: Be honest. Be fair. Ask before you spend the client’s money. Don’t jump to conclusions. Listen.

Then came the giant one: no fear. Do not make business decisions out of fear. Don’t make any decision out of fear.

It’s hard to keep that one. I had made business decisions based in fear for a long time–fear of my boss, fear of not meeting the team goals, fear of the competition, fear of getting fired. And it was that fear that made me a lousy corporate employee. So, on my own, I decided–no fear.

There are plenty of things to be afraid of when you own your business–not making a profit, getting underbid, outperformed and over cautious. But fear was the big “Aha!” in my business life.

A decision based on fear is frequently loaded with other weak motives. Revenge, neediness, lack of control. If you take fear off the table, you get a different picture.

“What if my competition underbids me?” Became “How much do I need to earn to make a fair profit and do the job well?” If it costs me $10,000 to do the job, and I underbid on purpose and then get the job for $8,000, I am not getting an $8,000 job, I’m losing $2,000. That’s fear.

“I hate Client X, she’s always blaming me for her own mistakes.” I can choose
to work with Client X and be clear on responsibilities or I can pass on the job. But if I continue to let her blame me for her own mistakes, I’m letting fear make my decisions. At the end of the job, she’ll either blame me anyway or I won’t respect myself for taking on blame that isn’t mine.

Fear undermines us. It justifies bad behavior. It is the road to the collapse of self-respect. I can’t live my life without fear, but there are a million great reasons to make decisions and always one lousy one–I did it because I was scared.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach. (c) 2009 All rights reserved. Image:fantom.xp.com

Stone-Age Marketing

One of the things about the West that charms me is the inventiveness of the people. Many people here xeriscape–no lawns, crushed granite and native plants dot the front yards. And there are people who happily market their services and products in that environment.

bags of stone with a message

They use small plastic bags, about 2-inches x 3 inches, put in a small card with a description of their product or service, put in a few chunks of granite, seal the bags and toss them onto your front yard. I see them when I walk in the morning, bags left by slow moving cars that could easily be mistaken as a hit-man cruising the neighborhood (if you’ve watched all seasons of the Sopranos). Well, not really. Mostly the cars are several years old. One person drives, the other one flings the marketing bags onto yards.

I’m not saying I love them, you have to go pick them up and dispose of them, but I do think the idea is clever. Never a loss for getting your name out there.

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Surprising, however, is how many people feel a need to tell you they are

Information side of bag o

Christian or love Jesus. (In the bag on the right, you can see the fish symbol.)  Again, it’s charming that the worker and his company love Jesus, but I don’t find that a deciding factor in landscaping, pool care or painting. Even if Jesus’s dad was a carpenter. I guess people do use that in the decision-making factor, or it wouldn’t be so prominent on the marketing material. And that opens up another whole line of thought. . . .

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and a certified creativity coach. She wonders about a lot of things and lives happily in ambiguity. See her work at QuinnCreative.com

Working Way Out of the Office

Running your own business is hard enough, finding time and space to do it is a tricky business. When I worked in an office, I had a to-do list. Most days, I’d arrive at the office, and by the time I had a cup of hot coffee in my hand, there was a line of people and my email beeping insistently.  My to-do list became the coaster for my coffee, and the day was filled dealing with the people at the door and on the other end of the email. My to-do list remained undone.

Now that I run my own business, it could be the same. But it isn’t. My to-do list is the stuff I need to do. Today. So I use the perks of life in a connected world to my own advantage.

Need to do some research? I grab the laptop, go to the library, and while I’m there, get work done using the free wifi at the Tempe Library. (Check your library for wifi access by going to Maps.Google and clicking on Businesses, then typing in “free wifi” in the first search block and your city in the second.)

Visiting a client? While I’m at checking how to get there, I’ll also check for wifi spots close to the business. (See the method above, type in “free wifi” in the first search block and the address of the business in the second search block.) When I leave the client, I head for a wifi spot and create two documents–a summary of the meeting and what I agreed to do and entries on the to-do list to start the project. While I’m at the wifi spot, I’ll check for emails and answer the pressing ones.

Ready for lunch? I rarely eat between noon and 1 p.m. The restaurants are full. Eating after 1 p.m. at a free wifi spot makes it more likely to find a spot where I can use the laptop and phone.

Sometimes I do work from home all day long, but on days that are filled with client visits, I get work done without missing a beat. And getting out of the office is often a great way to get a little social time in. And yes, I have talked to people at lunch or in the library and walked out with a new client. It doesn’t happen often, but often enough to include the laptop’s extension cord in the carrying case.

Free wifi spots in the Phoenix, AZ area.

–Quinn McDonald develops and runs training programs in business communication skills. See her work at QuinnCreative.com