The Roller Coaster of Starting a Business

Starting a small business was thrilling for the last week and a half. Now I'm coming back down to reality. When will something happen? What's next? Gosh, this is hard!!

Networking - Up

I have heard the refrain over and over that networking is the life-blood of small business. I am seriously trying and to commend myself, I have made some good strides. Here are my accomplishments:

• Lunch with colleague from church, which led to....
• Networking meeting for professionals who work with the aging population, which led to....
• Contact with a financial advisor for seniors, which led to...
• Invitation to join a networking group
• Two meetings with possible business contacts
• Meet ups with friends and acquaintances, some more distant than others. 
• Three upcoming meetings with contacts/colleagues, etc. 
• Registration for a highly relevant conference in my region.

Networking is challenging for an introvert like me. I am trying to be easy on myself and not beat myself up too much with "should have" or "ought to" but it's hard. I am not opposed to contacting people, but it's not my natural way to work. If all things are equal, I'll choose the task that involves solitary work over calling someone. 

I need to make some goals and use those weekly (or even daily goals) as my motivator. 

Leads - Neutral, Slightly Down

I got a new lead for a potential client. One of my previous leads is no longer viable since the potential client passed away. That was depressing at several levels. 

Now I have 3 leads and one is looking pretty good. I need to reach out to the third lead, but since it's for someone with whom I used to work, I wanted to give it a little time. 

The first lead is in progress - meaning, I'm developing that lead...I guess....I'm new to the marketing lingo. 

Resources - Up

I'm learning about business, too. There are countless books on business processes, techniques, philosophies, etc. and I've gotten into a few of them. Here's what I've worked on so far:

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

The phrase "eat that frog" is an eye catcher and a metaphor - who on earth wants to eat a (presumably live) frog? Bleh. The frog you "need to eat" is a task you really need to do, but you keep putting it off. The idea is that you'll feel better and be more successful if you get it done and check it off your list. While I didn't find any concepts or approaches radically different from what I already knew about time management, it was an easy, entertaining, and fast read. It's so easy to slip into bad habits even when you know better. I definitely think it was a worthwhile read, and I do expect to re-read it periodically as a refresher. 

The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals

This book describes a system to achieve big goals while still dealing with the whirlwind of everyday activity in a business. It's somewhat targeted towards larger companies, but one can use the principles at all levels. It was a good an inspirational read - although, I don't even have a whirlwind to break through, yet!

Coffee-Lunch-Coffee

This is a blog (and a book ) about networking as a way to advance your career and find your next dream job. Since I am not a natural networker, I will be taking some of the author's tips and techniques to heart and using them almost verbatim. The author had a goal of 15 networking events/appointments/interactions per workweek - which would result in coffee, lunch, and coffee with someone every day, Monday through Friday. Whoa...that's an overwhelming number for me! but I could commit to a smaller number, like...say.... 5. Or maybe start with 3 and work up to 5.

I wonder what my goals should be for blog posts. I enjoy writing them and it helps me think things through. 2 per week?

Test post - to see if I can back date a post

Until now, I didn't need to put the date of a post earlier than I actually wrote it. I'm trying to see if it can be done.

Stepping Out on my Own

I finally found the courage to leave my job.  Now I am unemployed but I am starting the habits to become an entrepreneur.

I will be the first regional office for a small geriatric care management company. This is the company that helped my family our in 2012, taking care of my father while family was so far away.  I contacted them to ask about what it's like to start a business like this.

They responded that they were looking to expand. Would I be interested?

Heck, yeah!

I had had it in my mind that I was going to do it all on my own. I never thought they might want to expand halfway across the country. After all, they are in central Virginia and I am in the midwest. One would think they would prefer to stick with a regional focus.

I resigned from the hospital in early September, and my last work day was 9/16. Officially I was an employee until 9/19.

Now I am starting to do the things that entrepreneurs do - network, call, sell, follow up, network, and network.

My goodness, I am so happy to have some time to myself again!

I missed writing in this blog, too. I think it provided some therapy for me and allowed me to work some issues through.

Coming Back to the Heart: Part 2

This time I'm talking about corporate values.

I don't want to complain about a corporation's values as demonstrated in their day to day operations. That's not really productive, but I will say that when it devolves to complaining, one must stop and consider what is going on. 

What is causing my complaining? What is the disconnect?

I left computing and the corporate life because I did not want to disengage from my work. The only way I have found to survive in such an environment is to disengage, stop caring, and focus life fulfillment elsewhere. I felt that was happening in my previous corporate life, so I left. 

I am not that person, though. I desperately want my work to matter, I want to be engaged, and I want to care deeply. I want to make a beautiful, functional, useful, and worthwhile work environment and correspondingly, product.

I don't fit any more, because complacency is not one of my values. 

• I want to minimize crises and heroics. They are too costly, and there are enough of them in real life without purposely seeking them out as a way of working. 
• I want to have a plan and know where I'm going. That way, even if I have to step away from the plan, I can keep going in that direction.
• If I can't keep going in that direction, then I can at least not undo the direction.
• I want to discuss the hard problems frankly, not placate others to stroke egos.
• I want to empower others and trust them to do the right thing. I want to be empowered myself.
• I want research to guide practice, not personality.

I'm such a revolutionary. Hell... no really, it looks like I am an entrepreneur. 

Coming Back to the Heart: Part 1

Four years ago I took a job away from patient care with the noble ideas that

• I had some skills to share and 
• the organization I work for desperately needed these skills.

I used to be a computer programmer. I grew up in software companies and my native tongue is the language of software development. I became frustrated with the industry after about 15 years and it became apparent I wasn't going to change the world with my work in that industry.

So I went to nursing school, with the humble idea of helping someone.

I did help someone. I took a major salary cut for work one on one with real people in a hospital setting, helping them get through the scary and dangerous world of the hospital. It was rewarding, most of the time. And it was less hours - rare overtime (because nursing overtime was "expensive." Ha!)

Then situations changed such that my old position acquired a new boss.  I gave her a try but, I just didn't mesh with her management style. Soon, it was clear to me: one of us had to go - and she was a very popular lady in the organization, so it wasn't going to be her.

There was an opportunity in informatics. It was a normal salaried position 5-days per week. Informatics is something like a business analyst position, except you concentrate on clinical data, not business data.

Applying for the job was difficult because I knew what could happen to me. But as an end user with software experience, I could tell my company did not know how to run a successful software support organization. I did know how. So maybe I could make a difference.

I was terrified that I would end up facing the same frustrations that caused me to turn my back on the software industry 15 years ago. It was a heartbreaking experience. I thought long and hard about going this route.

Nevertheless, I applied and they hired me. And here is what I found.

• I found an organization that did not feel it was necessary to document their systems and decisions.
• I found an organization that had no formal change control process.
• I found an organization that had no way of moving maintenance requests forward. 
• ...that had no equitable method to prioritize requests.
• Their informal prioritization method was "how powerful is the person complaining?" and "how loud are they screaming?" 
• ...that thought that exclusive knowledge in a single person was a robust organizational model for support. 
• ...that did not value its people, therefore they did not need skilled management.
• ...that had no naming conventions, guidelines, or standards and no data dictionary.
• ...that believed that software usability problems lie with the user
• They couldn't even tell the user RTFM. There was no M to read.
• So the answer must be "user, you must be stupid."

OMG, did they need help! Unfortunately, this was not my group, it was the IT group we were supposed to work with.

The only problem is that no one wants someone outside the organization to point out their problems, even if you're right, and even if you have a solution.

Next installation in this series: Corporate values.

Good Karma

One of the things I do to help the world out is to write reviews on Tripadvisor.

They call me a "senior" reviewer - I've posted 21 reviews so far. I look at reviews of hotels, restaurants and attractions when I travel, so it only makes sense that I should contribute.

It's exciting when I get a response. Indeed, the little things in life thrill me.

Do you write reviews? You should - they don't have to be long or details, although that helps. It's practice writing and it helps other people out. Trip advisor even lets you upload pictures.

I tend to be positive in my reviews, even when I wasn't so thrilled. Like the "chinese buffet" that included 2/3 stations of greasy American food. I suppose they do that because it is what sells, and you can't fault them for doing what is necessary to stay in business. The positive thing was that I could get a meatless meal there, and this place was in rural Kansas (or Missouri - I don't remember right now).

Another aspect of reviewing for travel is putting up reviews for places that are local to you. There are always people who come to your region or town on business and they want to know to best places to eat, or a nice way to spend a free afternoon, etc.

So why not contribute to the community at large?

Getting Away

What is the purpose of a trip away?

I used this weekend's getaway to do something different and deal with different problems. Problems that are ultimately of little consequence: what time do we go to the park? What should we do today? When should we have lunch?

It gives the brain a rest not to worry about the everyday things and the work things.

We ate pretty good food out, we slept easily, we watched brainless TV (Diners Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network, and Pawn Stars on History Channel). What can I say - we dropped off paid TV about 2 years ago and now those shows are a treat.

We explored a part of Kansas I did not know much about: the flint hills and the tallgrass prairie. We hiked in the Konza Prairie Biological Station. The prairie was very beautiful. I wish we could have gone either early in the morning or at dusk to increase the chances of seeing more wildlife. We did not see many animals but we took in the vast landscape and got a sense what it was like to be a pioneer, trekking across this grassy prairie.

At the Konza Prairie, we saw:

• Giant Swallowtail butterflies
• A skink of some kind
• A Killdeer 
• Moths, fritillaries, and skippers
  (I didn't know there was a subgroup called a skipper)
• Jillions of grasshoppers, katydids, and pollinating bees and bugs

We'd missed the main spring bloom and we were too early for the late summer and fall bloom.

On Sunday, on the way home, we took the flint hills scenic byway south. While on the byway, we stopped at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. It's a nice park that features the flint hills tallgrass prairie landscape and we had been there several years ago. But since then, they have improved the place significantly, including a new visitor center. It's even better than before. They have built a new visitor's center with a nice presentation area, a short film, and souvenirs. I highly recommend this park - not a lot of drama or excitement, but they do have miles of hiking trails, an old ranch house and barn, and an old schoolhouse all to explore. If you like natural settings, this is a really good one. 

I do feel refreshed. This USA has a lot of interesting places to explore.