A Portfolio of Profit Centers

Steven Kalas is a family counselor with a lively practice. He also plays in a band that’s been busy promoting their new CD, but I know Kalas for a different reason: he writes Human Matters, my favorite column in the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Like many people with multiple interests, he’s found ways to incorporate his diverse interests into satisfying ways of making a living.

Of all the ideas in Making a Living Without a Job, none has ever gotten a stronger response than the notion of incorporating eclectic interests into a unique livelihood.

Many people have felt stifled trying to fit themselves into the Single Occupation mold. There’s often a visible sense of relief when I suggest that it’s possible to create a business from diverse passions.

There’s a practical side to the MPC notion, as well: multiple income sources can level out cash flow. No business, no matter how large or small, is immune from the ups and downs of income.

To everything there is a season, including cash flow.

Here are a few more things to keep in mind when planning your potfolio of profit centers.

° They don’t have to all be the same size in order to be valid. Some profit centers will be occasional, some will peak and then decline, some will be major income sources.

° Under one umbrella or separate identities? If your profit centers are completely unrelated (eclectic rather than clustered), you will probably need to have individual identities for them.

You don’t want to confuse your market by clustering things that don’t go together.

 ° If it matters to you, it belongs in your portfolio. If your interests are diverse, you may decide that some ideas aren’t serious enough to turn into a profit center.

More likely, your apprehension comes from the old belief that if it’s fun and pleasurable, it  should remain a hobby.

Nobody tackles this issue better than Steven Pressfield who writes in The War of Art about turning pro. He says, “The conventional interpretation is that the amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for money. Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his ‘real’ vocation.”

° Differing  activities can boost creativity. In the name of efficiency, we’ve turned many of the workers of this world into robot-like machines who show up in the same place at the same time to do the same things day in and day out.

The capacity to think creatively is the first casualty of that system.

Creativity thrives on variety and setting up your profit centers to give you a wide range of experiences is ultimately as good for your imagination as it is for your bank account.

° Take inventory on a regular basis. Many profit centers require a lot of time and attention at their launch, but  become somewhat self-sufficient after that.

It makes sense to review the various projects you’re working on and align your attention with what each one needs.

Sometimes a profit center becomes a noisy child and takes you away from the others.

At other times, you’ll find you’ve grown bored with an idea and it’s time to consider a different future for it.

Every 90 days or so, do a review and make changes where necessary.

° Be wary of multitasking. One way to stay focused, is to assign different days of the week to different projects. When you’re throwing pots, you aren’t writing your pottery seminar, for instance.

° It’s evolution, not instant creation. Profit centers evolve over a long period of time. Ideas morph, new ones show up, old ones have served their time.

The important thing is to create a business that engages your talents and imagination, and pays you to do what you love doing most. As Paul Hawken reminds us, “The business you can succeed with is distinctly and utterly you and yours. It is unlike any other business in the world.”

You have your MPCs to thank for that!

Artists of Everyday Life

The late Jim Rohn spent nearly half a century sharing his insights on successful living, insights gained in his own entrepreneurial career. His seminars, books and tapes are considered classics and his recorded products continue to influence scores of people who are working to build a better life.

Of course, he had plenty to say about being entrepreneurial. Here’s a little sampling:

An enterprising person is one who comes across a pile of scrap metal and sees the makings of a wonderful sculpture.

An enterprising person is one who drives through an old decrepit part of town and sees a new housing development.

An enterprising person is one who sees opportunity in all areas of life. 

To be enterprising is to keep your eyes open and your mind active. It’s to be skilled enough, confident enough, creative enough and disciplined enough to seize opportunites that present themselves…regardless of the economy.

Rohn believed—and taught—that entrepreneurs needed to build character and cultivate creativity. Like so many other business philosophers, he realized that entrepreneurs are truly artists who simply happen to work in a different medium.

What goes hand in hand with the creativity of enterprise is the courage to be creative. You need courage to see things differently, courage to go against the crowd, courage to take a different approach, courage to stand alone if you have to, courage to choose activity over inactivity.

Jim Rohn was a quiet philosopher, which was quite a contrast to the army of self-proclaimed success gurus working diligently to sell you formulas, shortcuts, sure-fire steps for building a fortune. Popular as many of these events happen to be, they’re about as nourishing as fast food.

What’s truly needed, however, aren’t auditoriums packed for success rallies and pep talks. Entrepreneurs need to discover how to nurture their own creative spirits—and regularly do the things that inspire them to act.

That’s more easily accomplished in quiet ways, quiet places.

(Can you imagine what might have happened if someone had stood behind Van Gogh shouting, “Paint, damn it, paint!”?)

When we realize that running a business is a creative activity, not just a money machine, it alters everything. Like any art form, it’s an on-going exercise.

As Goethe pointed out, “The art of living rightly is like all arts: it must be learned and practiced with incessant care.”

Catch the Spirit

Yesterday I spent a great deal of time browsing through back issues of Winning Ways newsletter. Even though I’ve been publishing it for twenty-six years, I’m always delightfully surprised when I go back and come across an article or idea or quote that I had forgotten—or forgotten to put to work in my business.

As I reread things I’d written more than a decade ago, I knew that I wanted to share several of the stories on this blog. After all, collecting entrepreneurial stories is a valuable aspect of building an inspired business and I love passing along those that catch my fancy.

For example, I came across reference to a study that found almost anyone can be a boss, but not everyone is cut out to be a subordinate.

So even though I’m a bit late in getting started this month, I’m excited that our theme for August is Catch the Spirit. I decided on that after reading something I wrote in the July/August 2003 issue that seemed a perfect way to set the stage for what’s coming.

I also think it exposes one of the best kept rewards of the Joyfully Jobless Journey. Here it is:

“There’s an unspeakable pleasure attending the life of a voluntary student,” said Oliver Goldsmith. I know he wasn’t talking about entrepreneurs, but I think that’s the real spirit that drives enterprising people.

What can we learn? What if we traded predictability for exciting experiences? What can we discover within ourselves that we didn’t know was there? How can our business be a blessing for those whom it serves?

Those are the kinds of questions that fire our entrepreneurial spirits—and keep us searching for answers.

If fear is holding you back, it’s a sure sign you’ve haven’t caught the spirit yet. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much to change that.

A small success, reclaiming a neglected passion or a glimpse of a bigger vision can do the trick. You can speed up the process by exposing yourself to people who are already infected.

But be warned: while the entrepreneurial spirit is contagious, there’s also no known remedy for it. Once caught, it’s a permanent condition.

The symptoms are easy to spot. You’ll see opportunity everywhere. You’ll have more ideas than you can ever handle. Life will feel like an endless adventure. You may even begin to see symptoms of it spreading to the people around you.

Best of all, you will discover that what once seemed impossible is within reach.

Who’d want to recover from that?

Wishing For a Windfall

For millions of people, their wildest (and, often, only) dream is to win the lottery. Week after week they pick up tickets at their convenience store and wait to hear their numbers called.

Why is that? Dig a bit deeper and you’ll discover that many of these folks are convinced that such an event would be the solution to all of their problems.

But would it?

A closer look at the real lives of those who once picked the winning numbers shows a slightly different picture. A surprising number of lottery multimillionaires dispose of their newfound wealth rather quickly.

The same is true for many athletes and performers whose wealth arrived in an avalanche. Most of us, it appears, are far more successful when change of any sort is a gradual process.

But that’s not the whole story.

Recently, Paula Pant’s blog, Afford Anything, had an interesting post called How Would Your Life Change If You Had Millions? The article was inspired when her partner asked her what she would do if she found herself super wealthy?

Her reply? “Nothing would change. I’d do the same things I’m doing now: buy rental properties, run a website, write articles. I’d just do it on a bigger scale.”

Pant goes on to explore how people who handled their wealth really well were often people who had already been doing what they loved and just expanded their territory as they prospered.

The piece reminded me of one of my all-time favorite episodes of Inside the Actors Studio on Bravo, an interview with Dustin Hoffman.

At the end of the evening, during the Q & A with the students, Hoffman was asked, “Why do you act?” His answer was passionate and memorable.

He said, (and I’m paraphrasing a bit here), “If I hadn’t gotten the movie (The Graduate), I’d still be doing this. I would be doing this period. I would be doing this in community theater. I’d be teaching at some college or a repertory theater. I can do it anywhere—and I would.”

Even if you consider playing the lottery to be a pleasant hobby, stop fooling yourself that a windfall is the solution to making peace with money.

Instead, consider this observation from Mike Dooley: “Both having money and not having money make fantastic adventures possible that would not otherwise be possible. Same for having, and not having anything else.”

A Laughing Matter

Shortly after I met Chris Utterback, I was having a difficult day loaded with disappointments. I decided to see if my new friend could cheer me up so I gave her a call.

When she answered the phone, I said, “This is Barbara. Make me laugh.”

To my amazement, she calmly replied, “Let me get my cartoon folder.”

When she returned to the phone, I said, “You keep a folder of cartoons?” She admitted that she had done so for quite some time and had a fine collection.

I loved that idea and promptly started one of my own which I labeled Make Me Laugh. Whenever my spirits drooped, I knew exactly where to go to get a boost.

Several months later, Chris called  to share a Ziggy cartoon that had her giggling. The punch line was, “My definition of prosperity is a checking account with commas.” I loved it, too, and that became a new target.

A checking account with commas. At the time, it seemed a far off goal, a big stretch, but in less than a year, my checking account regularly sported a comma.

So today I’m suggesting that prosperity may be easier to achieve when we lighten up a bit. Fussing and fretting about a sluggish cash flow has never, ever fixed the problem for me.

On the other hand, going for the comma has produced stellar results.

As has the reminder from Moneylove author Jerry Gilles who taught me that anything worth having is worth having fun getting.

Money Goals That Fit

When I first learned about goal-setting, I thought it was mostly a tool for determining financial aspirations. I promptly wrote down my personal goals, huge numbers beyond anything I’d ever achieved before.

Not much happened to move me ahead financially and eventually I gave up in despair.

Was I destined to be a loser in the Money Game?

Happily, I wasn’t, but it took some inner work before I began to see out changes. Here’s how I moved the numbers on paper into my bank account.

° Understand the four uses of money. It may seem obvious, but many people remain oblivious to the fact that when it comes managing money, there are four very different activities involved.

We can earn it, spend it, save it, invest it.

Most of us excel in one or two of these areas, but neglect the entire spectrum. Money ease comes when we’re wise about all four arenas and give thoughtful attention to each.

Incidentally, this is easier to do when we are self-employed and not hampered by a salary.

° Define enough. I was first introduced to this idea by Charles Handy in his wonderful book, The Hungry Spirit. It was a revelation to me.

Here’s a bit of what he says about that. “In most of life we can recognize ‘enough.’ we know when we have had enough to eat, when the heating or air conditioning is enough, when we have had enough sleep or done enough preparation.

“More than enough is then unnecessary, and can even be seen as counterproductive.”

He goes on to suggest that if we haven’t defined what enough means when it comes to finances, we’ll never be satisfied, never knowing the feeling of abundance.

This is, of course, something each of us needs to define for ourselves.

° Know your own numbers. How many people aspire to millionaire status assuming that this magical milestone will solve all their problems, meet all their needs?

Then there’s the current popularity of programs offering to teach you how to achieve a six-figure income.

Really?

Thinking that there’s some magical number—determined by someone else—that will fit us is ridiculous (and, perhaps, harmful).

° Read this first. A brilliant piece from the New York Times puts Money Happiness into perspective. I urge you to check it out for yourself.

One secret to happiness may be “underindulgence.”

° Now set some goals for yourself. Break your big picture goals into monthly, weekly, daily targets. Challenge yourself to create abundance.

Share. Enjoy. Stretch.

As Alan Cohen reminds us, “Money should be the servant of your visions, not their master.”

7 Ways To Make It Better

All startups should be thinking, “What frustrates me and how can I make it better?” It might be a small thing or it might be a big thing, but that’s the best way for them to think. If they think like that, they’re likely to build a very successful business.~ Richard Branson

Starting a Business is Step One, of course, but after that the assignment switches to  Making it Better. Not only does Step Two last longer, it becomes an on-going challenge—and source of creative fun.

Here are some idea starters for days when you feel stumped.

° Every day ask yourself these questions and listen for the answers. Those deceptively simple questions are:

What can I make today?

How can I make it better? (It being anything that is right in front of you.)

How can I amaze myself today?

° Goals aren’t enough. As valuable as formal goal setting is to the process of building a business, it’s not the only tool for growing.  A manifesto, a motto and a mantra (or two) will add power to your goal achievements.

A manifesto is your personal statement of why you do what you do. Avoid corporate gobbledygook  in writing yours.

A motto and a mantra are similar, but not quite identical. One definition of a motto says, “A maxim  adopted as a guide to one’s conduct.”

A mantra, on the other hand, is also a short statement, but may be one that begins with “I am” and includes a reminder of the kind of person you are working to become.

All three of these word tools can strengthen focus and, even, simplify decision-making.

° Put the odds in your favor. According to the National Business Incubation Association, 80-90% of businesses are still operating after 5 years where the founder has received entrepreneurial training and continues with a network group, as compared to a 10% success rate for those who do not receive training.

Be a voluntary student as often as possible.

° Get fussy about your customers and clients. When we’re a new little business, teetering towards success, it may be prudent to take on any and all comers. (Our early customers can be fine teachers, by the way.)

As your business matures, your notion about who you can best serve—and who can be the most joyful for you to work with—may become clearer.

A written statement about your ideal customer can help you weed out the ones who are going to waste your time, be difficult or simply inappropriate.

Having clarity about the folks you want to work with will help you find shortcuts to connecting with them.

° Amuse yourself with another list. As I was browsing through a journal of mine, I came across a list titled Things I Will (Probably) Never Do. Some of the items included wear a baseball cap, eat oysters, play the bagpipe and head a huge corporation.

I realize that there are some dangers in such a list, but they’re minor. While it’s also true that we sometimes surprise and delight ourselves by doing things we’d previously thought were out of reach, this kind of list is designed as an exercise in fun.

Certainly, you can also outgrow your notions about things you’d never do, just as you can outgrow things that you’ve always done.

° Test drive new ideas. Most of us would not dream of spending thousands of dollars for a car that we hadn’t taken for a spin. Our ideas deserve a test drive of their own.

However, the criteria should not be based solely on market response.I learned that lesson in the early days of building my seminar business when I had the willing cooperation of Open U, a fledgling adult ed program, to try out any and all ideas that I had.

Sometimes I discovered that a subject that seemed promising on paper wasn’t all that much fun in the classroom. Sometimes an idea I thought was a small one, turned into a surprising success.

Find your own way of creating a laboratory for running experiments on your ideas. (Just thinking about the pros and cons is not a reliable testing ground.)

° Upgrade when possible. Critics scold Apple for their frequent revisions of popular products. Of course, their most avid fans will repurchase, but this isn’t just a clever marketing ploy.

It’s evidence of an on-going obsession with improvement.

Evolution is your friend, after all, and even the core offerings of your business can be im-proved in both large and small ways. Pay attention when such opportunities reveal themselves.

Do You Speak Entrepreneur?

Becoming entrepreneurial is very much like learning a new language. While others are headed off for another predictable day, entrepreneurs are thinking about ambiguity, uncertainty and, even, paradox.

Eavesdrop on a group of self-employed folks at your neighborhood coffee shop and the conversation bears little resemblance to those overheard in an employee lunchroom.

To aid in the transition, I’ve created The 21st Century Entrepreneur’s Lexicon to help you become fluent as quickly as possible.

Adventure—any undertaking, the outcome of which cannot be known at the outset

Boss—a four-letter word that is banished, unless, of course, it’s what other people call you

Businessperson—Duncan Bannatyne said it best. “Business is not the same thing as being an entrepreneur. Businessmen have fat bellies, red braces and pin stripe suits.

“Entrepreneurs do their own thing to create a business. I want to raise the profile of the entrepreneur and make it a sexier word so that more people will do it.”

Collaboration—working with kindred spirits to produce a project or product of mutual benefit; far more satisfying than the old competition model of business

Comfort zone—place to avoid or exit from quickly

Creativity—the secret weapon of entrepreneurs

Dreambasher—one who attempts to interfere with the dreams of another; also known for nipping their own dreams in the bud

Dreambuilder—person assuming responsibility for creating the life of their dreams

Expense—financial outlay used to run a business

Failure—an option often mistaken for running out of patience

False security—trusting someone else to take care of you

Fun—the acid test of a good idea

Homework—gathering information, doing research, talking to trusted allies; a preliminary to taking action, but not a substitute for action

Inspiration—an entrepreneur’s trusted invisible friend

Integrity—the cornerstone of any worthy enterprise

Investment—financial outlay spent in the expectation of a greater future return

Kindred spirit—those folks whose faces light up when you walk in the room

Laughter—sound emanating from the Joyfully Jobless throughout the day

Lifelong learning—wonderful bonus of being self-employed

Multiple profit centers—the jigsaw pieces that make up your perfect business

Natural monopoly—when you are so perfect for the situation that the competition disappears

Options—the more, the better; sound decision-making comes from considering multiple choices and selecting the best

Problems—the hiding place of great opportunity

Purpose—the guiding light for decision-making and business-building

Quotation—wise thoughts to be collected; a good one is a seminar in a sentence

Remarkable—a worthy aspiration for an entrepreneur

Right brain—the generator of entrepreneurial ideas

Risk—not knowing for sure, but being confident enough to move ahead because you’ve done your homework

Security—knowing you can solve problems, create profit centers, always find a way

Supervisior—see Boss

Ubiquitous—my favorite definition says “appearing to be everywhere at once”; a smart entrepreneur keeps looking for new ways and places to appear

Vision—a place to come from

 °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

Although I’ve shared my lexicon in other places, I was inspired to dig it out again today after reading Scott Stratten’s delightful Top Tep Things Entrepreneurs Never, Ever Say.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out for yourself.

One Way to Accomplish More

Remember those carnival barkers who hollered, “Pick a number, any number,”? Could they have been suggesting a tool you can use to build your business?

You don’t have to be a math whiz to put numbers to work for you. Assigning a number to a project can help you focus and  give you a finish line.

Open-ended goals have a way of never reaching completion, but attach a numerical addition and getting started is much easier.

Here are a few ways to put numbers to work.

° Pick a number under ten and use it as a goal setting guide. For me, it’s the number five. You might prefer three or six.

Then instead of thinking, “I need to get more clients,” set a short term goal to get three (or whatever your favorite number is) new clients.

Of course, you can repeat this exercise as often as you like, but your chances for success increase enormously when you work with a smaller number.

Years ago, when I was floundering around trying to get my speaking  business launched,  I met a successful, but unhurried, seminar leader who told me her business plan was, “Do one, book one.”

As soon as she finished a program, she’d spend time marketing her services until she’d booked just one more.

It’s a policy I have used ever since with great success.

° Stumped about your next steps? Challenge yourself (and your subconscious mind) by asking a idea-generating question such as, “What are three ways I can grow my business right now?” Or “Who are four people I could collaborate with?”

° Write a tip sheet.  Don’t forget how useful numbers are in writing tip sheets which can be turned into articles. Six Ways to Get More Exercise is an easier article to write than one called How to Get More Exercise.

Using numbers also is a reminder that when you write a tip sheet the intention isn’t to tell everything you know.

° Numbers work equally well for subtracting things from your life that you no longer want. Instead of trying to unclutter your life all at once, for example, get rid of nine things a day until the job is done. It’s far less overwhelming if you break it down into bite sized chunks.

Go through the junk drawer and throw away nine things or toss out nine magazines or find nine things in your closet you never wear and put them in a bag for the thrift store.

Assigning a number to necessary, but not necessarily pleasant, tasks can break through procrastination and get positive momentum going.

° Pick a number, any number, and then pick one of the projects listed below.

*  Ways to get into the conversation

*  Books to add to my library

*  New profit centers to design

*  Things to study

*  New adventures to schedule

*  Self-bossers to invite to  breakfast

*  Fresh marketing tools to create

*  Media interviews to book

*  Nonessentials to eliminate

*  Ways to support other entrepreneurs

*  Articles to publish

 Or add your own projects to the list—and then get busy making them happen.

Seminar in a Sentence

Although I don’t know when I began collecting quotes, I do know that I learned about the power of words early in life. As a student at Trinity Lutheran School, I began memorizing Bible passages as soon as I entered first grade.

As I got older, I discovered that these words I’d committed to memory often came in handy when I was confused or frustrated. They also could be used to win arguments with my siblings.

When I was in my early teens, my widowed Aunt Marge advised me to memorize beautiful poems, “So you can recite them to yourself when you’re scrubbing the floor,” she explained.

That bit of advice both surprised and moved me. When I would see her working hard to care for her two daughters, I often wondered what lovely poem was on her mind.

More beautiful words entered my life when I chose English as my college major and, later, taught English to reluctant high school students. However, this was more of an exercise in appreciating fine writing than it was in taking those words to heart.

It wasn’t until I began my journey of self-discovery that I found myself startled, encouraged and inspired by the words of others. How did that author know I needed to hear those very words?

Were there universal truths that could be revisited over and over again and make an impact every time?

Was I the only one who needed frequent reminders?

I really didn’t care what the explanation was. It was enough to know that despite distances of time and geography, there were others who had thoughts that touched me and, frequently, lighted my path.

When I began writing myself, it seemed natural to include quotes from my growing collection.

I also noticed that although I never intentionally memorized these words, they often had lodged in my memory and would show up at appropriate times—providing answers or encouragement.

One day a quote-loving friend and I were talking about the power of words. I said, “I think a good quote is a seminar in a sentence.”  My friend agreed and the description stuck.

Two summers ago, I gathered some of my favorites in a little book called, of course, Seminar in a Sentence. I intended it as a handy guide to pull out whenever a quick seminar was needed.

The pocket-sized book has quotes organized by subject including Dreams and Dreaming, The Creative Spirit, Work and Love, Beginnings, Create Abundance, Small is Still Beautiful, Taking Risks, The Power of Ideas and several others.

You can add it to your library—or purse or pocket—by ordering it directly from me.

As Doris Saatchi reminds us, “Pure space, filled with thoughts rather than things, is good for the soul.”

And if you have a favorite quote, feel free to share it in the comment section below.