9 Ways to Feed Your Entrepreneurial Spirit

 

My definition of job security is having a strong, healthy entrepreneurial spirit. That can only occur if you feed yours regularly with activities and thoughts that are nuturing. Here are some of my favorite ways to do just that.

°  Give yourself a change of scenery. It may be efficient for factories to standardize their production lines, but our creative selves thrive on variety.

Take a different route when running errands, take a sabbatical, take a vacation, take your laptop to the park. You can be productive without being routine.

°  Tithe your time. Don’t just send a check to support things you care about. Find ways to share your time.

When Joe started his own insurance agency he decided he’d spend 10% of his time doing volunteer work. Eventually, he worked his way up to 50% volunteer time. Did his business suffer? Not at all. He made so many contacts along the way that his insurance business grew naturally.

This is another way to back up your personal values with action.

°  Create a research project. What would you like to learn more about? Look for a way to fund your research.

Start by checking the grant directories at your local library. You may have a project that someone is eager to fund. Get clear about how this will enhance you personally and entrepreneurially.

You could  find yourself photographing  mosaics in Morocco or interviewing artisans in Ecuador. Use your imagination to come up with a fresh research project that excites you.

°  Share what you already know. Write a tip sheet and get it published—or publish it yourself and distribute it. Mentor a new entrepreneur or a kid. Put your experiences together and teach a seminar.

There’s no better confidence builder than sharing your unique insights and experiences.

°  Find  great entrepreneurial stories. On a flight, I read about a mother and her daughters who started a fascinating business called Junk Gypsies. I was so enchanted by their story that I logged onto their Web site the next day and became a customer.

There are thousands of inspiring stories out there. Make it your hobby to find them. After all, it’s your tribal history.

°  Offer praise. Master the art of writing the exquisite fan letter. Let other people know that you noticed.

After I read Monica Wood’s breathtaking novel Any Bitter Thing, I began planning a review for my local library Web site as well as Amazon. And the author deserves a letter of thanks as well, I decided, to know that her writing has touched her reader.

Catch others doing something good and let them know you noticed. It’s good for them and good for your soul.

°  Learn how to synthesize ideas. We should have learned how to do this in school, but I fear many of us haven’t.

For instance, I was reading Jim Miller’s Savvy Senior column in my local paper. He was asked by a reader how to find a reliable handyman. He offered dozens of suggestions.

As I read what he had to say, I thought that anyone wanting to have such a business could find some great suggestions for marketing themselves using the suggestions in Miller’s article.

It’s equally important to look at enterprises that are nothing like yours and figure out what you can adapt from their way of doing things or their overall philosophy.

° Attend with a friend. I always like to see pairs of people showing up together in seminars. I realize that sometimes a friend comes along hoping to discourage their companion from doing anything foolish.

However, sharing a learning experience with an entrepreneurial friend can be a great way to extend and deepen the lessons learned. There’s nothing like building dreams with someone who gets it.

° Record your journey. Keep an illustrated journal of your entrepreneurial life. Don’t just include the big events; do a photo essay of an ordinary day in the life of your business.

The sooner you begin this, the better. It might become your grandchildren’s favorite storybook. Even more importantly, when we record and acknowledge our own lives, it raises our self-worth.

 

Anatomy of an Idea

After the sudden deaths of his parents in 1999, University of Oklahoma employee Jim Miller was devastated. To help ease his grief, he began working at a local retirement community and writing a question-and-answer column for seniors in his hometown of Norman. 

At first he did it for fun and to help the retirement community get a little free publicity, but the deeper he delved, the more he realized that easy to understand information pertaining to senior issues was hard to come by. 

Miller was convinced that there was a market for his Savvy Senior column. When finding a syndicate to distribute his column failed, he decided to self-syndicate, contacting small newpapers throughout the country. Thousands of letters and follow-up telephone calls brought in hundreds of buyers at $3 to $5 each. 

Miller’s idea continued to grow. Not only does his column appear in more and more newspapers every week, his Web site The Savvy Senior  is loaded with more great information. 

His first book, also called The Savvy Senior, was published by Hyperion and he now makes regular appearances on The Today Show sharing new products designed for the senior market and offering tips.

So what did Jim Miller do right? And how can we follow his example? There are several obvious and a few not-so-obvious aspects to his success story.

°  His business was born from his heart.  Miller got a master’s degree in education, but never got past teacher training because he found out he didn’t enjoy working with kids.

Through volunteering, he discovered that there was a group of people he enjoyed being around and helping. 

° He identified a problem—saw something was missing—and set about to solve it. Many great ideas come about in just this way. Most people who find something missing simply sigh and say, “Why doesn’t somebody do something about this?” 

The entrepreneur recognizes that a void is something that needs to be filled—an opportunity to explore.

° He focused on his niche market. Miller’s audience was clearly defined. His idea to market the column also was highly focused with small local papers being his target.  

° Began with intellectual capital, not big financing. Miller created his business by generating cash flow with a minimal financial investment.

° He was willing to do the groundwork. Locating and contacting thousands of small papers was a grueling, time-consuming task, but Miller embraced the chore because he was convinced that his idea was a good one.

° He was not intimidated by his youth, his lack of credentials or existing organizations that served his market. In other words, he focused on his vision, not his obstacles.

° He kept building his expertise. Research is a big part of what it takes to become an expert.

Miller didn’t start out being an expert in the fine points of Social Security or Medicare, but he proved that he’s a willing learner and thorough researcher.

* Personal touch is crucial. Miller answers all e-mail questions himself and gets his column ideas from the mail that comes in. His audience is an on-going source of ideas.

* He took advantage of opportunities to grow. Collecting his columns into a book was a natural progression; getting a gig on a popular morning television show required a willingness to stretch.

So what did Jim Miller do right? Just about everything, it appears. We can all learn alot by applying this same process of analysis to successful enterprises and see what winners have to teach us..