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What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…
Did I tell you that my goal for 2018 was to sell Mirror Mirror six times? I promised myself that if I didn’t achieve that goal, I should review the feasibility of the business (although it would take a lot more than a few sales short to quit).
The last time I posted a blog with Femflections, there had been 2 sales for 2018. Now it looks like there could be 7! When I say a ‘sale’ it doesn’t have to be delivered within 2018, but it does look like a few more might be, even though it’s November already. That’s incredible! What a boost.
I need to tell you all about it…
But first, I’m tired. I keep waking up at about 2.30am for an hour or two. Seeing myself from the outside, I notice a bit of panic, worry, tension.
Sometimes I think I might have OCD on getting stuff done. I’m frantically thinking of actions and racing my way through them. It’s still just me doing the heavy lifting. Proposals to write, ideas to capture and convert, processes to develop, technology to enable….
I suppose now’s the time to put all of that learning around self-management into action. I need to do this to get through all of this stuff a get safely into the New Year.
What stuff?
Summary:
| What’s happening? | What’s stressing me out? |
| A public sector organization of 60 people want me to lead a team retreat, including a Quick Scan for all teams in advance. Love it! Setting out the proposal was EASY!! | I am moving the Quick Scan across to automated reporting and an updated question set. Let’s hope this is done before I need to send the link to these teams! |
| An ‘agile’ association wants me to set up a behaviour and knowledge gaps analysis tool potentially leading to lots of Mirror Mirror work via their consultants | Fantastic but this is not exactly my bag. I’m sure it will be fine – let’s hope I get the commercials set up properly on this. |
| Someone came up with a great idea to develop a similar behaviour / knowledge gap analysis tool for teams who need to implement the new IT security data privacy legislation – they have a budget, we could sell this as a sideline | Yes, it’s a sideline – Is it worth taking my eye off the ball for this? I would need some investment – do I know anyone who would want to run this as a separate project? |
| One new repeat business sale for Mirror Mirror Full Picture – same team | Great – but the Mirror Mirror process has changed a lot since we last ran it. Is it going to be easy to compare the data? |
| One new urgent enquiry for a Steering Committee in need of help via an agency in the Nordics | Lovely – but how urgent? Can I do all of this work? |
And it goes on. Just now got another lead in from a contact of mine in the Middle East.
And amongst all this I decided to change a couple of things I’m not happy with (including my hairdresser).
- THE TEAM TEST:I decided to cancel my plans to run the social media advertising campaign promoting the Team Test because
- a) it doesn’t make sense for my budget. I contacted 3 friends of mine in similar unique B2B situations, and they said that clever content marketing is getting them some good results but advertising spend just hasn’t been worth it. It’s entirely possible that the total 15k budget I had set out for this activity doesn’t get the results we’re looking for. If that’s the case, it’s basically commercial suicide, which is a risk I can’t take.
- b) It’s too early. Mirror Mirror has been knocking on lots of doors to find an opening in the market. This could be mergers and acquisitions, it could be agile – I don’t think it’s HR / Communications – it’s too early to tell. The interest I’m getting is random. It could go anywhere and when it does, I’ll really need to hone-in to make the most of it. It would be odd, now, to go into testing markets with messages without having first established a foothold anywhere.
- THE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR. Now this one has been really bugging me. The intention was that this guy – whom I have a lot of respect for – would support the growth of Mirror Mirror by connecting me to his network over a 6-month period. He was to get a small share of the business for 3 years in return. Now 6 weeks to go to the end of that duration and zero leads have been passed over. I called it out. We spoke. Now he’s on a generous commission-only deal. What a weight off my mind!
Over the past week I’ve felt powerful, confident, overburdened, stressed. I need to manage that.
A good contact of mine told me it took them about 2.5 years before they saw their business take off. If I was being superstitious, I could say that the minute I started GIVING to the Universe (with the team test), I started getting things BACK. Do you believe in that?
Mirror Mirror– improving team effectiveness through behavioural and cognitive alignment.
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