I woke early Sunday morning. I beat the sun again. I started the coffee; turned on the computer; and while they fired up, I cleaned up and fired up myself. After I poured that first cup of coffee, I sat down to see what was happening on Twitter and one interesting Tweet from @WamdaME timed at 03:49a.m. was waiting for me.
After another tweet or two, we established that WamdaME was asking about “starting your own company,” so I sent the following stream of tweets to her under the hashtag #owningit and favorited them too.
It seemed a good idea to share them here too.
THE 7 Key Steps to Becoming Your Own Boss
The seven steps I tweeted might seem to have come easily at 4:00 a.m. that morning. But every success is build on our skill set and talents — what we’re good at — and experience. Strategy and strategic thinking come naturally to me. However, I learned this strategic process by testing it constantly and doing it wrong until I found the way to “right.” After the experience of building a conference business from a blog post and a consulting business from that, I can tell you this is what works.
- Look over your successes to find what they have in common.
- Recognize the skill sets and experience that you’ve already acquired.
- Name the values that define you.
- Know how to recognize the people who believe in those same values.
- Get to know the people who share your values and understand their goals, dreams, and problems better than your own.
- Identify a problem that you enjoy solving at the crossroads of your success skill set and your values.
- Build a strategy to serve the people who share your values and the problem you solve for them.
- Make it your mission to be mission critical to the mission of the people you serve.
- Understand your position – how your size, skills, visibility, competitive place, and relationships offer opportunity.
- Leverage conditions – find the opportunity inside every trend, cycle, shift, change in power, etc.
- Make command decisions – commit to where you’re going, persuade the right people to help, focus on the things that move you forward.
- Build Networks and Systems – Connect the people who help you thrive. Have an ever simpler process for serving them.
- Be in with your head, heart, hands, and both feet.
And the most critical …
Offer those ideal customers (the people who share your values) the solution to the problem (something that makes their life easier, simpler, or more meaningful) and make that offer everywhere they gather in ways that are easy for them to say yes. And keep listening to their responses , tweaking your offers, and practicing your craft to give the people who love what you do more of what they love, less of what they don’t like, and something uniquely surprising and valuable that only you can bring.
Success in establishing a business grows from what has always has always made us successful — those talents and gifts that define us expressed in the ways that only we can bring them to the world — and such a deep seated commitment to an idea, a quest, a goal that we’re willing to focus all we are to make it real.
It takes commitment to become your own boss — a commitment to yourself, to the people you serve, and to the value of what you offer.
That commitment has been in every success you’ve won.
Make the commitment and you’ll become an irresistible force.
Ever had an experience like that?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!
