Instigator Blog

Before hopping into the proverbial sack with a new business partner, you need to ask these questions:

1. What’s our exit strategy?
2. How will we handle/moderate conflict?
3. How much equity will we each own?
4. What are the roles each of us will play?
5. What are each other’s expectations for ourselves and for one another?

If you don’t ask these questions and discuss them thoroughly and honestly, you’re going to be surprised at some point in the future (and not in a good way.)

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One of my goals from Thanksgiving to Christmas was to run one last group writing project. I thought about a few ideas, but decided to look back in time and ask the question, “What did you learn this year?”

I’m not the type to overly reflect on the past but given how much I’ve learned and how much experience I’ve gained over the past year, it strikes me as the kind of thing that many of you would be interested in. Not just what I’ve learned and my experience but everyone’s newfound insight and ideas. And of course, your own.

When you sit back and really examine what you’ve learned I know a ton of super interesting things will come out.

So, here are the details:

• Starting Monday, December 18th write at least one post answering the question, “What did you learn this year?”
• You’ve got until Sunday, December 24th when the group writing project ends.
• Post a link to Instigator Blog from your post(s). (And feel free to use the image in this post.)
• Tag your post(s) (for Technorati if you do so), “what I learned”.
• Email me to let me know about your post (easiest way for me to find out about it.)
• I’ll provide at least 2 links back to your post and encourage everyone to check out your blogs!

To add a little gift-giving fun to this project, I’m also going to randomly give away a few prizes:

• Phil Gerbyshak’s book 10 Ways to Make It Great! (two signed copies!)
• The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living by Randy Komisar (recommended by Austin Hill)
• What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting by Ted Demopoulos
• Marketing Outrageously by Jon Spoelstra (recommended by Jim Kukral)
• (More prizes may be forthcoming!)

(Note: Even if you donated a prize or recommended one, please contribute to the group writing project anyway. If you’re picked to win something, I’ll make sure I don’t give you what you donated!)

Obviously you won’t get these prizes before Christmas but I hope they’ll be a nice little boost come 2007!

Let me thank everyone in advance who participates and enjoys this group writing project. I can’t wait to learn about what you’ve learned in 2006.

Please help me spread the word about this group writing project. I’d love to get 50 submissions, but that’s going to take some work!

Inspire. Motivate. Energize.

Last week a good friend and I were chatting about where I see my business life going in the next year or so. I’ve got plenty of goals after all, including starting a couple of new businesses. I can’t remember the exact conversation but at one point I said something to the effect of, “I’ve never had a problem visualizing success…”

It sounded a bit egotistical when it came out, and rather matter-of-fact. Visualizing success has never been a problem for me.

That’s not the case for everyone. Sometimes, when you’re “very deep into something” you think of it as obvious or straightforward. But for many others, you can be sure that’s not true. You might think writing a great blog is a no-brainer, but others struggle with it. You might think making sales calls is easy, others shudder at the thought. You might think it’s plain as the nose on your face that you have to network in order to build a successful business. Others haven’t realized that yet.

Your expertise is not obvious. What you excel at isn’t common.

Visualizing success is important. My belief in my own success, my vision of that, has propelled me through lots of difficult times. And I see 3 types of visualization that have helped me.

1. Daily Visualization. Visualization is an active process. Not something you do once and forget about. Isabel Isidro shares an interesting technique at 10 Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs:
   

   “… when climbing stairs, recite your goal with every step you take. So if you want more money, say ‘I will have money’ in every step of the stairs. This technique will reinforce your goal and keep it fresh in your consciousness.”

   I use similar techniques regularly. Very often driving home from work, reviewing the day in my head, I’ll mentally repeat my goals, visualizing success. And, I’m often tackling short-term goals. Visualizing short-term goals and success is easier to do; it feels more realistic, and because of that you can use daily visualization of short-term goals as a building block for something grander.

2. Long-Term Visualization. To me, this means visualizing longer-term goals, big things that you want to achieve. It’s harder to visualize success in these cases; the successes seem so far off. But mix in a bit of dreamer, egotist, and fearlessness and long-term visualization becomes a reality.

   How to Overcome Your Fear of Success at Trizle notes that the brain actually starts to believe things have happened the more you think about them. So the more you visualize big-time success, the more your brain thinks it’s true. That creates a sense of comfort with achieving your goals, helping to remove fear.

   I can attest to this phenomenon, which leads to my third mode of visualization…

3. Constant Visualization. Think something long enough and it becomes reality. Some might call this an over-developed ego, and I do think you can overdo it by lying to yourself. Visualization is only the first step to success, not the last. People who do nothing but visualize success are just dreamers, and entrepreneurs are more than that. We’re the best combination of dreamers and doers.

   Constant visualization isn’t something you consciously do. It evolves over time. If I really look back, I’d say my own constant visualization has a lot to do with my parents; they instilled a healthy, positive ego in me, and that’s led me to always believing in my own success. Daily and long-term visualization can turn into constant visualization. You’ll know you’re there when something bad happens and you recover faster than you used to. Instead of getting overly frustrated, depressed and negative, your response will turn positive more quickly. You’ll be naturally buoyed by something inside of you. That’s your ego talking. That’s constant visualization buffering your brain against crap.

The most successful visualization comes from the right combination of short-term, long-term and constant visualization. Skewed in any one direction, or if any of the three are absent, you’re not arming yourself enough to achieve your goals. I haven’t achieved a perfect balance yet. I lean mostly towards long-term visualization, which in my experience has resulted in being less-than-active on a daily basis in ensuring my own success. I lacked short-term goals and daily visualization techniques to remind myself, “Success doesn’t come to you, you’ve got to go grab it…”

So let me ask you…

Do You Visualize Your Success? How? Does it Work?

Photo by Goldschleife.

Everyone’s heard the phrase, “Small business owners wear a lot of hats.”

True, but security guard?

Last night my business partner called me around 11pm, just as I was getting ready to call it a day. The alarm company had just contacted him; the alarm in our office had gone off and they had dispatched the police. My partner asked me to go check it out (I live 10 minutes away.)

This has happened before (all false alarms as far as we could tell) but off I went into the cold, dark and drizzly night, hair tussled, eyelids heavy, to see if there were bad guys rooting around in my office.

When I arrived at the building everything looked OK. The cops weren’t there. I called my partner back, asked him to contact the alarm company and find out if the cops were in fact coming. He called back in a few minutes and told me that the police had come, but since everything looked OK from the outside of the building and you need special keys to get in, they left. And, the alarm had only been tripped for less than 1 second; the front door contact had been broken and reset almost immediately. So it was likely a false alarm. Why the first agent at the alarm company didn’t tell my partner that information is beyond me.

So, being a brave little business owner, I trudged through the dark, empty building to my office. Although pictures ran through my head of being stabbed by some drugged-up lunatic thief, I knew the odds were good that it was a false alarm. The door was locked. I went in, turned on some lights, looked into each office and there was…

Nothing.

The office was empty (of bad guys that is.) All the computer equipment was in place and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

It was a false alarm. Phew. No bandits to wrestle with!

I went home and went to bed. End of story.

That’s what being a small business owner is all about …wearing every single hat.

More importantly, it shows you that being a small business owner / entrepreneur is all about handling unexpected situations.

Leah Maclean at Working Solo has tagged me with a meme that’s been rolling through the blogosphere. It asks people to post about 5 things our blog communities don’t know about us.

I was happy to get tagged, cause it’s fun, and I like doing similar things with group writing projects I’ve created, but the more I thought about it, the harder time I had finding 5 things to tell people. I’m not inclined to tell you about my 3rd nipple for example (oops!) but I do want my 5 things to be entertaining and interesting.

So here’s my list of 5 things you didn’t know about me:

1. I’m left-handed. A southpaw. Always have been. And you know what they say about people who are left-handed right?
2. I can’t skate. This is rather embarrassing for me as a big hockey fan and a good ole Canadian boy. I tried to learn as a kid, but I’ve got flat feet and complained a lot. Eventually my parents gave up.
3. I love collecting things. I don’t do it much anymore (no time really) but I’ve collected lots of stuff: comics, hockey cards, stamps, toy soldiers and more. Mostly when I was a kid but the urge to collect is still there.
4. I used to be a complainer. Complaining is easy. I used to do a lot of it. This may surprise some people because much of what I write here is fairly positive and optimistic. I’m over the complaining now (for the most part!)
5. I took a few years off. I didn’t quit work to travel the world or anything like that, but mentally and emotionally I was checked out for quite some time. I lost my mojo. I’ve got it back though, but those years (and they weren’t that long ago) were pretty bland and unproductive.

So there you have it. Ben Yoskovitz in a nutshell (wow, now I’m talking in the 3rd person!)

Thank you to Leah for tagging me with this. It’s my turn to spread the meme further and hopefully be entertained by what others tell us about themselves. I’d like to know 5 more things about:

• Bill Baren
• Shawn Hessinger
• Becky McCray
• Jordan Behan
• Noah Kagan

[tags]5 things, bill baren, shawn hessinger, becky mccray, jordan behan, noah kagan, meme, online community, viral[/tags]