Being A More Effective Entrepreneur

This is a harsh truth I have to face myself every few months. And it usually slaps me upside the head and manifests itself as me hiding in my room, curled up on my bed; surrounded by a bag of chips, a container of cookies (a girl needs options!) and Netflix on binge mode. There may be excessive tears/grumpiness and a whole lot of burn out. Which physically feels like every cell in my body has deflated like a flattened ball that got power-kicked in one too many rounds of kickball.

Relatable?

Spreading ourselves too thin is in our DNA as entrepreneurs. We are built and programmed to take it ALL on. We absolutely pride ourselves on our ability to accomplish task after task after task. We don’t say no, we start early and go late. Our kids don’t remember what we look like, our spouse sees divorce papers in their future. We can not help ourselves. Our dream, our ambition, our PASSION is all fueling us to keep going at an unsustainable pace.

Why is it so hard to let go? Why is the mindset of doing it all so engrained in our psyche?

What I have to remind myself of, OFTEN, is that I will be far more effective if I go deeper instead of wider.

If you’re saying out loud inside your head “That doesn’t even make any sense!” Believe me, I was right there with you not all that long ago. And I still struggle with the follow through of this concept. However it is a necessary component of business.

Going deeper means you are working on the things inside your zone of genius. You are doing the things you are passionate about and good at, the things that will MOVE your business FORWARD. It is ridiculously easy to fall into the trap of giving ourselves so much busy work, thinking that is running the business and making it grow. But it’s not. It absolutely is not. Because us getting stuck in the minutiae of endless tasks takes our focus away from what we do best, which is whatever it is that got you starting the business to begin with.

For my esthetic students, when discussing UV rays and the energy and power for destruction they have I created the analogy of going bowling.

Your UVB rays are the bowler who steps up to the line, gives EVERYTHING they have to getting that ball to haul ass down the lane. What happens, however, is that the ball has so much speed and force as it travels, it strikes the pin and bounces off it. Only knocking that one pin, and maaaaaaybe it’s neighbor over. The UVB rays coming down from the sun have such a short, powerful wavelength that it hits our skin cells and bounces off of them, creating a burn.

The UVA rays, however, travel with a much longer wavelength; meaning it travels slower. This is the three year old who goes up with their mom, insists on rolling the ball granny style themself. The ball lobs down the lane, taking half a millennium to reach the pins. And it moseys through the pins knocking each and every single one down, resulting in a strike for that little ankle biter. UVA rays, with their long slow wavelengths travel deeper into the skin – affecting our very DNA and causing changes that leads to skin cancer and rapidly aging skin.

We want to be the UVA rays, slowing down and being INTENTIONAL in what we do and focusing on what matters most – the things that will lead to profitability. If we are the UVB rays, moving quickly and bouncing from task to task to task; not only are we getting nothing meaningful accomplished we are likely moving ourselves further and further away from profit and sustainability in our business.

NICHING DOWN

Very often when we come out of beauty school, we tend to try and dabble in everything we can. We cast a very wide net, hoping to reel in as many clients as possible with ALL THE CHOICES. When in reality, most people find their greatest and biggest leaps of success when they niche down their services and truly specialize in just a few, or even one, area. This will maximize your profitability, your time, and your marketing budget. You won’t have to keep as many supplies in stock – spending less money overall. Your profit margins can increase when you’re able to hone in on specifically what you need and by leveling up your experience and quality.

So how does that look, in comparison?

Going Deeper by Niching Down

• Maximize profitability

• Operating in your zone of genius

• More effective supply purchasing and stocking

• Staying motivated by being able to do what you are passionate about doing.

Going Wider By Doing It All

• Higher percentage of your profits spent in marketing and supplying a larger number of services, decreasing your overall profitability.

• Resources like time and energy are spread much thinner to accommodate everything you are offering.

• Jack of all trades, master of none: meaning you have no clear strength or purpose in which to draw ideal clients in with.

Focus on your Zone of Genius

This buzz phrase has become the thing to throw around lately. It’s pretty self explanatory, right? Working within the area you excel at. It’s more than that, however. In the book The Big Leap (Gay Hendricks) where this concept was credited with being laid out, there are 4 zones we operate in:

The Zone Of Incompetence
The Zone Of Competence
The Zone Of Excellence
The Zone Of Genius

Zone of Incompetence

Getting stuck in this zone is basically hell. You’re not good at it, and you hate it. But you keep doing it because you’re afraid to step outside this zone. Sometimes, no matter how bad a situation is, our mind tells us it’s better than the unknown of trying to escape this space. Fear of failure, fear of not reaching our potential keeps us here.

Zone of Competence

You can do it decently well. You may or may not enjoy what you are doing, but it is not exciting to you or is the reason you get up in the morning. You’re not driven to push yourself, you’re not motivated to achieve. It’s a thing that gets you by that others could possibly do better.

Zone of Excellence

You do this thing really quite well. You enjoy it well enough. But it just doesn’t light you up. You don’t feel driven or passionate about this particular thing. A lot of people stay in this zone because they convince themselves it’s either selfish or unreasonable to want something more when they already have something they excel at.

Zone of Genius

This is where what you excel at meets what you are passionate about. Your purpose, what you are here to contribute to society with who you are and what you do. This is where finding your why (which you can read about HERE) comes in to play. Which you can then use to focus and hone in your beauty practice to be exactly what you want that fulfills you AND your clients, and attracts the exact clients you want to work with.

How does operating within your zone of genius help you work deeper instead of wider? Answer: It helps you hone in your message, your marketing, your branding, your services . . . everything about your business and what you are doing becomes laser focused. You don’t even have to think about it beyond “does this fit my why, my purpose, my zone of genius?” If it doesn’t? It can get tossed out and you don’t need to spend the energy on it any further.

Do What Matters To You

This is huge. It will help you avoid burnout, but it can also help you overcome hang ups like imposter syndrome and shiny object syndrome. Let’s face it – we all experience those! But if you are so zoned in on what matters to you, the fire behind what you are doing, you can overcome anything in order to share your voice and message to your audience that needs to hear it from YOU. Trekking through the muck of all the “going wide” tasks wears us down until we don’t have the energy to do what we love, leading us to feeling like there’s no point in doing it at all. Far too many beautifully passionate entrepreneurs are lost to burn out.

Ways to do this are recognizing what you need to (and should) outsource. Spending the money to do this will hurt, I know! Believe me, I’ve been there. You will come up with ALL THE REASONS why you don’t have the funds to outsource anything at all. It’s a legitimate concern, for sure! The thing that is amazing, and has been proven to me over and over again: when you begin to operate from an abundant mindset (which we will totally go over in another post!) you start to find ways to things happen. More and more opportunities present themselves, unexpected funds come in. It takes that mindset shift, and it is a powerful, wonderful tool to have.

I’ll give you an example. Just recently, I was looking for ways to get into a physical space for the Lounge. My dream is to have an actual place we can go: a true resource center. First, though, I just wanted to find a place to hold classes and networking events. I had zero idea how to bring in enough funds to have a space. I had been brainstorming for weeks, and finally I just began talking about it to my little mastermind group. And LITERALLY the next day, I got a call from the company I worked for ten years ago doing product design, asking if I could help them out with an overflow of work they had. And then, I kid you not, $800 appeared in my bank account. I woke up, checked my accounts like I do every morning, and there was over $800 in my account. I about lost my mind! It was a back payment that I didn’t even realize I was owed! Now, I’m not saying $800 will appear in your banks tomorrow morning. I WISH! That was a total and complete “what the fuhhhh” kind of moment. But I kid you not, when you start focusing that energy and putting it into the world that you will make this happen, and this is what you need: your brain puts out those feelers and pays attention to the world around you and brings in those conversations, the people, the places you need to get yourself to your next step.

While you need to maintain focus, it’s also important to recognize when you need to take a step away. Healing your energy, giving your body and mind a break. We are in a passion based business, which makes it supremely hard to step away from. Especially in that building phase when it’s easy to be operating from a scarcity mindset that pushes you to work long and rest never. The resting is just as vital as the working: in order to go further in the long game of business ownership we need to move slower, more intentionally. Which is SO counterintuitive, right? Our society is all about the hustle, the grind, the long hours and being productive even in our sleep!

Always keep this in mind: Entrepreneurship is a mega marathon – definitely not a sprint. It’s a game of chess, or whatever other analogy you need to recognize that you have to slow down. You have to take care of yourself, you HAVE to be strategic and smart about the moves you make. Hustle and grind gets us thinking by being constantly busy, constantly going going going we are moving our business forward. Instead what that tends to get us is stagnancy and kills our drive.

Let’s all take a collective breath, and vow to ourselves that we will find what going slower to go deeper means to us. We will take care of our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual needs so we can operate as our highest selves. We will outsource what we can and focus on the profit making tasks that only we can do as the heart of our business. We got into this for a purpose, and we will keep that purpose alive and well.

One last thing: we will also remember that it takes a village to raise a business. Reach out to trusted friends, colleagues. Business ownership does not have to be isolating or a mountain we climb solo. Find a mastermind, a group of other business owners who understand what you are doing because they’re doing it too. Create space for each other. You will never feel as empowered and at peace as you do when you are with these people. And that alone is worth everything.