Modesty & Business Do Not Go Hand in Hand

Bootcamp

I’m SUPER excited!!

Entrepreneur Bootcamp for Women starts next Wednesday and I’m right in the middle of the launch for it now. Talk about a learning curve…I’m hosting preview calls , inviting people to be affiliates, sending emails to my list and hoping that I’m not annoying anyone yet.

And while all of this is new and exciting it’s also a little bit scary and nerve wracking. I’ve been trying to figure out what’s been getting to me and I finally realized it. I’m talking about this program a lot which feels like I’m talking about myself a lot. I don’t know about you but I grew up being told that it wasn’t polite to brag and that being modest was important. But if I was to follow that advice in my business…well, I’d be out of business.

I was talking with my coach the other day while I was having somewhat of a panic attack and feeling all “salesy” and uncomfortable. She asked me why I was doing this, why did I create this program and why am I running it? My answer was easy – I found starting a business to be a shitload of work. There was SO much I didn’t know and I had to learn it the hard way and it took a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of money. I want to help make the process easier for other women entrepreneurs who are in the exact same place I was a few years ago. I want to make their experience easier and more fun!

She then asked if I believed in my program. “Wholeheartedly,” I said. “It’s exactly what I wished I’d had when I was struggling to learn everything including the stuff I didn’t know that I needed to know”.

This conversation has allowed me to feel really proud of the program I created. Entrepreneur Bootcamp for Women rocks and although I still feel slightly uncomfortable trying to get and create so much attention around something I’m involved with, I also know it’s how I can help people. If people don’t know this program even exists then I don’t get to make a difference, I don’t get the chance to help someone out.

Sing it from the roof tops!

So if you have ever felt awkward around making a “big deal” out of something you offer, I encourage you to take a stand and remind yourself that what you do is important. You do what you do so you can make a difference for others. If people don’t know about you or your product/service then they can’t find you and you can’t help them. If you’ve got something great to offer I challenge you to sing it from the roof tops…because it is a big deal. If you don’t make a big deal out of it, who will?

Your first step can be to drop down in the comments section below and write about one awesome thing you offer (product/service).

Jen

ps. If you’re at all intrigued by EB4W join me tomorrow at 2:00pm MT for a free preview call http://jenniferpowter.com/businessbootcampnow/

Run Your Own Race

One foot in front of the other….

As someone who has run countless races and participated in many different types of endurance/adventure activities, the one thing I know how to do well is “run my own race”.

This means focusing on my own goal and my own training. It means NOT worrying about what everybody else is doing (ie. how they’re training, what they’re eating, the equipment they’re using, etc). Of course I pay a bit of attention as it’s always nice to learn from those who are more experienced than me, but I never lose sight of my goal, my race, my journey.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like if I kept switching my training program based on what a faster/stronger athlete was doing and then doing it again and again as I continued to discover my stronger competition.

This wouldn’t help me at all.

In fact, it would totally deplete me, decrease my focus, decrease the effectiveness of my original training plan and probably take me a helluva lot longer to reach my goal – AND I’d probably have some pretty big setbacks along the way emotionally as well.

SO WHY DO WE DO THIS IN BUSINESS?

I’ve seen and talked to so many people (and, I’ve done this myself) who are looking for that “magic pill”. The one program that’s going to change everything, the ‘entrepreneur shortcut’.

It’s so easy to look around and start comparing yourself and your business to others out there and all this does is keep you stuck…treading water…the whole comparison thing is like poison for your brain & your heart.

It leads to discouragement, insecurity and self doubt. It can make you question if you’re cut out for this, wonder if you’ll ever be “successful” and make you feel less than. So, instead…..

RUN YOUR OWN RACE

• Set your own business goals – don’t wander around aimlessly doing stuff half ass, it doesn’t work
• Write out exactly where you want to be and how you’re gonna get there…write this on paper (yes, this is akin to having a business plan).
• Seek out mentors and have some sort of a “coach”
• Then put your head down and RUN YOUR OWN RACE, simply put one foot in front of the other and keep going

I realized that in sport I was always most successful when I had the following things:

• A specific race picked that I was training – a goal
• A training program written on paper so that I knew exactly what I had to do and when
• I had a team or community of peers to train with
• I had a coach – someone to remind me of my goal, push me when I didn’t feel like doing what I needed to do, and reminded me of what I was trying to achieve

It took me a lot longer than it should have to transfer these basic things to my business. But now that I have —my business is rocking!

Last words:

RUN YOUR OWN RACE

When The Pressure Creeps In, The Joy Seeps Out

Here’s a little story for you:

Marcy loves to run. She’s been running for years and does it for the health benefits and plus the fact being out in nature just makes her feel good. She feels free when she runs. It’s her “me” time and is a hugely satisfying part of her life.

Marcy went for a run with a friend one day who suggested that she enter the upcoming local 10km race. Marcy thought that sounded fun so she ded. Much to her surprise she won her age category and is the third female finisher overall. Her friends and family can’t stop congratulating Marcy on her amazing run and as encouragement they suggest she should get “serious” about running…you know, really try.

Marcy, thrilled by the feelings of success she’s experiencing decides that she’s going to up her game and get serious.

Fast Forward One Year:

Marcy has completed numerous races and has done very, very well but isn’t satisfied with her results. She wants to be faster. She wants to win. She wants to be the best. She looks around at what the other runners are doing trying to figure out what they eat, when they train, how they train, and so forth. She knows she’s putting pressure on herself but she also knows she’s capable of so much more. So, she works harder, trains harder.

Fast forward another year

Marcy is miserable. She’s sick a lot. Her relationships feel stressful lately. And, she now hates running. What used to bring her such joy now feels like a burden. When she knows she needs to go for a run she avoids it, procrastinates, tries to make herself busy with other things so she doesn’t “have” to go. In the end she goes for a run but it doesn’t feel fun anymore.

Last fast forward

It’s a year later and Marcy has quit running. She’s moderately depressed and wondering why she didn’t succeed? She can’t seem to see how amazing her results actually were. In no time she went from being a recreational runner to a highly competitive athlete who was winning all sorts of races. Instead of feeling dejected, Marcy could feel proud of her achievements but because of the pressure she put on herself and the goals that she set all she sees is what she didn’t do/achieve/accomplish.

Has this ever happened to you?

Think about it. Think about your relationship, your business, your parenting, your own personal goals. Have you ever stopped and wondered if the pressure you’re putting on yourself is reasonable? Don’t get me wrong…I’m all for having BIG goals but I’m also all about having  a solid plan for going after those goals.

But when the goal becomes to have more, be more, get more, achieve more, the reasons that we’re doing our thing in the first place can get lost becuase we’re now focusing on the whole faster, further, smarter thing.  We start to create expectations for our self and start to focus on the outcome way more than the process, the journey of getting there.

And we put pressure on ourselves in all sorts of ways:

• Time pressure
• Money pressure
• Appearance pressure
• Status pressure
• Perfection pressure
• Keeping up with the Jones’ pressure (who are the Jones’ anyways?)
• Peer pressure

Here’s another little story:

I registered for Ironman Canada without knowing how to do front crawl (properly). Now if the race had only been two months away I can’t even imagine the pressure I would have put on myself to learn how to swim and be fast and master a stroke that I’d never spent much time learning.

But it wasn’t two months away, it was a year away. And I took a swim class. And then another set of swim classese. And I had a coach.

And I had little goals that I set for myself so that I wasn’t constantly thinking “Holy shit, I have to swim 4 km (2.4 miles).” I also didn’t pay a lot of attention to the faster swimmers. I focused on my own progress. Some of them had been swimming for years so of course they were faster than me, and yes, they looked a  lot “prettier” swimming in the water than I did.

But you know what? I did it. And I learned a whole lot about how to swim and how to get fast at the same time. And most importantly, I loved every minute of my journey.

When you notice that the joy has seeped out of something that you used to love to do, it’s time for a check in with yourself.

Ask:

• Are my goals reasonable?
• Have I somehow convinced my self that my worth is dependent on the outcome I achieve?
• What are the expectations I have of myself?
• What assumptions am I making?
• Do I need to adjust anything here to help keep this goal fun & enjoyable?
• Can I turn the “pressure” down at all? If so, how?

Not sure how? Here are a few suggestions to decrease the pressure:

• adjust your goal
• adjust your expectations
• check in with whatever assumptions you have and find out if they’re valid
• create a plan, have bite sized goals instead of one big lofty one
• stay curious about the outcome instead of attached to it

Because here’s what I know: When the pressure creeps in, the joy seeps out. And that’s just not a fun way to go after the things that we want in life.

Please drop down into the comments section and let me know if you get what I mean about “pressure” – would love to know if anyone else feels this way sometimes.

Jen

Why Being a WAHM Sucks Sometimes

(Ok – so the photo doesn’t really match the blog post title but I’m not gonna spend five hours trying to find the “right” photo. This is us. This is the good part of being a work at home mom).

So everybody is talking about “being yourself” and “being authentic” and being “real” – so here it goes…

My name is Jennifer Powter and I think that being a WAHM/mompreneur, whatever label you want to give it, simply sucks ass sometimes. Maybe this is just me – I dunno. But when I look around and compare – yes, I do it too even though I know it’s not healthy, good for me, does anything productive, and so forth, I do it because I want to learn how others are experiencing what I’m doing right now: working & being the primary caregiver of my almost 1 yr old and my almost 3 yr old.

What’s the secret? Is there a secret? Come on…fill me in!

I wanna learn from these women. I wanna know their secrets. I wanna know how they’re managing to “make 6 figures” and only work 10-15 hrs a week while having at least two children at home with them. And when it sounds so easy for them (and it’s not for me) I think they must have resources I don’t have like a full time nanny, or tons of loving child care like grand parents or aunts or sisters/brothers in town that help them out, or maybe they have a super wealthy partner so money isn’t an issue and working is simply something they do because it’s fulfilling for them but there’s no pressure on how much they make.

So I engage in this futile scouting around and comparing and it does nothing for me because all I see is the good stuff — mompreneurs espousing how great it is to have so much freedom and flexibility and money and all I think is “What the fuck? What am I doing wrong here?” And it sucks because I think I’m doing it “right” AND it still feels hard sometimes and that frustrates me to no end.

What do I mean about values and priorities competing? This:

• I have boundaries. Clear boundaries. I don’t work when my children are awake, I don’t tweet, I don’t Facebook. This is my choice. I learned very quickly that I suck at both things (parenting & work stuff) if I try to them at the same time.  My kids are awake by 6:30am and go to bed by ~7ishpm. I work while they nap and at night. It also took me two years to accept the fact that I needed “help”. TWO YEARS. Side note…why the hell is it so hard for high achieving, type a women to ask for help? (I now have a baby sitter two mornings a week).
• I also choose to prepare, cook and serve REAL food. Not food out of a box that’s reheated, not fast food (neither of my children know what McDonald’s is or have ever had fast food). And this takes time. This means that I’m making five snacks/meals a day. But health and healthy living is a huge value in our household. So I do this with joy and with the hope I’m teaching my kids to value “health” too.
• I also LOVE what I do – even if I didn’t have to work, I still would because I’m passionate about contributing to this world.  I don’t want to let this piece go AND my family benefits from me earning money. I like making money. A lot.
• Sigh….this list could go on and on…I’ll stop here.

So, what I’m learning is that I’ve got values and priorities that compete and that’s frustrating. And let me be clear and say it’s not my children who frustrate me or my work — it’s simply this stage when it feels like there’s so much I want to do and put out there and create in my business and my time/energy/capacity is limited, and yes I know it’s a choice. It’s a very conscious choice AND a very conscious choice can still feel hard. I’m allowed to feel frustrated sometimes. So are you.

As someone who was able to accomplish so much so quickly in my pre-kid life, I’m having to adapt to “new normal” and it’s hard. When I read the latest article on how to create a product in three days I have to remind myself that I’m living in dog years. Three days is more like three weeks, for me anyways.

So, for any other wannabe WAHM or mompreneurs or WAHM’s out there right now who beat themselves up for not being where they “want” to be or where they think they “should” be….give yourself a break.  This model we’ve created for ourselves is wonderful in so many ways; we get to see our kids take their first steps, speak their first words, we get to enjoy them while they’re little.  And it can also feel like a slow road to complete insanity…ok, that’s probably an exaggeration but essentially we’ve given ourselves three full time jobs:

1. We get to be with our children full time and parent (minus whatever child care hours we can carve out with someone that we trust)
2. We get to manage our home, cook, clean, take care of all the “stuff” that needs to be done
3. AND we get to be entrepreneurs who want to build/grow our businesses and make money

AND we most of us probably want to exercise, look after ourselves, nurture our other friendships, and stay connected with our husband/partner so that when we do experience the “freedom and money and flexibility” we’ve got someone to share it with.  As my business continues to grow you bet I’ll be handing off more of these responsibilities – I’ll get a house cleaner, I’ll have a personal assistant, I’ll have “people”…but as the saying goes “Income before Expenses”.

So – I’m a WAHM, mompreneur, entrepreneur, business owner who feels like it’s hard sometimes. I totally admit it.  I also love it and wouldn’t trade what I’m doing for anything.  I’m doing a lot of things right. My kids are healthy. My husband and I are still in love. My business is growing. I’m happy. But I did just want to share that for me, being a work at home mom isn’t about drinking lattes and eating bon bons all day. It’s a lot of fucking work. My house isn’t as tidy as I’d like it to be, the laundry piles up, I miss out on a few things my non working mom friends do, and… I’m choosing this.

Of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts/comments/questions – drop down to the comments section below and share what came up for you reading this. Thx!

Time or Energy- What’s More Important?

Our days are 24hrs long and no matter how much we might wish we could press the pause button or somehow magically add a few more hours to our day, it’s just never going to happen. So we aim to become very efficient with our time.

We create to-do lists a mile long – we use our iPhones, blackberries, pop up reminders, syncing of calendars, post it notes, and scribble on the back of our hand to remind us of everything we need to do. For a lot of us, it feels like demand exceeds capacity.

It does for me anyways. I have two young kids and a husband, run a business, keep a home, manage friendships, exercise, cook real food, look after the lawn, plan play-dates, book vacations, look after the finances, and on and on it goes. I’m the first to wish that there were a few more hours in the day. And then I think about that and imagine on the days that I feel like crap, the days that I’m tired and grumpy and definitely not my best self, having to get through an extra three or four hours would actually just suck.

What I do want is to have enough energy to be fully present in whatever task I’m doing in the moment so I can do whatever I’m doing well. I want to feel good during my day. I want to feel alive and engaged. AND, I know what I need to do to feel this way and I’m going to share it with you too.

I need to be personally responsible for managing my E.N.E.R.G.Y.

• E = Exercise
• N = Nutrition
• E = Emotions
• R = Relationships
• G = Goals
• Y = You

I’m in the process of creating an awesome model to represent this concept but in the mean time just take this in. All of these components are absolutely necessary to live a fully and energized life. If you ignore any one of these things you may not notice the effect right away – but  the short term decisions that we make in the moment to provide us with some sort of convenience often have long term consequences.

So in the next few days I’m going to be diving into each one of these components and explaining why it’s so important, typical things that derail us, and practical solutions for making space/time in your day to focus on you.

Why? Simply put – because you matter!

Even with all of the other stuff on your plate, you matter. And when you’re not looking after you…well, none of the other stuff does well, or as well as it could if you were at your best. And I want to help you truly feel at your best.

So – check back often this week to see new blog & video posts. And, if you’re interested in hearing me talk more about this then mark your calendar because on Tuesday May 25 @10am MST I’m going to be on Lara Galloway’s The WoMEN: What Women Entrepreneurs Need Teleseminar Series. Lara is awesome and her show is awesome too!

Gotta comment or a question – drop down to the comments section below and write away! I’d love to hear from you.

Jen

Entrepreneur Bootcamp for Women

Starting May 12th

It’s Time to Kick a Little Business Ass

I am so excited about this program and I want to share a little bit about it, especially how it all rolled out because let me tell you, it was old school. But let me back up a minute.

It started when I was talking with a friend and we were remarking how awesome it would be if we could go back in time with everything we know now and start our businesses over. I knew I couldn’t do that for myself but the idea kept rolling around in my head so I wrote down everything that I’ve learned and all of the stuff that I wish I’d known. Things like “list building”, “wordpress”, “marketing funnel”, “autoresponders”, “shopping carts” and so on.

Yes, if you’re laughing right now I get it, but I really was that business naive. Then I checked in to see if anybody else brand new in business was wondering about these things. They were. And I wanted to help them.

The title just popped into my head and I liked it – it would be a business bootcamp: intense, fun, learn a lot, grow, push limits and so on. I decided to do it.

I picked a date and started to market it word of mouth. That’s right. Word. Of. Mouth.

My website wasn’t even finished, I didn’t have a merchant account or shopping cart sorted out yet, but I felt really excited about being able to offer this – so I didn’t let that stop me.

A friend of mine suggested creating a facebook event might be a good idea and at least make it easy for people to pay. So I did that too.

And guess what? This program is almost full! I have 2 spots left.

Moral of this post (and really, the huge learning for me): don’t wait, do something. If there’s an area of your life that you’re holding back in because you’re not sure what to do or how to do it, just start. Keeping everything in your head makes for crazy making and is a way to beat down self confidence and it keeps you in nasty place called “stuckness”.

Taking action makes you feel like a super hero.

I’d love to know if there’s anything you’re willing to take a step towards. Please share below in the comments.

Jen