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Secret Income Strategies When You're BROKE and BUILDING Your Business (I Mean Like Broke and Unemployed)

3/18/2013

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Losing a job or income can feel like you’re being cast into the middle of the ocean with nothing but a life preserver ring (unemployment) to keep you from completely drowning.  It is unnerving and daunting for those of us used to the feeling of being rooted on land. I know all too well what this feels like.

In December of 2011, my board members and I voted to close the non-profit organization I had founded 11 years prior, due to financial difficulties and the terrible fundraising climate.  We closed our doors with only 21 days notice. 

Though we had a super successful 11-year run, it was incredibly sad and stressful to close. There I found myself, like so many of my fellow Americans, collecting unemployment, with only a few thousand dollars in my savings account.  Not only did I feel like I was barely keeping my head above water, I had absolutely no clue as to how I was going to make money.  I knew starting something and working for myself was the route I wanted to take, but I had zero money to invest in any kind of business; I would need whatever little savings I had to supplement my unemployment compensation and cover my monthly expenses.

If you find yourself wanting to start a business or non-profit with few resources, whether you just left a job, are collecting unemployment or disability or just barely making ends meet, here are some practical tips that can help you bring in a little extra income and help you gain financial momentum to move forward in your journey. 

Sell the Jewelry You Don’t Wear or Need

I am NOT a jewelry wearer, but I have bought a few things here and there in my lifetime.  On the rare occasion that I do wear jewelry, I usually lose part of it – an earring, a ring or a pendant.  I remembered my mom saying something to me about how the price of gold had skyrocketed in the past couple of years.  I had never sold anything, but was curious about whether I could get any money for the remaining pieces I had from jewelry sets - backs of earrings from my high school days, a broken gold chain, a black pearl necklace and earrings I had bought on a trip to Hawaii but never wore.

I ended up taking a little sack of miscellaneous pieces to two jewelry shops to see if they would buy them.  The backs of the earrings (because they were gold) were worth money.  The jeweler also bought the pearls.  I walked away with over $1,000 just from getting rid of mismatched pieces of jewelry and jewelry I never wore. 

The key strategy here was selling items with gold in them, as the current market value of gold has gone up so significantly.  Don’t underestimate the little pieces of jewelry that are lying around your house.  Take them to any gold buyer and expect to get 80% of the market price of gold. 

Selling things of value can be applied to anything that is taking up unnecessary space in your home or drawers.  Think about what you own that could be of value – do you REALLY need it?  How is it serving you to keep it?  Is it worth money?  Is it something you could give up now and buy again later on in order to earn money to invest in your future today? 

Consign Clothes
 

During my months on unemployment, I also ruptured my Achilles tendon. (It’s a long story.)  So not only was I unemployed, I was unable to drive (I know - LOSING).  My parents had to come from out of state to tend to me for a month because I couldn’t do much on my own.  And so began my mom’s cleaning frenzy.

Not only did I get lectured on how much “stuff” I had in my closets; every day I woke up, I’d find my mom had tackled a new cabinet in the kitchen.  She would pile things up and ask piercing questions like, “Do you NEED this?”  I’d nod my head, and sometimes defend my favorite frying pan with all my zeal.  Then she got my Dad in on it.  He eventually gave me a lecture on how I needed to get rid of everything in my closet.  I was annoyed, but I decided I needed to reframe quickly.  So I looked at the experience as an opportunity to create space for the old to go out and the new to come in. 

I got rid of all the clothes I hadn’t worn in the past 1-2 years.  Luckily, living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am surrounded by all sorts of cool consignment shops.  I took my clothes to one shop and earned almost $90 just from that trip.  That’s $90 more than I had before the cleaning frenzy!

I’m a firm believer in making physical space for new ideas and dreams to manifest.  And have you ever heard the saying, “we are burdened by our possessions?”  It couldn’t be more true.  Cleaning up and consigning left me with the space I needed to create, craft and build from a clear space.  Clothes are not the only things you can consign.  Think about old furniture, household items, rugs, antiques, etc.  What’s taking up space in your closet?

Sometimes, You Just Gotta Dip into Stocks or Mutual Funds

I know, I KNOW.  This is like the anti-financial planner advice.  But as an entrepreneur, sometimes you have to spend money to buy some time to make money.  No risk, no reward.  I remember listening to the founder of 3 Twins Ice Cream (my all-time favorite maker of chocolate ice cream in the Bay Area) tell his story about having no money when he wanted to start his ice cream company.  He liquidated his retirement and took a loan from his family to start.  He took a huge risk; everything was on the line for him.  The ice cream is now in every major grocery store that I frequent.

During my time of transition, I also took a leap a lot of people told me not to take.  I don’t have much of a retirement savings from having worked in non-profit for most of my career, but I do have some mutual funds.  I made the decision to liquidate two funds to keep me afloat a little longer while I figured out what direction I wanted to take.  I am so fortunate that I had some liquid investments, and while I still kept a few untouched, I felt I really needed to sell off the others for some extra money.  I knew I could make the money back, and that taking the money out of my mutual funds and putting it into current investments would inevitably help me with my future more than having that money sit and grow interest.  Money is energy, and sometimes having energy at your disposal NOW is way more valuable than keeping it for retirement.

Negotiate and Downsize ALL Your Bills on Fixed Expenses

Think you got a good deal on your fixed expenses like your cell phone plan, landline or car insurance?  It is amazing how much you can negotiate with respect to your bills.  This is how I downsized some of my expenses:

  • I got rid of my landline – I didn’t really need it.  I could use Skype to call somewhere if my cell didn’t work.  Why pay for another line?

  • I adjusted my cell phone bill and text plan.  I downsized the plan, and by talking with customer service and letting them know I was thinking about leaving for another carrier with better prices, they gave me an extra 5,000 anytime minutes.

  • I called my auto insurance company and made sure I received all possible discounts.

I put all of my fixed expenses into a grid and tackled them one at a time, figuring out any possibility of lowering my bills.  This is an exercise I have most budding entrepreneurs do, so they can really get empowered to know what their monthly expenses are, and where they can cut, if necessary.

Ask yourself questions like:

Do I really need those extra cable channels? 

Is it essential to have 1 GB of data on my cell phone vs. 2? 


Also, consider these other cost-saving ideas:

  • Use a pay-as-you-go plan on your cell phone, instead of locking yourself into monthly payments.
  • WhatsApp is an application you can download onto your smartphone to send and receive texts anywhere in the world.  Are you still paying for a monthly unlimited text plan?  It’s time to change that!

Volunteer

Yes, this seems counterintuitive, but it’s not.  One of the quickest ways to attract work and money your way is to give your services away.  This builds relationships and trust and gives you an opportunity to help others.  It also gives you an opportunity to really understand a business, a project or a challenge so you know better how you can be of service if you’re volunteering in an industry in which you want to work in the future.

In fact, when I started coaching, I would freely give of my time with absolutely no agenda in mind; I loved to practice my skills and witness transformative moments in the lives of the people I talked with.  And slowly, the very friends I had coached for fun started recommending me to their friends, and there are always opportunities that come from these types of referrals.  Putting yourself out there will lead to you being known, building relationships and perhaps taking on a project for money. 

The key is to get out there and start doing work and helping.  You manifest opportunity by acting as if you live in the opportunities you want to have, and at the very least, you are helping other people. 

Budget, Budget, Budget!

Budgeting was something I really learned to do when I took a traveling sabbatical from my non-profit organization.  My income was limited during this time, and I had to be really conscious about my spending.  Toward the end of my travels, I defaulted to surviving on ramen noodles and eggs as my daily diet.  I continued on the budgeting after I got home.  I separated my fixed expenses from my variable expenses in an Excel grid.  I kept track of every single cent that went out the door.  It’s tedious at first, but it’s totally empowering.  Then with my variable expenses, I had the opportunity to assign how much I WANTED to spend each month.  My variable expense categories included groceries, eating out, wellness and any other categories that were meaningful to me.  IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR ALL EMERGING ENTREPRENEURS TO GET A HOLD ON THEIR EXPENSES.  Know where you want to go, but also know where you are.  Looking after your money carefully will empower you in the long run. 

Have you ever been in my shoes?  Are you in my shoes right now?  What are some of the secret strategies, tools and resources you used to stay afloat?  I’d love to hear your practical advice from the trenches.  How do you make ends meet? 


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Feeling Overwhelmed by Your Business or Non-Profit?  Get Niche-y With it!

2/17/2013

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Early-stage entrepreneurship can be one of the most exciting times in a business or non-profit - you get to dabble in your creativity, test, experiment and tweak.  You get to build.  However, it can also be a time of great frustration.  You can feel like you have too many initiatives and too little time to execute them.  Are you an early-stage entrepreneur who feels like she is juggling a multitude of ideas and service offerings?  Does it sometimes feel like you are throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks?

Here are some tips to help you get through this time of frustration, overwhelm, and seeing things fall through the cracks.


1.  Identify Your Passion

When you are juggling all of your ideas and daily tasks, are you able to tune in to what aspects, services and programs give YOU and your team energy and momentum?  Is it talking on the phone with your clients?  Blogging about your business?  Being outside, selling your products at the farmer’s market?  Are you in touch with what your unique gifts are to your business or organization?

Whatever your passion may be, one of the keys to successful entrepreneurship is finding the intersection of what makes your business run and what the market needs, with what you love to do.  While it’s not totally true that you need to work 80-hour weeks to be successful in your business, what will carry it forward and challenge you to work out the kinks when things go wrong, or push forward when you don’t have all the pieces, is your PASSION. 

One of the greatest lessons I learned along the path of entrepreneurship was to NOT be afraid to get rid of the services or products that sucked my and my team’s energy.  Instead, I learned to focus on the one or two things that I or my team felt absolutely passionate about and that we knew we could execute.  Once you figure out your passion, you will see that it is so much easier to own and live up to the values of your business or organization, and to promote your business far and wide. 

In the early days of the non-profit I ran, called C.E.O. Women, we gave birth to a multitude of programs; from financial literacy for women, to a computer business training program, to a 3-month entrepreneurship training program, to a coach- matching program. Holy moly!  I know.  I KNOW.

It was a lot for our small team to administer; we were burning the candle at both ends, and it wasn’t pretty. Awkward silences at the office became the norm, as people did not know what to do about the sheer amount of work.  One day, my co-leader burst into tears when I made what I thought was a constructive criticism of her work.  I had not realized that she worked several nights and weekends in a row in order to get her work done.

2.  Hit the “Reset” Button

With the help of an executive coach and facilitator, we decided we needed a reset.  We had built so many programs and offerings in such a short time, that our human resources capabilities couldn’t keep up with us.  (This was due in part to my creative energy and my love of starting new things!)  We felt like we were the jack-of- all-trades and master of none, and it didn’t make for a very productive work environment.

In a facilitated session, we ended up doing a very scary thing – we cut some of our programs.  We looked at factors such as the cost to run the program, how many people benefited and the success rate of each program in a very analytical way.  We inevitably decided that our bread and butter was our entrepreneurship training program.  It had the deepest impact, and was central to our mission. 

It’s not easy to let go of a program or service you have built from the ground up, but when you have limited resources and you are trying to achieve your mission, you have to make smarter choices.

Sometimes, cutting something out is the best decision you can make.  It frees up mental space and resources for you to really make an impact with a service or offering about which you feel passionate or, frankly, for which there’s a demand. 

3.  Get Niche-y With It!

Through my experience with my own organization, I learned that the more specific and niche-focused you can be, the easier it will be for you to communicate with your audience and empower people to refer your services.  At C.E.O. Women, we knew who we were as an organization, and instead of being pulled in a thousand different directions, we reset our focus.

Cutting some of our programs allowed us to concentrate our attention on making fewer programs better, and allowed us to focus on pursuing foundations and grantors that really resonated with our mission.  It left us the mental space and energy to improve our ability to think strategically and execute services tenfold. 

If your business or non-profit is going to have multiple offerings, make sure you start with one or two, and do a really good job with them first to test your market.  You can use this same principal for any startup, really.  The best emerging fashion designers, for instance, do not go to market with 10 designs; they focus on creating three or four really kick-ass designs for their line and then go to market.

Don’t be afraid to “niche out” your services and products.  Add on where it makes sense, and don’t be afraid to cut.  Cutting or downsizing ideas and initiatives may be just the re-invigoration your business or organization needs to succeed.

Where are you struggling in your business or non-profit at the moment?  What do you need to take away in order to be the best you can be at delivering your product or service?  I’d love to hear your thoughts below in the comments section!





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Lesson 2 in Taking Your Leap: Find Your Treasure Map Within

1/15/2013

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Our personal journey through life defines our values.  We know what we like.  We know what hurts us.  We know what we are afraid of.  We know what gives us inspiration. This knowledge of self begins to shape our life purpose.  Our deep connection to our values is the most powerful motivator there is to propel us forward to take our leaps.  Trying to take a leap without clearly knowing what our values are is akin to searching for buried treasure without the treasure map; we meander aimlessly in circles wondering where it is we are going.

Two of my values have always been freedom and independence.  When I was a little girl, I’d never let my mom pick my clothes out for me.  I insisted on making my own lunches and was doing my own laundry by the time I was in the 4th or 5th grade.  I would ask my parents repeatedly if I could move into the shed in the back of our house so I could have my own home.  It was as if I was born this way – always wanting to be free and independent. Weird, I know.  These values drove me to devote my entire career to helping women take the leap to feel the freedom and independence of owning their own businesses.  

When I was starting the non-profit I ran for 11 years, never did it feel like it was work in the beginning.  I always thought I was so lucky.  It was only when the organization started to get bigger, and I faced increasingly frustrating growing pains and HR issues that I started to feel dissonance.  I’d finish a week that had been filled with sometimes 20-30 meetings with volunteer groups, organizational teams, donors, funders, vendors, and then retreat up to West Marin in Northern California not wanting to speak to anyone for the whole weekend.  I was exhausted.

I missed the energy of early-stage projects that allowed me to work on many different things.  I missed getting deep with the people I worked with, sharing that family-like camaraderie and building really solid one-on-one relationships with my colleagues.  When I ran the non-profit (which helped immigrant and refugee women to start their own businesses), I once knew each client by her first name.  Years later I just knew of maybe the star entrepreneur of the class.

I realized I needed to take my own leap and found myself contemplating a new career.  I eventually figured out a model for myself where I could still exercise the values of freedom and independence and be true to my entrepreneurial nature, but do so in a way that allowed me the valuable one-on-one time with people, and the ability to go deep.  These values are what drove me to coaching.

Since making the decision to work deeply with people, I’m back to feeling like my work isn’t work, but just a natural extension of what I love to do.  I talk with social entrepreneurs, creative people, and people with real struggles trying to take their leap.  I have the honor to help guide them to realize their values and craft a path for their life to align with those values.  It makes me feel energized, purposeful and alive.

This process and experience makes me realize just how important it is for you to know what you really value, else you may be taking a leap on a path that sounds good in theory, but that may compromise your values or make you feel dissonant or exhausted.  

Take a temperature reading of the dissonance in your life.  Do you feel any – in your relationships, at work, with respect to your health?  If so, I’d challenge you to make a list of your values – not material items, but attributes and ways of being in the world that are especially important to you.  Then rate each one on a scale of 1 -10 and see how much you are honoring these values in your life.  10 means you fully honor it.  1 means you have some work to do.  Where do you need to honor something more?  Are you not honoring one particular value at all?  What’s the one big thing you need to shift within YOU to change that?   

Values are our spiritual launch pad; they are our internal treasure map.  When the dream we want to bring to life is in clear alignment with our values, something magical happens and the treasures of life begin to unfold.  You begin to feel a natural energy and momentum which propels you toward your leap.  The universe just works that way.  It may be scary at first, but at some point you’ll eventually find yourself feeling like what you are doing is not work, but a natural extension of you choosing to live and exercise your values in the world.  Let your quest begin! 


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Lesson 1 in Taking Leaps: Focus on Change from Within

12/19/2012

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Everybody has the tendency to sometimes complain about their circumstances or the people they are in relationship with.  I once read somewhere that complaints are are just unspoken requests.  But sometimes we cannot make the requests we want to make so find ourselves in the position of complaining.  What we do have the power to shift is what is within us.  Getting in touch with your ability to make these internal shifts will help the leaps you want to take in your wave of life to be all the more smoother.

For example, there is an important relationship in my life but I had a hard time with the way that particular person has related to me in the past. This person from time to time would start to accuse me of things and then would start to criticize me.  I would feel defensive and hurt.  I realized that it was holding me back in a lot of ways and making me feel bad about myself, and even eroding my self-confidence.  I decided the next time she started to criticize me, that I would not react, but I would try to understand her perspective and see if I could find some value in her words and just listen.  Rather than let her words land on my heart center and feel defensive, as she spoke I imagined them landing on the ground in the space in front of me.   I also told myself to not take it personally.   

I made the conscious decision about how I was going to react and to approach the conflict the way I would surf a wave – to just be curious, go with it and follow it.  I listened and ask questions and tried to understand and clarify the source of what was making her criticize me.  The process diffused the episode of this person and allowed me the space to speak my voice and share my perspective with them.  In the end, I didn’t change her, but changed the WAY I chose to relate to her.  It also became apparent that her episodes were more about HER feelings and the way she experienced the world vs. about me. 

I learned that when you’re trying to move forward and you feel something or someone is holding you back, it’s easier to shift something within you, rather than change someone or try to change your circumstances.  You have far more control over changing YOU first .  This has been a critical lesson for me in leaping into the unknowns of life, not knowing what you might face.  Having the muscle to flow in and out of conflict and shift your RESPONSE to what is happening will make you all the more prepared to take your leap in life, whatever it may be. 

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