In these series of audio posts, we are discussing attaining Business Peace of Mind.

The first step is to make a decision: Make a decision to be a business owner. This does not mean making a decision to start a business. The focus here is on you as a business owner. This means that you will do whatever it takes to be a successful business person. This means you want to be open to learning about new things, interacting with people and valuing yourself. This means that you are making a “blind” decision. You do not know where your entrepreneurial activities will end and you have to be comfortable with that.  Of course, you will have an idea of where you are starting out and what you intend your business to look like.

If you do not value yourself and your skills, you will not not have the confidence to step forward into the market place.

This first step requires five things:

1. Make an honest assessment of your skills.

2. Make an assessment of what you may offer the marketplace in the form of goods and services.

3. Make an assessment of your personality and mindset to know if it is supportive of an entrepreneurial lifestyle.

4. Develop your business self esteem.

5. Make that quality decision to commit to being a business owner and an entrepreneur.

Of course there is a lot more to it. But do this first step. Do this step in isolation of all the other steps. Don’t worry about market research. Yet. Don’t worry about pricing. Focus on you. Many people by pass this step and their foundation gets easily out of wack. This is the foundation of your business.

So did you make a quality decision to be a business person?

Business peace of mind may sound like an anomaly. Whenever you think of being in business for yourself, it sounds stressful to most people. However, it does not have to be. If you set an intention to make having a business a peaceful endeavor, you can attain business peace of mind.  In addition, learning what it takes to have business peace of mind is so important.

Over the next few days, I am going to give you a pointer each day that will help you with business peace of mind.

What would business peace of mind look like to you?

When I practiced law, I read a book that literally changed my professional life. The book was, “A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future.” by Daniel Pink.

The reason this book changed my life is that it made me think of my skills differently. I realized that I was so much more than “a lawyer.” Now, it sounds corny but had to have an awakening that I was far more than just “a lawyer.” He says that the marketplace has been created around information which is a left brain ability. He says that we have to start focusing on right brain attributes that cannot be duplicated.

Daniel Pink says that three things are affecting the market place and making it change. He says we are moving from the information age to the conceptual age where we are getting paid for ideas and concepts and not just information. The three big things affecting the market are:

1. Asia: Outsourcing to Asia has reduced the cost of doing business. Therefore, basic skills are no longer as valuable.

2. Abundance: People have so many choices these days. If you want to buy a toilet bowl cleaner, you have literally hundreds of options as opposed to 50 years ago where one was standard.Today we have options and they are cheap options.

3. Automation: Robots are now running assembly lines, thereby eliminating jobs.

Daniel Pink says that business have to master the following right brain skills to thrive in the marketplace.

1. Empathy: Skills like nursing cannot be outsourced as we need this kind of individual one on one care.

2. Design: Creating things that are visually appealing and functional will continue to be highly valued in the market place.

3. Storytelling: The ability to tell stories and engage the minds and hearts of the listener is unique and effective in keeping your own marketshare.

4. Symphony: The ability to take different pieces of information and meld them together to create a new creation, a new perspective, is a valuable skill that cannot be duplicated.

5. Play: The ability to play and have fun is big money. As we are in a prosperous time, we make play more of a priority. Think of video games and movies. Those are major industries.

6. Meaning Making: As we genuinely move into thriving out of surviving, we as humans have an innate need to make meaning of our lives. We have the perspective that there is something greater than us and we want to be sure that we are fulfilling that purpose.

Which of these six skills are you using daily in your business? A business owner who is aware of this information and is using it in his or her business, is a powerful business leader.

So I recently attended my high school reunion here in Atlanta and it was a life changing event for me. I went to high school in Africa and 30 years later, the high school goddesses decide to hold a reunion in Atlanta. Come on!

One of the take-aways for me for the reunion was that we are far more alike than we are different. We all want the same things and we are all deserving of the things that we want.

At the core of it all, we are all the same  Too often we get stuck in thinking about how we are different. However, we are all the same. We want the same things in life. We all want to feel good. We want our families to be well and healthy. We want the struggle to stop. We want to love and be loved. We want to laugh. We want to dance and move. We want the best for ourselves and for others. We want to be accepted and loved unconditionally.

I thought about this in relationship to clients. Many of my coaching clients feel so far apart from their prospective clients. Yet, if you focus on what you have in common with your client pool, you will find common ground and you will be able to get on their radar a lot easier.

Toxic relationships are an indicator that something is not working for you. It is important to read the language of toxic relationships. So check yourself: Are you prone to toxic relationships? Well, it means unfinished business! If you do not clean up your unfinished business, and you are in business, you will inadvertently enter into toxic relationships with your clients. At the end of the day, this will affect your money!

Boundaries are critical in personal relationships and in business relationships. If you do not put up healthy boundaries today, you will put up unhealthy walls tomorrow.

Here are some questions to ask yourself  to make sure you are setting appropriate boundaries for your clients:

1. Do your clients pay you on time?

2. Do they pay what they agreed to pay?

3. Do they honor your time?

4. Do they do what they say they are going to do?

You do not have to grab and settle for less than ideal clients. There are millions of people out there that are willing ready and able to pay you – believe it.

How do you know if you are setting healthy boundaries? If you experience shame on an ongoing basis, then I assure you that you are not setting healthy boundaries. Experiencing shame when you think of asking for ask for what you need or want is an indicator that you need a self esteem boost. Shame is the result of not having healthy boundaries. If you are experiencing shame, you are feeling “less than.” So use shame as a friendly indicator that something is going on that you are willing to improve.

Is this your business picture?

I have coached many women that have a wonky vibe about money. I believe that we women underestimate how much programming is against us for our financial and business success.

For instance, I cannot imagine a man being told by his father, “You are the handsome one son. So don’t worry, you do not have to learn a trade as you are not smart. Just make sure you marry a rich woman.” Women clients have confided in me that they got this type of talk as a kid.

Also, if you did not experience your mother, or primary caretaker, working and contributing to the home or even running a business, this may be a subtle message to you that it is not a woman’s place. About 40 or 50 years ago, entrepreneurship for women revolved around selling Avon and maybe Amway. This is a great foundation to see yourself as an empowered woman.

We underestimate how much our primary role models, and our observation of them, has contributed to our programming. I recently discovered that I was a bully in high school and 30 years later, the behavior returned. So do not underestimate the power of what we picked up by osmosis!.

Now, there is also the collective! You see, if society believes a certain paradigm, we pick up on it and it programs us. Unless, you are particularly proactive. Most of us want to believe that we are really that proactive. However, I think you will find that we all can be much more proactive, especially when it comes to our programming.

I have coached more women who are dealing with shame and do not know it. If you are ashamed of your body, your femininity or any part of your womanhood, then that shame will show up in your business. You see, shame comes out of feeling “undeserving.” If you feel undeserving about life itself, if you feel small in any way, or you shrink back, then this will show up in your business. Can you see the connection now?

What are you doing to deprogram yourself of shame and increase your self esteem and thereby, your business bottom line?

Engage with others

In the 1989 movie, Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner plays a farmer in Iowa named Ray.  While walking through his cornfield, Ray hears a voice whisper, “If you build it, he will come” (often misquoted as “If you build it, they will come”), and sees a vision of a baseball field.

And so we get bit by the entrepreneurial buzz and we decide we are going to build a business. And so we do. And we spend months tweaking that website. The logo is just right. The font is perfect. And we talk about our business incessantly. We mastermind and we sign up with coaches. We build that membership community. And?  No one shows up!

Discouragement sets in. Disappointment. That feeling of “Why me? I worked so hard? What is wrong with me?” sets in. We loose steam. We loose moment and we start thinking of finding a job. At least that would be a steady paycheck.

Right? No! Wrong!

Let me tell you what is going on: The marketplace is asking for a new business paradigm. When the Internet was still new, “build it and they would come still worked.” A site like Facebook or Twitter may not have the same effect today because technology innovation is now common place. The consumer expects it. You are expected to have a fabulous website and to offer a whole lot.

So what do you do with this changed paradigm?

Well, you start out by deliberately building a community. A community is filled with people. People are what make up a community. So  focus on building community.  How do you stand out? You do that by active engagement.  You talk to people. You learn about people. Be interested in other people and what they are saying that they want. Share positive life building energy with them. Don’t sell to people

As the saying goes: People do not remember you for your words or products, but they remember you for how you made them feel.

So now you have the product and services, develop a strategy to engage with your prospects and they will stay! So tell me, how do you engage with your clients?

The Teenage Unconquerable Spirit

Being a kid is the most important thing in your life!  Now, I am talking about two different things here. I am talking about having a childhood that is a foundation for who you are as an adult and I am talking about playing as an adult as if you were a kid.

Regressing into childhood is so important. It creates an altered state in your mind. It releases endorphins and feel good hormones in the brain. As your brain taps into that time of your life of innocence and childhood you feel safe again and you let your guard down.

As children, we played together. Leaders emerged even back then. However, play was the focal point. Whenever you sense a differential in power between you and another person, in work and life, when we find ourselves trying to gain position and power,  or others, trying to gain position and power over us, remember it is time to play. Diffuse the situation with laughter. This is why powerful business men play golf. On the golf course, it is an even playing field. It is a leveler.

Dr. Stuart Brown of the National Institute of Play is a play researcher and psychiatrist. He started to study play because he studied mass murders. He discovered that for children who did not spend much time having an actual childhood, the absence of play and a progressive suppression of developmentally normal play in their lives, led to tragic outcomes.

Our brains light up when we play and play that includes touch, imagination, laughter, our bodies, our words fire up the cerebellum and develops our frontal lobe which is the executive portion of the brain. It also helps contextual memory to be developed.

Play is important for your ability to survive and thrive. Your business is dependent on your ability to play. How are you playing in business today?

I recently attended my high school reunion here in Atlanta. Remember, I went to high school in Africa and so this was all very exciting. I learned several leadership lessons at this 30 year reunion and I wrote about the first important lesson I learned about being a bully here.

The second valuable lesson I learned was about like minded community. Seeking like minded community is so important. However, how do you evaluate what like minded community is? Is it the people you grew up with? Or is it the people you live with now? Do your children and their friends and friends of their parents dictate your like minded community? What are the values of your community? How does your community support you?

As a business leader, you lead a tribe. Are you aware of the actual people in your tribe? Are you aware that “tribe” means “like minded community?” What are their values? What do you give them? What do they need? What do you get back from your community in return?

Please listen to the audio above and leave a comment.

Yes! I was a bully. Of course I am entirely too enlightened to continue to be a bully in my adult life but this was the deep dark secret I discovered about myself from my high school reunion.

Now get this: I grew up in Africa and I came to the United States when I was 16 years old. Over the years, here in the States, I have met a couple of people that went to high school with me. Also, a few years ago, I connected with a couple of my closest friends from back then.

Well, with the power of Facebook, several folks from high school decided to have a reunion of as many people as they could find and they decided that they would have it here in Atlanta. Well, I of course, had absolutely nothing to do with this. I did not attend any of the planning calls: I was not interested! What a scary thought! I left the entire continent and you want me to hook up with all that history, here in my new home? No way!

When I was in high school, five of us were very close and pretty much did everything together. Four of the five of us showed up for this reunion.  Of course, I had to drop by to say hello to them.

Over the next few days, I am going to do a series of posts that will highlight the leadership lessons that I picked up from my high school reunion. So look out for those posts.

Laura, was part of this little group. Laura came to the high school reunion all the way from England. Well, within the first few minutes of us being in each other’s presence, everyone took their positions. Laura stood between me and another friend and of course, just like she used to do 30 years ago, Laura said something very smart mouthed and I shoved her into the other person and the other person shoved her back at me. And so we turned Laura into a rag doll. Well, the fourth friend yelled at the two of us to stop bullying Laura. She said “Thirty years later and nothing has changed. You are still bullying Laura.”

Well, we all froze as we realized that we had automatically assumed childhood roles thirty years later!

What is the leadership lesson in this?

Well, what struck me is how much personal development work I have done and still, behavior like this still persists within. Surprise!

Granted, we were all in a regressed state and we all reverted back to our teenage years where we all felt safe to trust one another. Nevertheless,  I was surprised to find out how  thirty years later, some things have not changed.

What triggers and drivers are you completely unaware of?

What is within you that is driving your decision making process that you are totally unaware of?

Are you still the same old person with a fresh coat of paint yet underneath it all, nothing has changed?

What are you hiding?

When you do not deal with your core issues, they will show up in your life. They will show up in your relationships and they will certainly show up in your business!

For me, I get frustrated when I cannot make sense of something. As much as I love to use my words to communicate and share, sometimes, when I cannot get my point across, I get frustrated. I abandon the power of words when I am frustrated. I am also very protective and loyal. I can bully Laura but if anyone outside of my group does a single thing to hurt a single hair on Laura’s head, well, they have me to deal with and that will not be a pretty sight! I promise you that!

This frustration sometimes leads me to not fully express myself in my writing or even in my speaking. When I am frustrated, I do not communicate. I then do things like ignore the world, eat too much or watch too much TV.  I am not particularly proud of this revelation but it is important to address it.

This event was a lovely reminder to use my words and enjoy figuring out the puzzle of expressing myself even when my words fail me.

Now, Laura, I publicly apologize to you. I am sorry! Please forgive me. I have no intention of being a bully. It is not advanced thinking on my part. I guess that is the point: It is not thinking period!  LOL!

You are precious to me. Your sense of humor and your quiet ways really added benefit to my life. I do love and care for you deeply. I am grateful for the role you played in my life then, and now.

Thank you for being my friend for life!

Now, who is bold enough to confess that you were a bully too or that you recently discovered something about yourself that you do not like? Leave a comment.