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Standing in Your Light: Women and Entrepreneurship

by Debbie Lawrence

152 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-2720; ISBN 1-4120-4912-1; US$18.00, C$21.00, EUR15.00, £10.50

If you*ve ever wanted to feel comfortable embracing your power while moving your business to a whole new level, 'Standing in Your Light' offers insights you can*t afford to miss.

Read more!

About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

Whether you are a businesswoman or an aspiring entrepreneur, Standing In Your Light holds an important message for you.

Throughout this book, you will be challenged to become clear about your intentions; to state your goals and your dreams; to acknowledge your needs; and to embrace your power. Knowing you always have choices, I encourage you to let your heart sing by giving yourself time and permission to explore your options, to make choices based on factual information, and to build your own abundant circle of support. You will be challenged to create a strategy for growing your business based on the power of relationship marketing and to do so by thinking abundantly.

I encourage you to find ways of giving back to the greater community, ways that also nourish your soul. Most of all I implore you to come to all of this with a willing heart; to show up and do the work for that is where you will discover real growth and maturity. As you claim your light, you will reconnect with your wise, inner soul and discover that abundance can always be yours!

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About the Author

Debbie Lawrence, founder of Abundant Living Personal Coaching, is a life, business and career coach. Director of the Professional Ethics Review Committee for the International Association of Coaches, she has been an adult educator and business consultant for the past two decades. Debbie writes a regular column for several publications and is a much sought after workshop facilitator and professional speaker.

If you would like more information you can contact Debbie at abundantliving@ns.sympatico.ca or check out her website at www.abundantliving.ca.

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Excerpts

So often wonderful opportunities, valuable insight and much sought answers are sitting underfoot, just waiting to be tapped. It is a sure source of fuel for feeding your fire, for keeping that internal flame healthy and strong. Many of the people I have met have made choices based, not on facts, but on how they perceived the outcome of an alternate choice. They were women who decided not to ask for help; who assumed the person they wanted to approach would only turn them down; who suspected the bank would deny their request for an operating line of credit even when there was no logical reason for such an outcome; who chose not to ask for the opportunity to submit a proposal for fear they might be seen as lacking experience when compared to their competition; or who were afraid to set prices that honoured the quality of their work because they thought potential customers would not be willing to pay that much.

These were also the same entrepreneurs who came to me to talk about their frustration whether it was with the slow sales of a particular product line, an inability to get their message out, or uncertainty about how to secure the account of a prominent client. What I heard more than anything during our exchanges was an intense negative self-talk that kept leading them to acts of self-sabotage. They would think of a strategy and then, as opposed to developing it through to execution, would focus their energies on imagining everything that could go wrong and, as a result, rule the option out before they even started.

There's nothing wrong with studying the odds and preparing to deal with potential obstacles and setbacks. In fact, that's exactly what you should do. You need to get out there and do your homework. That means finding out actual information, gathering facts, talking to people, getting feedback, and asking the tough questions. The distinction amongst many of the women entrepreneurs I had met with was clear; they were not doing this homework. Instead, their assumptions and perceptions allowed them to skip this integral step. As a result, they were jumping from "I wonder if I can..." to "That's definitely not going to work because..."

It's like Denise who owned a wonderful little European café in a flourishing neighborhood in the city. She had been working very hard to cultivate a loyal clientele. After a short time in business, the same customer who stopped by for a coffee also ordered a take-out lunch and even finalized the details for an event she wanted Denise to cater later that week. This was becoming the norm, which meant increased demands on the kitchen staff and heavier traffic in the café.

Unhappy with customers having to wait for a table and tired of running short on supplies because there just wasn't enough storage, Denise wanted to expand her business. The commercial complex she shared with many other merchants was fully occupied, ruling out the possibility of leasing extra space on either side of the café. That meant she had to drive through the neighborhood in search of a new location.

It was around this time that I met her. During our early discussions about the relocation and expansion, I noticed that Denise kept crossing off one potential location after another. I asked her about her reasons for excluding these sites and she explained that the cost per square foot was too high. She had crunched her numbers and, taking into account the renovations and extra marketing costs she would have to incur with this move, Denise's business could only take on a maximum increase of $2.50 per square foot. Denise led me to believe that the addresses she had scouted were all asking for $15 and up per square foot. Regardless of the other features they may have offered, they were stricken from her list of potential locations for the café because of the high cost to lease the space.

I was curious. "Of all the places you've seen, which one is your favorite?" I asked. Her response was very telling. "Well," she began, "I haven't actually seen any of the spaces but there's that new complex being built just down the street. I would really love to be there. It's nearby so my customers won't really be inconvenienced and it's a brand new building. How wonderful would that be?"

I remember hesitating for a minute as I thought through what Denise had just said. I was confused. I couldn't understand how she could negate a location if she hadn't looked at it. I concluded that pricing must really have been the most pressing factor. Needing clarity, I asked some pointed questions. In the end, I learned that all she had done was drive around, sit in her vehicle in the parking lot, and size up each location. She hadn't gone inside, hadn't found out who the property manager was, hadn't gotten contact information, hadn't learned about the specific features of either site; hadn't found out for a fact the cost per square foot; and hadn't even considered the idea of negotiating a better lease. Denise had no facts whatsoever - just her perceptions and assumptions about what the facts probably were.

She's not alone. How many times have you made assumptions about what a person would say or do and acted accordingly? How often have you decided not to make a request because you felt the person wouldn't support you? How often have you chosen to do something yourself because it would be easier than trying to get others to help? Was that based on the fact that those people turned you down or was it your perception that they would not be willing or able to help?

At first, Denise fell into the language of "yeah but" as she tried to explain and rationalize her assumptions. Her wealth of life experience had been a trusted gauge for decision making all her life so it was natural for Denise to look to her instincts for guidance. To an extent, she's absolutely right. I always advocate having an awareness of what we innately believe we should do. I believe, however, that people can sabotage themselves by not seeking full information or choosing to ignore any information, perspectives and data that are contrary minded or unattractive. This "justify-my-actions" strategy is stifling and holds people back all the time. It's Denise who drew on unsubstantiated reasoning and landed herself in a situation of potentially missing out on a great opportunity for her café. It's any businesswoman who doesn't reach out for help because she believes she's supposed to be able to do it all and have all the answers.

I also hear businesswomen use the "been there - done that" school of thought to justify their inaction time and time again. This is one of the most dangerous lines of thinking to adopt. No one person has ever done it all, learned it all or shared it all. What I have learned is that you need to get out there, to explore your options, to ask questions, and to find out the facts. In the end, you may not like what you discover, but facts equal truth and I'd rather work with truth over assumptions any day. Hands down every time, the best decisions are those that are based on facts!

Once Denise realized what she had been doing, how she had been shortchanging her own business, she made a commitment to get back out there and find out the facts. We started by creating a list of her "unmovables". These were the top five features the new location had to offer. Without them she would be willing to walk away, even when as high as four of the five were available.

I encouraged Denise to get clear about what was really important. I didn't want her to have regrets. After four attempts she had her list of unmovable criteria that became her North Star; and it looked like this...

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Catalogue Information

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