It’s an election year. And an apocalypse year. I’m beginning to think the two may be related. Perhaps our collective anger will cause the world as we know it to implode or something.

Each day, I check into Facebook a few times, eager to see what my friends are doing, look at photos of people having fun, check out links to interesting articles, see who is playing Words with Friends, and all the other happy stuff that Facebook puts in front of me so that I don’t have to deal with the tension of working for 15 minutes.

What I see instead are acrimonious debates about abortion, Trayvon Martin, the Affordable Health Care Act, women’s rights, religion, corrupt local governments, and on and on. Don’t get me wrong: I think healthy debate is a good thing. But what I’m seeing far too often cannot be described in any way as healthy. There is name calling, shouting of accusations, emotional ranting…it’s worse than when I taught middle school. At least there, the arguments were over things like who should get a cookie. When a discussion about the politicization of the Supreme Court, or the death of a teenager, or homelessness, is reduced to nothing more than pointless shouting, the situation is a bit more disturbing.

It doesn’t matter what “side” you are on. It doesn’t matter if your position is the one you think God would take. No matter what the other person is entitled to disagree with you. Yeah, that’s important enough to warrant being both italicized and bolded.

One of the things I have discovered via Facebook is that a great many of my acquaintances hold opinions quite opposite from my own about all kinds of things.

Important things. Things like whether or not homosexuality is acceptable, whether or not health care should be available, whether or not corporations should have the same rights as individuals. Unless someone insults me because of my opinions, I don’t mind.

This does not mean that I won’t “unsubscribe” from their Facebook stream. Just because they are allowed to have a different opinion doesn’t mean I have to listen to them talk about it. If you don’t like what’s playing, change the channel. I have “unsubscribed” from all sorts of people because it felt like they were shouting all the time. Even if I agree with you, shouting becomes tiresome after a little while.

The fact that we live in a society of people who hold diverse opinions should be a good thing. It gives us all a chance to be exposed to different points of view, and most of the time there is something to be learned from examining a way of thinking that is unfamiliar to you. It may help you see why people think the way they do, or help cement your own opinions.

You may be wondering how any of this has to do with writing or marketing or operating a small business. When you meet with a new client, or you attend a networking event, or you hire someone, you probably don’t know their political, religious, or social views. You probably studiously avoid talking about those things, particularly if you are trying to build a relationship or make a sale. In my experience, if you do end up building a relationship and things go well, people tend to get comfortable.

More than once, at this juncture in a business relationship, I have found myself being insulted. It is natural to assume that someone you connect with and genuinely like will hold the same opinions as you. After all, only an idiot would believe that fill-in-the-blank-here-with-anything-you-find-really-disagreeable, right? And this person is clearly not an idiot. I’ve made this mistake before, much to my own discomfort, and so have some of my associates – again, much to my discomfort.

After it becomes painfully clear that you do NOT share political or religious or social views, how do you handle the situation?

You could decide to not discuss said issue, and carry on working together. (This only works if both people decide to avoid it.)

Since the other person is clearly misguided, you could point out all the reasons they are wrong to think whatever they think. (I hope you don’t do this!)

Unfortunately, lots of people decide to tell the other person how stupid it is to think something different than you think. (If you do this to me, expect to never hear from me again.)

You could pretend to agree with everything your customer/client/colleague thinks. (Sleazy? Probably.)

There are all sorts of ways to handle it. Since I’m a non-confrontational sort of person, I try to avoid topics that could cause friction. On several occasions I’ve flatly refused to answer questions or reveal my opinions. Part of me feels cowardly in doing this, yet I don’t think that a business relationship is the right place to champion my causes. And it works, most of the time. I’ve had great working relationships with plenty of people who think differently than I do about all sorts of issues, but I have also left jobs where I felt out of place because of my opinions.

To me, the key is respect. Even if I think you are crazy to believe what you do, I respect the fact that you do believe it, and the fact that you are entitled to believe it. I may not like it, and if you shout it out often enough, I will slowly, quietly withdraw from our relationship. Unless we are personal friends, I will not try to convince you of your wrong-headedness.

Have you discovered that a client or colleague has radically different views than you do? Do you think that running a business makes difference when it comes to sharing opinions on political, religious, or social issues? If you found out your accountant of the last 15 years was a member of an organization you find deplorable, would you look for a new accountant? What if your chiropractor vehemently supports a political cause that you vigorously oppose? 

I realize that “professionalism” should come into play somewhere here. But if we are being honest, we must admit that these things do matter, even if we don’t want them to, and even if we use the mantle of professionalism to hide the fact that they do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Yesterday, I ran across an ad for a job in my Facebook stream. Pretty much everything about the position appealed to me, and I spent several minutes reading the posting and thinking about who I knew at the organization and comparing my experience

with the qualifications listed. Then I just sat there feeling conflicted. This has happened a few times in the recent past. 

 

I’ve said several times that I don’t want another full time job. I love writing, working from home and having the ability to be choosy about my who I work with. There’s no dress code and no schedule, I don’t have a commute, and I get to play with my dogs or dig in the garden whenever I need a break. So, why would a job opening raise such turmoil?

 

At least a couple of my clients have struggled with the same question. Would a position with a company give me some stability while I continue to build a business? Could I still do a good job of running a business while working somewhere else? Should I be thinking about winding my business down and start looking for a full time position? These are the questions that haunt my darkest professional moments.

 

For me, so far, the answer to all of those questions has been no, and for a long and varied list of reasons, not the least of which is that I know the grass is NOT greener anywhere else. I’ve never had a job that I enjoyed as much as I have enjoyed Smiling Tree Writing. That doesn’t mean that there are not hassles and aggravations, but for the most part they are small, and overshadowed by the good stuff.

 

If you are a business owner, do you ever contemplate taking on another job, either part time or full time? Even if you don’t seriously consider it, do you indulge in fantasies about working in an office, and watching those lovely, regular paychecks flow into your bank account?

 

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One of the advantages of having had lots of different jobs in a wide range of industries is that you get to see that pretty much everyone gets bored with the limits and repetitions within in their own worlds.

No matter what you do, the conventional wisdom concerning your work will get stale. If you work in an office there are some phrases you’ve heard so many times you think you will puke if you hear them again. My last “real” job involved the phrase “get my arms around that” far too often.

Aside from tired language, every industry suffers from tired advice, too. The words used to issue the worn out instructions may vary, but for the most part, change in an industry happens slowly. Painfully slowly. Through generations, even.

Look at these statistics about web browser usage. Note how many people/companies are still using IE 6, which is so outdated that lots of sites will not even display correctly.  My daughter is finishing up her first semester in college and wondered aloud why one of her teachers requires her to print out a copy of her final PowerPoint presentation. A client of mine recently wrote an article about “thinking outside the box” that was well-received by his audience but would have been horribly boring to many other audiences.

Every industry clings to some antiquated processes and ideas and when someone comes along and innovates they are either praised or shamed – or both.

If you are steeped in the literature, training and language of your industry, how do you avoid saying and writing the same things everyone else is saying and writing?

If you are looking for a new way to approach your business, try taking a look at some industry completely unrelated to your own. I love reading blogs about social media and online marketing and newsletter writing, but often find it helpful to read about cooking, taking care of children, running restaurants, style and fashion, massage therapy, raising chickens or any of about a billion other topics.

Most small business owners face a similar set of problems and challenges, but the language used to talk about them varies by industry, and so do the methods of solving them. Six Sigma experts have traditionally worked in manufacturing, but are now being employed by hospitals. Although the industries are vastly different, both need effective, efficient processes to handle the flow of goods and people to increase productivity and keep costs down.

It takes a certain amount of creativity to apply the lessons learned in a different industry to problems you are facing in your own business, but then again, you need to be creative to solve problems anyway.

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Last week I lost 2 clients. That may seem insignificant to someone who has 40 or 50 clients – or more – but for me, it’s a sizable portion of my income.

The first person told me he doesn’t have time to dedicate to the work I’m doing. No doubt it’s true – he runs a thriving business that involves a great deal of travel. He even said that “when things settle down” he’d like to talk again.

The second person is a long-time client who has just decided to do something entirely different with her business. She is making a great decision and will still give me referrals in the future. She has been one of my best clients ever, and I will miss her.

When you lose clients, you have a few choices. You can hide in bed and read the really thick novel you bought to distract yourself from worrying too much. You can give up completely and start looking for a “real” job. You can start marketing your tail off and praying that someone hires you. You can fall into a horrible depression that cripples every interaction you have with other people. You can make lists of places to look to replace the lost business. You can look for services to add to your current offering.

No matter why you lose business – a crappy economy, a move, a shift in technology, whatever – it feels personal. It can be tough to turn off your sensitivity and remember that owning a business means you are going to deal with rejection, ups and downs and even outright failure. It’s not a matter of if you will face hard times or not, it’s a matter of how long they will last when you do.

Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, I see now that I should have been less worried about being spread too thin. I should have been looking for new clients all the time and outsourced some work if it came to that. Right now, though, I don’t have time to beat myself up over what I should have done. Right now, I need to create a calling list, leave some comments on blog posts, update my samples page, schedule a couple of networking events, order some business cards, write an ad for craigslist…

What about you? What do you do when your business takes a sudden and  unexpected nose dive? How you avoid feeling like your world is crashing? Do you immediately pick yourself up and get busy beating the bushes or do you give yourself a day or two to worry?

ps

If you know a small business owner who could really use some help with building and executing a marketing strategy or who would like to send out a newsletter or who wants to get started using social media for business purposes, please, send them my way – I have a couple of openings

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Since this blog is all about inspiration and motivation and why some people reach their goals and others don’t, I write often about my personal goals – which are numerous and documented in multiple lists.

My husband doesn’t really have goals. There are a few things he’d like to do, and he accomplishes plenty. He just never sits down and thinks about what he would like to achieve and how he is going to manage to do it.

Early in our marriage, I decided to return to college and get a degree, so that I could get a “dream job.” I asked what he wanted to do, what his “dream job” would be. He said, “I don’t know. I never really thought about it.” I couldn’t believe it, and started asking about 5 million questions, trying to decide for him what he wanted to do.

He thought it was funny and said something like, “Work sucks. All work sucks. There is no such thing as a dream job. You just have to go to work and it’s going to suck.” I felt sorry for him, and was naively secure in the knowledge that it was possible to look forward to work everyday because you love what you do.

Fast forward 8 years. My sweet husband has accidentally stumbled across his dream job. He works for a very small company, building custom furniture. He loves his boss, his co-workers, what he does…he looks forward to work everyday and feels regret when he has to take a day off.  No hardcore pursuit of any goal was necessary. It just happened. He still works there – he’s been there for about 12 years now – and still loves it.

I got the degree I wanted so badly, and was working at Blockbuster. Before that, I taught for a few years, and thought that was my dream job. It wasn’t. I couldn’t handle the politics of the public school system and couldn’t survive on the pay at a private school. So I was working at Blockbuster, enduring crazy customers and terrible hours.

By this point our positions were completely reversed. I was convinced I would never find a job that I even liked, much less loved, and he had realized there are jobs you can look forward to everyday. He was giving me pep talks about being patient and “letting it happen.”

It’s hard describe how hard it is for a very goal-oriented person to “let it happen.”

I went through a series of not-great jobs, all the time looking for a “great” job. I applied at every company in Chattanooga that seemed appealing, and at quite a few that were definitely unappealing. I went to lots of interviews and after every one thought, “I could do that. It would be fun.” Then I would spend some time imagining myself working at whichever company, and thinking about how great it would be – even if it was doing something decidedly outside my comfort zone. I even applied at a bank – in case you don’t know me, I struggle to count, much less add.

I had all but given up on the idea I would ever have a job I enjoyed and was working on learning how to make my life outside of work so fulfilling it wouldn’t matter. I decided to start writing much more. I started learning about sites like Twitter and Facebook and trying to be more sociable in an effort to develop new friendships and strengthen old ones.

Then the idea for SmilingTree Writing came to me slowly and I saw a way to create my own job, instead of waiting for someone to give it to me.  Now, I’m back on the “dream jobs do exist” side of the argument.

The question is, could I have arrived at just this point without all the angst and worry and goal-setting? Should I abandon my lists and objectives in favor of “letting it happen?” Will I arrive at the same place anyway?

What about you? Do you set goals, or are you one of the lucky laid-back people?

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