I spent the day in a client’s basement balancing their checking accounts. I love these clients. They’re amazing people. But every time I go to their offices to work I’m extremely unnerved. The truth is I’m scared of them. Not them personally. I’m scared of what they represent. It’s a family-owned business that they’ve been running for over 15 years. They don’t make a ton of profit but they continue to work hard and they’re amazing at what they do. They market themselves every day, they put themselves out there every day, and they’re amazing at connecting with people.
Any good entrepreneur will tell you that marketing is huge – connecting with people, networking, working with others around your needs – these are all imperative components to success with a small business. I knew all of this when I started this journey in 2006 and I jumped right in. I started some blogs, created a lot of marketing materials, and went to several networking events. I got a lot of good clients and things seemed okay.
Then I slowed down. I got to a certain point and just stopped pushing for more business, especially around the bookkeeping side of things. I remember a reporter asking me how many people have a hired since I started this business. “Hired?” Am I supposed to hire someone? Am I supposed to open myself up and expose all the extremely vulnerable aspects of my business venture to another person? Who does that? The answer is, “pretty much every person that starts a business.”
It took a while for me to realize how closed off I am from the outside world. How my personality and talkative nature is just a cover-up – compensation. I give the illusion that I’m outgoing and personable so that people will think, “Oh, she has tons of friends. She doesn’t need one more.”
People always say the first step is to face your fears. But I think the first step is just acknowledging your fears. So this is my acknowledged fear of the day.
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