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Meetings with Remarkable Entrepreneurs

When I coach self-employed people in business skills, one of the first questions I ask them is “Have you written your job description?” The most usual response to this is “No” and I have to remind them that SELF-employment means that you are employing YOURSELF. You need to have a detailed job description that outlines your duties, responsibilities and compensation ….it should be very attractive to you so that if someone were offering you that position/role in the company, you would be delighted to accept.  

One of my close friends at the College of North West London did this recently although he has been an employee of the college for many years instead of being self-employed.

“ How do you get to write your OWN job description in a company?” I asked him. He gave me many examples of how he had been able to gain trust from senior managers by adding value in his work environment without asking for a reward.  This is called “reciprocity” …..whenever you give something of real value, it always comes back to you…not necessarily from the recipient of your generosity. 

Talking about generosity, I must mention one of my entrepreneur friends, Andy Harris, web consultant/strategist,  who often e-mails me with nice comments and friendly tips for developing my business…. http://www.focust.biz/index.htm  He says that one of the hardest things for
entrepreneurs/people in business, is keeping motivated and suggested a couple of useful tips for remaining motivated and having fun in business. The following is his second tip: 

“ 2.  This one is a bit more off the wall!  Being entrepreneurial can have it's down moments, lazy moments, and just "don't know what to do next" moments.  I've got a list on my wall that has six categories.  These categories include things like 'Revenue Generation', 'CPD', 'Internet Freefall' and if I really need that push to get moving again, I simply toss a dice and go with the number that comes up.  So, if it was 'Revenue Generation' I'd focus on an activity that is going to generate me revenue (rather than filing, loss leaders etc.).  If it was 'CPD' I'd do some Continuing Professional Development and develop my skills in a way that stops me being held back (e.g. in my case, learning to use Photoshop properly so I don't have to rely on a web developer every time I want graphics created).  'Internet Freefall' is, on the surface, a mindless activity and my new site will talk more about it.  Basically, pick up a book, newspaper, anything, and pick a page and line at random - slect a 2-3 word phrase and type it into a search engine like Google.  Then throw that dice again and click on the link down the page that corresponds to the dice roll.   Browse through that site, start to click on the links in it, click on the links that take you to other sites, and so on.  What this does is help the mind to wander in different directions and inevitably it sparks off something in your own mind that is useful for your business development. Give it a go and you'll see what I mean! Hope those couple of initial thoughts are at least interesting, even if they seem mad!!
Best,
Andy 

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