Smaller with Purpose

April 17, 2012 by 13 Comments

After nearly two years of trying to woo the internet world to my doorstep, I have made an amazing discovery: I enjoy being a small business and don’t want to be big! WOW …. that feels good to finally say out loud.

The reason that I needed to say that today is because I know that there are many people like me. People who are looking for a business opportunity based more on their life purpose than on how big the business can become or how rich they can get. What they are looking for is the answer to their life’s dream rather than some arbitrary definition of success that equates success only with money earned.

Now, if that is how you define success, it is alright by me. However, if success has a different meaning to you, one that is more personal, more intimate, then maybe you ought to consider building your business smaller with purpose.

In order to build this way you will need to consider three things:

  1. How much is enough? If you don’t have an answer to this question, the allurement of “more” will have a much greater chance of overtaking your dream. You will give up some of life’s most special moments in chasing the dream of more and in the end may well regret what you have lost more than celebrate what you have gained.
  2. How does business blend with your life’s purpose? I heard someone just the other day talking about living out their dream. What made me listen more closely to what she said, was that she is not a millionaire nor someone whose current efforts could lead her to that magic place. However, because what she does moves her in the direction of her life’s purpose, she ends each day having lived one more day with purpose.
  3. Are you selling quality or quantity. Early on in the development of The Doulos Group, I was asked what kind of business I wanted. Did I want to be more like a “discount store” that makes its money through volume sales or did I want to be like a “premium store” that made its money selling high valued products at premium prices. At first I chose #2, thinking that I could work with just a few high end clients and maximize my income in the process. Now, while I am still looking for just a few key clients, I am not so much concerned with maximizing my income potential. I want to sell quality products to an exclusive clientele at a price that makes sense to them, not me! In the end if I live out my purpose, what I make and what I’m able to have will be taken care of!

I didn’t intend to make this post about me, but I am an example of developing the mindset of smaller with purpose. Maybe you are struggling with your business ideas as well. Maybe you are looking at the “rat race” and wondering how to get out of it and still enjoy life’s bounty. Maybe you have a great idea that keeps you up at night and wakes you early in the morning. Maybe you want to build a business that allows you to live your life’s purpose rather than becoming your life’s purpose.

If so, maybe smaller with purpose is the answer for you as well! What do you think?

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How Much Time Does It Take?

March 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

How much time does it take to make sure you are doing the right thing in starting a business? That’s a good question. One that unfortunately doesn’t have a cut and dried answer. There are many factors that every new entrepreneur must consider and the time it takes to consider these factors varies person to person.

Here are just a few of the factors new entrepreneurs need to consider:

1.    Building a business based on their life’s purpose. Many have not even considered that their life really has a purpose, so to begin at this spot might take a significant amount of time.
2.    Determining whether or not their business idea can be a function of that purpose. It will take some time research, to structure, and to create the mindset that such a business can be created/profitable.
3.   The new entrepreneur must also consider their current skill set to decide what they know, what they need to know, and how long it will take to gain any additional knowledge as well as how much that knowledge will cost. They then must determine if they can spend the time/resources to gain that knowledge.

This list of considerations is by no means an exhaustive list. On the contrary, it is just a beginning. Each entrepreneur will have these and many other factors on their own list of  potential questions that will need to be asked and answered before any business planning, modeling, or marketing would even begin to take place.

It is possible for some that these questions can be answered quickly and with little effort, but, for most new entrepreneurs, care must be taken and time spent should not be considered wasted if, in the end, the right business is started and the entrepreneur is able to live their dream, according to their purpose, in both life and business.

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Aligning Life and Business

March 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Perfect Office Space

When making the choice to be an entrepreneur, you are stepping into a world of your own making. What I mean by that is that as you start your own business, you are in control of the clients/customers you choose to work with, the size and scope of your operations, and the culture, brand, and value you present. Since creating an income is what most people spend their whole lives trying to perfect, it would sure be nice if we could actually enjoyed it by aligning life and business.

To align your life and business, you must consider the following:

  1. Who are you really? I mean, when no one is around and there is no fear of a camera or a recording device of any kind, who are you? What motivates you to action and what frightens you into inaction? To be successful in business you must know the answer to this question.
  2. What is your life’s purpose? I have an old friend who said for most people life’s purpose can be summed up with the phrase, “get all you can, can all you get, and sit on the lid.” Unfortunately I think that he is, for the most part, correct.
  3. How can you align your business plans, goals, and dreams with your life’s purpose. You see, I am convinced that the greatest levels of frustration and stress exists in life when we are operating apart from purpose. If there is no real point to life, then what’s the point of excelling at anything?

I just saw a new statistic yesterday that said that in the US, 84% of current employed people are looking for different jobs. 84% … dissatisfied enough with what they are doing in the event they do the most (work) are looking for something else!! Seems to me that it is time to take a step back, think about life and its purpose and end the end do all you can to align life and business!

What do you think? How do you go about aligning life and business? What secrets are you willing to share?

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Having a Strategy for Growth

February 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I have been online consistently now for more than two years. I have read blogs and ebooks and articles and white papers and listened to webinars and watched videos and …. well you get the picture! I have done everything that I know how to do to create a valuable blog for people who want to design a successful life/business plan.

strategy

strategy (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

Since re-focusing the Doulos Group in January my readership and other analytics have gone up and I am grateful. However, I have discovered something that I hadn’t seen before that I want to put into practice here and to share with you as well. I have been studying my blogging heroes (Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Nancy Duarte, Mark Schaefer, and Scott Stratten, to mention a few) and have discovered that they have something that I don’t have. They have a visible strategy for their posts and the direction that they want their blog and business to go. Nothing seems to be “hit and miss” about their writings. They have a plan (strategy) and they execute it with precision.

I, on the other hand, have written about things that I thought were important for the moment. (Or things that other people said were important to business professionals.) At the end of 2011 I looked back and tried to decide what I had accomplished. I enjoyed getting better at writing, but I didn’t really take my readers anyplace specific. I didn’t have a strategy or plan for what my writing should do or what story I might tell.

I read a lot of blogs and find many like mine. Lots of information that is good, but no real direction/strategy. My goal in the re-focusing of my online venture is to establish and work my developing strategy. I would challenge every entrepreneur and new business start-up to really consider the strategy and direction of your business and create a focused plan for 2012. With a definite strategy and a direction for your business online as well as offline, you can’t help but create something special for your customers/clients.

What is your strategy for the new year? What direction is your business heading? Would you be willing to share some of your ideas about focus, planning, and direction?

 

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Break all the Rules!

December 2, 2011 by 8 Comments

Have you ever been tired of just about everything in life? I mean so tired of the way things are that you thought about how wonderful it would feel to just break all the rules? Just to strike out on your own and end up where you want to be rather than were you are expected to be!

Boomers across the world seem to be collectively struggling with these very thoughts. Our sense of freedom from the ordinary that carried us through our youth has given way to our sense of responsibility to a system that more and more makes little sense.

Most of us have worked hard, been responsible, and followed the rules, only to be the first to be laid off and the last to be rehired. Our years of efforts have been overlooked and the value we bring to our society has been minimized. It seems that the greatest worry society has today is that we are getting old and who is going to pay for our old age.

So here we sit, getting older fast and being minimized by the society that we spend our lives building for ourselves and the generations to come. Did we make mistakes? Yes!! Are we to blame for some of the failures in our society? Yes!! Could we have done better? Who couldn’t using hindsight as a measuring stick?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to break all the rules and strike out again to reinvent my life and reshape my future! Wanna come along?

If you do, I think that there are five things that you are going to have to consider:

1. To reinvent your life and reshape your future you are going to have to set aside the notion that everything in life that is bad is someone else’s fault. Personal responsibility has to trump everything else in life. I can wake up on a given day and make life great or make it unlivable no matter the circumstances. The choice to react or to respond is entirely up to me! So it is with you as well.

2. To reinvent your life and reshape your future you are going to have to decide what it is that your life is supposed to be and then commit yourself to that end! Do you believe that your life really has purpose? Have you ever considered what that purpose is? Are you moving in the direction of that purpose everyday? If your life purpose is not clear to you, you will never really move with confidence or inner strength. The desires of others for you will always take precedence to that nagging urge inside that tells you that something isn’t right.

3. To reinvent your life and reshape your future you are going to have to seek guidance from those ahead of you on this journey. Now I don’t mean follow them like zombies or lemmings, but watch them as they journey and pattern your journey according to the principles you find in them. Ask questions, listen closely to their answers, think carefully (pray if that is what your life is about) and then move in the direction of your life purpose.

4. To reinvent your life and reshape your future you are going to have to stay focused through all the storms that lie ahead. No one that chooses to break all the rules will be able to do so without creating some waves. These waves will often increase in size and magnitude until they become full-fledged storms. It is these days of what appear to be darkness and despair that the greatest victories can be found. Stay focused, keep your eye on the prize and let your dream dispel every wave!

5. To reinvent your life and reshape your future you must start! This is where the rubber really meets the road! It is not enough to be tired of what you see in front of you. It is not enough to wish you could develop the courage to strike out. It will only happen when you make the first move. You are the catalyst! You must make the first move and then commit to the next and the next and the next.

I am not going to let a broken world system determine whether I live a fulfilled life. Are you?

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Smaller with Purpose – Update

May 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I always love it when I write a post (Smaller with Purpose) and someone who reads it says, “that reminds me of something I’m doing” or “that reminds me of something else I saw/read.” Yesterday, a good friend, photographer Shuva Rahim said that she had just written a blog post about why she was a photographer. (Just click on Shuva’s name to read the post.) She also told me of a great video that she saw that touched on the subject of building a business with purpose.

Watch this great video by Simon Sinek and hear this concept of purpose from a different voice. After you watch, let me know what you think about this idea of purpose. Do you have a purpose? Do you know yours?

 

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Getting Ahead of the Curve

April 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This week is an exciting week for Doulos Marketing. We are working hard to get ahead of the curve in our business vision, ideals, and practices. Over the past month I have been able to really take some time to focus on our purpose and direction. I will be putting the final touches on some announcements that I will be making starting the beginning of May (along with client appointments and my regular duties as Dad and Pastor).

But, before the “big announcements,” I decided I would give you a sneak preview of what’s to come:

1. Doulos Marketing is changing its overall focus from being the “inbound marketing guys” to becoming the small-business identity folks.
2. Doulos Marketing is going to work with and help small-businesses “find themselves” and in doing so create a profitable niche that will give them all the freedom that success has to offer.
3. Doulos Marketing is going to stress the responsibility of being a socially aware business owner, understanding that every business has an impact on society as well as the economy.

So there you have it …. a different kind of marketing company …. one that will work hard to get ahead of the curve.

Stop by often, ask lots of questions, join the conversation, and let’s make a dent in the universe (Steve Jobs said this first!).

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