How to Have Big Company Impact as a Solo Entrepreneur

 My husband and I have shared a few laughs over the years thinking back to times that each of us badly needed to make a fledgling company grow into a final vision, with only a few days, and a few dollars to spare.

 I’ll never forget the story he told me about the time he was bidding on a contract to make some large and very detailed models for a customer. It came time for the inspector to drop by the business to make sure there was something actually there, and my husband started thinking that the hand tools required to actually do the job, didn’t look too impressive sitting there on the table.

 He had plenty of places that he could borrow a large saw to cut the one large platform to build the project on, but he knew the inspector had to see it in place when he arrived to understand. So with just a day or two notice, he went to a tool rental place and rented several large woodworking tools to fill up his workshop. He took his envelopes of small photos of the other jobs that he had done, and had them blown up into a portfolio, that showed the great work he had done for others and had professional written all over it. So when the inspectors showed up a few days later, he showed he was capable of doing the job, and that’s what they wanted. The fact that he knew that he looked ready and able gave him confidence, and he was able to relax and talk about the details of how he was going to produce the model, which was then completed to their satisfaction.

 But in the meantime, after he was awarded the contract and the inspector left, he had a really good laugh. In his haste of setting up he hadn’t even plugged the equipment in! I was rolling on the floor laughing when he told me.

 And I think this is a perfect example because the point was not to fake being able to do something that he couldn’t do –that is never a solution, and in this case he was well-qualified. It was all about creating the business image that would make the inspectors, in this case the decision makers, feel confident at a glance so that he would get hired for the job. The old saying “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” is as important to your business image, as it is to your own personal image.

 This is not much different than putting on a good suit for a job interview, and researching the employer to put your best foot forward. It is all about getting your image just right to convey to the employer that you are the person for the job.

 I’ll always remember the first big show I did in Boston, after I started my sheep-to-sweater business in Vermont so many years ago. I was putting the finishing touches on how I would set up my table at the show, to impart the charm that people always felt when they came out to the farm to buy yarn, visit the newborn lambs, or be measured for a handmade sweater.

 I was startled when out of the blue the phone rang, and it was the producer of a live news show on WBZ in Boston, asking if I would come to their studio to make the commercials for the coming show! I was in shock, and worried that I had neither time nor money to come up with the image I wanted to portray on a major television station.

 But I knew it was time to step up to the plate. In the next three days I had a print made of the wonderful painting that hung at the entrance to the farm. I took all of the pictures of the sheep and the sweaters and put them into an impressive album. I somehow found a printer in the basement of a local church that printed my painting of shearing sheep, and I had created my logo and my first yarn label. I turned over the label, and had the backside printed on half of them, with the natural colors of the yarn and ordering information, and created my first sample card.

 No designer could have given me a more nostalgic, unique or charming look, that appealed to sophisticated city dwellers, as well as my neighbors and friends in Vermont.

 The story didn’t end there. Just before I left to go to Boston I got a second call from the TV producers at WBZ. This time they were asking me if I would be willing to do an entire segment on the show — live! — be interviewed, show my sweaters, and tell the story behind the designs. What a blowout of a craft show I had as a result, and I continued to run into people for years afterward that remembered me from that one TV appearance.

 There are many points that could be made from this simple story. Perhaps the most important is the power and vibration of your internal vision when you create a business from your heart. It gives you the confidence to take on that windfall business when it comes, no matter how unexpectedly it may be. It shows you the true power of the law of attraction to match you up with people who want and appreciate what it is that you offer, and lets you experience in real-time your business dream coming to fruition.

 In the next few articles I will be expanding this idea as I discuss the ways to multiply your business efforts many times over. I will be talking about how to outsource to give yourself full productivity as a business owner, even if you are a solo entrepreneur. We will follow that with discussions of joint ventures, to expand the reach of your business even further. And last but not least I will wrap up the series with a discussion of the law of attraction and how you can apply it to your business, called “Make a Money Magnet of Your Business”.

 Here’s to Your Success!

 Sue

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Filed under: Law Of Attraction, one-person business ideas