Is doing it alone taking its toll?

Last night, I read an article in Inc. Magazine about solo entrepreneurs.

It said that the biggest pitfalls for solo entrepreneurs are loneliness, inertia, and not having a sounding board to talk through your ideas and decisions.

Amen and hallelujah.

I’ve been talking to business owners about their goals, challenges, and dreams, and the thing that keeps coming up is that we aren’t talking to other people enough.

Not in the polite way.

In the real, open, receptive “I’ve done everything I know how to do and so I’m ready to listen to your ideas” way.

Many of you reading this are, like me, American. (To the Canucks and Scots and Brits reading this: I know you’re here, too. Bear with us.)

Which means that if we were fish, we would be swimming in the ocean of rugged individualism, doing-it-yourself-edness, and lone wolves.

But wolves are wild dogs. And dogs are pack animals.

What if you are a pack animal, too?

Don’t get me wrong. The conversation you have with yourself is one of the best you’ll ever have.

But what if it’s a one sided conversation that, by its nature, keeps certain things hidden from you?

We’ve been asking business owners what their biggest challenge with writing sales copy is. And you tell us it’s things like:

(1) Seeing things from the clients viewpoint

(2) Communicating with my tribe how what I will do will change their lives for the better – without being salesy or gimmicky

(3) Speaking the language that resonates for them and causes them to click the buy button

And if you’ve found value in my articles and training calls, then hear me now and believe me later (just don’t wait too long – it’s costing you!):

Speaking the language of your ideal clients – and if you’re here, reading this, gourmet clients who like to pay more for quality – is a foreign language.

And like any foreign language, you don’t learn it from a book.

You learn it on the streets.

You learn it in the grocery store. At the café. From conversations with patient, strangers.

This doing it alone… this trying to figure it out in your head… without actually taking the conversation you want to have with people in your business to “the streets”…

… it’s the slow, painful way.

There’s no judgment here. Many of us are raised to “figure things out” solo. It’s in the school system. It’s in our institutions. It’s in many of our families.

But what if that’s the old way?

And what if the new way is to link arms with other women and men who have a different vision — one of collaboration, and contribution, and yah, making money along the way?

The thing I keep seeing with my clients and students is that they don’t just want to have a conversation with their audience – they want to have a conversation with their peers.

Collegiality can be hard to come by as an entrepreneur.

That’s why I do things like host the Writing Intensive. Because other people can see you more clearly than you see yourself. And often, they can see bigger things for you. What ends up happening is that they reflect back to you a bigger, bolder, more rich expression of your work.

At the last Writing Intensive, I asked the group to think of one thing they don’t want people to find out about them in their business. One woman shared that she was a health coach, but she wasn’t 25 and she wasn’t blond and although she’d lost 70 pounds, she still had more to go.

“What are you, crazy?!” another woman yelled.

With love, of course. (This was a raucous group.)

“That’s a selling point for me! I don’t want to work with someone who is perfect and only eats clean.”

And thus, a powerful talking point was born.

The longer I do this work, the more I’m learning that I don’t have all the answers.

I don’t need to.

None of us do.

What we need is to relinquish the white knuckle death grip over our message, our business and yes, even our lives… and explore the radical idea that we don’t have to do this alone in a room. Hunched over a laptop. Inner gremlins screaming nasty things.

We can link arms, join forces, and trust what chosen others reflect back to us about ourselves.

You want people to feel like you GET them, when they read your stuff? Then come to the Writing Intensive, Feb 20 -22 in Miami, where I will personally talk you through your next writing project. I invite you to get unreasonable. Get on a plane. And get your website, sales page, email series, or preview call opt-in page DONE. More info + register here: stellaorange.com/writing-intensive.

Mighty thanks to BiblioArchives flickr photostream for the pack horses.