Entrepreneurial Years

As in “The REAL Entrepreneurial Years.”

I learned three powerful things during those network marketing years – how to sell,  how to extrovert fearlessly, and how to say no to authority by standing up for what I believed to be right.

I knew I didn’t want to be controlled, and corporate life, at least for me, had been about control.  Sure, it feels like there’s safety in letting someone else make the call, but it is a false safety.  It’s a safe feeling that comes only from not looking at the danger.  A change in management, a change in strategy, a change in your boss’s opinion can mean you are out the door, even if you did everything right (or at least believe you did).  I was on the right track with being independent, but it needed to be real.

In network marketing they say you are running your own business, but you are not.  If you were, you’d get to control the marketing and advertising.  You’d get to decide which products to carry.  You’d have an accounting system to know what your profit or loss is.  You are running your own sales operation, which is the most critical part of any startup, but it isn’t the whole story.

It’s true that nothing happens until someone sells something, but I was fresh out of things to sell.  My last corporate job had been in consulting, and my husband was a consultant, so it seemed like a good place to start.  The great thing about a services business is that it requires minimal investment to get started.  You really just need something to offer to people.

I’d always been fairly good at organizing my space, and so I fell into professional organizing.  I joined the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO), which had a very strong Atlanta chapter.  From these ladies I was able to learn all the secrets of organization.  I was able to take what I’d learned about sales and marketing from my last career and bring it to a real, stand alone company.  I got business via referrals and referred business out.  I collaborated with other organizers on their big projects, and I hired peers to help me with my larger gigs.

At first the learning was amazing.  Tips and tricks for organization.  How to establish, market, and run a real business.  How to team with others on projects.  But within a year I’d grown tired with the actual organizational work.

We tend to feel like what is easy for us is easy for everyone.  It’s not.  And the danger of this type of thinking is that we fail to appreciate our gifts, and the efforts of others who are weak where we are strong.  After a bit of time as a professional organizer, I just wanted to scream, “just clean up after yourself!  You are an adult!  Put your toys away when you are done playing with them!  It’s not that hard!”  Wanting to yell at your clients is a strong sign that you may not be working with the right clients.  It was time to move on.