Career
Getting In Touch With My Own Inner Samurai, Part One
Once upon a time, I left a well-paying job to start a business. It was a personal services business where I would provide coaching, consulting, writing, and speaking focused on careers. It had such wonderful potential and energy at the beginning. I loved the idea of working for me and working toward my own dream rather than someone else’s dream that was imposed upon me. It was liberating. Until I realized that I kind of sucked at it. Not the coaching, consulting, writing, and speaking parts…I was pretty good at. It was the entrepreneurial start-up business part. You know, the stuff any entrepreneur has to do like sell themselves and their business. My inability to do this surprised me because my work up to that point was marketing and membership development. How hard could it be to sell myself when I had sold my organizations for the past few years? That’s right…a hell of a lot harder. That’s when I learned that entrepreneurship isn’t for the meek or the timid (or the overly arrogant).
Before going any further, let me make a full confession: I fell flat on my ass and while it was painful and humiliating and the time I would not take back the experience for any amount of money. I learned way too much that will help me when I go back to working for myself again in the future. And until then, I’m making a point of reading and networking with folks who have made the transition from organizational employee to entrepreneur.
Enter Susan L. Reid and her new book called Discovering Your Inner Samurai. The subtitle is The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Journey to Business Success, but if you’re a guy don’t let that scare you away. Even though she writes from a female perspective and often openly to a female reader, there’s plenty of great advice and insight for anyone.
As to what this whole Inner Samurai stuff is, here’s how Susan describes it on page 5:
I began calling [my inner voice] my Inner Samurai when I realized how strong, vast, and powerful my inner voice is. Inner because the voice is deep within my being (to distinguish it from the voice inside my head) and Samurai because of how strong and powerful it is.
That definition gives a pretty good indication of what’s to come. Bear in mind that this isn’t your typical “how to get started in business” tome. Susan is much more interested in helping her readers figure out who they truly are, how they can connect their identity to their passion, and how they can focus that passion in their entrepreneurial actions. She interlaces these lessons with her own personal experiences as an entrepreneur (or as she calls it, an Accidental Pren-her™) and the experiences of her clients.
Susan encourages any newly emerging entrepreneur to consider the process of starting up a business as an adventurous journey. Along the journey, it’s natural to ask questions like these:
- Is my business idea good enough?
- How do I get the money to start up my business?
- Will I be able to run a successful business and not be chained to it 24/7?
- Do I have all the learning, education, and experience needed to be successful?
- What if I fail?
From my own experience, I readily admit that I struggled with each of these questions. They’re the types that can gnaw at you - particularly that last one on failure. And for each of these questions, Susan offers real examples of how to deal with them and the underlying fears they represent.
By the end of the book, be prepared to walk away with some essential tools that will help you build a business based on who you are. This is where the energy is and it’s what will get you through the lean times that are inevitable in any start-up venture. Trust yourself. Confront your fears. Enjoy the journey.
So if you’re thinking about starting a business, add Discovering Your Inner Samurai to your library. You can learn more about Susan and her coaching practice at http://www.alkamae.com/. And if you’re interested in what others are writing about the book, check out her virtual book tour page.
A final teaser: On Friday, I’ll be writing an additional post connected to Discovering Your Inner Samurai. One of the chapters in Susan’s book is on a subject that I’m intensely interested in - the concept of Multiple Streams of Passion. If you’re someone like me who has multiple interests and passions but don’t know how to harness the potential of all these options, make sure you come on back and join in the dialogue.
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11 comments for “Getting In Touch With My Own Inner Samurai, Part One”
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What a wonderful review you’ve written, Chris! Made all the more so because you know what it’s like to crash-n-burn in a small business start up. Therefore, you know what it takes to succeed, and have a sharp weather-eye out for what works and what doesn’t.
As you pointed out, “Discovering Your Inner Samurai” is not just for women. The men that I know of who have read my book have said the very same thing. In fact, Jim Horan of the “One Page Business Plan” series frequently chides me that this book should have been subtitled: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s and Cool Man’s Journey to Business Success.
You sum it all up when you say that the energy is found in building a business based on who you are. I worked with Susan initially on a project that I couldn’t make work. I wasn’t connected with it in the way I needed to be to find success. When we took a turn and found what I was connected to, I built a business from there. Having tried it both ways, I can say that building a business based on who you are - rather than based on what you think you’ve got to sell - is the only way to go!
Chris,
Thanks for sharing your unfolding entrepreneurial story. Such a reminder that there is so much more than a quality product or service. Those are essential however they don’t equal success. I loved the Susan’s conclusion:
“Your business success rests on these three ingredients:
1. The importance of knowing who you are.
2. The value of accepting yourself as you are.
3. The significance of daring to be who you are.”
Your last inning hasn’t been played and today you know and accept yourself in new ways as you dare to be who you are. That is the excitement of the journey!
I look forward to your next post. Pam
Indeed, Pam. Those last three qualities and characteristics of entrepreneurial success really stand the test of time. There is such importance, value, and significance in being you and packaging that to the world.
Agreed Dana. It is so much more self-propelling and profitable when you build a business based on who you are and draw the market to you, rather than chase the market, trying to sell to it. When clients first start working with me, I look for their unique marketing position, because a good idea without structure is just that.
Dana…lots of good stuff there. Doing something as crazy as a start up business requires stamina, patience, and motivation. The best source of fuel for all of those is Passion. The thing that I’ve discovered is that when I’m passionate about something, I’m way more open to finding the flow that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes about.
Pam…indeed! The pleasure is always in the journey…
Susan…thanks for adding even greater value by offering your perspective t the on-going dialogue.
I have to jump in here and say KUDOS to anyone who even begins down the road of having their own business. I agree with Chris when he says it is not for the meek or timid. And while I am not a highly extroverted personality,for me it has taken a HUGE amount of the three things Chris mentions…Trust yourself. Confront your fears. Enjoy the journey. I would add one more in there…trust the process. It takes time to build something worth while, it takes energy, and it takes faith…believing in things not yet seen.
Susan does a great job of helping us with “how” to trust the process by helping us get in touch with knowing and trusting ourselves. She truly is giving hope to women, and MEN, and expanding our awareness of the entrepreneurial journey.
Jina, yes! You’re right, trusting the process is so important to long-term success. Thanks or adding that!
How easy it is to throw in the towel and quit too soon, all because we haven’t trusted the process. It does take time and energy to build something worth while, and believing in things unseen is part of trusting the process.
Jina, like Susan, I agree with the addition of trust the process. When I went through my start-up, I thought the ‘leap of faith’ existed primarily at the beginning when I chose to leave my org job for own business. But the leap is much longer than I ever realized. Each action necessary to cultivate my business took a leap of faith. Even the decision to end my foray into the entrepreneurial world took faith in the unknown.
Brilliant addition to the dialogue, Jina! Thanks for sharing.
Chris, love your honesty as you shared your own experience developing your business. Not all of us will fit the mold of Donald Trump’s Apprentice. Susan’s book will attract those on a different plane than his style. I personally appreciate her focus on business folks who are connected to who they are being, and how that shows up in not just business life, but personal life as well. I love her focus being on the foundation of the person. However one defines as their successful business, we probably all agree the key is in the relationships built thru them that support and serve others. What lacks so often is the focus on the relationship we business folks have with OURSELVES. Once that is developed and strengthened, success is inevitable.
Hiya Carol! Sorry for the tardiness of my response to your comment. I really appreciate what you write (and has been one of my big learnings from Susan’s work) about starting the business from within…getting into a better relationship with ourselves. It’s kind of like learning to love - we can’t love another person until we know how to love our self. If we skip this step, then we are on very loose footing and our lack of confidence will shine through in just about every way we don’t want it to. I can definitely say that this was a strong reason for my own failure. And it’s all great learning.
Thanks for coming by and bringing yourself to the dialogue. Hope to hear your voice again soon.