Lately, I’ve been exploring Needs – those essentials in life. I’ve been wondering what are the simplest building blocks of a good life and how can that be applied to business so that we aren’t continually producing waste (products, time, energy, etc). As I delved into the world of Needs, it became apparent that it wasn’t just about minimising waste. Creating essential products and services can mean your business survives (and perhaps thrives) in uncertain times. Here’s my recently published article from Flying Solo that explains it more…

When cashflow gets tight, a natural response is to start eliminating those expenses that aren’t ‘essential’. How do you meet your clients’ needs and ensure that you don’t get crossed off their essentials list?

Recently I wrote about how understanding your needs as a soloist can help improve not only your enjoyment of your work and wellbeing, but also your performance. To ensure you’re not crossed off your client’s list of essential services, you need to be sure you’re meeting your clients’ needs.

This begs the question: what do people really need?

In my last article, I looked at our needs as soloists and found that in addition to our basic physiological needs we have the ABC of psychological needs of autonomy, belongingness and competence.

Most businesses meet some need – sometimes indirectly and sometimes creating more needs in the process. You can trade on your client’s fears and get them to continue buying your product because it gives them a temporary feeling of security or feeling good. For me, making clients buy five products to meet a need or setting up client dependency is akin to selling junk or creating waste – it is not only unethical but not sustainable.

The idea of creating services or products that help your clients to the extent that they no longer need you may seem to conflict with the purpose of business. Aren’t we here to maximise profit? Well, no, not all of us.

Most soloists I know and work with have moved beyond this approach. They want their work efforts to be more than the passing of time or making a buck. They are interested in providing great services or products that truly improve their clients’ lives.

A sustainable business for uncertain times addresses clients’ needs as directly as possible and does not create more needs in the process.

How do we create businesses that meet clients’ needs?

Your business may already address a basic physiological need. For example, you may produce the snuggliest winter coats this side of Antarctica and thus be meeting people’s need for warmth. Or, you could be addressing the need for shelter by providing access to home loans or rental properties. As a bookkeeper you are addressing your clients’ need for security and sleep – knowing that their BAS will be in on time!

When I look at the businesses on my outgoings list that I consider ‘essentials’, it consists of businesses that not only meet some of my basic physiological needs but also my psychological needs. They give me choices, make me feel that I belong, and help me grow.

What can you do to better meet your clients’ needs?

1. See your clients as whole people

Your clients have a complex range of needs and are not just consumers who can be manipulated into buying an unending array of products.

2. Meet your clients’ need for Autonomy

How can your product or service increase your client’s autonomy? Do you give them choices? Do they have more choice in life after using your product? Does your product help them feel the “master of their domain”?

3. Meet your clients’ need for Belonging

Does your product help your clients connect with others and feel that they belong? Does it make them feel part of humanity or does it make them disengage with people and with life? Do you treat your clients with respect or speak about them disparagingly behind their backs?

4. Meet your clients’ need for Competence

Does your product allow your clients to learn new things and grow? Do you acknowledge your clients existing competence and give them ways to enhance it?

Finally, and most importantly:

5. Ask your clients what they need

Delve deeper should they answer “more money”: what does more money gives them? Choices? Security? Food on the table?

The opportunity awaits you to find creative, sustainable ways to meet your own and your clients’ needs – and not get crossed off that list.

This article was first published in the online community for solo business owners, Flying Solo.

Related posts:

1. Understanding your needs as a solo business owner
2. Dealing with Non-paying Clients
3. Seven ways to create a sustainable business

The evidence is everywhere. If we don’t treat clients with respect, we lose them. If we take non-renewable resources from the planet, they run out. It’s time to look past our financial bottom-line to see how to create a truly sustainable business.

For me, it always hits me when I buy paper. Do I get the budget $4 ream or spend a couple of extra dollars on the eco-friendly, post-consumer-waste, recycled stuff? Sure, “What’s one ream of paper ?” I say, but what if every business says that and leaves it up to someone else to make the difference?

The challenge is not just to run a profitable business but to run a sustainable business – a business that gives back the resources it uses. Assessing your business with a triple bottom line looks at its environmental (planet), social (people) and economic (profit) impact, and it’s just as relevant to soloists as it is to large corporations.

Now you may not be ready to go solar, but here are seven simple things you can do to reduce your business’ environmental impact and create a more sustainable business.

Consume less

1. Switch off  the lights, the computers, the fax and the photocopier at the wall at the end of the working day. If you’re not ready to harness the sunshine, then get supplied with green power. Put on a jumper rather than the heater. Open the window rather than cranking up the air-conditioning. In the heat of the day, have a siesta, take a long lunch or adopt a more European work day.

2. Get on the phone. Can that meeting be conducted by phone? Do you need to take the car or can you hop on the bus or carpool? What’s the impact of your air travel? If air travel is essential, buy some carbon offsets for your business.

3. Embrace working from home. Reduce your travel and doubling up on equipment and resources. Or share an office space with other soloists. When sourcing equipment and services, consider buying local to reduce travel miles.

4. Use less materials. Do you really need to print that? Do you need the glossy promotional materials? Could you ‘go digital’ instead? Consider ways of standing out from the crowd without producing endless bin fodder.

Reduce waste

5. Recycle. It’s now easy to use recycled paper, envelopes, pens, equipment, furniture and clothes. Keep the flow happening by recycling your own resources. Choose lunch on a ceramic plate or get your takeaway coffee in a ceramic mug.

6. Do no harm.  Be aware of the potential harmful effects or by-products of the production processes you use. Are your raw materials contributing to rainforest loss or river pollution in the far off place they are produced?

7. Increase lifecycle. What about the lifecycle of your products? Are you buying equipment for life or something that will need to be replaced or upgraded in 12 months? Are you producing high-resource, short lifecycle products to make a fast buck? Or are you creating products that will last beyond the season, the fad or the warranty?

We have the opportunity as soloists to make immediate changes to create a sustainable business, so our business reflects our values and the world we wish to live in. We may be only one business but together we make up a vast chunk of the workforce and can make a difference.

In the next article in this series of three on creating a sustainable business, we look at our relationships with clients and suppliers and ask the question: what’s the social impact of your solo business?

This article first appeared in the online community for solo business owners www.flyingsolo.com.au

Related posts:

1. Meeting your clients’ needs
2. Understanding your needs as a solo business owner
3. Organic business: Why I’ve gone organic

 

I couldn’t just let it ride.

I understand how some soloists manage their finances. Where the question when looking at the pile of bills isn’t “What’s due this week?” but “What can I get away with NOT paying this week?” I’ve been there. When I’ve had slow payers before, all it has taken is a reminder phone call to get my invoice on top of that list and it gets paid within the week.

But that’s not how it panned out this time. I did all the “right” things in the service delivery: clearly negotiated terms and expectations before we began. Checked expectations met on completion. Issued invoice. Followed up by phone, followed up by email, followed up by phone and post, and phone again. I was persistent but polite.

90 days later and my partner laughs when I ask her to check the post office with an earnest “Just in case there’s something there!” In my heart, I realise this one’s not going to pay.

Tapping the wisdom of other soloists

Realising the gently-gently approach wasn’t working, I began scouring the articles and forums here at Flying Solo to see how other soloists handled non-paying clients. But as I read through the advice about taking legal action or engaging a debt collector, something wasn’t sitting right with me.

Sure, my former client may be disrespecting me by not paying her account, but do I want to use an adversarial system I dislike to resolve the issue?

Letting it go

I was determined to find a third way, so I asked my colleagues what they would do in my situation. Their responses not only confirmed I wasn’t alone but pretty much summed up what I’d already done and what I was feeling: Do what you can and then let it go. It was surprising the number of people who shared how the day after they decided to move on, the cheque arrived in the mail.

It’s not about the money

In the end, it’s not really about the money, it’s about fairness, respect and trust. If you negotiate a certain amount of work or an outcome for a certain amount of money, and you deliver, then you will receive said remuneration.

Paying your bills or communicating with a supplier when you are experiencing difficulties shows that you respect them and their business. However, the most important thing when I work with people is trust – as a coach, they tell me their deepest desires and trust that I won’t make fun of them, tell the world or use it to my advantage. In return, I trust they will pay their bill.

Doing business with integrity

I know some people will consider these expectations naïve, but experience tells me otherwise. I’m not in the business of making a buck through dog-eat-dog tactics and squeezing as much as you can from your suppliers and clients. If I’m talking to a client and fairness, respect and trust aren’t important to them, I’m quite happy to say no to their business.

Being clear about my rules of business

So for me, this experience has boiled down to realising that a client who I assumed played by the “new rules of business” was actually old school. There will be no debt collectors or threatening phone calls, just a realisation that I have different rules. I might even be playing a different game.

I’ve learnt the need to check the rules potential clients play by and be much clearer about my own rules before putting time, energy and commitment into working with them.

Oh, and from now on, I’m taking a tip from the oldest profession and getting the money upfront.

This article first appeared in the online community for solo business owners www.flyingsolo.com.au

Related posts:

1. Meeting your clients’ needs
2. Seven ways to create a sustainable business
3. Understanding your needs as a solo business owner

As a soloist, I’ve struggled to find the right amount of structure to keep my business fresh, enjoyable and with a healthy cash flow. I have discovered over time that the organic business approach works best for me.

I’ll give anything a go to see if it works and consequently, I’ve tried many of the gurus’ business models.

I implemented the seven habits and became somewhat effective. I spent a lot of time thinking but didn’t really grow rich. And, I rejected the myth of the entrepreneur by working on my business only to realise what I most enjoy is working in my business. So how come this expert advice hasn’t worked for me?

Other people’s programs don’t work because I’m not actually listening to the real expert in my business: me. That’s where organic business comes in.

Your organic business approach

By organic business, I don’t mean growing veggies under my desk. It’s about drawing inspiration and insight from my own natural systems and rhythms as well as those around me, and creating business structures and practices that are in sync with these. 

It’s about being responsive to what’s happening now, aware of the infinite possibilities, and mindful of what has worked and not worked in the past. It’s about listening to the earth, the community and myself, trusting my intuition and making decisions based on the really big picture (see my previous articles on creating a sustainable business).

An organic business approach is not without structure. It’s just a natural, adaptive structure with minimal constraints. It involves redefining success as being able to learn from each step you take towards your goals. 

It’s also based on the fact that we cannot fully imagine the future. We can plan, but we can’t take all of the complexity into account. The beauty of keeping our goals or visions fuzzy is that more often than not the future will actually be better than we imagined.

Natural cycles

As with nature, I’ve found there are cycles in business that I can either work with and flourish, or doggedly work against and be continually frustrated. While it’s sometimes difficult to accept the fallow periods when they’re happening, I’ve always found that they are essential for creativity and innovation. 

For me, the busy-ness has to stop so fresh ideas and approaches can emerge. Following the seasons, along with my natural energy levels, is more effective than mindlessly churning out a nine to five day. I work earlier in the summer, later in winter, get plenty of siesta time in the hotter months, and when it’s right, I work a four hour day. 

And when I work, I might go from a complex task to something that’s a no-brainer or something that makes the neurons fire a little faster. Rather than being a distraction, I find that mixing it up keeps it fresh.

Allowing the path of least resistance

One of the most valuable questions I have ever been asked is “Who are your people?” That question made it clear to me that marketing isn’t about persuading strangers to buy, but about letting those who know and trust me hook me up with people who need my services. For me, taking an organic approach is about allowing these pre-existing paths – or the path of least resistance – to help me get where I want to go. So I use my natural networks to create business, and my values, interests and strengths guide my business direction.

Find freedom and your edge with flexibility

Like many soloists, I want flexibility and freedom. Going organic allows this. By developing a strong core of who I am and what I do well, I can bend like the reed in my rapidly changing environment. I can gain my edge by responding and adapting to changing technology, markets and cultural shifts. And by being open to multiple income sources or ways of working – whether it’s as a soloist, an employee or a contractor – I’m not putting all my eggs in one wobbly basket.

Goodbye hierarchies, hello connections

Our businesses are naturally non-hierarchical – except for those of us with multiple personalities – and ideally suited to an organic approach. We can communicate directly with our customers and suppliers, and build the trust and rapport that leads to natural marketing through word of mouth and referrals.

My organic business approach helps me because it’s based on how I work best. I know that there is no ‘one right way’ to do business – just ways that suck the life out of me by creating doubt and despair, or ways that remind me why I’m doing this in the first place.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer the latter.

This article first appeared in the online community for solo business owners www.flyingsolo.com.au

Related posts:

1. The natural seasons of business
2. Seven ways to create a sustainable business
3. Setting up your Business Action Group