The Power in Learning to Receive
As entrepreneurs and small business owners, we are notoriously hard-charging people. We know how to get it done, make it happen, and squeeze the maximum productivity out of our 24-hour day.
We also enjoy giving back, our time and our talents. What we (or maybe this is just me) find difficult is to receive. It’s harder than dancing on the head of pin to give up control, not to micro manage, to let others take complete ownership of any part of our “baby.” It is most challenging of all simply to stop and listen to good advice.
For several years now, I have been running two parallel consulting businesses: one, focused on entrepreneurs and small businesses, and one focused on more traditional corporate consulting clients.
Early last year, I was given an enormous gift of insight for how to take these two separate businesses and combine them to provide a broader service offering to the entrepreneurs and small business owners I most enjoy working with.
That gift was a way to take a complex corporate, enterprise-level consulting methodology for branding, messaging and marketing that I’ve been using for years; a methodology that was way too complex and expensive for small businesses, and make it fast, easy, effective and affordable for small business. That gift was a new product called 5 Easy Pages, a complete marketing system in five pages.
But I couldn’t create this product alone, and I didn’t have the resources, financial and otherwise, to just pay people to get it done. I didn’t know it in the beginning, but Boy was I blessed! Through bringing this product to market I learned a big lesson in the power of receiving. Receiving wisdom from the business owners who took time from their hectic schedules and businesses to beta test the product and provide vital feedback; receiving advice from wiser mentors who have walked this path before and could steer me away from the rocks that crater new products before they see the light of day, and receiving time and talent from vendors and partners who worked out generous options for payment or service trades.
My lesson for 2011: Sometimes it is better to give than receive. And sometimes it’s not!
This blog post is part of the Word Carnival series, created by the amazing small business blogger and consultant, Tea Silvestre. Please check out all the great posts in February’s Word Carnival. Please comment and let us know what you think.
Recommend on Facebook- Share on Linkedin
-
- Tweet about it
- Subscribe to the comments on this post
About Clare PriceClare Price developed 5 Easy Pages to make marketing easier, faster and more effective for overwhelmed small business owners. Her system is based on her 20 years of strategic marketing experience with global companies like Microsoft, Wells Fargo Bank and Proctor and Gamble as well as multiple start-ups. Clare is the author of 700+ articles in the areas of technology, marketing and business strategies and growth. She has been a featured speaker for the American Marketing Association, SARTA and the U.C. Davis Graduate School of Management.
Trackbacks
-
Biggest Business Lessons of 2011 | Word Carnivals says:February 28, 2012 at 8:58 pm
[...] Price of 5 Easy Pages: The Power in Learning to Receive [...]
Reply
Speak Your Mind Cancel reply
*
*
Comments
You are not alone. I often fear that if I don’t do the work for my business that it won’t get done to my high standards–even if the help I’m offered is free! I could use a decent lesson in learning how to receive help myself. Great Carnival post, Clare.
Thanks Emily! I look forward to learning and receiving wisdom from you as well.
Ditto!
Wow…there’s almost a common theme running through most of our posts this month. Very, very In-ter-est-ing!
I have to confess…I’m one of those control freaks (so you’re not alone, Clare) who often finds it difficult to delegate tasks where I feel my reputation might be on the line. (Hmm. Insight?)
Thanks for sharing this story with us. Can’t wait to see how big your 5 Pages grows!
Thanks Tea! Its been an exciting year for all of us. Great to see “our tribe” growing and prospering as a team and as business onwers.
Another control freak raising her hand! One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is when to let go and allow someone else to do stuff – it still doesn’t always come naturally. Thanks for sharing your experience, Clare.
Yes…..it is hard to receive…..hard to let others in and share your weaknesses, vulnerability and I thank you and others of the Posse for being the people that came in and provided such awesome advice. This new journey we are on feels so positive as if it is circulating through us as a whole. You have share some very nice tools that totally rock and I am very grateful to you. Your sharing and shout outs is so appreciated and lifts me up to know you thought of me. THANKS for being so giving!
Oh hon, how I feel ya. This one’s particularly hard for me. When my great failure occurred, I realize now in retrospect, I made it SO much worse by failing to (A) admit I was in over my head and (B) ask the right people for help. I never even got to (C) accepting that help, because I wouldn’t admit I needed the help in the first place. It’s partly ego, and partly the deeply rooted desire not to bother anyone else with your petty problems. Except they’re not petty, we ALL need help from time to time, and no woman is an island.
Definitely! I’ve been in the pattern of learning a similar lesson, and it’s not always as simple to open up for the good stuff, even though we provide it for others. It’s great that you were able to let people in to help, and opening up to the bigger idea of what your project became. I also thank you for the reminder that it’s important to look at opportunities for receiving with a more open mind, and embracing the idea that it may completely change the course of a project, and that’s OK.
Clare,
You’ve got a great lesson here about taking advice from folks who are able to see things you’re not.
Often times people get so stuck in what they’re doing that they can’t see anything except for that. Without perspective, it makes the whole problem a lot harder to solve, the target a lot harder to see, the issue nowhere near as clear.
Good job getting outside your own head!
-Nick
Thanks Nick! I see that great prespective in your blog posts as well.