Managing Personal Weaknesses In Your Business

Last week I discussed the need to be a leader in your business, even if you are a business of one. For many of us, we might excel at our craft, but the other skills needed to be that leader–such as getting the message out there– can be the struggle. The question is, if we’re a company of one, how do we go working around our personal weaknesses?

Figure Out Your Personal Weaknesses

We have a lot of weird views in our society. Let me touch on one.

Have you ever noticed how we latch on to successful people’s every word? Whether it’s a great entrepreneur, CEO, artists, actor, musician, athlete, or whatever, if the person has something to say, there’s someone with a mic to record it. And there’s an audience to listen.

This somehow leads to a lot of “Oh, he’s great at basketball, so of course I want his cookie recipe!”

Maybe LeBron makes the best cookies in the world, but there’s nothing inherent in his basketball success that indicates he should have his own cooking show.

(Side note: I would totally watch “The GOAT Cookie Challenge hosted by LeBron James”).

Success glosses over weaknesses. That can be true with our personal weaknesses. I’ve met plenty of people who think that because they became real estate gurus that they are experts in tax law.

We all have weaknesses. Do you recognize and acknowledge yours?

You absolutely should. Treat them like a Nat Geo special: Find them and document them.

Once you’ve figure them out, then you can come up with a plan on how to handle them.

Develop Habits

Do you loathe budgeting? Do you hate going on the cesspool of Social Media for marketing? Are you tired to editing your work? Is your writing terrible?

Guess what? It still needs to get done! And since you’re running this business by yourself, you’re going to have to manage these personal weaknesses.

Look, these things will (likely) never be your passion. Unless you’re really weird, you don’t create art just to track business expenses.

You can get better at them, though. The key to this will be developing habits around the stuff you really don’t want to do.

I keep going back to James Clear on this habit stuff, so let’s go there now.

Habits come in four parts: cue, craving, response, reward.

Let’s break that down. Some cue triggers your brain to initiate a habit process. Because your brain is expecting a reward, it starts craving to do the habit. The response is the actual habit itself. Then, finally, you get a reward.

Think about your morning routine. You wake up. You crave brushing your teeth. You brush your teeth. You have the reward of a tingling sensation in your mouth that makes you think it’s clean.

The trick is to create this same loop for habits you want to develop.

Walking Through An Example

I’m not a fan of Social Media. There’s a lot that goes into that, but let’s not get into that right now.

At some point I know I’ll have to up my Social Media game to better market The Indiepreneur. Let’s think about how I could do that.

Cue: I need something to trigger that I need to get on Social Media. I don’t want to get sucked in first thing in the day, so maybe I say I do it right after I finish lunch. I’ll put a calendar reminder for a bit, but the ultimate cue should be “eat lunch, chat on Twitter.”

Craving: Right now, finishing lunch won’t make me crave getting on. But eventually my brain should (hopefully) crave the reward and really want to get on after lunch.

Response: I get on Twitter and respond to some number of people or for a set period of time (the goal here is also important. Just getting on Twitter and looking at cat videos wouldn’t get me to a better place).

Reward: This one is a bit tough. My reward is ultimately to see more people on the site, but I likely will have to manufacture a reward in the meantime. Maybe eat a mint. Or, more healthily, I get up to walk (Twitter = getting up from desk for 15 minutes).

That’s just one example. I’ve used this habit loop successfully on other things (exercise, doing dishes). My plan is to try this specifically on Social Media in a bit. I just need to get through a few more weeks of tax returns…

Get Help

On a whim, I picked up a book called “All You Need To Know About The Music Business.” It has some fascinating information in it, and I love to see industry dealings from behind the scenes.

The book starts off with the importance of having a good team around your music. Which is exactly where you’d expect a music lawyer to start this kind of book.

When you start your creative business, typically you won’t be able to pick up that sort of support right away. It’ll be nearly impossible to find a business manager if you’re a musician with no proven success and no trust fund. And even more so for a music lawyer. So you’ll have to manage the hard stuff on your own.

Eventually, though, you can bring in help. Just because you’ve finally forced yourself into doing those Social Media posts or taxes by yourself doesn’t mean you have to do it that way forever.

I can’t tell you exactly when it’s time to get help, but a pretty good indication is when you can afford the help and you’re spending so much time on the stuff you have to do that you never have enough time to get done the stuff you want to do.