One Red Hot Country Mama!

Followers of this blog will know that for the past three years, I have been running my own marketing consulting business (at www.convertinnovations.com). During that time, I have had clients of all sizes, worked on interesting projects, and have tripled the business, then shrunk it down again. I have learned a lot of lessons in my years as an entrepreneur, and I would like to take the opportunity to share them:

• Not all entrepreneurs are these amazing inspirational people. Some people are entrepreneurs because they cannot get a regular job, or they can’t stick with one. I went into it with this idealized view of people who chose the independent route, not realizing that many are there because they have no other choice, and many are totally not inspirational at all. Also, a lot of entrepreneurs idolize large companies, rather than seeing small enterprises as the best.
• Employees will never care about your business as much as you do. No matter how good someone is in interviews or discussions about a job, they will never be as invested. I realized that it is much better to work with complimentary and equal people, rather than having a full-time employee.
• It is not impossible to do business with friends and family, but it can complicate the relationship. Although it is fun to work with friends at first, it can be challenging as well in terms of maintaining the friend-side of that relationship.
• As an entrepreneur, you have a lot of freedom, but you also have a lack of security. Even accounts that seem rock-solid for years can change with no warning. It is important to keep your eyes open at all times for new opportunities in case this happens.
• The vast majority of business owners in Canada are white men. If you are thinking of entrepreneurship as a way to change the status quo in terms of our established social hierarchy, it is not that easy.
• Finally, always get payment up-front with new clients! If they are too cheap to pay up-front, you never know if you will get payment later.

So – as you can probably gather, some of these lessons were difficult, YET, I still want to be an entrepreneur. Especially now that my son is born, being a work-from-home person gives me opportunity to be “out there” doing cool stuff, but also, I have time to be with my son as much as possible.

For my next steps, I think I will continue consulting, but mix in other opportunities, such as teaching, developing iPad apps and building a non-profit or a think tank. I want to give back to the world more, and that what is there now is still not enough. Onward we go!

As you may know, I am now living in a town an hour outside of Toronto called Port Hope. It is a beautiful little town, and we live in an antique house on the water. But, since Matt has a job in the city, and the commute is crazy, we are going to have to eventually move back to a city of some sort. On the short list right now is Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa. If you can think of a word for each city, I would say: Toronto: Work Vancouver: Outdoors Ottawa: Community After 10 years in Toronto, I found it was a really great place for career, but it is not as good for community. Ottawa is community since it is the kind of place where people still know their neighbours, and you can meet people you know whenever you go downtown, and Vancouver is more about the stuff that you do on the weekends. So – which one will we choose? We don’t know. The move is in the five-year plan, so we will see!

As one of the first gifts for baby Allan, I made paintings of the “spirit animals” of both me and Matt, including a dragon. See the photos here. He loves to look at them after he gets changed and dressed!