Working on being a Good Little Biz™

Good Little Biz™  is a free website to help independent service professionals build a solid business. It’s the brainchild of Marsha Shenk, who has taken her thirty years of experience in coaching and transformed it into a series of seven self-guided worksheets. The website also offers workgroups, a directory of people who are working with the process, and a range of resources to hep.

You start by filling out a comprehensive profile, which helps Marsha understand her audience and how to best help us. Its longer than most, but it dials in the details of who her customer is – which is one of the things I know I struggle with defining. Lesson one before I even start the worksheets – ask your customers about who they are and what they need. Show them you want to know about them.

There are seven worksheets, focused on the following areas:

1. Dreaming
2. Good payoff?
3. The right setup?
4. The right customers?
5. The right pricing?
6. Getting the word out?
7. The right deals?

Reading through the worksheets, I can see all the mistakes I have made in the past 20 years.  It’s not the simple how to start a business information, you are looking at the most important factors that it takes to make a service business successful. Even more important, do you really have a business model that is solid and has a chance of meeting your needs.

What’s holding me back?

I’ve been looking at VisualsSpeak’s business model for a while, knowing something needs to change. While I have had many ideas, and received  a lot of wonderful suggestions, there is still something missing that is preventing a plan from falling into place.  I decided to begin the Good Little Biz™ worksheets to help sort it out.

Each question on the worksheet is simple but deep. While I can answer each one quickly, it doesn’t really drill down to the deeper level I feel I need right now.  Instead I decided to use the questions in conjunction with VisualsSpeak. This is the start of a series showing that process.

Getting beyond the stories I already know

When I have worked on a particular problem for a long time, I develop a story about it, a particular way of describing it.  This story isn’t particularly helpful in creating new insights. It tends to be stale, more about where I am stuck.

VisualsSpeak helps get beyond these stories by accessing the brain visually. If I assemble images quickly, it can bypass my thinking stuck brain, and give me a deeper level of information. That is exactly what I need right now.

Join me?

Anyone interesting in working through the worksheets with me? No pressure, informal. I started a group on the Good Little Biz site called Creative Good Little Biz. Email me christine (at)  visualsspeak . com or Dm me on twitter, or just join the group after you register for GoodLittleBiz if you are interested.

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Posts about the Dreaming Worksheet

a. What would you really LOVE to be doing?
b. Who would you LOVE to be working with?
c. Who do you most want to benefit from your work?
d. What kind of benefits do you want them to enjoy?
e. What kind of experience do you want them to have as your customer?