Commingling Funds is Stupid

We all know that commingling funds is a bad idea. From a legal standpoint, my understanding (Translation: I am NOT an attorney so if you want the real deal on this issue, call one) is that mixing funds that you are holding in the care of one of your clients with your own could cost you a pretty penny and a few not so happy moments in the slammer.

When it comes to your own business, commingling the funds you use to pay for your daughter’s ballet classes with the funds you use to pay for your Internet shopping cart can just be really messy. It’s not necessarily wrong and if that’s what you have to do to get started don’t let it be an unnecessary barrier, but it’s not ideal.

So, best to keep money coming in and going out from your business completely separate from that coming in and going out of your general house account, or whatever you call it. It will help you to stay on track regarding your business growth, stick to a budget and to not want to totally pull your hair out come tax time.

Commingling Your Personal Blog and Your Business is Stupid

I am one of those fortunate people who make good money online despite all evidence to the contrary. It would probably surprise most people to know that the side of me they are most familiar with online – the chick who writes about numerology, yoga, personal development, lifestyle, running, mojo and lord knows what else – is not the side of me that earns a living. Not by a long shot and it’s not the part of me that has tried to make a living either. A couple of times I thought, “hey it would be really nice to get a bunch more traffic here and try to monetize this” but at the same time I was far more interested in keeping it as my “write and do what I want when I want it site” than I was in doing what I know I would have needed to do to make it an actual income generating business.

My blog has never been about generating revenue – that was never the intention – and thank goodness for that because if that were the goal my blog would be considered an abject failure.

I love writing and I love the emails I get from the people who read it telling me I’ve helped them, encouraged them to transform a story or otherwise made them laugh. I love it so much that I have been writing online for 4 years with virtually no monetary reward to show for it. (That is changing dramatically this year but I’ll get to that later.)

I made nearly 70% of my income last year and 100% the years before as a marketing strategist and advisor. I have a full practice and work with clients every day but 90% of them come to me from word of mouth. I do very little promotion for that, though I will likely be doing more this year since I have a few good ideas up my sleeve.

I am sure you can see the problem, right?

I have very little visibility when it comes to my work as a marketing advisor so when it does come time to market to the people who do know me, they are really confused about what I’m offering and think I’ve just decided to pick up this marketing thing on a whim.

When it comes to the people who do know me as a marketing consultant, when they end up here on this blog they wonder if they have taken a wrong turn.

The two make no sense when taken side by side.

Has this ever happened to you?

I could have solved this problem years ago by making my blog all about marketing but quite frankly I wasn’t interested in writing posts about marketing and business every day. If you have read my blog for any length of time you’ll notice that at several points I got more heavy on posts related to business and marketing which incidentally really confused the heck out of people. Again, commingling your personal blog with your business one – not a good idea.

I didn’t decide to be a marketing consultant because marketing is my favorite topic in the world and that’s all I think about. I chose it because I have multiple degrees in sociology, psychology, education and counseling and in my opinion really good marketing is based on a deep understanding of psychology and group dynamics.

I also chose it because one of my greatest strengths is being able to see opportunities, ideas and holes more quickly and clearly than others and using that insight to help them solve their problems. I have been doing this since I was a kid and whether it had to do with relationships, dealing with authority, career matters or school struggles, my job has been to be the problem solver. So, using this skill in business was a natural step for me and it has proved to be a great one.

Having said that, last year was a time of deep introspection, getting crystal clear about how I want to spend my time in my business and where I want it to go and exactly what I am going to do in 2010 to get me there. In determining my business goals for 2010 I wrote down the most important lessons (including the commingling ones above) I have learned over the past 4 years and wanted to share them with you in case they can serve you in some way and in case you have gotten caught in the commingling trap somewhere along the way as well.

Business Lessons Learned

1. Have a Clear Goal for Everything You Do

Maybe you have a clear goal to make money or to increase your traffic or maybe you want to be seen as the go-to expert in a certain niche. Whatever your goal, the only way you are going to reach it is if your actions support it on a consistent basis. Over the past few years my goal has been to work with really cool and smart clients and make a lot of money. I was clear about this every day and so even though I may have wanted to spend a lot more time writing and researching studies for my personal blog, I knew that was not going to help me reach my goal.

I began every workday knowing that the only way I would be able to keep my really cool and smart clients, who would then continue to pay me, was to consistently work on their behalf. By putting them first in my business, I put me first. It was a win for both of us.

On the other hand, I never had a clear goal for my blog. And when you have no specific plan or results in mind and you just go day by day doing whatever floats your boat, that’s exactly what you get – no specific results.

2. Know What Is Most Important to You

One of my favorite questions to ask people is, “What’s most important to you?” Chances are, if I ask the question it’s usually because it is obvious to me what is most important to the person but it’s not something they are willing to look at.

For example, as much as I would have secretly loved for someone to stumble on my blog and offer me a giant book deal on the topic of my choice, it was clearly far more important to me to not have to work that diligently on it than it was to have that book deal. If it had been really important to me I would have changed it a long time ago.

Look at the results you are creating in your life and you’ll find out very quickly what’s important to you.

3. It’s Not All About Your Passion

We hear a lot of talk about finding your passion and doing it to make a lot of money and while it sounds really juicy I actually think sometimes it’s just a load of bunk. Not every passion can be translated into big dollars and more to the point, not everyone with a passion has a clue about what it takes to do it for money and even if they do have a clue they aren’t willing to put in the work it will take.

And, if money and freedom are the ultimate goal, which they are for many people I talk to, then often times you just have to find a hole in the market and fill a need. Unfortunately it might not be what you’re passionate about. That doesn’t mean you have to give up your passion. Not at all. The truth is if you want to, you can spend your life doing work you love and also get paid for it…but you may have to do some other stuff too that you might get paid REALLY well for because you’re great at it.

4. Investing In Your Business is a Long Term Proposition

It took me a long time before I really considered my business to be a long term investment. I suffer from short timer syndrome – that funk you start to feel when you know something is ending so you start to detach in order to make it easier when it actually does end.

I used to think failure meant I had to turn it in. It was as if as soon as things went bad in my business it was time to cash it in and move on to the next idea because somehow everyone would know I messed up or something didn’t work or I wasn’t perfect.

Then I heard something a few years ago in the movie Elizabethtown that really stuck with me. In the movie the main character Claire says this to the guy she likes who is getting way too comfortable in his pitty party:

So you failed. Alright you really failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You think I care about that? I do understand. You wanna be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you’re still smiling.

So I decided to stick around, learn from my mistakes and know that being a solo entrepreneur with a lot of ideas is a fabulous thing but it doesn’t mean you have to act on them.

5. Get a Remarkable Mentor Who Is Where You Want to Be

I have worked with a lot of coaches and consultants over the years but I used to pick them in the completely wrong way. Actually I think the more important point is that I wanted to have a mentor but I picked a coach. Some people use the words coach and mentor interchangeably but I think they are profoundly different.  A coach is someone who instructs, trains and supports. A mentor is a counselor, a guide and an example. A coach is more performance related and it’s perfectly reasonable and even common to be making 6-figures and have coaching clients who are making 7 figures.  A mentor on the other hand focuses more on the person and her individual growth and maturity and I assure you business coaches who are making 6 figures are not mentoring ones who are making millions.

I am not saying one is better than the other it’s just that in my case when it came time to really move forward I didn’t need another coach. I needed a mentor, someone who had accomplished a lot and who was where I wanted to be and who was primarily interested in taking me on as a mentee because she saw something in me and she wanted to invest in my growth. It’s not always easy to find a good mentor but a good one can be the difference between stagnation and success. Mentors represent real but often very BIG possibilities which is exactly what you need when you want to make a huge leap.

6. You Don’t Have to Be Everywhere

I get overwhelmed pretty easily so when all of the social networking sites started gaining popularity I started learning all about them, hopping on board, completing profiles and trying to stay “connected”. But the truth is I did not enjoy myself. I had a commingling problem there too:) What I found was that I wanted to be at the pool with my daughter, tweeting, posting, reaching out, writing, talking to clients, and learning more but I discovered very quickly that I was sucking at all of it.

I came to the conclusion that I needed to have clear goals for being in certain places so I didn’t get caught up pretending that something was working just by the mere fact that I was present. So, I use Twitter to stay connected at “work”, I use Linked In because they have some great groups with interesting conversations and in my most freeing move of all I deleted over 2000 connections on Facebook and now my only connections include people I actually know in real life and who are either friends I spend time with on a regular basis or are people who I have been friends with way before these networks ever started. I actually enjoy reading my feeds now.

Knowing that you can’t be everywhere and knowing where your presence is most beneficial is a key to being more productive and reaching your goals.

7. It Takes a Lot to be Great

There are a lot of people who are average or even good. There are far fewer who are really great. I don’t think I even knew what it meant to be really great until Penelope Trunk said this to me, “If you are going to do this you have to be willing to be really great. Are you ready to be really great?” Naturally I said YES! but it wasn’t until later that it really sunk in.

If I was going to be really great it meant I was going to have to pick a lane, clean house, be really vulnerable, take a stand, not cash it in when things go bad, stick it out, dig deeper, take a real risk, innovate and claim leadership in my proposed area. And that’s just in the beginning.

When I realized what being great really meant I realized how little I had settled for in the past. I can feel the change already as I am being forced to stretch in a million ways as I head in this new direction. It’s exciting and energizing but it rattles my cage every day. That’s why I know I’m doing the right thing.

What are you willing to do to be great?

If you have learned some lessons you’d like to share, please do so in the comments section. I’d love to read them.