The likelihood is, you never are.

Short story for you: I led a workshop which showed fellow coaches how to use Twitter to grow their businesses. Lots of them wanted to learn more so there’s now a masterclass series available, via teleconference, starting 9th November. That’s just three weeks from idea to actualization and the point is: the interest was there, the timing felt right, I was being encouraged from all sides – so why not?

Every time I’ve launched a new workshop or programme, I’ve offered it with just a title and a synopsis. I’ve known the general stake and have felt the heart of the work – and people have hired me or enrolled based on that. Having the date in the diary and people to whom you’re committed provides that all-important external deadline that every solopreneur craves. The detailed planning and structuring then takes place with that date in mind.

So much of what we do as entrepreneurs is stuff we’re not ready for. Our first radio interview, first talk, first community workshop, first funding application. I’m reminded of that scene in My Best Friend’s Wedding when Cameron Diaz’s character has the microphone thrust into her hand  and is told she’s singing. She holds back, petrified at first, and yet soon she is reveling in the experience, delighted to have been pushed. On the entrepreneurial path, it is vital to respond to pushes, give ourselves pushes and then feel ourselves being pushed onwards and onwards by the dates we set and the commitments we make.

There’s obviously a balance to be found here. We don’t want to be underprepared. We don’t want to commit to offering anything which we genuinely don’t have the time or resources to put together. Yet nor do we want to fall into the too-common trap of overpreparing, letting a project fall stale because it’s continually being revised on our office desk. We need to trust that there’s a point where we can release into the public domain because so much of the evolution of a venture takes place collectively. If you look at a movement like Transition Towns or 10:10, you’ll see that so much of what takes place is beyond anything that an individual could have conceived in his or her own mind.

The secret is: We’re never really ready to offer anything because the readiness comes as a result of the offering. As with my Twitter masterclass, as long as there’s one person enrolled (and there is!), people will take benefit and the venture will move forward.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) What are you sitting on? What project have you been mulling over and over without really getting anywhere?

2) How could you start nudging this into the public domain? What step do you not quite feel ready for but which might actually be the step that helps you BE ready? One action may be to join a social networking forum – like Facebook or Twitter – and start connecting with others who could collaborate with you, or help you move this project forward.

3) Time for some bravery. Launch an idea knowing the heart of it and with some structure (e.g. a date or a way for people to get connected with you), trusting that ideas and support will flow in from others and in turn bolster you in your feeling of readiness.

4) Leave a comment on this blog post, letting us know how you are doing with moving your venture forward, piece by piece. What helps you know you’re ready? When does holding back… hold you back?

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009

Stop Waiting – Time To Spread The Word

You have a venture and want to let more people know about it. Maybe you want to find your ideal clients, maybe you want to find collaborators or funders.

In my experience, Twitter is a fantastic way of networking with vast amounts of people whilst using little energy. It makes it fun and easy to spread the word about the project you’re passionate about.

Join us for this 4-week masterclass series via teleconference. We start Monday 9th November and then speak again the following three Mondays throughout the month. You also receive a 45-minute mentoring session which helps you get super-clear about who you want to communicate with and how to reach them in the most effective ways.

For more information, click here. There are now only five places available so to avoid disappointment, do book yours now.

This is Global Entrepreneurship Week and to mark its start, I volunteered at the first day of Chain Reaction, an event which saw 700 people gather to explore how entrepreneurship can be a source of social good.

There was a variety of inspirational speakers including Tim Smit of the Eden Project, Sophi Tranchell of Divine Chocolate, and Eugenie Harvey of We Are What We Do. My greatest surprise of the day was the closing remarks made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. His focus was on the economy but not the all-too-familiar message of “this is just a downturn, we’ll be back to big, strong, lean and mean again soon” of which many politicians and business people are trying to persuade us. Instead, he acknowledged the economic crisis as one and the same as our resource crisis, emphasised the ‘climate change imperative’ and urged the importance of investing in renewable energy and agriculture. He described these times as experiencing the birth pangs intrinsic to us becoming a global community and as such that they alert us to the need for transition phases.

In many ways, the general thrust of the day was similar to the approach taken by Rob Hopkins, instigator of the Transition Town Movement – that we are entering transition years and that the innovation, ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit which got us in to this situation can now be re-harnessed and directed towards finding solutions to the world’s needs.

As I left the conference and spotted in the newspaper that more City jobs are being cut, I had a vision of those thousands of people moving not from employment to unemployment, but to enterprise. A move away from complacent expectation that someone else will employ us as a cog in some wheel…. to a belief that we can have great ideas, gather with others to turn them into reality, and effect social change through doing so.

It feels like time to get excited. There’s the sense of a new model of business emerging. It’s not the old way where business is set up purely for the sake of profit with the directors perhaps developing a conscience later in life, creating philanthropic foundations to offset the damage their enterprise has done. The new model is that enterprise itself is a vehicle for answering society’s needs.

The win-win-win nature of this transaction continually inspires me. I spoke to two women at the conference who were feeling increasingly frustrated as the day went on. They were hearing about all these inspirational projects yet feeling that their own gifts were being wasted, their potential not fulfilled. I hear this so frequently when interviewing women for my Inspirational 100 project – the pain of that gap between what you could be doing, and what you are doing. One of the women started crying as she told me that in her previous decade of working life she felt that she had added no value. She knew that she could give, and that she WAS, more than that. It reiterated to me this great human need for personal fulfilment through fulfilling our own potential – and that one way of doing this is by fulfilling a need in the world through enterprise.

The World Needs Your Passion, So…

1) Inquiry: What is the most entrepreneurial thing I have ever done? What was it like to match my strengths/interests with a need in the world?

2) Inquiry: If starting a business were the only way to effect social change, what need would I want to meet and how could a business model serve that need?

3) If there were no time to waste and you were really needed right now, what would be your next action step? Get whatever support you need to make it.

© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2008

** You – The Entrepreneur **

This is the very exciting launch of a new workshop designed for anyone who is considering starting their own entrepreneurial venture. This is a FANTASTIC opportunity to attend a super-affordable, high-impact workshop and get you moving on that entrepreneurial path. For more information, click here.