Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

Guest Post: 3 Reasons Improvisation Will Make You a Better Entrepreneur

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Fear for blog

Today’s guest post comes from one of my good friends, Kevin Benson. Kevin and I went to Whitworth together and he recently launched his own Consulting firm focused on teaching improv skills to entrepreneurs. You have a lot to learn folks…

One of the strengths of being an entrepreneur is the ability to adapt, change and respond quickly to client needs, or what our market or our competitors are doing. Too often, however, these skills are learned through years of trial and error. What if there was a skill set that could make you more adaptable, creative, spontaneous and responsive as an entrepreneur right now? There is! Improvisation.

3 Reasons Improvisation Will Make You a Better Entrepreneur 

1. Improv makes you an amazing listener

Improvisers are taught to listen intensely.  Listening involves more than just speaking and hearing. Listening is a deeper level of awareness for the communication and messages being sent by others. Improvisers train themselves to pay special attention to details given in a scene or performance.

As business owners, what would happen if you listened wholly and intently to messages from our clients, colleagues and customers? In addition to your clients feeling appreciated, heard and understood, you would probably have a better understanding of their problems, needs and how to serve them. Win-Win!

2. Improv forces you to be comfortable with failing quickly and failing often

We hate being beginners, don’t we? Especially as adults, the daunting task of learning something new can be frustrating and even cause us serious anxiety. The first exercise I teach my students in my improv 101 classes is to stand in front of a group of their peers, to exclaim loudly “I failed! Thank you!” and then take a deep bow to thunderous applause. What would happen if we CELEBRATED failure? We celebrate what did NOT work, we recognize that and then we immediately get on with the business of getting better at improv.

I would argue that we fear failure so much we have created organizations, employees, and even executives who will do everything in their power to make sure that each and every idea, product, service, or project they touch has NO CHANCE to fail. As entrepreneurs, we do not have the time or energy to think this way! What if you created a mindset that made it necessary to take big risks and embrace big failure? As entrepreneurs, we must stop fearing that things won’t work. Failure can be a gift, embrace it!

3. Improv increases your creativity, spontaneity and speed

Accepting that it is OK to be creative and take COMPETENT RISKS in our work can really unlock some potential for us. But, do you know what holds us back from this creativity most often? Our own minds! The silent voice of judgment in our heads telling us what is and is not good. Especially for entrepreneurs and those of us who work on our own, our biggest voice of judgment is NOT coming from the executive in the C-suite. It’s coming from our own heads. Improv can help you break through that, and respond more creatively, and faster than ever before.

Improvisation can be scary. That’s understandable. Starting and running your own business is also scary. Improv and entrepreneurship complement one another in very powerful ways. If you are an entrepreneur, you ARE a risk taker. Improv can help you overcome more of those fears!

Hey it's Kevin Benson!Kevin Benson is a solopreneur, teacher, speaker, improviser and owner of Bold Move Consulting. Bold Move Consulting works with companies and non-profits to make them more “improvisational.” You can find Kevin on Twitter @kevinbenson.

Is Your Casual Email Etiquette Costing You?

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IMG_3191Often in my line of work I end up working with other service providers on behalf of my client or in tandem with them. And it’s great, I get to make a lot of connections with people and it’s a part of my job that I enjoy, and that my clients often appreciate me taking off their plate. Lately, I’ve had a few of these fellow providers who are a little too casual for me. Yes me, the one who talks about The Walking Dead, my dog and beer WAY too often. So you know if I’m talking about this, it must be an issue.

Today I received an email where a person I have NEVER met (but have had to nag a bit to get what I need from them) sent me what I needed with “Here’s the info love“. Huh? I wouldn’t call my husband love in an email (we’re just not mushy that way), let alone a person I’ve had 3 email interactions with. It was weird.

Another service provider I’ve worked with for a couple of clients often send me lots of XOXO’s in emails and similar casual interaction. I just met this person last week in person after 3 months of email, and she is definitely the kind of person to do that, and now that we’ve met and worked together a while, it’s OK, but at first it was a little surprising.

I know that I am casual and what you see is what you get, but I also try to pay attention to who I am talking to in an email and our familiarity (and yes, I did give Vegas recommendations to a client last week and beer recommendations to another client). KNOW your audience, there’s nothing wrong with being more conservative in your email until you really know the person.

Properly Placing the Blame

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MjAxMy1iZTk3ZDZhOTMxMTVkZWNhI have a client who I am having a heck of a time with their Google+ page. Somehow two pages were setup, one is a page, one is a brand, and the client has no idea what the login is for one of them, and G+ isn’t helping me to identify it. I’m SUPER frustrated and trying my best to figure it out and not just blame “stupid google+” for the issue. And, I’m also hoping my client doesn’t blame me for this issue. It’s wasting a lot of time and money and mostly I just want to throw it out the window. SUPER Frustrating.

Yesterday I got a voicemail from a healthcare provider I recently visited. The appointment wasn’t great, and now I’m trying to submit the information to my insurance to get the claim paid to me, since this provider doesn’t bill directly. The voicemail I received was “I just spent a half hour trying to get through to them, and they want this private information I don’t want you to have, and I am so frustrated I might as well just pay you myself so this all goes away.”

So that was SUPER professional, mature and makes me want to hire this person again…Sure it’s not their fault my insurance wants what they want, and it’s OK by me if they don’t want to work directly with the insurance provider. but if you’re in the healthcare industry, you need to either deal with it, or figure out another solution.

It’s always going to be easier to blame someone else to keep up appearances and make yourself look good to your client. And sometimes it really isn’t your fault and making sure the client knows you did all you can is important. But, more often than not, you look like you’re making up excuses when you place the blame on someone else. I hired you to do a job, do it, or tell me you can’t do it up front and we’ll figure out someone who can do it.