Every few months my teenage daughter asks me to color her hair new colors. Yes, colors as in multiple different colors like black, teal, and hot pink. As I'm coloring her hair this time dark red brown with a bold red "peek-a-boo" stripe on one side, I'm reminded of the courage I had when I was a teenager. My parents' interior bathroom door frame shows evidence of the days that I also would color my hair multiple colors. I'd use Sun-In, spray paint my hair various bold colors or the multi-glitter spray, and once I even cut all my hair short on one side and left the other side long. I'd wear pink eye shadow with a bold blue stripe at the crease and teal eyeliner giving me the nickname rainbow eyes. I adorned myself in painted sweatshirts and melted plastic jewelry I hand-made.
At the age of eleven, I had a paper route and I networked with the other paper delivery kids to know who was going to give up their route and was able to build up to three routes by time I was thirteen. At fourteen, I set a goal to have my own car by sixteen. I talked my friend's brother into getting an interview for me at the Little Caesar's on the corner. I learned all aspects of the operations to become their youngest shift manager by the age of sixteen. As a teenager, I was fearless, clear on my goals and obviously willing to do things that looked pretty silly.
I realized this isn't much different than the experience of an entrepreneur. We launch our businesses and try on different products and/or services to find the right niche. We put ourselves out there promoting ourselves and our businesses looking for the right image that works. We quickly realize we need to learn all aspects of business to be successful. Once again, we are finding ourselves.
Are we unleashing the teenage entrepreneur within ourselves or are we holding back afraid of what others will think? Are we true to our dream whether it's to work solo or to build a team into a large organization? I know firsthand working through our fear of failure is tough and this past year I've pushed myself the hardest and made the biggest mistakes I've made, but that little bit of failure has reduced my fear because I've been forced to face it and I'm still here to tell about it. (I will share more in my next post.)
So in preparation of 2011, I'm putting some teal and glitter in my hair and sharing it with the world! Are you with me?
Lisa Meloche, founder of Organized Operations, helps entrepreneurs develop and document systems in their business to allow for delegation and duplication building their dream business.
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