Practice patience, persistence and passionate focus!

That’s the only thing you need to know to grow a slow and steady business. Seriously.

I do all three of those things often. I recommend them always. It’s hard to have all three at once, but they are necessary if you aren’t planning on quitting – and we all know that even though you’ve threatened to quit that super cool business you started, you aren’t going to. Right?

I see patience, persistence and passion for business as the hallmark of entrepreneurship. I see these 3Ps as the characteristics that help small business succeed in spite of setbacks and disappointments. These 3Ps are the qualities that allow us to be brave enough to make mistakes and learn from them.

If I was a marketing genie with a magic bottle, I’d grant you these three wishes.

Patience

I grant you infinite patience with yourself so that you may make mistakes from which you can learn, so you can let real life interrupt your business mojo without making you feel your business has to stop and so you can celebrate the small hills you’ve climbed behind you more than fret over the mountains ahead.

Persistence

I grant you the fortitude to persist no matter what. When your partner or family question your ideas and abilities, when your colleagues and connections let you down, when your best ideas turn into your worst ones and when your road bumps feel more like walls, I grant you persistence to see it through to the brilliance of the next day – for it will be one day closer to your success.

Passionate Focus

I grant you an unlimited supply of passionate focus for when the going gets rough and you are tired, drained, disappointed, broke, hurt, confused and lost, your passionate focus will still carry you through and remind you that you have blinders to what doesn’t matter and that you and your business are RIGHT and PERFECT and WORTH IT.

Practice patience, persistence and passionate focus. Sadly, I am not a genie. I can’t grant you these three wishes. But I suspect you can manifest them for yourself with a little thoughtfulness.

Yeah yeah. All the rage in blogging is being “authentic”, telling your truth, sharing your voice. These are the buzz words for the decade for sure! And they are also wise advice for every business – for within these over-buzzed ideas is the anchor for your brand. BRAND authenticity for most small businesses starts with YOUR unique flava flave!

But Kim, how do I be personal on my blog without telling my secrets?

Nobody needs to know what’s in your junk drawer or the junk in your life. The junk is part of your truth, but it is yours and yours alone. Telling your truth and being authentic does NOT mean dumping every little seedy or sad or silly detail of your life in your business blog. Unless that is the core of your business or serves a purpose to support your brand.

Yeah, I did spill a few times in the past few months that I have PMDD. This is a very personal detail. Why do I think it fits on my business blog? Because I know MY audience. And my audience is mostly high-achieving, highly-motivated women who have a hard time being honest with themselves that perfection in business is not necessary, and that being human is not a weakness. So I share my life as a marketer and entrepreneur while also being a human being with flaws and fabulous all at the same time. It’s what I need to do to try to inspire and motivate. But that’s not what you need to do for your business most likely.

You do NOT need to write about your marriage, partner, kids, dogs, diseases, breakfast to be personal. You need to write WITH YOUR PERSONALITY to be personal.

Ask yourself this one question before you post anything to your blog:

Does telling this to my audience lift up my brand and what my brand stands for?

If not, delete and re-write.

If yes, take  careful read of your tone and your intent with what you write.

Everything you write for your blog should aim to do three things:

1. Teach or make a point.
2. Support Search Engine Optimization to your site (using keywords that connect to your brand).
3. Have a purpose related to your business goals.

Anything less than this fragments your brand.

If you have something to say that does not support these three things, then perhaps you need to re-address your brand or write a book! There will be times when you really want to get something off your chest and onto your blog. This is fine. There are no RULES, but there are guidelines and a framework to strengthening a business by using your blog, so just think it through before you hit the ‘publish’ button.

How to find “your voice”

Your voice on your blog is pretty much a literal concept. If you read your blog out loud, does it sound like how you talk?

You aren’t in school when you blog. Your Business Writing 201 teacher is not breathing down your neck to ensure you have eliminated the personality from your writing. In fact, it’s just the opposite. You need to INFUSE your blog with all the magnificent things about you.

When you speak to your closest friends, what emotional response do they have to you?

• laughing with tears in their eyes?
• deep awe at your intelligence?
• comfort like you are a great big warm hug?
• a sense of ease and relief?
• sarcastic verbal jousting?
• provocative conversation?

Unless you bore them to sleep, this is the voice you are striving for in your blog. The way you are to your friends is what will make you interesting on your blog to your business audience. Seriously. Don’t you want to do business and have readers who actually “get” you? Then write like your friends hear you.

What tone are you known for?

• dry wit?
• being silly?
• tear jerking?
• sarcasm?
• extreme though-provocation?
• being serious?
• being calm in the storm?
• being direct?

Whatever “tone” you take with your friends is also the tone you want to deliver on your blog to a degree. You must remember you aren’t a one-dimensional person, but the person you are certainly is unique to you. Writing how you talk and how you actually think and feel takes practice, but it is a practice that pays off.

If your blog is YOUR blog and your business is YOUR personal business – regardless of your name being in it or not – there is a place for your personality to shine in your writing. This is what makes your blog interesting. This is what your readers want and deserve.

Whatever you do, serve a purpose

When we start blogging, we need to just jump in and write for the sake of writing. But as soon as you can, you need to outline some goals for your blog related to growing your brand and building your business.

Your blog must serve a purpose and that purpose must create a marriage between creating response to the sales-side of your business and the demands or wishes of your reading audience.

Tap into YOUR purpose and that marriage is easy to make.

This is mental health week. I encourage you to face up to how you really feel while running your awesome business. If you are like one of the 121 million people world-wide diagnosed (remember MOST mental health issues are not diagnosed), your business blues may actually be a diagnosable form of depression.

Depression has a stigma that must no longer be ignored. It is a serious, but manageable illness.

Just like when you need help to run your business by hiring an assistant, a marketing expert or a coach, you need help with your mental health.

You deserve to be the happiest healthiest entrepreneurial rockstar you can be! We deserve you to be the healthiest you can be — what you do matters.

You are Small Business SUPERHERO!

Running a business is for champions. And even champions get knocked down sometimes. The true sign of a champion is picking yourself up even when it feels the hardest. Especially when it feels the hardest. This is you right? You feel knocked down at times, but you pick yourself back up and keep going on. Heroic! That’s you.

• You can do this! (You are not weak or pathetic, you have an illness that is manageable)
• You are awesome! (Your worth and value of what you bring to this world is not minimized by having a mental health diagnosis)
• This too shall pass! (The anxiety, panic, sadness, fear, rage or questioning your worth always pass – tell someone, journal, call your local help line – it passes when you reach out)

I know. I am a small business star, just like you, and I live with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). PMDD is a diagnosed form of symptoms related to a woman’s hormonal cycles. But NO – it’s not just PMS. It’s a serious form of PMS affecting 8% of all women.

Getting My Head Out of Sand to Find My Superheroic Self

It is more natural for me to hide and not ask for help. I really accepted my mental health diagnosis in 2010, not that long ago. And this was around the same time the brave and brilliant Lee Horbachewski of Simplee Serene began sharing her story publicly. Lee is a now a super-champion for depression and anxiety and I encourage you to follow her blog at Simplee Serene.

There is often conversation around me about “how do I do it?!” – be a full time parent and run my businesses, that is. But there is more to my story that I am going to share today, to support my friend Lee, to thank her for HER honesty, so that I can be honest too.

Accepting The Truth Emphasizes the Awesome

Some months I have fewer than 10 truly “well” days. My PMDD lasts 10 days in a 21 day cycle. Yep, half of every month is marked by PMDD. I also have suffered with migraines since the age of 16 which affects me 1-2 times per month.

PMDD has differing challenging symptoms for everyone. For me, my unmanaged PMDD shows itself in depression with hallmark signs of withdrawal from family and friends coupled with rage.

When managed with medication, 2000UI Vitamin D daily, proper amounts of rest, and ACCEPTANCE that I am just fine as I am, I can walk in this world as most perceive me – confident, successful, a go-getter, a connector, an informed small business helper.

These are all the parts of me. I am who I am because of everything about me.

I am not sure I have the right support system around me to help. Probably because I’m still going through the process of accepting it as my reality. And probably because I haven’t clearly told my support system (my family and friends) how serious it has been at times.

What I am sure of is that my mental health improved when I was diagnosed by my doctor, without judgment, and full of kindness and ideas for varying ways to manage it (not just meds!).

Simple Steps to Be a Small Business Superhero When You Are Down

I have some very specific activities related to my business and my lifestyle that help me significantly in coping and growing my business at the same time:

• Champion others. Often. I sometimes feel like screaming HELP ME! NOTICE ME! This is my truth. But as a professional business woman this is not really something I would do online obviously. So instead, I promote others, I champion others, I comment to others with kindness on social media. I know this bolsters them and their business which is a core part of my business values anyway. But it does something for me too — it creates conversation when I need it most. The gratitude from others reminds me of my self-worth, it calms me and it reminds me of my purpose in this life so I can stay grounded in reality, not caught up in my depression which tells me other stories.
• Blog. I don’t blog about mental health. But I write because writing feels great. I’m a linguist at heart. I love putting ideas together on paper. It’s cathartic to write for EVERYONE. I write about business because it feels great! You need to write, on a blog or in a journal, about whatever gets you juiced up! You’ll forget about your blues or mental state of mind by sinking into writing something you love.
• Speak. I am an introvert with PMDD – this means I have to have “alone time” and quiet time to recharge my engine. However, I am adrenalized by public speaking. In front of a group, sharing business ideas and motivation, I feel most super heroic. The natural endorphins that create happiness are in full operation when I get to share my voice out loud. I create these opportunities for myself and have for 5 years. You can use your voice in the same way, or other ways, just don’t isolate yourself so that you never get out and speak with your actual voice!
• Use social media to be connected 24/7. Often when you need someone, there is nobody around. Having social media as a core part of your marketing platform gives you 24/7 access to online communities that benefit you personally and professionally. I currently belong to 15 active Facebook groups. And someone is always awake! I only have 2 where I share about my personal feelings or PMDD at this level, but communicating regularly about business or life as an entrepreneurial parent is normalizing, it is helpful to others when you share, and it is helpful to you.
• Only work with people I really like. Fortunately, I really like most people! But I won’t hang out with dream killers or people who have ulterior motives for being connected to me. I won’t be used or manipulated. I won’t be taken advantage of. I am in the world to do great work with great people who are as motivated, as human, as me.
• Remove the need to be perfect. Perfectionists often can’t work. And the key to success is action. If I gave in to depression, migraines and perfectionist tendencies, I’d have enough negative self-talk to be immobilized. Fortunately, I easily overcame the perfectionist in me when I became a mother. And the pragmatic planner in me, who always has a new idea and actions to follow, keeps me moving forward always. It’s often not at the pace I’d like, but it’s always in the forward direction. I silence the perfectionist and just act no matter what.
• Ask for help. Okay, this one is a lie. I don’t ask for help and I need to learn how. And so do you. When I know more about this, I’ll let you know! If you know how to do this better than I do, please share in the comments!

Not sure if you have the “blues” or depression?

Reach out and get help in either case. It’s not your place to diagnose yourself. So call your doctor and ask for help. If you are in distress, call your local help line.

Follow @SimpleSerene on Twitter and join the mental well-being movement and help remove the stigma around depression. Those who live with mental health issues are superheroes living with invisible illness. Champion them!