A quarter-time check-in for your business origin story.
Even though the calendar says Q1 ends in March, I never feel the year truly begins until tax season is behind us. It’s the perfect time for a check-in — not on your analytics, but on your origin story.
How did you start?
What keeps you going?
For most of us, the answer starts with one (or a mix) of these three: Sweat, Skill, or Serendipity.
SWEAT
This is when we had an idea for a business but no skill in that area. We had to therefore invest a lot of sweat equity to find out how to create and do the thing we wanted to bring into the world. We might have found we had some skills that carried us forward, but the best skill was investigative — how do we run a business like this? What’s entailed? Where do we start? Who can help us with [blank]?
That was exactly the story I helped tell for the Sramek family in Microenterprise Hits the Big Screen. It’s the story of Carla Sramek’s pursuit of starting her nonprofit Carla’s Movie Restaurant. As a young woman with an intellectual disability, she had a team of supporters to help her reach her dream. The beauty of discovering from this place is how open you are to possibility. Every idea and suggestion is like an open door, and invitation to advance to the next stage. It can feel very supportive and significant.
One needs to recognize that too many doors closing is also significant and sometimes it is hard to lay down a dream. Sometimes the technology just hasn’t caught up to our imaginations.
As you listen to others, study, research, and stay curious, you gain skill. By the way, that skill that the Sramek family developed — the journey to create a microenterprise — is what ended up in the book. It’s as much Carla’s memoir as a how-to book. It is helpful not just to people with disabilities, but to anyone wanting to start a business.
If you started with sweat, you know the value of curiosity, persistence, and not being afraid to ask for help. Those qualities turn passion into progress.
SKILL
Many small businesses and nonprofits start with a clear area of expertise. Maybe you had years of experience and realized you could do more — and do it better — on your own. Whether you launched a consulting practice or turned your knowledge into a service, you likely realized that skill alone isn’t enough.
You might find yourself struggling to know where to look for clients. Do you have to go to meetings? Cold call? Create social media posts? And so on.
Refer to ‘sweat’ above — you ask people, you seek out the experts and do what they do. When you’ve gained an understanding, then you decide to DIY or hire (employee or consultant) and you might not stop sweating until there is a steady flow of clients and income.
SERENDIPITY
Maybe your journey started with a moment of luck — a chance encounter, an unexpected opportunity, or a sudden opening in the market. But if you’ve been at this a while, you know serendipity isn’t pure magic. It’s often preceded by a whole lot of sweat and skill.
Still, there are many little moments of serendipity along the way. Celebrate the time when you sat next to a stranger at a networking event who turned out to be your next client or collaborator. Acknowledge how perfect it was that you emailed an old friend just when they needed you.
It’s those moments of kismet that keep life enjoyable and bolster our faith.
Be grateful for those moments. Not just the coincidences that teeter toward your fortune, but for the ways you can also be of service to others.
So how about you?
How did your journey begin?
What keeps you going today?
Are they still the same — or has it shifted?
This quarter, take a moment to reflect. You may uncover a new insight, reconnect with your mission, or even spark your next move.
Cheers to Quarter Two.
Let’s keep going — with sweat, skill, and a little serendipity.
Leslie A.M. Smith is the owner of McCormick L.A. Public Relations, a PR consultancy she founded in 1994. She is the author of Laws of Promotion and the Co-Author of Microenterprise Hits the Big Screen. She teaches a marketing starter class online for small businesses called BOOST, that teaches the essentials that come before the promotions.
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