RobKinney.com

Imagine for a second…

No Experience Necessary

Rob

Can you start a business without experience?

Sure why not? Does experience help? Sometimes it does other times it does not. With experience, you can limit yourself; you can get stuck in doing things the way they always have been done or the way “they” say it should be done. When you don’t have experience, you just do it. Sometimes you do something because nobody told you that you couldn’t.

 

Having experience in business could simply mean that you have failed before. Because if you hadn’t failed, would you be attempting the project you have in mind? OK, so sometimes people do have experience in business and are successful and only want to attempt a second project now that the first has taken off.

 

The knowledge is out there, anyone can learn it and apply it. You have to start somewhere and at some point, you will begin something and not have ‘the experience’. But I disagree, you do have the experience, all of the actions you have taken in your life are experiences that can be applied towards running a business. Sure some may be more suited or even more direct experience but there are so many things that come into play which can be counted as experience. Here are just a few that come to mind which could be applied to business experience.

 

  • Writing – In business you have to be able to articulate what you want to say in a number of different styles, from emails to news copy.
  • Meetings – So much business is conducted in meetings, knowing how to run one maintains professionalism.
  • Babysitting – It amazed me when I became a supervisor, how much of the job was over glorified babysitting. Learning how to deal with people is a huge advantage.
  • Checkbooks – Being able to understand numbers and balance books will help to keep your business successful.
  • Perseverance – This one quality alone can make or break your business, too many people want to give up at the first sign of a struggle.
  • Organizing – Being in charge means to be the organizer, you are the one who makes sure everyone is doing what they should be doing.

 

These are just a few examples of the way that the duties in your day to day life can pertain to the skills needed in business. There are several things that every business owner needs, creativity and persistence being a couple of the biggest items. you have to be able to think on your feet and stick with it, no matter how difficult it may become, you need to keep your sights on your dream and fight for it. So if anyone tells you that you can’t run a business or that you shouldn’t be in business because you don’t have experience, you can tell them that you have a lot of experience and then you can relate to them how your life experience corresponds to your business.

 

So what do you think of this idea of starting a business without experience?

What experience do you think someone needs to run a business?

How should they gain that experience?

How to Tell a Good Story

Rob

There’s nothing like a good story. Begin telling a story and you capture everyone’s attention. If you don’t finish the story, you will have people hunting you down to find out how the story turned out. Storytelling is one of the oldest art forms in the world. It was used for entertainment, a way to teach lessons and even to share news. The art of verbal storytelling is one that has fallen by the wayside in this day and age. There are still people who hold onto the tradition. But being able to tell a good story is not a skill that everyone has the talent for. Here are a few simple steps to learn how to tell a story.

 

  1. Find a story that you enjoy. This process is going to assume that you are going to learn a story (which is easier) as opposed to writing and learning your own story.
  2. Read the story a couple of times. Try to picture the action as you read it.
  3. Put the story aside. Write down the main points of action that happen in the story, using your own words.
  4. Re-read the story. Set your paper aside and re-read the story.
  5. Add to your paper any additional thoughts.
  6. Read the story again.
  7. Condense your points into several main points.
  8. Read the story again.
  9. Combine all of your main points down into only a few descriptive lines of three to four words. In your own words.
  10. Practice telling your story in your own words, using only your note card of a few descriptive lines.

 

By going through this process, you can learn a story, put it into your own words (which makes it more natural) and learn to tell it efficiently. By putting it into your own words, the story becomes more natural and with that, it will flow smoother.

 

You can do a number of things to enhance the story as you practice it and as you tell it. To add some variety to the common stories that most people think they know, look for other versions or similar versions of the same story. Throughout history, many countries tell stories that are similar to the ones we grew up with, or have a different spin or even a different lesson to them. By studying these stories you can add new details to a tired old story.

 

You can even add dramatic flair to the story, acting out parts and giving the character voices. Adding emotion to your story and bringing it to life. Description, painting word pictures for your audience will help them to picture the scene you are trying to describe. you don’t have to spell out every detail but just give them enough to let their imaginations create the scene. If you do this, you will capture their attention and hold it for the duration of the story and when you finish, they will be wanting more.

 

In a future blog post or perhaps a series, I will delve into how to write a story for telling and then learn it to tell verbally.

 

So how do you learn a story for telling?