Why? Because it tells you that you’re serious about your business. Especially in the beginning, you’ll notice that fear rears its head when things are about to become very real – launching your first website, making that important phone call, or signing a contract with your first big client.


Fear is a sign that you’re moving forward.

If you don’t feel any business-related fear, ever… it’s time to ask yourself if you aren’t playing it too safe. Are you missing out on opportunities that involve greater risk, but also greater rewards? Are you trying new things and generally growing as a business owner?

Do you have a lot invested in your business – be it financially or emotionally – or have you made it so low-stakes that it doesn’t truly matter if you succeed or if you fail after all? If so, how do you get motivated to give your very best day after day and ensure that your business grows?

Instead of seeing fear as the enemy, or as a negative emotion to be suppressed, I suggest that you accept it as a useful indicator that your business is alive, constantly evolving, and going places. And while I’m not suggesting that you look for reasons to feel afraid – we expats already have enough to worry about in our everyday life – when things get a little too comfortable, ask yourself what you could do to stretch your limits a bit and reintroduce some excitement in your work.

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Emmanuelle

Images by calico courtney (top) and clodius-maximus (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

If you want to get ahead with your business, you can’t afford to let negative feelings affect your productivity and concentration. It’s all too easy to lose hours, if not entire days, to worry, guilt, and sometimes even sheer panic. So what do you do when your stress levels get out of control?

Here’s the method I use to nip negative emotions in the bud – give it a try next time you’re having a bad day.

Play out the worst-case scenario

Your first reaction may be to try to “get a grip”. As you probably know from experience, that doesn’t work. Putting a lid on your emotions will only leave you all tensed up and feeling even less productive than before.

Instead, try the exact opposite.

Whatever it is that you’re worried about, allow your mind to race for a few moments. Go ahead, play out the worst-case scenario in detail – not just a vague sense of dread, but the specific consequences you’re afraid of.

Done? Good. Now come back to the present moment, and take a cold, hard look at your fears. Are they warranted? How likely are they to come true?

How bad is it really?

In most cases, you’ll be relieved to see that you were merely overreacting. No, you’re not going to lose your business because there’s a typo in your newsletter. Just let it slide and get back to work.

In other cases, you may want to take corrective action, but that still doesn’t mean there’s cause for alarm. OK, you didn’t understand half of what your local supplier was saying when she phoned you today. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to end up a social pariah in your host country – but consider signing up for conversation classes to boost your oral comprehension skills.

Finally, some of your fears might be entirely justified. While you’re unlikely to literally end up living under a bridge if you miss your deadline, you could very well lose business and damage your reputation. What you need in a case like this is an effective contingency plan.

How can you limit the inconvenience to your client? What changes do you need to make to manage your time more efficiently? What concrete actions can you take to put your mind at ease, and soften the blow should your worst-case scenario come true?

Connect the dots

Now that you’ve put your mind at rest, take a few moments to compare your worst fears to the list of triggers you wrote down the other day. What theme do they have in common? Money? Being wrong? Other people’s approval?

Identifying your hot-button issue is worthwhile, because it’s much easier to stop panic dead in its tracks when you can name clearly – I’m tempted to say coldly – what’s causing it. Use this as a shortcut to snap yourself out of a funk, restore your serenity, and go back to focusing on your work.

Whew. Doesn’t that feel better already?

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Emmanuelle

Images by LunaDiRimmel (top) and Anna Gay (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

The problem is, you cannot productively deal with your feelings unless you define them clearly. It’s like the old management axiom: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”

Identify your feelings

So your first course of action should be to put your finger on what it is exactly that you’re feeling.

“Stressed out” is too vague. “Overwhelmed by the number of tasks I have to complete before tonight” and “Afraid to make that important phone call” are much better, because they point to two concrete issues: time management and procrastination. That’s useful information.

Recognise your triggers

The next step is to identify your triggers. When exactly do you switch from your normal mood to Overwhelmed and Afraid? What are the circumstances and the associated feelings? What’s the pattern here?

Be as specific as possible. You may want to take notes, even if some of your triggers may look silly once you write them down – I know mine certainly do! Keep a record of the information you’re uncovering, because it will come in handy further down the line.

In case you’re wondering, you’re not just playing detective for the fun of it, or for the sake of self-knowledge.
Recognising your triggers is important, because with a bit of practice, you’ll be able to take a deep breath, pause, and calm yourself down before your emotions become too distracting. In a matter of minutes, you’ll be back to working efficiently and building a successful business, instead of wallowing in negative feelings and self-pity for hours, if not days.

In the next post, we’ll look at a technique you can use when things get really bad – when you’re not just scared, but downright panicked and unable to focus on your work.

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Emmanuelle

Images by n0r (top) and Phil Romans (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

We all know that’s not how it works. Running your own business is often hard, and it can be downright scary. So, enough with these displays of entrepreneurial bravado – it’s time to accept the fact that we’re human beings, not robots.

Acknowledging your feelings may be the best thing you’ll ever do for your productivity. All these tasks you’re procrastinating on? It’s not because of laziness or lack of self-discipline - it’s all about fear and vulnerability.

To deal with your emotions and prevent them from impacting your business, you have to be willing to look them in the eye. So go ahead and take stock today. How have you been feeling lately? And how are you feeling right now?

If you’ve been trained to believe that emotions don’t belong in the workplace, you may be afraid that you’ll look weak, unprofessional or easily flustered when you start acknowledging them fully.
Please. Give me (and yourself) a break. By choosing to take on two of the most difficult jobs that I know of, those of expat and entrepreneur, you’ve already proven how strong, resourceful and driven you are.

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Emmanuelle

Images by Adam Foster / Codefor (top) and tany kely (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

Sounds familiar? Welcome to the club! Being an expat is a full-time job, and being a business owner often feels like two or three full-time jobs – combine the two, and something’s got to give.

Fear and stress aren’t glamourous topics. Yet they’re very real, and they can have a disastrous impact on your business. How many talented entrepreneurs have prematurely thrown in the towel and gone back to the perceived “safety” of a day job, just because they couldn’t take the pressure anymore?

Self-employment gurus and glossy business magazines carefully avoid this subject, simply because they don’t have a clue how to deal with the emotional impact of having your own business. Thankfully, there are some quick, easy techniques that can help you manage your stress levels, just like you would manage any other aspect of your business.

Want to know what these techniques are? Stay tuned for our next series of posts (better yet, subscribe by email or RSS in the right sidebar), where we take you from this:

… to this:

(aren’t otters the damn cutest – and most relaxed – critters on earth?)

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Emmanuelle

Images by Flipped Out (top) and mikebaird (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

A very rich interview, full of inspiring lessons for expats not only in Vancouver, but all over the world.

- Can you tell us what brought you to Canada, and how that move has shaped your career?

I wanted to learn more about my Canadian heritage, and although I understood the importance of this, I don’t think I fully realized the magnitude of it, or the impact it would have on the person I was becoming. Having been born and raised in Mexico City, I knew very little about vast open spaces and the profound changes they produce in people.

Canada is full of people unpacking their personal and cultural treasures. The land is silent, but welcomes dreamers. The space acts like a blank canvas, and being far away from everything that is familiar gives you a different perspective on who you are because there are no longer any givens. The context is completely different and that forces you to re-examine, re-evaluate and re-define your core. You sift through your cultural baggage in an effort to hold on to what makes you, you – and the rest is taken by the wind back to where it came from.

Canada has changed me. In good ways. This awe-inspiring landscape – holder of truths – beseeches us to question not only who we are, but also what we do and how we do it.
I started craving a more organic approach to design and remembered my first two years of university, where the use of the computer was strictly forbidden. Hands on – ink, paper, scissors. Me, and the world forgotten, in a room.

I started imagining graphic patterns. I took a letterpress course. I started drawing again. I bought a letterpress… Ink, paper, scissors. Handmade magic, gently held by the mountains that surround me, and deeply infused by the rich colors that inspired me to begin.

- Was there anything – good or bad – that surprised you about Vancouver when you moved here?

Moving to a different country is an incredible experience, but it certainly has its challenges. The first time I came to Vancouver I fell in love with the city and its radiant bustle. The vast array of cultures, languages and traditions immediately intrigued me.
I instantly knew it was the right place for me, so within a few months I moved.

Vancouver has no mold; anything goes and there is something here for everyone. But there’s a learning curve. I felt lonely, and I hadn’t expected it. I never imagined having this feeling while being surrounded by so many people. I felt homesick… I was terrified. If only I had brought my friends along for the ride… The city and its people felt cold to me and I wanted to hide inside a box with the lid shut tight.

Building solid relationships takes time, and I’ve found that you have to be very patient. Over time, I realized that there are few true Vancouverites, which means that most of the people living here had to go through that same transition, and it’s a scary thing to admit to, let alone talk about it with people you barely know, especially when you’re feeling vulnerable, but once you figure that out, it lightens the load. You have good days and bad days – and you carry on, letting the city in and letting yourself out.

- You’re currently launching your new business, Texture & Finery, a line of haute couture wedding invitations. What are the main challenges you are facing as an expat entrepreneur?

It’s a circus and you’re on the tightrope, trying to stay on your feet, while juggling 500 things and holding a baby that needs all your attention. It’s scary, so you try not to look down, and sometimes it feels like you might just lose your balance so you compensate by shifting your weight here and there.

Learning the balancing act can be extremely tricky at times. There’s a lot of push and pull back and forth. You’re an expat AND an entrepreneur: that’s two jobs, both equally demanding.

I think one of the most challenging things for me has been learning to listen to my own rhythm. Sometimes you just have to stop for the day, and sometimes you have to go go go and then go some more. I think it’s about integrating both the expat and the entrepreneur… one needs more attention than the other on any given day, and acting upon that is crucial.

The second challenge is fear. It’s the part of me that actually looks down when I’m on the tightrope, and it’s paralyzing. Nothing moves, time stops and the world goes so quiet you can hear a pin drop. Sometimes you just want to run back and hide in the box with the lid shut tight and cry. So you cry a little. Ok, so you cry a lot, but you keep on juggling, and balancing. And you make room for fear, because it’s real, and because you’ve also made room for excitement and optimism and they all just need some room to be. Just accepting that it’s there makes it easier to zoom out and look at the big picture. And when you do, it’s extraordinary.

- Any advice you’d like to give to fellow expat business owners?

Breathe. Breathe in and out. And give yourself some credit. Starting a business is not easy, and you have to fight fight fight for it. And it’s exhausting and beautiful and worth it. And we’re all going to be okay. And we learn so much from this. And we have to learn to breathe.

- What are the most important lessons life abroad has taught you?

Living abroad changes you forever. You become a mixture of old ways you choose to keep and new ways you learn. You become richer, deeper, stronger, better, wiser, weaker, calmer. Big adjustments take time, so it helps to be patient. Very patient, with yourself and others. Things are not better and they’re certainly not worse: everything is just different, and being able to understand that makes all the difference.

Originally from Mexico City, Christine Delano is a graphic designer living in Vancouver. She is currently launching her new business “Texture and Finery”, inspired by the haute-couture tradition and providing custom designed, hand-crafted letterpess wedding invitations and stationery.

Did you find this interview as inspiring as I did? Share your biggest takeaway in the comments. What advice would you give to expat entrepreneurs?

Emmanuelle

Images by JOHN CORVERA (top) and Anna Gay (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

Find out what kind of business was there before, and how long it lasted. Has there been a frequent turnover in occupancy? What do other shop owners think of that particular spot?

Right in the middle of one of the most charming city blocks in Vancouver, there is one particular retail space that is inexplicably bad for business. The tony retailers and bistros around it are thriving – but that location? In less than 10 years, it has killed 4 restaurants, and a wine bar.

Even if you don’t believe in “cursed spots”, why move into a space that the locals see as a bad location? You won’t know unless you ask. So don’t let your business be the next victim – do your homework.

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Emmanuelle

Image by macwagen via Flickr Creative Commons

“Success is liking yourself,

liking what you do,

and liking how you do it.”

- Maria Angelou

Such lovely words: simple, comforting and oh so true… how are you faring on your own path to success?

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Emmanuelle

Image by beautifulcataya, via Flickr Creative Commons

The secret to becoming an expat

Before you read any farther, let me reveal the number one secret to becoming a successful expat (a fulfilled, content, wealthy expat – however you want to describe “successful” – the secret applies 100%).

One word: Attitude

Yes, it’s just about attitude. It’s not about paying off your debts, not how many friends will throw you a farewell party, or even how much planning you do before leaving. It’s about having the expat attitude.

The Expat Attitude is the mindset that says “I have wanted to live overseas and, dammit I’m going to go.”

Do You Have It? YES, You Do. You have what it takes. Let me help you find it.

Tips to Find and Develop Your Expat Attitude

1. Seek motivation and energy from within yourself.

Normally, we get motivated only after others recognize what we’re doing. In short, you do something good, others applaud you. Unfortunately, that’s not enough when deciding to be an expat. Why? Because a lot of people will not “clap” for you. Instead you’ll hear “What are you thinking?” or “Are you crazy?” So, you may need to find more motivation from within yourself first. Only after you’ve done it and can share how great it is, then you’ll hear more “I’m crazy for staying here.”

2. Goals – set them to be SMART

If you haven’t heard yet what a “SMART” goal is, here you go: a goal has to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. A bad example of a smart goal is “I will exercise more next month.” A good example of a SMART goal is: “I commit to doing 10 push-ups each night for a month.” After one month, which goal do you think actually amounted to some action?
For optional definitions, check out Wikipedia’s SMART criteria article.

3. Understand the power of progress

Having a SMART goal is one thing, but some goals take so long to complete, we get bored or demotivated before we finish them. If you goal takes several tasks, make yourself a list of those tasks and enjoy how you ‘tick’ off each task. If still too daunting, maybe each task should be a SMART goal on their own.

4. Lean on your network

No one says you have to go at it alone. Have a friend, relative who can encourage you, ask you/pester you about tips 1 through 3 above? Oh, and if that person is very affected by your living overseas, it’s a very good idea to clue them in early. Like, don’t wait to tell your wife “Honey, we’re moving to Portugal next week – isn’t that great?!”

Jeff loves to travel, taste different foods and is generally a big fan of Canadians (his favorite is his wife). Jeff really admires the Winning Away blog, so he wrote a “winning attitude” article for Emmanuelle and her readers. Through fun and sharing, Jeff motivates others to become expats, too on his blog www.ExpatYourself.com. Enjoy!

Image by Dr John2005, via Flickr Creative Commons

If you just need a few straightforward questions answered, don’t go to the trouble of hiring a market research firm. You’ll save tonnes of money by conducting your own survey.

Surveying people from a different cultural background is a bit of an art, as I learned while working as a market research specialist for a multinational corporation. Here are a few guidelines to help you design and conduct a successful survey anywhere in the world.

3 tips for DIY surveys

1. Survey enough people

You need to thoroughly map out where you’re going to find enough respondents for your survey, or your efforts will fizzle faster than you can say “On a scale from 1 to 10”. If you don’t know many people yet in your host country, advertise your survey via social media and on message boards. Make sure that the respondents belong to your target market, or you may end up with biased results.

25 – 30 answers for each question should give you pretty accurate results. Keep in mind that people may skip a question here and there, so you may need more respondents than that to get valid results for each question.

That’s for a basic survey, where you only look at the overall results. If you need to analyse the data more finely (by gender, age, employment status, etc), you’ll need many, many more respondents to get enough answers from each subgroup, for each question. Ask a market research firm for advice if you’re not sure what you’re getting yourself into.

2. Take cultural traits into consideration

Back when I worked in market research in France, our department had to beg the German head office to stop designing surveys that were 53-questions long. Apparently the German public was willing to answer page after page of extremely detailed questions, but our French customers visibly had other priorities in life, and our return rates were laughably low. Price paid for overlooking cultural differences: huge amounts of money wasted on a survey that was all but useless in France.

What cultural traits do you need to take into account when you create your survey? Are there any topics that are considered taboo or highly personal in your host country? For example, many Europeans are reluctant to talk about money, so expect them to skip questions about their income, or give biased answers about their financial habits.

Make sure that your questions are culturally appropriate. It makes sense to ask North Americans about the “experience” of purchasing something from your website or visiting your shop – shopping is seen as entertainment, and expectations are high when it comes to customer service or user-friendliness. The same question may seem irrelevant to a Bulgarian or an Egyptian, who doesn’t have the same expectations of a trip to the store.

3. Keep it short and simple

What is the one question your survey should answer for you? I know it’s tempting to try to gather as much information as you can while you have your respondents’ attention, but really, a good survey can only focus on one issue.

Are you going to take immediate action on all the data you’re collecting? If not, eliminate the unnecessary questions.

Yes/no and multiple choice questions work best. You can also use a scale from 1 to 10 to measure interest or see if people agree with certain statements, etc.

Use an online tool like Survey Monkey to create your own web-based surveys. You can also hire business students to do the data processing for you. It’s a relatively small expense that will save you a lot of time, and with a bit of luck, you’ll even get pretty pie charts in the bargain… (not sure anything can top these two, though:)

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Emmanuelle

Images by NickPiggott (top) and johnbullas (bottom), via Flickr Creative Commons