037 Coach Radio: Your Story – Howard Sheppard

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037 Coach Radio – Your Story: Howard Sheppard

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Howard Sheppard and I spent three months working together to help him get his business off the ground.  He hosts a podcast at lifebeyondtheassemblyline.com.

We recently spent a weekend together in Colorado to brainstorm on ideas with 35 Free Agents.

Howard is refocusing his business to work with sales people.

“If I can help one person in business, then it’s not a waste.”

We discussed how Howard has a tendency to do so many things that he continually runs into walls.  But that leads him to find where the walls aren’t.  If you’re waiting for a sign to know you’re on the right path, it may never come.  Get out there and make something happen.

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Posted on May 31, 2010

  • JamesDibben

    “Walking into a few walls to find out where they are not”

    Best quote ever from the “Your Story” series.

  • JamesDibben

    “Walking into a few walls to find out where they are not”

    Best quote ever from the “Your Story” series.

  • http://coachradio.tv/ Justin Lukasavige

    I agree; I've been thinking about this comment all day.

  • http://twitter.com/hlsheppard Howard L. Sheppard

    Glad I could offer some food for thought. I suppose walking into walls is how I learn best…

  • Pingback: Learn From These Real Life Stories as You’re Starting Your Business

  • Ivan Bickett

    This was a REALLY good interview.

    I got two main take aways from this.

    1. You can change what you started. I agree, but it took me almost giving up on wanting to start my own business to figure this out. I got REAL excited about an idea I had in March. I started a blog and tried to figure out how to get a business going. But the blog quickly fizzled because I realized I didn’t have much to say and the planning also fizzled b/c a large part of the idea was trying to monetize an idea for the church community (which apparently is EXCEEDINGLY difficult). This made me feel completely stupid and a total failure (it’s not my only idea that died during incubation, just the most recent). I seriously thought about throwing in the towel on the whole idea of becoming self employed (again, this is just the most current example of many like it) because I just thought it must not be for me b/c I keep coming up with ideas that don’t work for me.

    It was REALLY hard for me to realize that it’s better to find out I don’t have anything to say after a few weeks than it would be to find out after a few months or even years.

    Thanks for sharing how this happened to you too, Howard.

    2. The whole issue with never starting. As you can tell from above, I have an issue with that. I too am a perfectionist and therefore use that as an excuse to not ACT. Justin has taught me to not let good be ruined with perfect. JUST DO SOMETHING. So that’s my new approach.

    Ok. So maybe I have 3 things. Stubbing your toe in the dark in your house is a good analogy to starting a business, I expect (since I haven’t done it yet). I am now expecting to make screw ups and have things go not how I plan or expect. So what I’m trying to do on the front end is find a support group of trusted advisers to get me through these expected future events. Hopefully I can avoid some mistakes by learning from others and also there will be others there to help pick me up when I fall (so I don’t stay down and give up).

    Thanks for another great show!