Jean Roberts

One Man Show - Featuring the Authors and Shakespeare

In 1985, I established my one-person company and began the journey along the road of self-employment as a One Man Show.

A road-journey over many years will involve travel along highways and byways. There will be:

• major highways where you engage the cruise control,
• busy 2-way streets where the degree of ‘travel risk’ depends upon the nature of destinations linked by the streets, time of the day or night when travel is either possible or required,
• behaviour of fellow-travellers,
• number of crossings – trains, trams, major streets,
• access to or exits from major highways or bridges,
• availability of service centres or rest areas,
• possibility of snow, sleet, fog, storms, drenching rain or direct rays of strong sunlight that can’t be avoided by wearing sunglasses or tilting the shades provided in the car,
• holiday traffic escaping the cities for beach, mountain, river or outback breaks, or the hairy experience of the school drop-off hours.

And there will be lanes, byways, side streets or cross-country tracks that invite and allow you to
explore ‘off the beaten track’.

Most importantly, there will be lots of traffic lights and railway crossings, where signage and coloured lights will offer direction on how best to proceed from the point of signage.

As a One Man Show, you should heed the traffic lights and plan accordingly. Traffic lights demand quick decisions. When approaching a green traffic light, you can be tempted to increase your speed to make sure you make the crossing before it turns yellow for a brief moment then the inevitable red. As it turns yellow, you must decide whether to stop or continue to cross: this involves looking quickly at your rear-vision mirror in case there is a car close on your heels that could bump into you if you stop suddenly. Sometimes, it’s safer to continue to cross than to stop suddenly. A yellow light may cause you to stop and think, or may cause you to speed up if it seems safer to do so.

There may be times when the red light looks more like a challenge to be overcome rather than a direct statement to stop.

When you are travelling on foot rather than in a car, pedestrian crossings with lights present the same options. And the main thought in your mind, whether as a driver or a pedestrian, is the safety of yourself and others. So it is with your One Man Show.

These lists present a series of green traffic lights that are definite go signs, yellow traffic lights that are definite cautions, and red traffic lights that are definite stop signs.

Red Traffic Lights – Stop!

Must not do’s – run away from these:

1. False pride
2. Making decisions based on your wants, not your business or product needs
3. Believing everything you read, hear or are told
4. Finding reasons to disbelieve, doubt or discredit your inner thoughts or feelings
5. Not creating and maintaining a factual basis for decision-making
6. Neglecting debtors
7. Not looking after yourself – which can lead to de-motivation and ‘dropping your bundle’
8. Ignoring clear and factual signs that your business is not healthy, or your product is missing the mark
9. Failing to plan – and when you do plan, failing to monitor and measure progress
10. Taking your eye off the ball – which for you as a One Man Show means losing or ignoring your vision
11. Not expressing your vision in practical terms as ‘short-term achievable goals’ and as a set of annual performance indicators, measures and targets
12. Not marketing regularly, especially when you are at your busiest
13. Not monitoring life cycles of (a) your product and (b) your business
14. Not watching your finances as closely as you watch your own satisfaction or comfort level

Yellow Traffic Lights – Caution!

Must always be wary about:

1. Be selective in what you believe – always test what you read, observe, hear or think against your practical every-day experience and insight
2. Develop your own definitions and check that the meaning of key words and terms you use in conversations or documents are clearly understood by each audience
3. Always test your – and others’ – assumptions
4. Protect your intellectual property or capital to the extent that you decide you need to
5. Treat yourself as your greatest and most reliable asset
6. Treat the past as the basis for planning your future – and use the present to assess/review the past and examine options for the future
7. Examine the perspective and motive of any person or group who suggests you need them in your business – or associated with your business in any way. Make them earn your trust.
8. Finding, attracting, developing and retaining and maintaining staff
9. Maintaining direction and motivation
10. Managing instability or uncertainty
11. Managing your workload, and rewarding/acknowledging effort as well as achievement
12. Managing your time and tasks
13. Keeping vision and focus
14. Being effective, energetic, and practical
15. Remaining pro-active as opposed to reactive
16. Manage your resources with skill and care – this includes finances, systems, procedures, advisors, products, services – and keep a constant watch on facts and figures
17. Being innovative – as well as realistic
18. Balancing innovation with maintenance
19. Deal with each problem or difficulty as soon as you are aware of it: if these situations creep up on you as a surprise, you have a different and bigger problem! This should never happen.
20. Create the appropriate image, and check to see that this is the way you, your business and your product/component/service are perceived.

Green Traffic Lights – Go!

Must do’s – and must do well:

1. Capitalise on your skills, experience, qualities, qualifications, observations – ie what went on and was going on in your life at the time of starting your One Man Show
2. Define and write your business objective/s in practical terms, and place it where you can see it each day
3. Know the difference and relationship between cost, price and value
4. Plan your business and product life cycles, and know that there will be peaks and troughs, times of pleasure and times of grind – and give as much energy to celebrating effort as you do to celebrating results
5. Work out your understanding of ‘trust’ and ‘trusting’ – and monitor reasons to distrust as well as reasons to trust
6. Constantly develop, check with and tap into your inner wisdom
7. Know, understand, respect and love yourself – remember that you are your most important and valuable asset and resource
8. Go the extra mile in customer service – gaining customer loyalty and respect should lead to repeat business, which is the cheapest and best form of marketing
9. Develop strong supplier relationships – find and retain suppliers who are (a) reliable, (b) display a commitment to providing a consistent quality of service that meets your standards and requirements, and (c) show respect for you and your business
10. Do what you do best, and pay suppliers or contractors to do other necessary things
11. Accept that a time of challenge or ‘back to the wall’ is an open invitation to display entrepreneurial activity and initiative
12. Display a high level of commitment to your own effort and potential – this is a strong selling point for your business and your product
13. Be proud and passionate about your business and your product
14. Moving from business activity to business reflection
15. Be specific and confident about your:
    • Uniqueness – what is the ‘point of difference’ about your business and your
      product/component/service that can be presented, packaged and marketed
    • Competition – identify and assess current or potential competitors to maintain and strengthen your uniqueness, and
    • Credibility and viability – these are marketable features which you should always aspire to maintain
16. Coordinate your marketing activities within a carefully structured and resourced marketing strategy
17. Negotiate ‘space’ with your personal or private relationships
18. Create – as well as recognise – opportunities
19. Be capable of living with the prospect of success
20. Be capable of growing and developing as a successful One Man Show
21. Find a role model or mentor – no matter how successful you become: you will always need to have a person who will offer advice or a considered response with your best interest at the heart of such advice or response

One Man Show further expands the concept of traffic lights and provides suggests on how to change red lights to green.

One Man Show - Featuring the Authors and Shakespeare

Contents

About the Author
About the Book

Section 1: Setting out as a One Man Show
Jean – as a One Man Show, from 1985
Shakespeare as a One Man Show, from 1592
Why Shakespeare?

Section 2: The Resource Base of a One Man Show
The ritual of celebration
What I had to work with in 1985 (at the age of fifty-one)
What Shakespeare had to work with – from 1592 (at the age of twenty-eight)
Some features of Shakespeare’s life and times – which contributed to his Resource Base

Your Resource Base
You – being a One Man Show involves your whole person
The ‘Person’ Spider-web
Work/life balance
The Intimacy of Daily Life
The Generational factor
Similarly in Shakespeare’s life and times

Your resourcefulness
Business principles and values
Understanding the relationship between Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity
Momentum
Risky Changes
‘Unshakeable Facts’
There is always a degree of risk associated with a One Man Show
Risk Management – some useful definitions
Engaging suppliers
Risk Management Checklist
Crisis Management
Similarly with Shakespeare
Crisis Management Strategy
Business Brainpower – left- and right-brain orientation
Business Brainpower Tool
As easy scoring tool
Discussion with Business Starters
Application of Business Brainpower to selling and buying
The issue of Trust in your working relationships
Your resources – available or accessible
Cost, Price, Value and Return on Investment
Marketing
Who and What you know
Be wary of making assumptions
Similarly with Shakespeare

Section 3: Two different – and useful – business life-cycles
The relationship between ‘core business’ and business life-cycles
Theoretical Frameworks
Business life-cycles
Example 1: Four-stage Continuous Business Life-cycle
Innovation Stage – new things, or new ways of doing existing things
Research and Development (R&D)
Establishment Stage – business readiness
Project Mentality and Project Management
Planning structure
Growth and Development, Trial and Refinement Stage
Managing Fear
Critical Success Factors – Jean’s A-Z
Evaluation Stage as basis for further innovation
Using the Four-Stage Continuous Business Life-cycle
Example 2: The Sigmoid Curve Business Life-cycle
Similarity of the Sigmoid Curve Business Life-cycle and the Four-Stage Continuous Business Life-cycle
Jean’s Sigmoid Curve Business Life-Cycles
Shakespeare’s Sigmoid Curve Business Life-Cycles
Application of the Sigmoid Curve as a business life-cycle for
Business Start-ups
Checklist to guide planning at each stage in these two separate but similar business life-cycles
Retrospective Planning – a revelation in 1999
Similarly with Shakespeare

Section 4: Traffic lights for One Man Show business start-ups
The One Man Show journey
Green (Go) Traffic Lights – must do’s
Yellow (Caution) Traffic Lights
Red (Stop) Traffic Lights – must not do’s
How to turn Red (Stop) Traffic Lights to Green (Go)
Epilogue Jean’s tribute to Shakespeare
Bibliography

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