Cathy Mahady
Independent Distributor
Emerald Director
Team Leader and
Business Coach
Top Sponsor

Minneapolis, MN
952.239.0635
CoachingTheDream@gmail.com

Building a Home Business is Like Learning to Make Cookies

While teaching my 10 year old daughter how to make cookies, I am amazed at how similar this process is to my home business coaching. She starts out with such enthusiasm and excitement to learn something new, to be able to do it herself. Just like the new distributor who is starting their new home business.

We move through the basics of the step by step process that reading a cookie recipe requires. But my daughter wants to jump ahead and fails to read each step, missing something important along the way. Tasty cookies don't come when important information is not learned... and applied. Missing just one step or one ingredient can lead to an unfortunate failure. Similarly, this is why we set up business training that requires the new business owner to not progress onto the next step until the previous steps are studied and implemented.

In giving it her best inexperienced effort, she makes a mess. Fudge frosting on the wall, sugar on the floor, and flour that has totally missed the mixing bowl. While first enjoying the novel process, she quickly assesses once into the heart of the activity, that she isn't very good at this and inaccurately determines that it is not ever going to work out. She wants to compare her skills and abilities with her more experienced mom.

As a result, she goes to sit down, aka, quit. Without the prompts and advice from mom, aka the coach, she would have given up. While early in the coaching process, it takes someone more knowledgeable and experienced to pull the new baker, aka new distributor, out of this initial fear and disappointment and help them to see that the outcome will be well worth the effort, despite the messy start.

Imagine if we all had stopped making cookies just because we weren't very good in the beginning. We would never know the ultimate pleasure of enjoying the cookies that have become such a part of our holiday traditions. Practicing the skills, again and again, moves us away from the feelings of inadequacy and fear that first envelops us as a new baker. Similarly, a business coach has to be apt at not allowing the new home business owner to get derailed by their initial inexperience, ineffectiveness, and disappointment in their abilities.

Through the coaching, my daughter jumps back into the game and regains a sense of anticipation of the outcome. But later she grows bored with doing the same thing and wants to know if she can change things up by adding brown sugar to the white sugar and cinnamon. While this may work and not create a complete disaster, it is not following the steps outlined by the recipe.

This similarly is a problem that many business coaches encounter with their distributors who become bored with the mundane. It's easy for the new home business owner to want to do something comparable by trying to come up with ways they think may be better than what has been prescribed by the business coach. Isn't variety the spice of life? Maybe, but mastering the mundane creates success. We are in a business of duplication, not innovation.

Just as in business, cookie making takes time and has lulls while waiting for a batch of cookies to finish baking. My daughter gets easily distracted by the lure of the iPad and games that seem more exciting than watching dough rise. Correlatively, the new (and even older) distributor needs to be pulled back into the process and encouraged to stay focused, even when there is no reward yet.

Once the cookies are complete and she gets to partake in the goodies of her efforts, she is so satisfied with the outcome and exclaims how delicious the cookies are. Without a backward look at the mess, the feeling of inadequacy, the boredom of the repetition, or the long wait for the outcome that brought her to the ultimate end, she is pleased. She is proud of the new skill she has learned...not yet mastered but learned well enough that the outcome is success! With each successive attempt, she will master the technique and will be able to complete the process without coaching. And then one day she will be able to teach the skill to others and carry on the tradition with her own family.

Similarly, the new business owner does the same!