Week 4: The Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs wraps up

The Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs is a 30-day challenge to become a better entrepreneur. Participants get daily tips and questions to help them understand themselves, identify areas for improvement, and apply these learnings to their business. Sign up!

In week 4, participants focused on taking everything they learned so far and putting it into practice. Here’s what happened.

Chris Barrett

What’s the biggest thing you learned this month? The biggest thing I learned this month is to only take on what I can handle. In the past three years since launching PRserve, I find myself constantly wanting to handle everything that goes into each client launch and campaign. Most PR agencies like to over-promise in order to sign clients on monthly retainer, but, by the end of each month, they’ve under-delivered, because public relations is not easy and the field is always changing.

This month, I made sure to keep my clients’ PR expectations in line. If a potential client wasn’t a fit for a certain media outlet, then I let the client know we weren’t going to pitch them.

I’ve also made it policy to inform potential clients during their initial phone calls that there are never any guarantees with public relations; you could have the best product in the world but, if a reporter is busy or wrote about a similar company recently, then those circumstances are out of our hands.

Martin

What’s the biggest thing you learned this month? Working out goals in a team, even if only one person works on it, is more effective.

Week 3: The Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs

The Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs is a 30-day challenge to become a better entrepreneur. Participants get daily tips and questions to help them understand themselves, identify areas for improvement, and apply these learnings to their business. Sign up!

In week 3, participants focused on identifying areas for improvement as an entrepreneur and in their business. Here’s what they discovered.

John Michael Hydo

What’s the biggest thing you learned this week? When faced with hard decisions, put one foot in front of the other…Trust God and keep feet moving. You’ll be surprised how things work out.

What’s the most surprising insight you gained this week? I remember with a smile on my face, that every little thing is gonna be alright.

What actions could you take around your business? Is there a difference between “personal” and how I conduct “business”? Nope.

Martin

What’s the biggest thing you learned this week? Breaking up the week’s goal into daily tasks helped identify where I waste time on things not relevant for the goal.

What actions could you take personally? Try to be more focused on the short-term goals.

Week 2: The Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs

The Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs is a 30-day challenge to become a better entrepreneur. Participants get daily tips and questions to help them understand themselves, identify areas for improvement, and apply these learnings to their business. Sign up!

In week 2, the entrepreneurs focused on understanding their assets as an entrepreneur and in their business. Here’s what they discovered.

Chris Barrett

What’s the biggest thing you learned this week? The biggest thing I learned this week is how critical it is to take one thing at a time. I have a number of clients who are tackling lots of amazing things at once. But instead of spreading our energy over every media goal, I’ve found the best way to build success is to devote all our attention to one goal, accomplish it, and then keep the momentum going by devoting 100% to the next task. This approach really helps keep both my team and my clients focused. I like to set short-term goals for myself and my clients and, only when we’ve met one goal, do we move onto the next. I’m honest with clients: we will have the most success if my team focuses on one goal at a time.

Jose Mejia

What’s the biggest thing you learned this week? This week I learned that I should feel more confident than I do about my livelihood and chances at success. Taking stock of the assets I have at hand to take the steering wheel and drive my career was a helpful exercise that gave me a much better perspective on what I’m capable of accomplishing.

What’s the most surprising insight you gained this week? I was mostly surprised by the reach of my network. Sure, I’m one of those people – like many – that “knows a lot of people.” I took the time to sketch/map that out a bit and was pretty shocked by the reach.

What actions could you take personally? Definitely going to focus on owning my confidence and being more consistently confident about what I’m doing. It’s easy to feel like everything you’re doing is pointless, even when you’re doing well. I feel like I’m better equipped to deal with those feelings now.

What actions could you take around your business? Nothing in particular besides ensuring to keep up with my existing habits and new systems.

John Hydo

What’s the biggest thing you learned this week? Saw a picture of my wife and I and we were standing in a river in Hawaii. The actual photo was a picture of our feet in the water. That picture reminds me to remember where my feet are. My feet are not in the past nor are they in the future. My feet are here, right now. Enjoy the moments.

What’s the most surprising insight you gained this week? Firing people is hard. It’s never been easy for me.

What actions could you take personally? Keep feet moving.

What actions could you take around your business? Fire quickly.

Week 1: The Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs launches

The Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs is a 30-day challenge to become a better entrepreneur. Participants get daily tips and questions to help them understand themselves, identify areas for improvement, and apply these learnings to their business. Sign up!

In week 1, the entrepreneurs focused on understanding their motivations and goals for starting a business. Here’s what they discovered.

Chris Barrett

What’s the biggest thing you learned this week? I’ve spent the past two years taking new client calls every day of the workweek. Sometimes, I’ll talk with prospective startups and CEOs, each with their own unique set of circumstances and extremely specific media needs, for three or four hours straight. Staying on my toes and honing in on so many clients back-to-back (I substitute a lot of meals with Starbucks) can be thoroughly exhausting. I realized, recently, that my desire to fit as many calls in as possible was running my energy into the ground. In the short term, I was getting a lot done, but in the long term I was sacrificing quality (and sanity) for quantity.

So, last Friday, I decided to shake things up a bit. I took an office field trip down to Vocus’s HQ in Beltsville, Maryland, so I could give a talk on the innovative ways I’ve been integrating Google Glass technology with work and life. The day away from the daily grind was so invigorating and restorative that I was exponentially much more successful, come Monday – even though I’d spent an entire workday out of the office and off the phone. The experiment was so successful that I’ve now officially blocked my Fridays off from taking calls for the rest of October. It’s quite possible that “No Call Friday” will become a permanent part of PRserve.

Jose Mejia

What’s the biggest thing you learned this week? Nothing I didn’t know already; just helped to sharpen my focus on what matters to me during this period.

What actions could you take personally? More clearly define the lifestyle I want to lead moving forward and set stricter boundaries.

What actions could you take around your business? More clearly define the goals I want to achieve moving forward and set stricter timelines.

Anything else you want to share? So far, it’s been good to get the things that are otherwise just floating around in my head out into words and sentences. It helps sharpen my focus on what I want out of life.

John Michael Hydo

What’s the biggest thing you learned this week? My spirituality must become bigger than my problems.

What’s the most surprising insight you gained this week? It’s not.

What actions could you take personally? My action is to put my “me time” as a priority. Me time starts as soon as my knees hit the floor.

What actions could you take around your business? When “me time” is my first priority in the morning, my day usually goes a bit better and when issues arise, I am in a better state of mind to find solutions.

Martin

Anything  you want to share? Had a holiday week with family visit and little time to work, so no learning that’s worth sharing, other than that it is harder to get back into coding after a longer downtime (but I knew that already).

Meet the participants in the Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs

The Honesty Experiment for Entrepreneurs is a 30-day challenge to become a better entrepreneur. Participants get daily tips and questions to help them understand themselves, identify areas for improvement, and apply these learnings to their business. Sign up!

Entrepreneurs are constantly trying to get inside the minds of their customers, but do they know their own minds? If they understood themselves better, would their business improve? In the next 30 days, we’ll find out – follow us on Twitter to stay updated!

Danny Beckett Jr

Family is first and after that he’s all startups and business (San Francisco)

@dannybeckettjr

Why participate? “Always searching to learn and grow myself.”

Chris Barrett

Founder of PRserve (Philadelphia)

@chrisbarrett

Why participate? “I always try to be as honest as possible, but I want to learn how I can even be more honest!”

Jose R. Mejia

Multi-disciplinary disciple of getting things done (New York City)

@JoseRMejia

Why participate? “Seems like a great way to craft a better version of myself.”

Brian

A touring and recording musician who runs an event production company called Mole Street (Philadelphia)

@molestreet

Why participate? “To keep building.”

Anna Lauren Farrell

A freelance entertainment producer in film, theatre, and digital/television commercial production (New York City)

@annalaurenf

Why participate? “I’m all about personal development in business and matters of the heart. If I can marry the two that’s a sweet spot. Successful people understand people. Understanding yourself is the first step in that process.”

John Michael Hydo

I’m one grateful dude (Los Angeles – Silicon Beach)

@JohnHydo

Why participate? “Getting honest with myself, introspection, the hard questions, and ‘what the heck am I doing here’ are all core to who I am. I’d love to be part of an ‘experiment’ that explores who we are and why we do what we do. Honesty is a great tool that I use to uncover and discover God and the answers to those questions. Doing this experiment with others on the same life journey sounds fantastic.”

Paulissa Kipp

Creative BraveHeart and Curious Phoenix empowering truth prospectors to discover the gold within (Omaha, Nebraska)

@paulissaisms

Why participate? “As an entrepreneur, it is as important to be honest with yourself as it is to be honest with customers.”

David Brown

A young latino cofounder of Smart Money Entrepreneurs, an equity crowdfunding portal that protects investors through proprietary financial tracking tools (Yonkers, NY)

@SmartMoneyDave

“I want to share my experience building a tech startup in NYC.”

Amber

Defined by three words: introvert, wife, mother (San Antonio)

@aleighsb

Why participate? “I would like to take an honest look at whether I’m cut out for being an entrepreneur.”

Martin

A software developer and currently cofounder in a startup (Beijing)

Why participate? “I want to find out if I am honest enough about my contribution to our startup.”