It’s hard to believe that in a few days it’s been 10 months since I got laid off at Stitch Fix. It’s shocking to me– in a good way– that my business is growing and I seem to be making it. But I do often ask myself: How do I keep attracting bread-and-butter clients? There always seems to be one client that pays my mortgage, and I am very grateful for that. I’m grateful for the word-of-mouth growth, both locally and on the internet. I’m grateful for the opportunity to give workshops and network and help others achieve their dreams.

But there’s a lot of steps to running a business and I’m getting close to the point where I need to make some decisions about how to run and how to expand my business. So, I looked into some SCORE workshops and requested a SCORE mentor.

“SCORE is the nation’s largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors, with 10,000 volunteers serving all 50 U.S. states and territories. Since its founding in 1964 as a resource partner for the U.S. Small Business Administration, SCORE has helped more than 11 million current and aspiring entrepreneurs start, grow or successfully exit a business through mentoring, resources and education. Reach out to your local chapter, SCORE Lehigh Valley, today!”

In the Lehigh Valley, Northampton Community College (at its Fowler Southside Center in Bethlehem) hosts SCORE and other entrepreneurial material. They host One Million Cups, another group for entrepreneurs that I have attended, and they offer a small business management and entrepreneurial certificate which I would love to earn (it’s only $1,600).

But I had my first meeting with my SCORE mentor today, and I’m not going to say much about the mentor himself because I didn’t ask permission to talk about him in the wide world of the Internet, but I wanted to say it’s so powerful to tell a stranger your hopes and dreams. It’s a safe place, so hopefully that stranger won’t tell you you’re an idiot doing everything wrong. But I suppose a good mentor would offer advice to make you less of an idiot.

Don’t worry– my mentor did not tell me I’m an idiot.

He was very kind, and he listened well, even when my Goffin’s cockatoo Nala insisted that she needed to attend the meeting. And he’s going to send me a template to formalize my business plan. Congratulations, he said, for getting your business off the ground.

Now, if you know me, you know I can do things. I can do big things. I can do hard things. I can do thinking things. But sometimes, I don’t know where to start. Sometimes, I feel a little overwhelmed and paralyzed.

So I told my mentor– I probably don’t even know what my needs are. If you point me in a direction and hold me accountable, I’ll figure out the details. He wants me to make my formal business plan to give me focus. And he pointed out four areas to ponder, all of which I have thought about but the answers don’t lie in one guiding document. And I have written “business plan” on my to-do list just about every week since the start of the year.

Here are the four areas my mentor wants me to consider:

1. What is my service? Who are my clients? Who isn’t? What can I do? What do I want to do?
2. What are the future goals for my business? My business is in its first generation, but as it evolves, where do I want it to go? What do I want to do longterm? What do I want to stop doing?
3. What is my preferred revenue model? Right now I have clients who hire me hourly, traditional publishing clients, and clients who hire me to write. How do I want to make money?
4. What marketing does my business require to grow?

The meeting energized me!