Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in personal and business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Sunil Bhaskaran, Founder of Global Communities, LLC., located in Vallejo, CA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

My vision is to have 100 million joyful and successful entrepreneurs in the world by 2050. Women entrepreneurs (49.6 percent of all entrepreneurs) are critical to this vision being seriously fulfilled. Women teach others when they learn; teaching women is thus a strong lever to use for this vision to be fulfilled. The pathway to having women be joyful and successful at the same time is certainly in all the conventional means (marketing, branding, systems, sales, leadership, etc.), but the question that was never heretofore resolved is how to make an abundance of money while having a lifestyle that is fulfilling, satisfying and enriching. The Joyful Calendar has been solving this conundrum with proven results using my proprietary calendar, workflow, life enrichment & momentum tracker systems. Starting with building your calendar and time as a sacred foundation stone yields a system that leaves one empowered with free "choice," time being the driver for more money - an unconventional approach - but one that makes sense and feels right when put into practice.

Tell us about yourself

I started in 1991. My first mentor in business was one who had Zen Training before he became a business consultant. He taught me the value of building myself inside out to achieve high-quality breakthrough results in any domain - life or business. My first lessons were on how to discipline myself to focus my time and energy with full intention and joy. This internal building of myself started to give me much more confidence than I ever had before. My first "test" was in going to a ballroom dance competition and show. To make a long story very short (yes.. I know.. I am leaving out a lot of juicy stuff here), I won in three categories of dance (tango, waltz, and foxtrot) after three months of dance training - never having danced before and having been deathly afraid of dancing and making a fool of myself. The breakthrough awoke in me the realization that the limits I place on myself.. were just that - limits that I placed on myself - mere inventions of my very creative imagination. After that, I took on bigger challenges and had many failures accompanied by fewer but higher quality breakthroughs, including having enough wealth to take 1.5 years off to travel the world, date a celebrity actress and go to Hollywood to pursue being in the entertainment industry as an act of love, rather than as an act of extreme ambition.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

My biggest accomplishment is easy to state - it was and still is in helping thousands of entrepreneurs achieve a level of success and joy in their business - in helping them see something possible for themselves to have, than in supporting them to stay and refine the course to get there and then to celebrate the success by teaching others.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

Being distracted by things that really do not matter. Most entrepreneurs make a mistake also of following a model that may not fit their style - fitting a square peg into a round hole, thus clogging their machine of creativity, innovation, and focused profit making. Another mistake is not to invest work, time, energy, and money into being mentored and guided to success. All of these tend to be secondary priorities, and while I understand that with the pressures to make money, the decision to delay inside-out development can be appreciated, the decision is still a killer of sustainable success.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Identify clear objectives for three months, one year, and five years. Write these down and manage them seriously on a frequent basis. Have strong accountabilities and systems to ensure success.
  2. Identify and write down your strategy for marketing: who you market to, what you sell to them, and most importantly, the super clear and concise reason for them to buy from you and not anybody else. This clear and concise reason must be convincing - super convincing, but this conviction may come over time and needs to be assessed with patience.
  3. Get a mentor. Pay them well. Engage them, be coachable, and do the work with no complaint.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Passion comes from Latin roughly meaning the willingness to suffer in the short term for something good in the long term. You must almost always suffer in the short term to have long-term joy. The key is to not do what most people do - long-term suffering with short (very short) vacations of joy (mostly distractions.) You must always choose between long-term joy (with some short-term suffering) long term suffering (with short-term joys).

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://sunilbhaskaran.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoyfulCalendar/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cahayamind
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilbhaskaranspeaker/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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