Michele – Page 28 – Michele Christensen

How long should a voicemail be?

I tend to leave longer voicemails than most, but let me explain before you hate my habit!

One of my favorite business topics to study and coach on is productivity. I try to always make sure I’m getting the most I can out of every effort I make. For both myself and the person I’m calling, this means that whenever it’s possible I leave a voicemail with all the information in it someone needs to answer my question and call me back. If I’m calling about a bill, I leave my account number, invoice number, my identifying information and exactly what my question is. That way, the other person can research the answer and probably leave me a voicemail with all the information I need. Two calls, problem solved. The alternative is leaving just a name and phone number and playing phone tag for days on end, which I dislike.

I got to thinking about this when I heard an “expert” say that he deplores my type of voicemail and that nobody should ever leave more than a name, number and possibly a subject. What an utter waste of time! People are busier than ever, it’s almost impossible to catch people by phone without an appointment and nobody likes phone tag – how many more reasons are there for leaving enough information to get what you need? Yes, sometimes my messages can go on for over a minute, but it’s voicemail – save it and play it whenever it suits you. I don’t understand the logic that days of phone tag taking much more than 2 minutes is preferable to a 1-2 minute voicemail.

To each, their own I suppose…. but you won’t catch me leaving a vague voicemail unless I’ve been specifically told to.

What kind of voicemails do you prefer? What kind do you leave? Post a comment and tell me about it.

Friday Solopreneur News Roundup, 4/1/11

No jokes here! Every Friday, I publish a summary of some items I think are useful to solopreneurs. If you’d like to see these right in your Facebook feed, click over to my page and like it. I also use this post to remind you to take some time to recharge your batteries this weekend in whatever way works best for you. As solopreneurs, we’re in big danger of working too much. There’s so much to do, and we feel so personally connected to all of it that it’s easy to get sucked in. As for me, I have NOTHING planned and that’s the way I like to spend a lot of weekends. My weekdays are so heavily scheduled that I need a break from all that scheduling on the weekend. Regardless of what I end up doing I’m usually happy if it doesn’t involve a schedule.

Missing keywords in your URL doesn’t ruin your SEO! I was thrilled to read this article – one of the ideas in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is that your keyword (what people are searching for when you hope they find you) should be in your domain name url. If you got a great name with no keywords, don’t despair as this can be overcome.

http://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/search-marketing/seo-domain-keywords/

Shocking but true! Half a percent of Twitter users generate half the tweets!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/28/twitter-study-statistics_n_841666.html

Free webinar on increasing your email effectiveness. Marketing Sherpa gives great information, so I’ll be on this webinar!

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/406918825

One of my favorite teachers Michele PW is presenting this free call along with Shannon Cherry: “3 Simple Secrets to Attracting All the Clients and Business you Deserve, No Matter What”

3 Simple Secrets Call

There you have it, my picks for the week! I hope you have a great weekend and start the next week raring to go!

Every day, do something to build your business

As a solopreneur, it’s so easy to sucked into working on what’s in front right now rather than what will help you build the business you want to have later. Always “firestomping” may keep the business from burning down but probably won’t help you get ahead. A certain amount of time to crank out some tasks is really important, but make sure to spend time every day doing something to create, grow and build the business you dream of.

What are these activities? They vary from business to business, but here’s some ideas to get you thinking:

Building your community of people interested in what you offer. This includes social media, real life and your newsletter.
Planning your next projects and long-term projects
Brainstorming
Educating yourself
Creating new products or services to sell

That’s just a few of the things you could be doing to build your business. What else do you do to build your business? How often? Leave a comment and let me know.

Friday Solopreneur News roundup, 3/25/11

Hi and welcome (almost) to the weekend! I hope you’ve got some time blocked out to unplug from your business. If not, do that as soon as you are done reading this post! If you want to see these news items right in your Facebook news feed, click over to my Facebook page and click the like button.

People often try a business promotion strategy and conclude it doesn’t work without giving it a fair try. For blogging, you’ve got to blog regularly to expect any benefit.

Hubspot: Blog Subscriber Growth

We get bombarded with so much information and marketing on the web that we’ve all gotten quite adept at tuning out noise. Make sure your marketing isn’t part of that noise for the people you want to reach.

Winning the New Marketing Democracy

Human brains are capable of magnificent things. Don’t waste the power of yours by keeping track of things better suited to a to-do list, calendar or project list. The world needs you to use your brain to do the great things you are capable of.

Why list is a dirty word

Here’s a slightly humorous but insightful article comparing ducking your business challenges to wearing fat pants instead of hitting the gym:

The Business Equivalent of Fat Pants

Finally, here’s a great list of 10 social media myths that may hurt your business.

10 Social Media Myths

That’s the news this week! My newsletter comes out every other Thursday, so if you want to be included in that use the sign up box to the right.

Have a great weekend, and make sure to recharge your batteries so you can serve your market fully.

3 tips for calculating your hourly rate

If you’re a solopreneur who offers at least some services by the hour, you’ll need need to calculate what rate to charge. This can be tough – aside from just figuring out the dollar amount it usually causes us to bump up against all sorts of mindset issues like “Would anyone pay that much?” Mindset is a big topic all by itself, but here are 3 tips to help you with the math.

Your hourly rate may be a flat $x per hour, or you may have a sliding fee based on how much time they book. If someone books you for a day or half-day, they might get you at a lower hourly rate. This makes sense for the business owner because you aren’t spending any time selling that additional time, and it makes sense to the client as a volume discount. It’s also cheaper for you to deliver a block of hours together instead of one hour at a time because you minimize your switching costs, i.e. time preparing and sending any follow up.
Don’t be intimidated by a number much larger than your comparable salary at a job. As a business owner, you need that rate to cover many things it didn’t when you had a job. Some examples include: overhead, business taxes, specific business expenses and all the time it takes to sign up new clients. Your hourly rate also has to compensate you not only for the hour you work but for all the expertise you bring into the situation. How many years have you been building your knowledge? How many classes have you taken? How many books have you read? Your currently hourly rate should reflect how much expertise you bring to the client.
Post your rates. Or don’t. There’s loads of debate about this, and ultimately I suggest taking it all in and start by doing what feels best and then test, test, test. See if posting or not posting helps you serve more people. I’m on the side of posting my rates right now. I almost never go any further with purchasing a product or service or even reading sales copy if I can’t see a price right away. If my rate scares someone off, then we’re not a good fit and we shouldn’t go any further.

Do you sell services by the hour? How did you calculate your rate? Leave a comment and tell me about it.

Friday News roundup, 3/18/11

Every Friday I send a recap of the news I posted this week. I read dozens of newsletters and other news sources and hand pick one article or event to share every day that I think has value to solopreneurs. If you’d like to see these news items right in your Facebook feed, visit my page and click like. Here’s this week’s picks:

26 ways to generate leads from social media

Social Media Examiner consistently delivers great content and this is no exception. As solopreneurs, we often hate the sales part of the business but if your business is going to succeed you must become proficient in selling. Generating leads is the first step in making sales.

Online Sales Productivity Summit

Hubspot also provides excellent content. This summit is scheduled for 3/17 and 3/24, but you may be able to get the first recording if you sign up.

Develop a Strategy for Setting the Right Price

Pricing can be a perennial issue for solopreneurs. We’re often torn between wanting to help people and hearing “I can’t afford it.”

The Science of Timing

Hubspot has done a whole series of “The Science of” webinars and they are always fascinating. They collect and analyze a large body of data to see what the best practices are. In this case, they’ll be revealing the best time to tweet, email, blog, etc.

Lame Sales Questions to Avoid

Laughed out loud at this one! It’s filled with things you can’t believe any salesperson would say, but I’m sure they do. Whether we like it or not, becoming good at or at least comfortable with selling is a pre-requisite for business success.

That’s the news for the week. Are you making some time for fun this weekend? Create some separation from you business for at least some of the weekend so you can come back recharged and ready to serve.

Solopreneurs must create work/personal separation

Solopreneurs must create work and personal separation

When I worked at a job outside the house, it was easy to separate my work and personal life. I got up, got dressed in work clothes (which weren’t the clothes I wore outside of work), went to my job, and came home. As soon as I left, there was no connection to work. I never had a remote login or 24-hour on-call status, so it was easy to say “I’m done.”

Now that I work from home, it’s much harder. It’s tempting to just check in when I’m enjoying a quiet Saturday morning or to go down the rabbit hole of checking email. One way I manage this is by having separate work and personal email addresses. I was surprised to learn at a recent Hubspot webinar on email marketing that 88% of survey respondents did not have separate work and personal email addresses!

This is something I’ve had as long as I’ve been self-employed. When I’m out having fun, the last thing I want is work intruding on my time. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my business and tend to work too much already but I don’t want to think about work when I’m doing something else. If I’m out hiking or visiting family on a weekend, I don’t even want to know about loose ends that need to be taken care of. If I read an email and need to do something about it, I don’t want that hovering in my thoughts while I’m having fun.

As solopreneurs, we ARE the business and it becomes much harder to separate and take a break than for people who have a job with someone else. But you absolutely have to carve out some time to disconnect or you’ll lose a lot of the biggest benefit of being self-employed – freedom. I strongly recommend separate work and personal email addresses for solopreneurs. Try this tiny step and see if you feel more at ease when you’re “off.”

Do you have separate business and personal email addresses? Why or why not?

What to do about spam email

On the heels of my recent post How not to build a mailing list and my recent newsletter article on clearing your email inbox, I thought I’d give you some information on what to do about those pesky spammers.

First, use the “Mark as Spam” button on your email service provider (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or through your hosting account). Every provider I’ve ever seen offers a way to mark messages as spam so you never have to see a message from that sender. It’s also an important public service because your provider will use that information to improve spam filters. I wanted to include this tip because so many people struggle with getting too much email and with this one step you can help reduce your email volume permanently.

Second, if you feel it’s warranted, report the spammer to the FTC. This is done by forwarding the entire email to spam@uce.gov (link to FTC information HERE). I have done this on occasion, when I’ve felt the the sender was particularly egregious in their violation of the spam laws or they continued to send to me after I requested to be removed. The FTC accumulates this information to build possible cases against spammers, so your forwarded email contributes to their efforts to reduce the spam in the world.

What do you do when you get spam? Have you ever reported it? Leave a comment and let me know.

Friday news roundup, 3/11/11

Here are the news highlights for solopreneurs from this week. Enjoy and make sure to take some time off from your business this weekend! Your clients will thank you for your renewed energy and creativity.

I post news links on my Facebook fan page, so if you’d like to see stories like these delivered right to your Facebook news feed, head over to my page and click like.

Businesses rate direct mail as effective – Marketing Sherpa

This blew me away – I put most of the mail I get right into the recycling bin or shredder. But somebody must be reading their mail or businesses wouldn’t send it.

Business vs. personal use of social media – bplans.com

Great advice here – it’s fine to mix the two, but do so consciously and assume that everything you post is available to everyone.

Optimize your email marketing for social media – American Express Open Forum

Without question, the entire web is going more social so it only makes sense that your email marketing should too.

Free List Building telesummit – listbuildingsummit.com

16 experts in a free series to help you build or start your email newsletter list. I’ll see you there!

Keeping your email inbox in check – featured article in this week’s issue of my newsletter

I take a somewhat controversial stance on how to maintain your email inbox.

4 Problems with our brains that can effect your business – Business Insider

We can be blind to the flaws in our thinking – don’t make these common errors in your business.

That’s the news this week! It’s beautiful here in SoCal, and the tsunami missed us so I am thankful for that. Chris and I are still putting our house back together after having flooring installed throughout so we’ll probably do some work around here and maybe take the dogs for a hike. Have a great weekend!

How not to build a mailing list

Throughout 2010, I did a lot of business networking. My efforts paid off in loads of new contacts, which was great, but not so great was the unexpected side effect of SPAM in my email box! About once a month, I got added to a newsletter without giving verbal or written permission (being in possession of someone’s business card does not mean they want to be added to a newsletter). These SPAM messages usually came from directly from someone’s email address without the use of an email list management service like Aweber (affiliate link). This meant that there was no “unsubscribe” button, and I had to email the person directly and tell them to remove me. If the spammer was on top of their email, I sometimes got removed. Often, it took more than once and I sometimes got added repeatedly after being removed.

This is SPAM as defined by the CAN-SPAM act (easy-to-read guidelines here), and is a great example of how not to build an email newsletter mailing list. It looks unprofessional and slapped together. If people aren’t opting in, the sender has no way of knowing if the newsletter is of value to the recipient of not. Only the recipient can determine that, and if they don’t want the newsletter then the sender is just being a pest by sending it.

There’s loads of reasons why this type of spamming isn’t a good idea, but the main one for me is that I’m irritated that the sender presumes to know their newsletter is good for me even if I don’t think it is. The way to avoid this is simple and not very expensive. Use a newsletter service like Aweber, and only send your newsletter to people that have expressed clearly that they want it. The rewards are huge – I’m still in awe every time I hit send that I have a community of people waiting to hear from me.