how to – Page 14 – Michele Christensen

Why I love my email newsletter service

Today is the first post of many on services that I recommend for your solopreneur business. I’ll also be introducing a brand new resource that will allow you to get a comprehensive listing of all the products and services I use. Today I’ll tell you about the email newsletter service I use and why I love it. If you want to get on my email newsletter and test the service I use for yourself, use the signup box at the right.

I’m going to start by assuming you already know the value of an email newsletter for your business. If you’re not familiar with how an opt-in email newsletter can benefit you, stay tuned because I’ll be discussing that in future posts. If you want to have a newsletter, than you need a newsletter service. Don’t try to do it from an email provider like Outlook, Gmail or from the email address provided by your hosting account. You’ll save the service fee, but in the long run it will probably cost you money because you’ll have to handle things like subscribe and unsubscribe requests by hand. Since I’m committed to giving you good information for you business I feel compelled to tell you that not using a service makes a poor impression as well.

I use Aweber for my email newsletter service. I’ve been with them for over a year, and I’m very happy with the service. They do well with the basics like stats, reports, subscribe and unsubscribe requests, social media blasts, list segments, web forms, etc but that’s not why I love the service as much as I do. On top of the basics, there are 2 things that make Aweber stellar in my opinion.

First, they have a strong anti-spam stance that is woven throughout the entire customer experience. It’s not that you get one anti-spam message in your introductory materials and then it’s done. They obviously value preventing spam greatly so they do all sorts of things to encourage you not to spam and to make sure you don’t do it accidentally. Numerous times, I’ve been added to a newsletter by someone who assumed because they had my email address it was okay to add me to a newsletter and this has never happened to when the sender used Aweber. When I’ve done live events, I manually enter the names of people who fill out a form stating they want my newsletter and even in that situation the software reminds you to only send to people who want you to.

Second, they have great customer service. Their online information base is great, but when you need a person you call or live chat their Pennsylvania offices during business hours and get a live person right away. They figure out who you need to talk to and get you to them without making you jump through hoops just to talk to a person.

These features have made it easier for me to have a spam-compliant newsletter that goes out regularly which has been a boon to my business. Oh, and yes they have an affiliate program and yes the links here are affiliate links!

This is the first of many resources I plan to share with you. If you can’t wait for the rest of them to be revealed, you can grab my entire rolodex by clicking here! This is a brand new resource and as you can see I haven’t even set up a proper opt in page for it but you can still grab it right away. It is updated for 2011 and contains 32 resources I use and love.

Picking a niche – scary but oh so worth it!

One of the first things I often tackle with a new client is the question of who they serve. For so many reasons, getting clear on this is one of the most crucial factors in whether your business succeeds or fails. For starters, here are just some of the benefits of picking a niche:

It makes it clear to anyone you communicate with whether you’re a good fit for them or not, and makes it easy for people to refer business to you
It allows you to establish yourself as the go-to person for that niche
It helps you find the people you want to market to
It makes writing your marketing copy much easier because you know who you are trying to reach
It narrows your focus for your own training and research

There are loads more benefits, but I think just the points above make a solid case for picking a niche. So why are we solopreneurs so hesitant to do it?

Quite frankly, it can feel really scary. Especially when we are first getting started and clients are scarce, it might feel foolish and risky to declare that you only work with certain people. It feels like you’re cutting off the vast majority of options and leaving only a tiny sliver for yourself.

This thinking isn’t really accurate though…. there’s no law against serving people outside your niche, but if you don’t pick something you might not have a business. In a way, you are cutting off a lot of options in that you will no longer be reaching out to everyone but only to your niche. The thing to look at though is not the huge number of options you are cutting off but in the number left. You don’t need an infinite or even a huge number of people in your niche to build a successful business. You need some, you need enough, but you don’t need everyone in the world.

I invite you to take a look at your business and see if you chosen a niche. If not, think about doing it. If it feels scary or risky, consider the impact that not doing it may have. If you need help in this area, I’d love to work on it with you. Click here to schedule a call with me.

Leave a comment telling me about your niche, how you picked it and how it’s worked out for you.

Reduce stress and be more on top of things with one change to your to-do list

Lower your stress with a small change to your to-do list

Even I was a bit skeptical at that headline and I wrote it! However, it is true I promise! The one thing I’ll tell you about is really simple too. It has to do with assigning priorities in your to-do list.

I recently switched over to an online to-do list manager called Remember The Milk. One of the many great features is that you can assign priorities to your to-do items with choices of 1,2,3 or none (priority 1 shows on top of your list). I hadn’t been using priorities in my two most recent systems and didn’t want to get too complicated so I stuck with just using priority 1 or no priority. My rule for deciding whether to prioritize something was either it had a fixed deadline with a high penalty for missing (e.g. paying a bill or sending my newsletter) or it was just something important to me (sweeping up the dog hair from the floors). What started to happen was that in my two levels of priority, many things got put in priority 1. So many items were in priority 1 that I began to fall behind and had to start triaging even my high-priority items. This is where stress comes in – it’s very stressful to look at a big list of priority 1 items, know you can’t get to all of them and have to start deciding which to do and which to leave undone for now. It’s also a big waste to spend time and energy deciding what to do because you haven’t maintained your to-do lists in a way that supports you getting things done.

What I did, and this is the big secret today, is to change my criteria for priority 1 into only things that carry a substantial penalty for not being done on time. To support this, I added a middle layer of priority for things that don’t have to be done by a specific day but I that I don’t want to leave indefinitely either. Sweeping up the dog hair falls in here – it doesn’t have to be done today, but I can’t let it go for too long and maintain a sanitary living space. In contrast, sending my newsletter is a priority 1 because it reflects badly on me and disappoints people who have placed trust in me to send it late. The big temptation is to load too many things into priority 1, which takes me back to the original problem. It’s been helpful to have a rule to determine if something really belongs in priority 1.

The big stress relief comes from looking at my to-do list and seeing just 2-5 items that are priority 1 for today. It’s a small universe, it feels do-able, and lets me know in a glance what has to be done today. Everything else is optional. Having things laid out this way is great for really busy days – I can crank through the “must do’s” and even there’s dozens of things that don’t get done I know without a second glance I’ve done what has to be done today.

You can apply this with almost any system you use. Every electronic to-do list manager I’ve ever used allows you to assign priorities and you could even do this with paper so I encourage you to give it a try. It’s done wonders for me, and less stress equals more and better quality work.

Do you have any to-do list tricks you use? Tell me about them in the comments.

Do you know what your website is for?

What purpose does your website serve? Do you know?

Thinking strategically is one of the most important things you can do for your business. It means having clearly defined goals, a path to get there and way to measure if your actions are working. Every action you take should be a fit for your strategic plan. Sometimes I’ll hear someone in the early part of their business make a comment like “I have to start tweeting!” This seems to be true since many successful business owners are tweeting, but my response is always “Why?” or “What do you hope to accomplish by tweeting?” If it’s early on in our work together, it sometimes throws the person for a loop or they think I’m being sarcastic (I’m not). Nothing is a given in my business world and everything has to pull it’s weight.

The same is true of your website. You know you need one, but what’s it for and does it perform that function well? A website can serve very different purposes depending on the business. Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

gather leads through a form
build newsletter subscriber list
encourage people to call for an appointment or consultation
sales of product right on website
provide basic information (the online version of a brochure)
give potential customers an easy way to get to know you
provide customer support or help

Which of these functions should your website be serving? Does it? What changes would help your website function better? What other functions does it serve?

Using Facebook for business – a range of options

When I started to write this post, I began with with all the stats and numbers to support the idea that you should be using Facebook for your business. It was turning into a big proof for Facebook rather than a backdrop for what I want to say, so I’m going to start from the assumption that you already know all the benefits of using Facebook for your business. I wanted to write this post because I’m amazed at how often I hear people in heated arguments over the one right way to use Facebook for business. I’ve heard everything from use only a business page (what used to be called a fan page) to use only your profile and everything in between. The truth is, like may business issues, there isn’t one right answer and the best choices depend on the situation, the individual and the desired outcome of using Facebook for your business.

I’ve seen people get great results using only their profile for business. The two broad categories would be people that only use their profile for business and don’t do any personal interacting on Facebook and people whose business is so closely tied to themselves, their lifestyle, values and personality that their business is indistinct from the person.

I’ve also seen great results from people making full use of a business page. This is pretty much what I do. When I first got onto Facebook, it was before it was used much for business so I made all sorts of personal connections there. Since I focus on a small niche, my work isn’t relevant to most of my friends so I don’t post it on my profile. Similarly, my business community probably wouldn’t find the mundane details of my life interesting. Those people are part of my business contacts because they trust me to bring them valuable business information, not because they care about the killer parking spot I just found.

Then of course, there are myriad ways to use both your page and profile to promote your business. Some people are very comfortable mixing both.

The bottom line is, Facebook is a great free resource to get the word out about your solopreneur business in a forum where people already are. The important point here is that there is no one right way to promote your business on Facebook except that which fits you best. I would avoid the extremes though – don’t post too much information about your work to your personal connections if it doesn’t apply to them, and don’t inundate your business community with mundane details of your personal life if it’s not interesting to them. Above all, don’t make your Facebook strategy choice based on someone else’s advice unless that person is a trusted advisor with a proven track record.

Lessons learned from a bad experience with Ikea

Lessons learned from a bad experience at Ikea

I had a blog post planned for today, but yesterday’s experience just was too full of great lessons to ignore. For those of us in the US, yesterday was a holiday and that means some stores are closed or have shorter holiday hours.

Among other things I had planned yesterday, I decided to brave a trip to Ikea to keep some home improvement projects moving ahead. Since it’s quite a trek to get there, I wanted to make sure they were open into the evening. I started with their website and there was no mention of holiday hours. I then entered into phone menu purgatory which was an endless nested maze of options, none of which was “at any time press zero for an operator.” Those phone menu set ups are a horrible way to treat customers. Does any customer feel valued when that’s what they are greeted with? I think by now most people are used to the phone menu hazing they have to go through to get service, and know that if they do choose to speak to a live person they may have to wait. I was surprised though, at how difficult they made it and that there was no obvious way to get to a live person. I finally did get a live person through one of the many combinations of keys I pressed, and of course he couldn’t answer my question but put me back on hold for 7 minutes until someone picked up. Needless to say, this was extremely frustrating and a big waste of over 20 minutes of my time. It made me, an interested customer, way less interested in buying. In fact, if I didn’t need something I could only get there I wouldn’t have gone at all. It certainly made get in and out as fast as possible and thus they lost any other sales they might have had with me. A company like Ikea can get away with this – the one near me is almost always jam packed with a lines of 20 people at each of a dozen registers. They don’t need to change anything about how they treat their customers, but what about the rest of us? What lesson is there for a solopreneur business in this? I came up with 3 things we can take from this experience.

First –

Don’t make it hard to buy, in fact make it as easy as possible. I suspect Ikea would have lost a lot of people in this situation who were less determined and in need than me.

Second –

Don’t make it hard to contact you. Give clients and customers options for how they contact you and make it easy to find that information.

Third –

Anticipate and reply to obvious questions. Think about what big, obvious questions your clients may have and answer them before your clients ask. Don’t make them work for basic information – most won’t and you’ll lose sales. If you get the same question more than a few times, put the answer in your materials.

What are some of the ways you help customers to buy? Share them in the comments.

Too much email?

Let’s face it, most of us solopreneurs spend a lot of time on email. In fact many people I talk to say they have “too much” email and that it hurts their productivity. Today, I’m proposing something radical for dealing with email. In fact, you might think it’s not even possible or that I’ve gone haywire!

Here it is, one of my key tools for handling my email effectively.

Check and clear your email inbox once a day.

Yes, that’s it, just once a day. Unless your solopreneur business is emergency services or is related to birth or death or you make money be responding quickly to situations (like a daytrader or board up service for damaged buildings) then you most likely don’t need to check your email more than once a day. I do use the email feature of my smart phone to take a couple of quick glances while standing in line or riding the stationary bike and if it’s a client I’ll respond right away. Barring that, I do one bulk processing of my email in the morning and don’t touch it the rest of the day. In fact, I even shut it down so I can’t see that oh-so-demanding little number count of unread emails that just begs for a peek.

My point in this post is not to say that my exact system will work for you, but to throw away the preconceived notions that you have about needing to always be available via email and figure out what works for you and how much you can stop doing. Constantly checking and responding to email is a huge time suck and will keep you from doing other work that supports your big vision. We often get the message that we need to respond quickly to emails in order to be successful in business and it seems to be the truth, so we don’t ever think about what is right for us. I’m sharing this today to give you encouragement to think outside of what you’ve been told. If I can get away from constant email, maybe you can too.

How often do you check your email? Is it constantly on? What could you do differently?

Easing solopreneur overwhelm

When I talk to solopreneur business owners, one of the themes that emerges is overwhelm. There’s just so much to do and even if you have help there’s a lot to learn and manage. One area where you can ease some of your overwhelm is in how you manage your projects. All too often, we put something like “Re-do website” on our project list, and it never gets started much less done. The problem with that project is that it can’t be “done” because it isn’t clear. Most of us would just look at a project like that and get a sick feeling and skip it today, then tomorrow then the next day. It hangs there and makes us feel bad. To reduce the overwhelm in a project like this, I suggest the following 3 steps:

Start by getting clear on exactly why the project needs to be done and what you hope to accomplish by changing your website. Once you know why you are doing something, much of what else you need to know becomes clear. How much to spend, how high a priority to place, what time frame, etc all become much clearer when you know why you are doing something.
Once you are clear on the why, you can define the scope of what needs to be done. Defining the scope of a project helps you to know when it’s done. It will also help you avoid “feature creep,” or the tendency to add things in along the way.
Once you’ve defined the desired outcomes and scope of the project, make a list of the tasks needed to complete the project. Start with just the first few if that’s as far as you can see. The key here is to keep the steps really small – as small as they need to be to stave off overwhelm. For example, your first step might be to find a web person, but that’s still a big, vague task. I suggest starting with a task such as “Make a list of 5 people I can call for a referral.” Next might be “Spend 1 hour reading up on how to hire a web person” followed by “Call people on list.” In each case, the task is very small and focused and “done” is clearly defined.

When I talk to someone who is feeling overwhelmed, using these three steps can often help. Tell me about how you got out of overwhelm on a recent project in the comments.

Measuring things that actually matter

One of the most important things you can do to continue to build your business is to measure how well your efforts are working. There’s tons of information out there about things you must do, should do, would be foolish not to do, etc. but really the only criteria for deciding whether to do something is if it works for you. I love this analogy: When a plane takes off, it’s almost always pointed in the wrong direction because runways are only built in certain directions. Once the plane is airborne, the pilot looks at his controls and determines how to adjust his direction. At that point, the pilot has just 3 options: continue in the same direction, fire the left thruster to turn right or fire the right thruster to turn left. He or she makes a choice and repeats the process once the new direction is established. The pilot continues to repeat this process until reaching the destination.

It’s much like that in our business. We can take a good guess at what direction in which to start, but we’re unlikely to have the best answer right off the bat. Once we make a business choice, we then have to determine if it’s helping us get to our goals and readjust course if necessary. If you find that you are off-course, don’t give up – instead, make a small adjustment that brings you closer to the right course. This is the basis for building a successful business, not getting everything correct right out of the gate.

However, the critical thing to decide is WHAT to measure. It’s easy to focus on things that can be easily seen in numbers – how many Twitter followers, how many Facebook fans, how many newsletter subscribers, how much website traffic, etc but those figures alone may not give you the information you need to course correct. How will getting that magic number of followers, fans, subscribers or visitors get you where you want to go? What comes after “so that?” For example, “I want 10,000 Facebook fans so that…………….”

If you are looking for single pieces of data that can inform you by themselves, you may want to think about things like:

gross sales
number of customers
number of sales

These are figures that will help you determine if your business is growing. There are also more complex pieces of data that can be helpful such as the percentage of people who buy after visiting a sales page or which products make up your gross sales. I’ll cover these in a later post, but for now I encourage you to not only start doing some measurement but also to make sure you are measuring things that matter.

What do you measure in your business? How is it helpful to you? Leave a comment and tell me about it.

(PS – measurement is one of the skills I cover in my free e-course “5 Essential Skills for Solopreneur Success.” If you’re reading this on my blog, sign up using the box to the right. Otherwise, head to my homepage and sign up there.)

Strategic thinking for the 1-person business

Solopreneurs need strategy as much as big businesses do

One of the skills I use all the time in my business is strategic thinking. This sounds complicated, and in fact it’s one of the skills emphasized in MBA programs but there are certain parts of strategic thinking that scale perfectly for a solopreneur or small business.

You can start your strategic thinking by always asking and establishing why you are doing anything. Ideally, you should be asking this of every single task or activity you are thinking of doing. If you decide you’re going to start Tweeting, then why? What’s the purpose? How will it add to your bottom line?

Why do you have a website? What’s the purpose of your website? Why are you writing that particular blog post? When I first start working with a new client and we begin to ask these questions, it can be unnerving. It’s an entirely new way of thinking and running your business. We’re used to hearing an idea and doing it. That freedom is one of the joys of being a solopreneur, and our natural inclination to take action is one of the hallmarks of solopreneur success.

While I would never want to stifle those tendencies, we need to put the breaks on ever so slightly and establish why we are doing this new thing, how it fits into our plan for success and if in fact it’s worth it for our business. One of the least effective ways to manage your business is to jump from one bright shiny new activity to the next and keep cramming more and more activity into our business without having a plan for how it will help our success. It’s fine to have a few activities that aren’t absolutely pulling their weight in your business if you enjoy them, but having a day full of purposeless activity will lead to exhaustion, discouragement and lack of motivation. Your success will most certainly come from activity, but not just any activity – it has to be a carefully orchestrated mix of actions that work together in a strategic way.