mindset – Page 4 – Michele Christensen

Solopreneur boundaries, part 2

(This is the second of a 2-part series. For part 1 click here)

Part 1 of this 2-part series was on the first type of boundaries solopreneurs need – boundaries on what you let out. Click here to read about some of the ways solopreneurs can hurt their business by allowing too much out.

The second type of boundaries every solopreneur needs is boundaries on what you let in. This refers to opinions, information and news, and expert or non-expert help you allow into your business, into your life and into your head.

Opinions are ubiquitous – everybody has one and many times people are happy, or even too happy, to share what they think. The problem is that the opinion of a particular person is not necessarily appropriate, valid, helpful, relevant or fact-based for your situation. Unless you have a relationship with the person, you don’t know what their motivation is or whether they are even qualified to render an opinion that is helpful to you. For example, I know nothing about wine. I don’t really like it, I’ve never taken a class or had any tasting experience so I would not be a good person to give an opinion on a specific wine. This is where boundaries are important. When an opinion is offered, take it as just that – something offered which you can accept or decline.

Many of the same things can be said about information and news. It’s everywhere and there are massive amounts of it. Some of it is helpful to you, some of it is not. As with opinions, some of it should be let in and some shouldn’t. It’s important to check out the source and see if it lines up with your goals, your values and what you already know. For example, if you’ve been having great success with a certain technique of generating leads and a news story comes out saying that your technique doesn’t work anymore you can feel free to ignore it. It doesn’t line up with what you already know.

The final area is help, both expert and non-expert. As with information and news, there’s loads of help from experts and non-experts available. Non-expert help is particularly tempting because it often can be had for free (ever have a friend offer to set up a website, blog, or social media site?) The problem is that you don’t know if they know this subject because you have no way of checking them out since they don’t have a business. I’ve seen so many times when someone get terribly off course because of free help. With expert help, you have the chance to check the expert out to a much greater degree before signing on. Even with experts, it pays to do your homework before hiring. Check the person out, and make sure they have mastery in whatever they are going to help you with.

Be very selective about what you let into your business. Not every input is a good one even when it can be had for free.

What are somethings you’ve kept out of your business?

Guest Blog post on Karen May Dy’s Social Media Marketing blog

Here’s a post I wrote for Karen May Dy’s Social Media Marketing blog on strategy, business and social media. I’d love to know what you think about it!

Do Nothing Without a Strategy

Two types of boundaries, part 1

Part of being a successful solopreneur is knowing how to set good boundaries. The first type of boundary is what you let out, and that’s usually the first of the two types that solopreneurs have to learn about.

It’s easy to let too much out. Solopreneurs do this by giving too much away, doing more then they are paid for, underquoting, and doing too much for free. To be sure, some of this is good business. If you deliver more than you promise, you have a chance of wowing your customer. Occasionally allowing a call to go over for a few minutes to wrap up something great can make your client very happy. Pricing yourself low may work in the early days of your business to get those first few testimonials and references. Even giving away some of what you know for free can be a really effective strategy to let people check you out with no risk.

The problem happens when you do too much of any of these tactics or when you do them unconsciously. You can end up making it too hard on yourself to make a living. You can end up with a group of clients who don’t value you. You might find yourself painted into a corner and not able to scale back to more reasonable deliverables. You run the risk of attracting only people who want free or impractically low-priced products and services.

A bigger risk is burning yourself out and coming to resent the business you once loved. It feels terrible to do work that is valuable and not have that work recognized. It can make a person lose enthusiasm and not even know why. Some people like to picture money as energy, and when someone pays you for your work it’s an exchange of energy. Being paid adequately can help the exchange feel equal and help keep you motivated and charged up to serve other customers.

Letting too much out may not even serve your clients as well as you would like to. If you try to tell a person everything you know in one consultation, they’ll probably be overwhelmed and not get as much out of it. If you charge too little, people may not take you seriously and may overlook what you offer. Clients may not use what they purchased if it was too cheap.

Why do people let too much out? There are probably more reasons than I could ever list, but here’s a few to consider:

They are new in business. It can be hard to charge a decent rate when you’ve got no track record, references or testimonials.
Fear. It can be scary to quote a price that may drive some people away.
Lack of belief in their own value. If a person isn’t clear about the value of what they deliver, they may not feel comfortable charging enough for it.
A desire to help. Many solopreneurs would do their work for free if they could, so they feel funny charging for it.
Not setting good limits on requests for free help. Watch those “Can I buy you a coffee and pick your brain?” requests, they can kill your bottom line.

What challenges have you overcome in this area? How did you let too much out and what did you do about it? Tell me about it in the comments.

(For Part 2 of this series, click here.)

What you can and cannot choose

There are some things in business and in life you have a choice over, and some you do not. One of the biggest of these is how other people act. You simply cannot make their choices for them. You also cannot choose their attitude. What you can choose though is how you interact with them.

Many people are very negative and have an attitude that doesn’t support their own success or yours. A lot of people like to blame outside forces for their situation instead of doing the best they can within whatever those outside circumstances are.

As you make the journey up the entrepreneurial mountain, many people will try to stop you, dissuade you and discourage you. They may be people you like or even love, and they may not even know they are doing it.

It’s not necessary to cut ties with everyone you know, but it does pay to monitor the effect being around negative people has on you. It may be harder to maintain a positive outlook and take personal responsibility for your life if most of the people you spend time with don’t. It may be hard to shake off the effects of that draining interaction and get back to work.

Assuming you don’t want to ditch everyone you know, how can you handle negative people with the least impact on yourself?

You may want to invite some new personal and business connections into your life. Having new people who share your positive outlook will leave less space for the negative people. It will also provide you with some uplifting energy to counterbalance the negativity.

Spending more time with positive, successful people will change you and make you more like them. The negative people in your life may come along with you or they may naturally select a smaller role in your life since you don’t have as much in common.

You may want to place some limits on the negative people in your life. Limit how much time you spend together, what you talk about or how much time you spend talking about your business and life. It’s always important to be polite and not deliberately hurt other people’s feelings, but if someone is hurting your success don’t be afraid to set some limits in a kind and gentle manner.

If you think there’s value to it, you can call the behavior to the person’s attention. I caution against this though unless you sincerely believe it will serve the other person and you think they actually want to learn and grow. Don’t confront a negative person for your own benefit. You’ll end up frustrated and probably make the other person mad.

What choices do you make when dealing with negative people? Tell me about it in the comments.

Don’t do more than your client wants

This article is about doing what the client has hired you for and wants you to do, and not veering so far afield as to offend them. I’ve been turned off on more than one occasion by people who felt that their status as “expert” in one area entitled them to speak to all areas of another person’s life. To say I advise against this would be putting it mildly! It’s happened a few times, but here are two of the most out-of-line people I’ve encountered.

A few years ago when I was still new to the internet side of my business, I signed up for a free strategy session with a successful guru and at our designated time she proceeded to criticize and pick apart areas of my life that have nothing to do with my business. At the time, I was not devoting 40 hours a week to my business, and this was a decision my husband and I made together and it suited both of us at the time for a number of reasons that aren’t that noteworthy now. She criticized and gave advice on how I spent my time, my business goals, and of all things, my fixer upper house! At the time, I was so surprised I couldn’t really respond but suffice it to say I immediately cut off all contact with her and would never recommend her or use her services. Yes, I should have stepped in and put a stop to it as soon as she got off topic, but the fact that she was so presumptuous and spoke on things she had no knowledge of was enough for me to know I’d never interact with her again.

The second example was during a training. We were working in pairs trying to help each other, and I told my partner that I hadn’t been able to sell the packages she suggested for me. She immediately jumped into some nonsensical “advice” about changing who I am so people would buy the packages, saying that something was wrong with who I am or the packages would be selling, etc. Now for sure, mindset plays a big role in business but this exercise was not about mindset and the workshop was not a psychological one. She went way outside what she was asked to do and what she said would have been insulting if I had taken her seriously. What I did instead was add her to the list of people I’d never work with, partner with or refer to.

Here’s the tricky part of this – you probably weren’t always in the business you are now. You probably have tons of skills and knowledge that would benefit the people who have hired you for whatever you now do. However, when someone hires you they’ve given consent for you to give advice on the topic they’ve hired you for. If you go too far afield, you run the risk of offending and alienating them. My suggestion is to ask permission first. If they want your advice, they’ll tell you. If not, you’ve shown respect by asking and they’ll tell you no.

How to stay on track

Someone asked me a question recently, and I thought it was such a great one that I decided to answer it here. I was at a training, and when I mentioned that I coached entrepreneurs, the person I was talking to asked me “How do you keep them on track? Entrepreneurs, myself included, are always changing gears.”

It’s a great question because he’s right – entrepreneurs are naturally drawn to new ideas and possibilities – bright, shiny objects anyone? Enthusiasm for new ideas is one of an entrepreneur’s greatest gifts and also one of the greatest challenges. Nobody goes into business with the desire to be bored.

Let me share a little of my philosophy first – I don’t “keep” people on track, because that implies force or power and I don’t believe entrepreneurs want or need that. Entrepreneurs are naturally motivated and love results, so guidance and perspective are better tools than force for entrepreneurs.

What I do is help business owners get clear on what they want to accomplish and how to get there. As they move forward, we tackle roadblocks together. When the inevitable “next big thing” pops up, I remind them of where they said they wanted to go and we assess if this new thing fits into that goal. If it does, we figure out how to fit it into the current plan. If it doesn’t, we talk about whether or not the original goal still fits. The beauty of running your own business is that you get to decide what the goals are and when to change them.

A word of caution – if you change your goals too often, you may end up never reaching them. I think this is one of the biggest hurdles entrepreneurs face – being able to stay with something after it gets boring but before it produces results. Most new projects go through the “darkest before the dawn” phase where the newness has worn off and finishing the project becomes a slog through tedium to get to the finish line. This is the worst time to give up – when completion is just around the corner.

This is a great example of how strategy and planning in a business pay off. If you start with a goal and a plan to get there, you have a criteria against which to weigh any potential new ideas. If the new idea fits, then use it. If it doesn’t, you have the option of changing your goal or your plan but do it intentionally and not because you got bored.

How to schedule your day for flexibility and productivity

In my last post, I talked about how to keep your personal life from getting in the way of your business success. This post is about how to schedule your day to accommodate both business and personal tasks while being flexible and productive.

First, it’s important to commit to a practice of scheduling your day, so let me explain some of the benefits. You’ll be able to get a clear view of what you did and did not get done in a day and adjust your next day accordingly. You’ll be able to look at a bird’s eye view of the 16 or so waking hours you have available and decide how to use them based on your current priorities. If you don’t already have it, you’ll get a sense of when is a good time of day for different activities. You’ll keep activities that tend to expand, like social media marketing, down to an appropriate amount of time. You’ll be able to prioritize the few things that you really need to get done.

I do this as part of my end-of-day routine when things are fresh in my mind. For some reason, having my day laid out before I wake up lets me hit the ground running. If I’m feeling bad about something I didn’t get done, I can put it on my schedule for the next day and let it go for the night. Of course I give in to temptation and skip my scheduling sometimes, and I always pay the price the next day.

You can put your schedule wherever it suits you – paper, spreadsheet, day planner, etc. I like to use a spreadsheet with one line per activity with start and end times. I would not recommend your main calendar – this is far more detailed than would fit on most calendars.

I always start my day with the same things. I’m best in the morning, so those first few hours are set aside for high-priority projects, and that means whatever is most important to be working on will get some uninterrupted high-quality time before anything else can get in the way. Consider putting in some time on high-priority work even before you check email or other messages.

Next, add in the “big rocks,” i.e. those big things you have to work around like appointments, meals, errands, fitness, etc.

Designate some time for personal tasks and for miscellaneous business tasks and handling email, messages, mail, etc.

Schedule in your breaks with a start and end time. Taking breaks is critical to being productive, but you do need to set an end time or it’s too easy to waste a lot of time.

Just like the first few hours of the day are set, so should the last few. Give yourself some time to wrap up your day, schedule the next day, do any before bed tasks, and finally some time to relax so you are in low gear when it’s time to go to bed.

Sounds great, right, except for inevitable last-minute things that pop up? The irony is that having a schedule helps you to be more flexible. You have a plan to deviate from. You know what you are giving up (or have to make up) if you say yes to something new. Being your own boss means that not only do you make your schedule, but you can change it too.

How do you schedule your day? Does it help you to be more flexible? Tell me about it in the comments.

Happy Independence day!

I’m celebrating this week and won’t be doing a blog post. I hope you’ve had a great week and see you next week!

3 Tips for Keeping Your Personal Tasks from Ruining Your Business

One of the best things about working from home is that you can take care of chores and personal tasks whenever you want, even while you are working. One of the worst things about working from home is that you can can take care of chores and personal tasks whenever you want, even while you are working. 🙂

Having no clear boundaries between work and personal tasks can mean that the two tend to blur, and this can be great until it begins to cause problems. Sometimes it gets really hard to leave personal tasks undone and focus on the business. After all, if you are home all day why isn’t the house perfect, the papers filed, the fridge stocked, the mail sorted, the calls made, etc.?

I’ve found that if I don’t watch it, that my personal tasks can start to erode away valuable time spent on my business which can be detrimental. I’ve found a few ways to keep the personal tasks from expanding too much, and so I have 3 tips for you that will help keep those annoying personal tasks at bay so you can focus on your business.

Create systems for things that pile up and nag you. For me, the worst offender is the mail. For an unknown reason, we get huge amounts of mail that needs to be dealt with. I did all the recommended steps to cut down on the mail, and still it regularly piled up. What I finally did was designate the first 15 minutes of every day to deal with the mail. Finally, this has gotten the accumulation down and keeps in check over the long haul. If your nagging, piled up task is laundry then find a way to fix it – designate a day, do a load every morning, send it out or go to a laundromat for a big session monthly. If it’s yard work, do some every day to wake up when the afternoon lull hits, hire someone to do it, or take an afternoon every other week. The point is, create some system for whatever your worst offender is so that it doesn’t nag you anymore.
Designate time to crank out personal chores. Trying to do chores in small bits of time leftover from other activities often doesn’t work. You need time to get into something and finish it. If you only have 2 minutes, that rules out most tasks you could even thing about doing because it’s not enough time. If you start with half an hour, that’s enough time to not only start but finish many household tasks. I set aside some time right after lunch every day and just crank through the top few pressing things I need to do.
Find your mental and physical productivity times. When are you at your best mentally? How about physically? Schedule tasks in a way that takes advantage of these times. If you’re a night owl, can you arrange you schedule to get some turbo-charged time late at night? If you have loads of energy for physical tasks in the morning, use that time to get them done.

I used to think that having a successful work-at-home business was only about being a good business person. Now I know you have to manage your personal life well too.

How do you keep your personal life from ruining your business? Share your tips in the comments.

Penny-wise and dollar-foolish

Have you ever heard this expression: “penny-wise and dollar-foolish?” It describes being wise with small amounts of money but foolish with big amounts. I heard a story recently that reminded me how easy it is to fall into this not only for solopreneurs but for big companies as well.

A friend of mine was traveling with his girlfriend and two dogs. They arrived at night at a big, chain hotel and took a room for the night. They didn’t know the hotel allowed dogs and so the dogs slept in the car (it was safe, near their room and the temperature was fine). The next day, as they were browsing the web to find a hotel for the next night, they found that the hotel they were in did in fact allow dogs so they let the dogs in for about 5 minutes before getting a call from management.

The concern of management was that while the hotel did take dogs, my friends were in a room that was not part of the hotel where dogs were allowed and they had not paid the pet deposit upon checking in. Sounds reasonable so far, right? The problem was that the management took a combative and accusatory tone from the beginning. They insisted my friends tried to bilk them and had broken the rules on purpose. The management also insisted upon a penalty fine of hundreds of dollars instead of just the $40 or so it would cost to deep clean the hotel room. My friends offered to allow an inspection and offered to pay for the deep clean. The hotel refused and wouldn’t even come to the room to look. My friends paid the penalty, resumed their trip and have told a lot of people about this experience.

Here is a perfect example of penny-wise and dollar-foolish. The hotel management staff were so intent on getting the few-hundred dollar penalty that they lost not only all future business from my friends but also that of the many people they told. Had they been gracious and just took enough money to make sure they weren’t out of pocket, my friends and all of their dog-loving friends would now be fans of this hotel.

There’s loads of other ways to be penny-wise and dollar-foolish. Do you alienate customers and lose big sales over small money? Do you buy the cheapest version of products or services and end up wasting precious hours because of it? As an solopreneur, it could kill your business to think this way. Always consider all the costs of your decisions and put much more emphasis on dollars instead of pennies.

Have you ever caught yourself being penny-wise and dollar-foolish? How did you fix it? Share your experience in the comments.