mindset – Page 9 – Michele Christensen

What are some things you stand for in your business?

What values does your business represent?

You probably know what your personal values are, but do you know what your business values are? What do you stand for in your business? What principles guide you? These are really important questions to answer and to contemplate regularly in your business. Being clear about what values your business represents helps you make good decisions in a number of ways.

It helps with your marketing communication. You’ll be much clearer if you know what’s important to you and the people for whom you’re a good fit will know it. One of my business values is that solopreneurs do great work that improves the world. Knowing this helps me focus on my niche – solopreneurs – and to create messages that reach people in business to help others.
It helps you choose education and training products, services and providers. Knowing your business values lets you assess and choose which trainers you’ll follow. I’ve tried and rejected a few based on my values. One coach I considered advocates working 7 days a week, and that’s something that’s not consistent with my values of a full and varied life and taking good care of my family and myself.
It helps you stay motivated. When you know why, beyond money, your business is important it helps you stay connected with what really drives you. There are many ways I could make money, but most of them would not allow me to make as big of a positive impact on the world and on other people as what I do now. That’s the big motivator. The desire to earn money will only take you so far, but knowing the underlying reasons why your work is important will get you through the tough times.
It drives your big picture. Even though solopreneur businesses are driven by one person, we still need to plan and have a big picture. Knowing what’s important to you can help guide you to the next step and all of the ones beyond that.
It gives you another way to evaluate potential vendors. I don’t like pushy sales tactics, vagueness or unclear pricing so not only do I not do those things in my business but I also don’t use vendors who do. Choosing a vendor isn’t just a price issue. I want my business to be congruent with my values throughout and choosing the right vendors helps me accomplish that.

What values drive your business? If you don’t already have a list, I invite you to make one now.

Pricing – just say how much will ya?

Michele Christensen on pricing for solopreneurs — Just say the price, please

Most solopreneurs I come in contact with love what they do and want more than anything to help people. They aren’t born salespeople and can feel uncomfortable with talking sales or pricing. I didn’t like sales at all when I first started, but now I know that sales doesn’t have to be high pressure or manipulative and I like it a lot more. I now think of sales and marketing as presenting myself and my services in the best possible way to assist people in deciding if I’m a good fit for them.

In the last few weeks though, I’ve read some articles that suggested tactics I’m uncomfortable with. The theme of these articles is that when talking to a new prospect that you duck any question involving price until you are ready to present the issue. At least, that’s how I describe the techniques in my words. They presented various ducking tactics but none of them simply answered the question “How much do you charge?” Most sales trainers would disagree with me, but if someone asks you that very direct question I think you should answer them with a dollar amount when they ask. The only time I would say something different is if I’m not sure which package or pricing plan would be best for a person and if that’s the case I tell them so.

I know if I asked the direct, simple, clear question of “How much do you charge?” and got a song-and-dance instead of an answer I’d feel all sorts of things and none of them point to signing up with the person. It feels condescending to me to assume I know better than my prospect what they need. I almost always have a price ceiling in mind when I’m considering a purchase and if we can establish in the first 5 minutes that the service exceeds that ceiling then there’s no point in wasting any more time. If someone didn’t answer my pricing question, I’d be concerned that it must be a huge figure or they would have stated it. I also think it gets in the way of a deep conversation where you can be of service regardless of whether the person buys or not. If I’m wondering about pricing and the person ducks my question, I’m going to be thinking about price not what we are actually talking about.

Am I unique in this? How would or do you feel when you ask about pricing and get an evasive answer? Have you used this technique with your prospects?

Have you “arrived” in your business?

Have you reached your business destination?

Every once in a while, someone asks me a question that throws me for a loop. In the moment, I’m usually just trying to think of something to say other than “Huh?’ but after thinking about it I usually find that the reason it throws me is that it’s not the right question to ask. A few weeks ago, an acquaintance of mine asked me one of those questions.

I hadn’t seen this person in about 2 years, so he didn’t know what was going on in my business. When I told him about it, his response was “So, is this it? Is this what you’re going to do with your life?” At the moment, I just told him the truth which is that I loved my business and the people I work with and felt I was doing important work. What I later realized is that the reason the question seemed off to me is that it doesn’t line up with the way I see people evolve and change over the course of their life. For many people, particularly the solopreneurs I work with, there’s an ongoing change of focus. We don’t suddenly wake up one day and say “Yes, this is it, what I’m doing forever.” We continually learn and grow, and interests wither as we find new passions. The underlying assumption I heard in his question was that everyone is on a one-way journey to a certain place where they will park their career until retirement, and that you’re either there or not.

The solopreneur journey is often very different from this linear path. We start with a grand idea, and from then on the business undergoes steady or sometimes sudden change. My own business is in probably it’s third focus since forming in January 2009, and I’m still learning and growing. Since you’re the boss, don’t be afraid to change your mission. In fact, expect that your mission will change. Not many solopreneurs stay with the same business they start with, so give yourself permission to grow and evolve over time. If you’re drawn to something new, it’s probably because someone needs that from you.

Leave a comment telling me how your business has changed since you started it. Were you surprised? I was.

Placing value on your time off

Solopreneurs must place value on their time off

How much do you value your time off?

How do you act on that value? Do you regularly schedule time off? Do you adhere to that schedule? How about vacations?

As a solopreneur, it’s really easy to get on a treadmill of work particularly when our income isn’t where we need it to be. For many reasons, this is a bad idea. For starters:

It’s not sustainable. You can only burn the candle at both ends for so long before bad things begin happening both physically and mentally.
It’s not satisfying. Work is a critical component of a satisfying life, but it’s not the only one. You need leisure, recreation, social time and family time too.
You won’t be at your best for your clients. I’m a big believer in each person contributing their brilliance to the world, and if you’re fried to a crisp you can’t do that.
It’s not an efficient way to work. Can you really be productive 16 hours a day for long stretches of time? Probably not. Sometimes situations dictate we work long hours for short periods of time, but it’s not a good idea to make a practice of it.
You run the risk of resenting your business and clients without even realizing it, and that’s no way to live.

When things are going badly in our business, it may seem like the answer is to work harder and that may well be part of the solution. But working harder can only take you so far. If you’re working too hard, as defined by you and your lifestyle needs, your business model may be in need of some tuning. Don’t fall into the trap of working harder when that’s not the problem. I invite you to take a stand for taking time off! Part of my stand on time off is that I don’t work weekends unless the mood strikes or I’m at an event. I don’t schedule client meetings on weekends.

Leave a comment with something you stand for in taking time off! If you don’t have any time scheduled for fun, grab your calendar and carve out some time.

If you’re working too hard and not getting the results you want, I’d love to help you fine tune your business model. Click here to schedule a call with me.

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.

Choose your business confidants carefully

In the last issue of my newsletter (sign up here or in the box to the right) I shared a story about a colleague asking how many hits a day I get on my site. When I told him the somewhat modest number, he could barely contain his disdain. I didn’t really understand his reaction – I had just gotten done telling him how pleased I am with my business growth this year so why the reaction to my traffic? It wasn’t until later that I realized that he was asking the wrong question. In his business strategy, big traffic is really important. In mine, it’s not. That led to a post on how it’s important not only to measure your results but to make sure you’re measuring what really matters.

I’d like to add one more thing I learned from this, which is to be very careful in choosing whom you share business ideas and information with. Had I not had a clear vision of how my business model works, I might have been dismayed by his reaction. I might have run home and gotten right on the “bright, shiny object” of getting big traffic. Fortunately, I do have a mentor I’m following and I trust her greatly. I’m following her business plan for growing your business via the internet and it’s working. It’s easy in the early stages to get lost in following whatever advice and opinions you can get, and right there is the problem – opinions and advice are easy to find, but someone who understands your business and can give appropriate advice is much more rare.

We have a natural, almost unavoidable tendency to view the world through our own point of view and to assess new ideas based on our experience to date. This means that not everyone is suitable to give you feedback on your business. Make sure you choose your confidants with intention and high standards. Of course you can have colleagues and friends who don’t meet the requirements to be a confidant, but choose your inner circle carefully. If you’ve gotten advice or feedback from someone you haven’t vetted for the role of confidant, make sure to take their comments with a grain of salt and run it through the filter of what you know is right for you. Their advice might be good, but then again it might not have any value, so be open to that possibility as well. People are very willing to provide feedback, but make sure it’s someone in a position to give valuable feedback before you take their comments as valuable. I would advise listening to your customers though – they always have valuable feedback which, since they are your customers, is right on the mark.

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.)

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?

Are you an introvert?

If so, come out of hiding and treat yourself right!

I read this article this morning on how to care for an introvert, and in addition to giving tips on how to care for an introvert, there’s great information introverts can use to care for themselves. Have a read and come back to the rest of the post.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/2696/

First of all, let me say that I am an introvert. If you know me in real life, that may be shocking because I’m social, have friends, love to talk and even love public speaking. But as pointed out in the article, there’s a lot of incorrect ideas about what an introvert is. I’m not shy, housebound or miserable. I am exactly like the introvert described in the article. When I do social things, I need lots of time by myself to recover. There’s a limit to how many social events I can do in a day or a weekend.

You can tie this into your business by making sure your business aligns with your natural, comfortable personality type. I love working one-on-one with people, but only have so much energy for that. I realized late last year that I was spending too much time working one-on-one with people, and now I’m leading group programs and working on information products as well as working with just a few one-on-one clients.

Does your current business work for your personality? If you are an introvert, are you draining yourself by spending too much time with people? If you are an extrovert, are you feeling like you’re missing out because you spend too much time working alone at home? Have you adjusted your business to a better mix for you? If so, tell me about it in the comments.

If you recognize yourself here and want to adjust your business accordingly, let’s talk! Click here to schedule a free strategy session.

Go ahead, be awesome!

If you’ve chosen your solopreneur business well, you’re probably doing something you are awesome at. It’s really easy to overlook your own greatness because it comes naturally to you. In order to serve others, it’s important not to overlook your own gifts because they are the tools you use to best

serve others. One of my most deeply held beliefs is that we are all born with strengths and weaknesses, and by serving others with our strengths, the world benefits. We get a bad message from society about “having a big head” or “being conceited,” but that’s not what this is about. Those messages are about somebody thinking they are superior to others because of their gifts, which isn’t the same as acknowledging your gifts and using them to serve others. Innate in this belief system is the fact that others have gifts that are just as valuable as yours, and in fact somebody has natural aptitude in an area you don’t. (And isn’t that a beautiful thing?)

How is this important for solopreneurs? A belief in yourself, your knowledge and skills is critical to serving others well and with integrity. If you don’t believe in the value of what you offer, how can people who need you be sure enough to buy? Self-doubt might cause you to hold back in serving others or trying new ideas and therefore deny the world the benefit of your full effort. A wise teacher once told me “It’s not arrogant to acknowledge and use your gifts, it’s arrogant not to.”

So how do you gain confidence in what you offer? Here’s a few tips:

Set up mastermind sessions with other professionals. When you see your business through someone else’s eyes, you might be surprised at how much other people value you. You’ll also probably find that others have the same lack of confidence, which helps you to see how common it is.
Ask past clients for testimonials. When you read a heartfelt expression of gratitude for your efforts, you’ll see the value of what you do.
Get coaching for yourself and/or your business. The fact that you are willing to invest money in your business is a powerful statement about the value of your business, and the right person will help you see your greatness, get absolutely comfortable with it and use it to do amazing things in the world.
Review your files and make a list of your successes.