productivity – Page 9 – Michele Christensen

Measurement basics for solopreneurs

One of the key activities in building a successful business is measuring how well your efforts are working. There’s the obvious measurement of whether profits

Michele Christensen on how solopreneurs can measure their efforts — Measuring your efforts is the only way to make sure they work

are increasing but you don’t earn profit in a vacuum. Your profits are directly related to a myriad of other activities you do and many of these can and should be measured. Most solopreneurs I talk to don’t like numbers, so it’s important to keep any measurement efforts simple, quick and informative. Almost nobody gets things right in their business right out of the gate, so the difference between success and failure is to be always measuring and adjusting to what you do.

The first step to measuring is to be strategic about what you decide to do. It’s not enough to say “I’m going to start Tweeting” or “I want to blog more.” There has to be an objective to your activities and preferably it should be one that can be measured in some way. Ultimately, of course, the objective in a for-profit business is to serve more people and make more profits but it’s likely that many of your activities will have results that are intermediate steps to making profit. For example, you may want to increase the number of people you meet through networking, but adding numbers alone will not result in more business. A more strategic way to think about this would be “I want to meet more people through networking so I can have 10 meetings per month with people who can refer business to me.” Your progress on this goal can be measured – how many people did you meet this month, and how many potential referral partners did you meet up with? It’s also an intermediate step to profit – empowering more people with what they need to know to refer to you can result in more referrals which can result in more business. Once you begin measuring these 2 things – people met and meetings set, you can see how well your efforts are working. Later, when you have some data over time you can see how much business you got from these referrals and have a sense of the dollar value of your networking efforts.

Conversely, if you didn’t measure this but only went to event after event and added to that ever-growing stash of business cards, you’d have no strategic goal, no way to measure and no way to know if the time you invested was paying off. This is why it’s so important to measure your results – continuing to invest time and energy into things that are not working will hurt your business. You do have to do this for yourself – you can’t just do what other businesses do because every business is different. As far as how to track the figures, I use a simple spreadsheet which I fill out every Friday. If a measurement has improved, the number is green so even with a quick glance I can see how I’m doing.

What do you need to start measuring in your business? Leave a comment and tell me about your plan.

5 tips to help you guard your time

Time is a solopreneur's most valuable asset

I was talking to some acquaintances this past weekend and we got on the subject of how we value time. I realized that my value of my time was much higher in dollar terms than the other people present and that a big part of that difference was due to being a solopreneur. The conversation revolved around various trade-offs we could make where we spend time to gain money (e.g. fixing up something you want to get rid of in order to sell it rather than just donate it) or spend money to gain time (e.g. driving instead of taking public transportation).

As a solopreneur, your personal and professional life are more closely linked than they are for a lot of other professionals. Work and home life can easily bleed into each other to a detrimental degree. Your decisions about time and money are interrelated.

My litmus test for any time and money question is to weigh it against how that time would pay off if invested in my business. If I save $5 by taking public transportation, but spend an extra 2 hours doing it then that’s not worth my time (environmental impacts aside). I can make way more than $5 by investing 2 hours in my business even if I’m doing long-term activities.

As a solopreneur, activities that cost time have to be done very conscientiously. Your time budget is at least as important as your money budget. You make money by spending your time correctly. Your time, even though you’re not punching a clock, is not free. There is an opportunity cost to every minute you spend both in financial terms and in terms of other activities you give up to do that activity. Guard your time like the most valuable asset it is.

Here are some tips to help you guard your time:

End your appointments at the stated time. It’s your job to watch the clock, so make sure you start closing up the conversation early enough so that you can finish on time.
Set limits on tasks that tend to expand – for example, give yourself 20 minutes to clear your inbox. Even if you don’t make your deadline, you’ll have an idea of how long this job takes.
Use a timesheet. I do this myself, and it really helps me stay on top of how long I spend doing things.
Create checklists and procedures for tasks you repeat. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Don’t do anything free just because it’s free in dollar terms. Make sure the activity is worth the time it takes.

Above all, placing a high value on your time should be a guiding principle in your business activities.

A solopreneur’s take on what tasks to do

When you’re an employee, you often don’t have a choice about what tasks you work on. Somebody else creates the big picture direction for the company and your job is to carry out the specific tasks needed to bring that vision to life. It’s a great role in some ways – you’re spared some degree of angst in deciding what to do. You’re not responsible for making sure payroll is covered. You may not be responsible in emergencies or for mundane tasks like insurance, licenses and taxes. But being an employee doesn’t allow you to shape the destiny of the company, and you may not be able to innovate as much as you want. That’s one reason why a lot of people are drawn to the solopreneur lifestyle – the freedom to sink or soar on your own merits.

I think many solopreneurs go through a bit of a let down when they see how many tasks they have to do that they don’t particularly like and this may be true even if you have outsourced help. It’s not that they are doing anything wrong, it’s more of a problem of expectations. Many of us go into our business with huge enthusiasm and a fire to help others, but without thinking about the less glamorous tasks like doing the books, filling out paperwork and finding new clients. What makes things even worse is that a lot of these tasks aren’t optional!

The good news is that once you take care of the mandatory tasks required to stay in business you have some choices about what tasks you do. Unlike an employee, you have lots of discretion as a solopreneur in what you work on. You can even, gasp, make decisions that are bad for business but good for your spirit. The important thing is that you do this with your eyes open. For example, I have not yet really begun to use video in my business very much even though I know I know lots of people like getting information that way (and I will add video at some point). The reason is that video is one of my least favorite ways to receive business information. I’d much rather read, which I can do quickly, or listen which I can do anywhere. Even though I know it’s probably not a great business decision, I’ve taken the liberty to make that decision since I can. There are other important things beside the bottom line for a solopreneur.

If you’re doing any tasks that aren’t absolutely mandatory and that you dislike, I invite you to think about giving them up even if it may not be best for the bottom line. Outsourcing is of course an option, but before doing that consider if you even want to be engaged in those activities. After all, being able to make decisions like that is one of the best reasons to be a solopreneur.

Product review – Google calendar

The basics

Google calendar is included with all the features you get when you open a free Gmail account. In spite of being free, it’s really robust and loaded with features. I’ve used Outlook and Blackberry calendars before, and I can’t find anything that’s missing with Google calendar. If you have an events calendar for your company, you can use Google calendar to get it published on your website without any programming skills.

What’s to love

Here are just the top 5 features that I love. There’s many more, but this should give you enough incentive to check it out. There’s also some newer features being tested at Google labs which you can enable as well (check under the Labs tab of calendar settings).

It syncs with my Timetrade (timetrade.com) account so clients can schedule their own appointments. Timetrade only shows when I’m available, not my appointments or what I’m doing when I’m not available.
Custom privacy settings make it easy to share as much or as little data as you want with your spouse or assistant.
You can invite other Gmail users to events and when they accept it shows up on their calendar. This is great for getting things scheduled with no confusion.
You can specify multiple calendars to see in your main view. Mine shows appointments in red, birthdays I’ve entered in blue, US holidays provided by Google in blue and business tasks or reminders in purple. This is helpful because I know at a glance what appointments I have and can look just at that if I want. You could use this feature for various family members or company functions.
I love the seamless sync with my Android phone.

I could go on and on (and often do!), but you get the idea – it’s a great product that happens to be free. This is one of 32 resources I’ve compiled in my Solopreneur Success Rolodex, which you can download by clicking here. The entire rolodex is a pdf with links to the best resources I’ve found for solopreneurs. See a preview of some of the resources and grab your copy today by clicking below:

Michele’s recommended resources

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.

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.

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.

Email isn’t a business activity

Talk to any group of business people and you’re likely to hear people crushed by the burden of email. The stats are just incredible – I spoke to someone who owns a small company who gets a staggering 1,000 emails a day! You can optimize your time spent on email, but that only goes so far. I think one of the key things to remember is that email isn’t really a business activity, it’s a way of communicating. You could handle some of those emails by other means like phone, snail mail, Skype or in person conversations. I’m not saying you should, just pointing out that the defining characteristic of the activity is not that it’s email but what you are accomplishing. When I go to a concert, the defining characteristic of that activity is that it’s a concert not how I got there.

When I work with someone who feels burdened by email, the first step is always to optimize how the email is handled. Once we’ve done that, what’s left is communication about some other critical business issue such as customer service, employee development, sales, personal development or business building. Once we establish that the true nature of the activity, it’s much easier to prioritize it and feel good about it.

I would almost make the argument that email hasn’t added any new activities to the work of having a business. People have communicated with customers, co-workers and suppliers since there was a such thing as business. What has changed is the number of communications we are part of. Email is “cheap” in terms of cost, time and effort so we do more of it than we would if we were communicating the same thing by other means.

Today, when you are “doing” your email I invite you to look at what you are really doing via those emails and put a name to it. Then, consider where in your priorities it should be. Leave a comment and tell me about your experience with doing this today.

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.