Step 1, Set a Deadline

I’ve recently made a significant change in the way I manage projects and it has helped my productivity greatly! In this article, I’ll share the change with you and how it’s helping me.

First, some background…

I used to decide on a project to complete for my business, figure out the scope of it, outline the steps to complete it and then set a target completion date. I based the estimated completion date on how long I thought the project would take and how much time I could put in daily or weekly. This worked pretty well, but I found that it didn’t always lead to spending the right amount of time on a project. How much time you spend on something should be proportional to the importance of it, and not necessarily proportional to how long it could take if done perfectly. Deciding what to do and how to do and THEN setting a time target meant that I could easily decide to spend weeks making a small website tweak that didn’t increase sales, profit or customer satisfaction. I didn’t really put this together at the time I was doing it. In the years I was a corporate project manager, this is more or less how we did it and it worked great.

The impetus for change…

I’ve had a big project I’ve wanted to complete since last fall. When I say big, I mean big both in terms of scope and in terms of how it will change my business. (Stay tuned, details coming soon!) It just dragged on and on, and in the meantime it isn’t available for people to buy so nobody is benefiting from it. It kept growing in scope as I worked on it (sound familiar? : ) ). I kept finding more and more to include in it. Finally, the exasperation got too great and I took a hard look at the project and decided to make some changes and get it done.

What I changed…

I picked a day on which to complete it and then downsized the scope so that I could meet that deadline. I realized that this project was something that could grow without any natural limit, so I had to place a limit on it myself. Once I picked the day it would be done, I worked backward to put some milestones in place. I’m just a few days away from that first milestone, and it looks like I’ll make it but only barely.

The Result…

The results of this one very small change (picking a deadline and adjusting the project to meet it) have been amazing. I feel so much more energized on this project because I know it will be out in the world soon rather than at some distant date in the future. It’s easier to get to work on it knowing my time on it is finite. Somehow, just knowing I’ll get the satisfaction of having it done in a short time makes it so much more enjoyable to work on.

Conclusion…

Even though I had years of experience as a project manager, this was a big shift for me. If you aren’t managing your projects at all, I invite you to try setting deadlines and milestones to help you get some big things done.

What do you have lagging that you need a boost to complete? Share it in the comments and tell me if setting a deadline helped you get it done.

Deciding what to work on and how much time to spend on it is one of my favorite things to coach on! Click here to set up some time for us to sort through everything that’s on your plate.

What are you saying no to?

I see a lot of attention being paid to the idea of saying yes to opportunities that come you way. A lot of people see this as a path to success with ease – watch for opportunities to come you way and then take them. I agree with this to a point – jump right in when the opportunity is right! What about when the opportunity isn’t a good fit? Should you still accept a chance to do something simply because it showed up without you working for it?

Business opportunities are everywhere, and some show up because you worked for them and some show up without any effort by you. There’s more to do in your business than you could ever possibly get done, so by necessity you will have to turn down some projects you may want to do. Given the imbalance of the how much discretionary time a business owner has and how many things they could be doing, they will have to turn down a lot in the course of their business life.

In these discarded opportunities lies one of the keys to success – choose very carefully what you will and will not do. It’s really important to say yes and jump into the right projects, but it’s equally important to say no and move on from the wrong projects.

Your time and energy are finite, and you can only get to a finite number of projects in your business. Starting too many or having too many going at once is a surefire way to get none of them done, have them take too long or have the quality suffer. You’d be better off picking a few and completing them at a level of quality that your customers will appreciate. Partially done, poorly done or abandoned projects never made anyone’s bottom line grow!

Throughout your business life, you’ll be bombarded with things you want to create, products you want to sell, content you want to write and more. If you’re like many entrepreneurs, you can think of more ideas in a day than you can do in a year. That means that you’ll only ever be able to actually complete a very small portion of all those projects. The bad news is that those numbers can feel really disappointing. The good news is that you can cherry pick only the best ones to implement. Keep an inventory of all those great ideas and things you want to do and when it comes time to add something new to your work, pick the best and leave the mediocrity behind.

Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know”

Why are we so hesitant to say these 3 words – “I don’t know?” I see this all the time. People often express an opinion after saying they know nothing about the subject. One of the contractors we used on our fixer upper house created a huge problem because he didn’t know something and advised me on it as if he did. I myself have been pressured to offer an opinion on subjects which I simply had no knowledge of or not enough information on.

This topic is on my mind now because weeks later, I’m still cleaning up the mess the contractor caused. His credibility is shot in my mind. I can no longer trust anything he says because now I know whether he knows something or not that his answer will sound the same. If I make decisions based on his input, those decisions can be made on faulty data. Had he simply said he didn’t know I would have been able to ask someone who did and there would have been no problem.

I’ve been pretty careful up until now to qualify how well I know something before I give advice to a client. I might know something really well, and I’ll tell them so. Or, I might only have read a bit and never done something in my own business and I’ll tell them that too. Sometimes my clients have done things that I haven’t and I’ll tell them that I can’t add much to their experience at this time.

When I hear someone say “I don’t know,” it raises their trustworthiness in my eyes. I now know that they will admit when they don’t know something rather than snow me. It also points to a level of discernment in their learning – nobody can know about everything, so it’s important to decide what you do want to know about. It indicates a precision in speech and thought I find admirable.

One thing “I don’t know” rarely does is lower my opinion of someone. I’ve had mentors who have said it, and I appreciate their honesty. I’ve heard people in social settings say it and it just means they can’t offer an opinion or assessment on the subject at this time. I say it regularly myself.

The only time it does lower my opinion of someone is when the thing they don’t know falls squarely into what they claim as their expertise. Sorry to pick on contractors again, but there was a plumber who wanted me to tell him what size pipe to use under the house to make the plumbing up to code. I had specified in his contract that the work had to pass a code inspection so this was a big gaffe by him and I obviously never hired him again.

How do you handle it when someone asks you something you don’t know? If you’ve tried to cover up or change the subject, I invite you to say “I don’t know” without reservation.

Will you really remember it?

Lately, I’ve heard from a few successful business people that they don’t keep much of a to-do list because “If it’s important, I’ll remember it.” Is this really true? Is it a good way to run your business?

In both cases, the logic was something along the lines of running your business (and life) more intuitively and trusting your mind to call up the important items and leave the rest behind. It sounds nice, and who doesn’t want to have that kind of freedom?

My first concern with this type of task management is that it’s an inefficient use of your best resource, your mind. Lists can easily be kept on paper or in a tech resource, and both of these are very well suited to keeping large amounts of data. Your brain isn’t. Humans have good retention for just a handful of things at a time, and then it gets hazy. How much more creative and productive are you when the slate is cleared, your mind free and you are calm?

The second problem with this approach is that it can cause stress if you don’t have absolute faith in your mind’s ability to choose and call up the best thing to be working on. Maybe some people’s minds can do this and they are absolutely comfortable with that trust, but if you have any doubt at all you run the risk of using valuable brain power to keep track of things that could easily be stored elsewhere. I don’t doubt that most people’s minds can call up some tasks to work on, but I know what I go through to pick the best thing to do right now and it’s not a simple decision. I’m not sure anyone’s mind can be trusted to do long-term planning and to weigh all the factors in deciding what to work on.

My third and biggest concern with this is the waste of brilliant ideas! How often does an idea come to you at an odd time when you would never expect genius to strike? It happens to me a lot. I often tell my clients to let me stew on something and I’ll answer them in a few days. Later, while I’m folding laundry, doing dishes or driving I’ll get great idea out of nowhere and the problem is solved. If you don’t record them somewhere, you run the risk of losing them forever and that’s pretty sad. Record it in some central place, and you have a stockpile of great ideas just waiting for you to act on them.

As with most things, the right answer is what works best for you. It’s important to make sure that whatever method you use to pick your next tasks is one that supports you doing your important work in the world and doesn’t hinder you.

One surprising way to get those tough projects done

Have you ever had a project drag on and not get done? Everyone has. It’s part of being a business owner. Some of what we do isn’t fun, but has to get done anyway. I often find projects get hard and tedious about half to two-thirds of the way through. Right when we’re most tempted to give up is worst time to give up – you lose all of the effort you’ve already put in and get none of the reward of completing the project.

There’s lots of hacks to help you get through projects. Mindmap your remaining tasks, list your remaining tasks, reward yourself for each milestone, chunk it down and work in small bits of time every day, get some help, scale the project down, etc. Here’s another hack to add to that list:

Turn the clock off

What does that mean? As solopreneurs, we have to watch our time really carefully. Our tasks and projects have to be completed in the right amount of time in order to be profitable. Things that tend to expand must be contained. We may have to consider how many hours something will take in order to set a price for it. We have more we want to do than we could ever actually get done, so every decision about what to do or leave undone has a time component.

In other words, as solopreneurs we spend a lot of time watching time. It can be exhausting, and even worse it can deaden your enthusiasm right when you need it most.

When you reach the dead zone on a big job and you’ve tried all the other tricks to get moving again, try separating the project from time. Hide all the clocks around, and just go to work. Don’t worry about how long you’ve been working, how much longer you have to go or how long it takes. Just do what needs to be done. Sometimes you’ll find that you can actually make big progress on something when you’re not under the thumb of time. It frees you up to take as long as you need, even if it’s a long time. It takes away the pressure of time deadlines which may let you do great work. You may even find that a project you were dreading suddenly becomes more fun (or at least less dreadful) without having to watch every minute you spend on it.

How do you get away from time pressure? Do you ever get away from it? How does it change your work? Tell me about it in the comments.

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.