Business Strategist for Solopreneurs
Earlier this year, I gave my email subscribers the chance to ask me anything about their business. In this video, I answer the first question, and I’ll be answering more over the coming weeks and months. The question has to do with time management systems and Timetrade.
If you want more information like this, including a chance to get your questions answered in the next “Ask Me Anything,” enter your name and email below for regular email updates from me.
I’ve just put the finishing touches on a brand new free report that will help you get more done every day and feel less overwhelm! Having to much to do, running in circles and feeling disorganized are all common problems for solopreneurs. One of the biggest single complaints I hear is that business owners are overwhelmed. When you wear all the hats in your business, you have to be super-efficient and super-organized to get done what you need to.
Most people understand the basic concept of keeping a to-do list, but they make mistakes in how they keep it that cost them time, well-being and productivity. The good news is that this report gives you 5 really easy tips for writing your daily to-do list that you can use right away to start feeling more on top of things.
Fill out the form below and get your report right away!
VIP Half-Day Planning sessions are closed right now. Please make sure you sign up for my mailing list using the box at the top of the right sidebar to get priority notification when new VIP opportunities are available. Thanks!
My first few years in business, I pretty much flew by the seat of my pants. There was so much to master, so much to do, and so many balls to keep in the air that I couldn’t find the time to think ahead. I was too busy reacting. As you probably know, this is not the best way to run a business. It’s like trying get somewhere by running really fast without knowing if you are going in the right direction. Fortunately, I learned that I had to plan ahead to be successful.
First I took baby steps, and just planned a few weeks ahead. Now that I’ve gotten much better at it, I plan my full year out ahead of time. In case you are wondering, things never go exactly as planned so my plan changes a lot as the year progresses. Nor does having a plan lock me into anything. As a solopreneur, I can change my plan any time I want. The key thing is having a plan to start with.
What will having a plan do for you? You’ll be able to make much better decisions about what opportunities to say yes or no to. You’ll know if you have space or can make space for something new. You’ll be working proactively and moving forward, instead of fire-stomping and treading water. What you do during the year will be laid out in a logical sequence.
Do you see how having a plan can help you have your best year ever? The benefits may be obvious, but how are you supposed to find the time to do a plan for a whole year? It’s one of those things that’s important but not urgent so it tends to get pushed to the back burner and before you know it months have passed.
To make sure you get your plan done for 2015, I’m pleased to offer you my support in a VIP Half-Day Planning Session. Your VIP experience starts right away with a questionnaire that I’ll review before our session so we can jump right in. Your VP Half-Day will be a total of four and a half hours – 4 hours of work with 2 breaks of 15 minutes. I’ll give you my custom planning tool, and we can even work collaboratively on your plan during your session (i.e. both of us working on the same document from our separate computers) if you want. This is not a group experience – you and I will be the only ones present and we’ll get your 2015 mapped out so this isn’t hanging over your head any longer. We will meet virtually and you have several technology options to choose from for our meeting.
To make absolutely sure you that nothing gets in your way, I’m adding in a 15-minute follow up call in February. We can revise your plan or talk about anything that you need help on to keep moving forward.
To recap, your VIP Half-Day Planning Session includes:
I offered this first to my email subscribers and as of this posting, there are 8 spots left.
To get started on your VIP Half-Day Planning Session, click the button below (terms and conditions here).
VIP Half-Day Planning sessions are closed right now. Please make sure you sign up for my mailing list using the box at the top of the right sidebar to get priority notification when new VIP opportunities are available. Thanks!
One of the main skills you need to be an entrepreneur who works at home is how to schedule and block your time out. When you work for yourself on your own schedule, there is no natural start and stop time for anything. Creating your own start and stop times is the structure that you need to create in order to be successful at running your own business from your home.
It’s definitely great to work from home, but without the skill of being able to properly schedule and block out your time you may find yourself spending too much time in a grey area where you are trying to straddle your work and personal life and do both at the same time. You can end up with a lot of poorly used time where you aren’t really working and getting things done and you aren’t really enjoying yourself.
What are some examples of in-between behavior?
Any of these can be enough to cause you problems. You can end up with no time where you are really “off” work, and you end up with a lot of hours of poor-quality work because you weren’t fully into your work. Because you don’t take enough time off, this can lead to burnout, stress and lack of enthusiasm.
It’s super important to create time when you are 100% working and time when you are 100% not working. The grey area in between is not a good way to spend your time and needs to be minimized. There’s a Zen saying that comes to mind:
“When walking, just walk. When sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble.”
In our entrepreneurial world, we could say “When working, just work. When off, just don’t work. Above all, don’t try to do both.”
Make sure every minute of your day is spent intentionally. Whether you are relaxing or working, what you are doing should be a conscious choice that represents the best thing you could be doing right now.
It can be hard to get your day started when you are a solopreneur! There’s so much to do in so many different categories, and then there’s all your personal stuff too. If you don’t have enough structure, that wide-open schedule might be as much a curse as a blessing. One way I get started right is to have a kick-start that I do every day. No matter how overwhelmed and lost I might feel, I always know to go through this short list and then I will have at least gotten started.
Here’s my kick-start list:
Once I tackled this list, I have a sense of accomplishment and my day is off to a good start. It’s often enough to get my momentum rolling and I can dig into everything else I want to get done. As with so many things, once you get your work day started it’s much easier to keep going than it was to get started.
If the idea of having a set way to start the day doesn’t appeal to you, an alternate approach is to set up the start to your day the night before. As your last task of the day, get yourself organized and set up for the morning so you can jump right in. Either way, make sure you give yourself an easy way to get your day going or you might waste a lot of time just trying to get started.
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In honor of the Independence Day holiday last week, I have a special way for you to work one-on-one with me that I’ve never offered before! There’s no contract, no long-term commitment and no complicated package. It’s simple and can help you make a big leap forward in your business quickly!
You have a huge degree of flexibility in how you use your sessions, and I’ve given you ideas to think about on the information page. I’ve coached solopreneurs since 2010, so there are a lot of areas I can help with. Click the link below to get inspired about how we can work together!
The offer is only good until Thursday, so click here to get details and book your sessions!
Independence Day Coaching Session sale
PS – This offer was opened for my email subscribers last week. If you want priority notification of upcoming special offers and useful content to help you grow your solopreneur business, fill out the box at the top of the right sidebar to join my email subscriber list.
Just a quick note to let you know that the giveaway event I’m participating in is closing tomorrow. There are 13 great gifts for you to download, and they are all designed around the theme of freedom in your business. Make sure to get the gifts you want before the giveaway closes.
Grab your gifts here:
13 Gifts for Business Freedom Giveaway
As I’ve increased the reach of my business, I’ve had an increasing number of people attempt to pitch me something in the guise of a Trojan Horse. It’s usually something like “Can I share your {whatever} with my audience?” or one particularly blatant one “I have a speaking gig for you, let’s talk (turned out to be a long sales pitch for something that was completely inappropriate for me.)
Just to be clear, it’s totally appropriate to pitch and sell when you are in business. Without selling, there would be no business. My objection to the Trojan Horse approach is that it is sneaky and often untargeted. In each case, I didn’t know I was going to be pitched to and the product or service being offered was not something I needed or wanted. The person pitching me occupied my time under false pretenses and I felt burned at the end.
What I want to share with you is to be on the lookout for these sales pitches. They will waste your time and if your experience is like mine, the people that do this don’t even try to target the right potential customers. Here are a few warning signs to look out for:
One of the really vexing parts of the Trojan Horse sales pitch is that it is usually flattering! I admit, the first few times it happened I was thrilled that a stranger recognized my genius. I’ve now gotten pretty good at sniffing out legitimate admiration vs. insincere and generic compliments designed to woo me into a meeting. I’ve also come to recognize just how valuable my time is, so I place a higher bar on any meeting and very low value on ego-boosting.
Another problem with ducking these sales pitches is that if you get too broad with your criteria for declining, you may miss legitimate and valuable opportunities to collaborate and have a sales conversation about something that may actually be useful to you.
It goes without saying that you should not be using this to sell your own products or services. It makes a very bad impression and wastes both your time and your unqualified prospect’s time. The big question is how do you avoid the time-wasting Trojan Horses and accept the right appointments?
Here are a few ideas:
First, don’t jump to schedule an appointment just because someone asks. Check them out by visiting their website, social media sites and doing a Google search.
Second, make sure you understand why you are having a meeting rather than some other form of communication such as exchanging emails. Ask them some questions about why a meeting makes sense. Often, this drives away people who you probably don’t want to meet with and people who are a good fit appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Third, don’t schedule right away. I generally schedule everything a week ahead of time anyway, but a side benefit of this is that it wards off people who don’t have a legitimate purpose for talking to you. They don’t want to work that hard or plan ahead!
Fourth, pay attention to your feelings. If you feel pressured, unsure, weird, etc. it may be because the meeting isn’t right for you.
As a solopreneur, you have to guard your time or you won’t be able to do everything you need to do. Don’t plan a meeting simply because someone asks. Make sure you know the value of the meeting for both you and the person who wants to meet with you.
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One of the big shifts I’ve made in my business this year has to do with planning and working ahead. In December, I met with my mastermind and we each planned our year out in a big picture way using big desk-sized calendars. At this planning meeting, we also each honed our focus to just a few areas where we are really getting results. My 2014 has been so much smoother because of it! I usually have at least the next few days if not weeks of promotions, blog posts and emails planned and I try to always keep a little ahead.
For me, there’s nothing that kills the joy of my business more than working under pressure. The same blog post, web page, or social media post which is a fun and creative activity when done without time pressure becomes a dreaded chore when I’m trying to beat the clock. It’s a great feeling to know I’m days or weeks ahead of schedule and if something should pop up in my personal life I can take care of it without having my business sit or even look idle. Before you can start working ahead though, you have to start planning ahead. You have to have some idea of what’s coming up in your business and what you are promoting. If you can plan your year at a big picture level that’s a great place to start. If that feels like too much, try planning the next month. If that’s too much, you can start with just planning your next few blog posts and emails. Are you still flying by the seat of your pants in your business? Schedule a few coaching sessions with me to get some plans laid down. You’ll feel more sure of what you are working on and have a better sense of how the pieces fit together. Click here to schedule some time with me.
Your business needs some structure even if you don’t like structure. I’ve never seen someone have a successful business without at least some structure. If you have no structure at all, you run the risk of constantly firestomping whatever the latest crisis is.
What structure does is give you a way to prioritize and plan what you want to get done, and it helps allocate your time in a way that is consistent with your goals. Structure means that you don’t reinvent the wheel every time you do the same task over and over. It means you think about and plan your projects before tearing into them.
The problem many solopreneurs face is that they don’t like structure! Some, like me, may have had bad experiences in overly-rigid corporate organizations. Some may be more artistic or creative and structure feels too constricting. Still others may resent the idea of having any structure in a solopreneur business – after all, why go solo if you have to have rules and constraints?
The answer is to make structures you can live with. Make them fluid, flexible and adaptable. In a solopreneur business, you make the rules and you can break them. There’s nothing to say you have to follow them to the letter every time. Leave some space in both your structures and your mind to do things a little differently or not as rigorously.
Here’s an example from my own business:
I have a daily list I do most days just to clear the air and keep things tidy. It’s kind of like the business equivalent of cleaning up after a meal – do the dishes, put the food away, wipe up and give the floor a quick sweep. My daily list has things like clearing my email in box, posting on social media, blogging and whittling away at all the “to be read” emails. Here’s where the flexibility comes in – I don’t do all of those things every day. I do most of them on most days, and all of them on other days but it’s just a general guideline for me to follow. Nobody cares if they all get done or not (including me). If I’m particularly pressed for time I have the “must do” items highlighted. If I’m on the road, I use the guide to pre-schedule some social media updates and blog entries and then just focus on keeping urgent items caught up. I know I’ll get to the rest when I get back and start using my process again.
What ideas do you have about structure that keeps you from implementing it in your business? Does it feel too stuffy and creativity-killing? How could you create structures that leave room for flexibility? Tell me about it in the comments.