productivity – Page 7 – Michele Christensen

“What do you do?”

What is it about this one question that throws most of us for a loop? Why is it so hard to answer, and why does it cause such angst? It should be straightforward – simply tell someone in one sentence what you do – but rarely is it so easy. Part of the problem is that a lot of solopreneurs do a lot of different things for a lot of different people, and while there may be common threads, it’s hard to group it all under one phrase and convey the full breadth and depth of what we help people with. Most of us care so deeply about our work that to try to sum it up in one sentence feels like we’re negating the value of what we do.

I wanted to share some of my thoughts on this because I was in a lively discussion on the topic last week and I thought most of what people suggested would not work for me if I heard it when I asked someone what they did.

The criteria used by most of the people in the discussion was whether or not the person you were talking to asked a follow up question after you answered “What do you do?” The follow up could be anything such as “How do you do that?” or “Who do your work with?”

This isn’t a bad start to evaluate how effective your one-sentence answer is, but it’s too simplistic. Yes, you want someone to be interested enough to ask for more information, but the fact that they ask a question doesn’t mean they are actually interested. Yes, I know that’s harsh but it’s true. It’s like when someone says “Guess who I saw today?” – I may or may not care depending on who says it and the setting, but since I want to be polite and not hurt people’s feelings, I’ll almost always respond appropriately by saying “Who?” My response is not an guarantee that I’m interested.

It’s the same with your one-sentence business description. Just because it invites a response or question doesn’t mean you hit the mark. There are at least a few different reasons that someone would respond in a socially appropriate manner, and not all of them mean the person is interested.

The discussion started with someone describing an answer he heard at a networking event and most of the comments agreed that this answer was one of the best. When asked what she did, this woman said “I help mature women to look as attractive as possible.” While I agree this is a great way to describe the benefit of working with her, it still doesn’t tell me what she DOES. If I heard this, my mind would be flipping through pictures trying to make a match – is she a make-up artist, stylist, hairdresser, skin care expert, plastic surgeon, Botox practitioner or something else?

A lot of people maintain both in this setting and in marketing that the benefit is what matters and that people don’t care how you get there. I would say that the benefit is the most important, but I can’t be the only one who thinks that how you deliver it is also really important. Why is it important to me? In this case, it will dictate how much time I invest in seeing if we should get to know each other better. If she is a plastic surgeon, there’s not a great fit for me because I don’t know anyone who has plans to get surgery and in my entire life nobody has ever asked me for information or a referral on this topic. It would actually be a disservice to her to take up her time when there are people in the room she’d be better off meeting. If she is a make-up artist who mixes her own chemical-free, cruelty-free cosmetics well then I’m interested because that’s something I’d consider using and I know a lot of people who would also be interested.

My follow up question would be something like “So, um, what do you actually do? Are you a make-up artist?” In my mind, I’d be thinking about how hard this person is making it on me to get the answer to a straightforward question. It would also put them way down on my list of people I’d consider referring business to. Do you communicate this vaguely with clients? Will people I send you have to work as hard as I did to get a question answered?

So, what’s the answer? My current thought is that it’s best to include what you DO along with the benefit you provide, such as “I’m a stylist who specializes in helping mature women look as attractive as possible.” That way, you give someone a full picture that includes everything they need to decide if they want to learn more. I know I’d appreciate being answered in this way!

PS – If you go to networking events or want to start going, check out this free training by Sales and Networking Expert Don Talbert did just for my community: “3 Strategies for Really Working a Networking Event to Create a Continuous Flow of Leads, Referrals and Business.” Grab the audio here: Networking training call

Anything worth doing is worth doing…..

at the appropriate level of quality.

Gotcha, did I? The popular version of this saying is “Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” and for the life of me I cannot figure out how something so plainly false got to be so generally accepted as true. I could give you numerous examples from my personal life, and it applies to business as well.

There’s something about working on the internet, having a website, and posting things that everyone can see forever that compels us to try to do it perfectly. This is not only a huge time suck, but it’s also a disservice to the people who want to hear from you. They don’t want perfection, and you can’t deliver it anyway. No matter how great something is, it can always be better. I’ve found for myself and clients that most of what you do to run a business can be “good enough” with great results. I know people (not in my community) who delayed months even starting a business because their logo wasn’t perfect, or their website needed work or some other item wasn’t in it’s final form yet. As an entrepreneur, your website/logo/business cards/tagline/etc will always need work so don’t delay offering your unique gifts to the world getting them perfect. It’s an educated guess anyway until you start working in your business.

As solopreneurs, we are particularly vulnerable to this because the business is so closely related to ourself. This is a valid concern – you certainly don’t want to be putting junk out there with your name on it, but try to make an honest assessment of how good it needs to be to serve the people who need you. There’s often a direct correlation in how long you delay something and how close to perfect you try to get it. If your goal is to serve others though your work, you may be depriving them of something they want or need while you try to get it perfect.

I think, sometimes, there’s a temptation to procrastinate or hide behind getting things perfect. If a person can spend all day writing perfect tweets, then they’re “busy” and “working,” but don’t have to risk putting any real work out in the world.

The only place I encourage you to always do your best is in working directly with clients or in creating things to sell. These things should always get your best efforts.

How well do you do things? How do you decide? Are there things that aren’t worth doing well? Leave me a comment and tell me what you think.

Keeping your work at home solopreneur business running

When you work for someone else, there’s a lot of support to get your work done. You have a phone system, computer help desk, human resources, a work space and reference material. When you have a solopreneur business, you need to meet all these needs on your own. One of the biggest places I see a problem in this area is business owners who don’t have adequate computer support. When you work from home, your computer is a huge part of your business and without it you may not be able to function.

What does it look like to have adequate computer support for your work-at-home solopreneur business? Here’s a few ideas:

You have regular backups that run automatically and are stored off-site. Your backup needs to be adequate to get you up and running quickly in the event of a hard drive crash or other disaster, meaning you have to be able to restore your programs and settings as well as your data. Using a manual process may be fine to start, but as soon as you are able get an automated system in place that runs backups automatically. You’re already stretched to the max just running your business, do you need one more annoying thing to think about? How hard will you kick yourself when you let this go and and lose a bunch of data because of it? Store your backups off site so that they are safe in the event of a fire, flood or natural disaster.
Have a plan to fix your computer before you need it. Know who to call or where to go. If you computer crashes, you’ll be frantic enough without calling all over town trying to find the right person to fix it. In that situation, you won’t have the luxury of properly vetting anyone to fix your computer.
If you are able, have a backup plan so you can keep working while your computer is down. This might mean you are able to switch to someone else’s computer or work somewhere else with a secure internet connection. Again, this is something to figure out before you need it. Scrambling in desperation is not a fun place to be and doesn’t position you to make great decisions.

You may be wondering how I learned all this. I had a computer problem last week, and no thanks to me all this was in place already. My husband is an absolute computer genius, and does a great job maintaining all the electronics in the house. Somehow, I had downloaded some sort of virus that was making my computer slower and slower until it wouldn’t function. Thanks to having all this in place, I was able to work on his computer until he fixed the problem. On top of all the regular tasks of running a business, I had a newsletter to get out so it would have a big problem if I wasn’t able to work. The entire experience, and the relative ease of taking care of it hammered home just how important all this is for running a business from home.

What would happen if your computer crashed? Tell me about it in the comments.

Be productive in spite of the experts

Image of mail in the sunrise — Email in the morning

I admit it, I’m a productivity junkie! I devour information on the subject – books, magazines, newsletters, blogs, etc. – I want it all. Apparently, I’m not alone – there’s a running joke in the productivity communities I frequent about procrastinating by studying how to be more productive.

I’m also a big fan of the scientific method and use it in my daily life all the time. I’ll read about something interesting, test it and decide if it works for me. My personal productivity and time and task management are no different. I’ve got an ever-changing system to keep it all together.

One of the rules I hear most often from experts on productivity is that nobody should check email first thing in the morning. The idea behind this is that it is reactionary – you open your email and start handling whatever is there regardless of how it fits into your business success plan. Once you get into your email, it can be hard to get out. By the time you get to the bottom, more messages have arrived. “Just a peek” turns into hours. A quick question and response leads to a live chat. These long email firestomping sessions rarely lead to anything profitable and they take you out of the driver’s seat for your day. I’m sure you’ve experienced being sidetracked by email – I know I have.

Many experts say you should start your day with something other than email. That something could be an activity you decided on yesterday, your current profit-making project, whatever you find most difficult, what your morning energy level dictates or any other intentionally-chosen project you decide on. It makes a lot of sense, given how easy it is to get sucked into the email rabbit hole. However, this is one area where I don’t follow the experts’ advice

I have a list of things I do first thing every day and email is one of them. I love getting my daily business “housekeeping” out of the way and having a clean slate going into whatever I do next. I like having an empty inbox going into my day so I can spot any urgent messages more easily. It’s great to know that at least once a day, my email inbox is at zero messages and I’m no more than one work session away from zero again.

I think one of the reasons this works for me is that I have a process for handling my email and a specific end point which is an empty inbox. Once I process all the messages that I had as of a certain time, I’m done until tomorrow except for urgent messages.

So what’s the point of my telling you this? First, by all means read what experts have to say but then test and assess for yourself. What works for most people may not work for you. Second, I wanted to give you an alternative to what you might read elsewhere about handling your email.

How do you handle email? When in the day do you look at your inbox? Do you ever buck the advice of experts in this area or others? Tell me about it in the comments.

A simple strategy to generate blog content ideas

I was working with someone recently who wants to start a blog, but is concerned about having enough content. “How do you come up with ideas to blog about consistently?” she asked. We talked about a few strategies for having consistent blog material, but I decided to share my best one, which is actually one of the simplest.

Here is the strategy, summed up in one sentence:

Keep a list.

It really is that simple, but there are some caveats that make it really work.

First, keep your list on your computer in an easy-to-access format and location. If you’re a big fan of paper, you could use paper but the computer works better because of the ability to change, add and remove things as well as the ability to back up your list. You might start with one idea, and that one idea spawns off several other ideas. By keeping them together, you’ll have the makings for a series. You can use a spreadsheet, document or list-making software, just make sure it’s something you love to use. The list should be kept in a way that removes all barriers from using it regularly. If you want to use paper, make sure you use something nice that inspires you to update your list. Don’t use random scraps, and keep it all in one place.

Second, use your list. This is the one and only place blog ideas should be stored. Every time you have an idea, put it here. If you’re not near your list when you get an idea, make sure to capture it so you can add it later. Be ready to grab an idea wherever you are: dictate a voice note to yourself, send yourself an email, call your voicemail, even jot it down on a piece of paper you know you will deal with later.

Third, cross off or strikethrough ideas once you’ve used them but don’t remove them from the list. Someday, that already-used idea might trigger a new one, and you’ll have a sense of what you’ve written about.

Why does this simple strategy work?

By having an inventory of blog topics, you’ll be under no pressure when it’s time to write a post. Having a system to capture and store ideas allows your mind to work at your leisure, not under fire. It capitalizes on your awareness, i.e. by creating a system you’ve created a new area of focus for your mind. Did you ever have the experience of a friend buying a new car in a model you’ve never heard of and all of the sudden you see that car everywhere? It’s the same idea – creating a concrete system to store blog ideas helps focus you on those ideas and you’ll see them more often.

Do you keep a running list of blog topics? How does it help your blogging?

The key to implementing a lot of things

When I talk to new solopreneur business owners, a common theme is overwhelm at all there is to implement and later maintain. These new solopreneurs are right, there is a lot to implement and maintain to create a successful business. Just to name a few, there are:

A website
Other components of web presence such as social media profiles and directory listings
Banking, payment and billing systems
Print material such as business cards, brochures and flyers
An email newsletter
A physical filing system
Bookkeeping

These are just a few of the projects that new solopreneur business owners need to tackle – there are many more, which is why it can seem like a daunting work load.

There is one critical key to getting all of these projects implemented, and that is to do things one at a time. If you are anything like me and most people, you’ll want all of this done right now. We see people with robust, established businesses and start trying to create that for ourselves yesterday. The reality is though, that people with established businesses didn’t get there overnight. They started somewhere and chugged away at adding things to get where they are today. No matter where you are in building your business, this is one of the best ways to make sure you get where you need to be.

I realize that this is not a glamorous, exciting take on building a business. Some people may be able to jump right in and have all of this done fast but that’s not the norm. When you see a business you’d like to resemble, see how long they’ve been around before you start thinking you’re coming up short.

Along the way, it might be tempting to jump into things too soon. If you are drawn to entrepreneurship, you probably have “bright, shiny object syndrome” which means new ideas and projects pull you like a siren song. It’s especially tempting when you are in the thick of implementing something and it’s gotten boring but isn’t done. Along comes the next new thing and it’s fresh and exciting, and we’re tempted to abandon the half-done project for the new one. Don’t give in! Anything you take on will only produce results when it’s done, so if you keep jumping to new projects without finishing the old ones you won’t get the results you want.

Have you been tempted into a bunch of half-done projects? How did you get some of them done? What’s worked for you in building your business? Tell me about it in the comments.

Save time when scheduling

(Update: 10/9/13: Several items in this post have changed since I originally wrote it. I still use and love Timetrade, but it’s now offered on a freemium model and the pricing is different than I describe. It also integrates with iCal now and they’ve added a lot more features. The general reasons I love this tool are still the same.)

If you work by appointment, you know that scheduling can be tough! In the early days of my business, someone would request an appointment and I’d send them 3 or so choices. Then, I’d have to hold those choices open until I heard back from them. If another client wanted to schedule, I’d have to come up with a set of different choices for that client or put them on hold until I heard from the first client. In the meantime, client number 2 has to put his or her appointment setting on hold until they hear from me. What a mess!

I’m so much happier with my scheduling process now that I use an automated scheduling tool. What is an automated scheduling tool? It allows anyone to whom I’ve given a link to self-schedule their appointment at a time when they know I’m available. I get great feedback on my scheduling process and I can’t even guess at how much time it’s saved me and the people looking to schedule with me.

There are several choices for an automated scheduling tool, and the one I use is Timetrade (timetrade.com). After a free trial, it’s about $30 per year and well worth it. Once you sign up, you link Timetrade to your Outlook or Google calendar and set up some rules for appointments such as the days and times you will accept appointments. Timetrade will then offer appointments that follow your rules and are not already taken by another appointment. Visitors do not see what you are doing when you aren’t available.

I work in 15-, 30- and 60-minute sessions by phone or Skype, so each of these choices has its own scheduling page (called “activities” in Timetrade). If a person has purchased a bundle of 30-minute sessions, I give them the pages where they can schedule a 30-minute call or Skype session. Because of the way the system is set up, the visitor can only schedule a 30-minute session which leads to fewer mistakes and rescheduled appointments.

Another great use for an automated scheduler is to avoid playing phone tag! People are so busy and a lot of productive people I know don’t answer their phone whenever it rings to it can be really hard to connect. If I want to talk to someone, I send them to a page where we can schedule a quick phone call at a time that works best for both of us.

There are other great scheduling tools available, so look for the one that will work best for you. The one feature that was non-negotiable for me was using a tool that eliminates back-and-forth. One scheduling tool I tried requires visitors to send you two options of when they want to meet. You then have to get the email, review it and pick one before the appointment is confirmed. This defeats one of the main purposes of using a scheduling tool. I much prefer that my clients and callers can book and confirm an appointment on the spot. Timetrade also sends a confirmation email without requiring your visitor to have an account.

Timetrade is just one of 32 resources I share in my Solopreneur Success Rolodex. Grab your own copy by clicking here and save yourself some headaches!

How to get people to respond to your calls to action

As solopreneurs, we are often asking people to take action in some way. The most obvious way is to make a purchase, but there are other things we want people

How solopreneurs can encourage responses to a call to action — How solopreneurs can create a compelling call to action

to do such as enter an email, download a report, answer a question or take a survey. How do you get people to respond to a non-sales call to action?

First, make it obvious what you want them to do and why they should do it. I cringe when I see someone I’ve never heard of saying “Like my Facebook page.” They got the first part right – it’s very clear what they want. But why would I do that? If I’ve never heard of the person why would I waste even a few seconds checking their page out without more information? A better choice might be something like “Like my Facebook page for daily tips on training your rescue dog.” Now I know what they offer on the page and can make a quick decision as to whether it’s for me. The only exception to this would be celebrities, sports figures, politicians, etc who are innately interesting to their fans.

Second, make it easy. People don’t have the time or attention span to read complex instructions on your calls to action. What you are asking them to do should be easy – click a button, enter an email, fill out a survey, etc. The most difficult request I’ve seen was someone asking for 5 questions to be submitted via Twitter direct message. The person was gathering information, so other than helping him or her there was no incentive to the reader. They didn’t ask for only 1 question, they wanted 5. Twitter direct messages are one of the more inconvenient way to submit questions as well. If you’re asking for help or feedback, make it really easy for people to jump in and do it.

Third, offer a thank you for their help. Don’t make it too enticing or you may get people doing what you ask just for the reward. If you are trying to survey your market, this might skew the results or you might get people just slopping their way through whatever you ask for just to get the reward. For ideas, you could offer a free downloadable product or one of my favorites, offer to mention them in a tweet. I was thrilled to complete a survey for someone who offered to thank you in a tweet to her tens of thousands of Twitter followers.

Don’t be afraid to ask people to help you or to do something. Just make it obvious, easy and rewarding for them to do so.

Have you ever had a successful call to action? What made it a success?

Contact management for Solopreneurs

Michele Christensen explains how solopreneurs can manage contacts for free — Solopreneurs need a way to collect and organize their contacts

As a solopreneur, your contacts are a very valuable business asset. By contacts, I mean all the people you know and have relevance to your business such as customers, prospects, networking contacts, colleagues and opt-in subscribers to your newsletter. Some of these groups should be handled by specific software such as a newsletter service for your subscribers and a shopping cart or subscriber list for your customers. But what about all the rest of the people you meet? You probably have hundreds of people you’ve met at networking events, trade shows, live training events and just being out and about, but what do you do with them?

For starters, DO NOT add them to your newsletter without their permission. It’s possibly illegal under the SPAM laws, makes you look bad and generally annoys people.

You do need a way to keep track of these people though. You may need to make a referral for a client of yours and you don’t want to be searching scattered piles of business cards trying to remember where and when you met that one guy who might do what that customer needs. You also may want to occasionally touch base with this network of people you’ve worked hard to connect with. Otherwise, they’ll forget about you and you’ll never even have a chance of being the go-to person when they need what you offer. You may need a service yourself, and want to hire that really great person you met if only you could remember who it was.

There are lots of free and paid CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools, but you may not need one. I’m a fan of using simple, free tools as long as they suit your needs. Unless you have specific requirements that indicate otherwise, I recommend Google contacts. It’s what I use and I’ve been in business for 3+ years. Here’s some of what I love:

It’s free and syncs with my Google email account, which I use to manage all the email that comes to my domain-specific email address
It works great with my Android phone
It’s simple to use, and you can add any fields you need
There is a generous notes section where you can write freeform notes to help you remember someone, e.g. “Talked with her at the bar at the September networking event. We both have rescue mutts and like kayaking.”
Your entire contacts database is searchable so if all you can remember is that they had the word “Yellow” in their business name you can search on that
When you are ready to upgrade to a different contact management or CRM tool, your entire contact database can be exported into several formats with just a few clicks, or add on one of the free or paid tools available

Should solopreneurs say yes to every opportunity?

Strategy helps solopreneurs choose events wisely — Think strategically when choosing which events to attend for your solopreneur business

I was with a friend over the weekend, and she mentioned an event that she was going to and thought I’d be interested in attending as well. She had told me about it a few years ago and I checked it out and decided it wasn’t for me at this time. When I told her so, she was absolutely stunned! Here she was, presenting me with what seemed like a golden opportunity and I was turning it down. Her thinking was that my business must be at capacity or otherwise I’d be going, but that wasn’t my reason.

The reason I wasn’t going comes down to the #1 thing business owners must have to succeed: strategy. Strategy is everything in a business. It means that everything you do is intentional and has a purpose that contributes to your success. For live events, strategy doesn’t mean going to any and every event that is open to you and hoping that it will help. Strategy means having a specific aim in mind for attending events, and a specific type of person you want to meet. To show how having a strategy guides decision making, I’ll tell you why I turned this event down.

For my business strategy, if I’m going to an event to meet potential clients then the event audience should have some correlation to what I do. There should be something about the event that attracts people who have or want their own solopreneur business. The event my friend invited me to was more or less a random assortment of the public. There was no attraction specifically for the people I feel most called to serve, solopreneurs.

The second factor that led to my decision is that this event required 5 to 8 hours on a Saturday plus prep time. This is a massive chunk of time to spend in an untargeted manner. There was also no guarantee you’d actually get any time in front of anyone. The event is run in a very free-form manner, and people may or may not enter your room when you give a talk and they can come and go as they please during the talk. This isn’t conducive to sharing anything of value with anyone.

The final factor to consider is that I live in the Los Angeles area, and there are dozens of events every week. I haven’t even begun to attend all the events I could that would possibly have people interested in what I do. Until I’ve made a considerable showing at those events, it simply doesn’t make sense to go to an event filled with random people.

It’s easy to pulled off course if you don’t have pre-set goals and strategy. Having those in mind helps guide your decisions and give you something to measure your success.

Have you set your goals for the year and your strategy for achieving them? Tell me about it in the comments – I’d love to hear how strategy helps you or if it doesn’t. If you don’t have a strategy yet, let’s talk and start setting one up. Click here to schedule a call with me.