solopreneur – Page 17 – Michele Christensen

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.

Solopreneur news roundup for Friday 5/6/11

Hello fellow solopreneurs! I hope you had a massively productive week and have plans to get some fun time in during the weekend. I’m planning on visiting the Alt Build Expo, a showcase for alternative/green/energy efficient/recycled building materials and methods. I always get great ideas there for our fixer upper house, although the downside is that I always get some “I wish I knew that a year ago” ideas.

Here’s the news I picked for the week. If you’d like to see these links in your Facebook feed throughout the week, head over to my page and click the like button.

I was amazed by this story that news of Osama bin Laden’s death was reported on Twitter first!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/may/02/twitter-osama-bin-laden-death-leaked

I find clever thinking to be fascinating and almost thrilling. I loved this article on the difference between smart and clever and how to be both:

http://www.bnet.com/blog/small-biz-advice/are-you-smart-or-clever-here-8217s-how-to-be-both/1490

One of the reasons I focus on solopreneur businesses is that they are everywhere and I see them being a powerful economic force in the post-recession economy. Micro-enterprises are also on the rise, and this article talks about what they are and why they matter. Did you know 87% of US businesses fall into the micro-enterprise category?

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/the-rise-of-the-micro-enterprise-and-why-it-matters?cid=em-smartbrief

That’s all the news for this week. Have a great weekend, take some time to recharge and tell me about your plans for the weekend in the comments.

Measuring things that actually matter

One of the most important things you can do to continue to build your business is to measure how well your efforts are working. There’s tons of information out there about things you must do, should do, would be foolish not to do, etc. but really the only criteria for deciding whether to do something is if it works for you. I love this analogy: When a plane takes off, it’s almost always pointed in the wrong direction because runways are only built in certain directions. Once the plane is airborne, the pilot looks at his controls and determines how to adjust his direction. At that point, the pilot has just 3 options: continue in the same direction, fire the left thruster to turn right or fire the right thruster to turn left. He or she makes a choice and repeats the process once the new direction is established. The pilot continues to repeat this process until reaching the destination.

It’s much like that in our business. We can take a good guess at what direction in which to start, but we’re unlikely to have the best answer right off the bat. Once we make a business choice, we then have to determine if it’s helping us get to our goals and readjust course if necessary. If you find that you are off-course, don’t give up – instead, make a small adjustment that brings you closer to the right course. This is the basis for building a successful business, not getting everything correct right out of the gate.

However, the critical thing to decide is WHAT to measure. It’s easy to focus on things that can be easily seen in numbers – how many Twitter followers, how many Facebook fans, how many newsletter subscribers, how much website traffic, etc but those figures alone may not give you the information you need to course correct. How will getting that magic number of followers, fans, subscribers or visitors get you where you want to go? What comes after “so that?” For example, “I want 10,000 Facebook fans so that…………….”

If you are looking for single pieces of data that can inform you by themselves, you may want to think about things like:

gross sales
number of customers
number of sales

These are figures that will help you determine if your business is growing. There are also more complex pieces of data that can be helpful such as the percentage of people who buy after visiting a sales page or which products make up your gross sales. I’ll cover these in a later post, but for now I encourage you to not only start doing some measurement but also to make sure you are measuring things that matter.

What do you measure in your business? How is it helpful to you? Leave a comment and tell me about it.

(PS – measurement is one of the skills I cover in my free e-course “5 Essential Skills for Solopreneur Success.” If you’re reading this on my blog, sign up using the box to the right. Otherwise, head to my homepage and sign up there.)

No news roundup this Friday

I followed one of my core productivity principles and took some time off to play this week. I got away for a few days and didn’t watch the news. I’ll be back next week to bring you more hand-picked news and links. I’m looking forward to catching up on my reading!

Have you had some time to recharge this week? If not, schedule at least a few hours as soon as you’re done reading this and tell me about your plans in the comments.

Solopreneur news roundup, 4/22/11

Hello again my solopreneur friends and yay it’s Friday! Friday probably doesn’t have the same meaning to you now that it did when you had a job, but maybe it should, at least to some degree. It’s so easy to get caught up in working all the time – there’s always more you can do and there’s no locked office to keep you away. But please, for the benefit of the people who need your services, make sure to get some time in to replenish your energy and fuel your reserves. Just like changing your oil regularly saves big repairs later, a little care for yourself now saves big problems later. I’m pretty tied up this weekend with some family commitments, but I’ve already book in some mid-week play time next week because I know I’ll need it.

Ok, but here’s what you came for – this week’s news for solopreneurs, filtered for you by yours truly!

I’ve been wondering how long the printed Yellow Pages can survive. Here’s a story about how they’ve decided to adapt and modernize. What a great lesson for business owners – take your core strength and re-tool for changing circumstances.

Yellow Pages Turns to Local Search

Denise Wakeman is hosting “Brag About Your Blog Day” over at The Blog Squad’s Facebook page. Head on over and sing your own praises! I did this and my blog got noticed by WE Magazine, where I was name a 2011 Woman Blogger to Watch.

Brag About Your Blog Day (like the page before you can brag)

I almost didn’t read this story because it isn’t solopreneur-specific, but I’m sure glad I did! It’s about how a day spa uses their great relationships with customers to raise capital for expansion. There’s so much great material about building relationships, creative financing and giving your customers a sense of ownership to the project.

Raising Cash from Customers

That’s it for the news this week. Leave me a comment and tell me about how you will recharge this weekend!

PS – If you want these items via Facebook, head over to my page and like it.

Strategic thinking for the 1-person business

Solopreneurs need strategy as much as big businesses do

One of the skills I use all the time in my business is strategic thinking. This sounds complicated, and in fact it’s one of the skills emphasized in MBA programs but there are certain parts of strategic thinking that scale perfectly for a solopreneur or small business.

You can start your strategic thinking by always asking and establishing why you are doing anything. Ideally, you should be asking this of every single task or activity you are thinking of doing. If you decide you’re going to start Tweeting, then why? What’s the purpose? How will it add to your bottom line?

Why do you have a website? What’s the purpose of your website? Why are you writing that particular blog post? When I first start working with a new client and we begin to ask these questions, it can be unnerving. It’s an entirely new way of thinking and running your business. We’re used to hearing an idea and doing it. That freedom is one of the joys of being a solopreneur, and our natural inclination to take action is one of the hallmarks of solopreneur success.

While I would never want to stifle those tendencies, we need to put the breaks on ever so slightly and establish why we are doing this new thing, how it fits into our plan for success and if in fact it’s worth it for our business. One of the least effective ways to manage your business is to jump from one bright shiny new activity to the next and keep cramming more and more activity into our business without having a plan for how it will help our success. It’s fine to have a few activities that aren’t absolutely pulling their weight in your business if you enjoy them, but having a day full of purposeless activity will lead to exhaustion, discouragement and lack of motivation. Your success will most certainly come from activity, but not just any activity – it has to be a carefully orchestrated mix of actions that work together in a strategic way.

Solopreneur News Roundup, 4/15/11

Hello solopreneurs, and here is the news from this week. I read dozens of newsletters and Google Alerts to pick just a few choice items that are worth your precious time. If you’d like to see these items and a few select others in your Facebook feed, come over and like on my page. Since it is Friday, I’d like to remind and nudge you to make sure to schedule some time off this weekend. Nobody can do what you do exactly how you do it, so it’s important that you refuel so you can keep going!

I’m having my in-laws up for the afternoon on Saturday so they can see our new flooring! We’ve been renovating for over 5 years, and they saw this place before we even purchased it so this is a big “reveal” event!

Tell me about your plans to refuel this weekend in the comments!

Here’s the news:

Success is often build by just plodding through with small steps day after day. Good habits are critical to success!

9 Bad Behaviors of Struggling Startup Founders

It’s tempting to justify expenses when they are for business, but don’t give in too much! Staying lean in your spending will help you be successful.

4 Indulgences Your Business Can’t Afford

Here’s a great, short description of strategic planning in just 3 steps.

3 Steps to Better Management

If you’re not seeing results from your business efforts on Facebook, join me for this webinar. Hubspot knocks it out of the park on their FREE webinars so it will be worth it to go.

Tools for Effective Facebook Marketing

Here’s an inspiring case which shows you can build a successful business doing what others are already doing by finding a better way to do it. Don’t be discouraged by having competition – there’s only one you so nobody can do your work the way you do.

Changing retail $1 at a time

That’s the news…. See you Monday!

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.

Friday Solopreneur News Roundup, 4/8/11

Hello fellow solopreneurs! It’s almost the weekend and that means that one of your to-do items today is to check your calendar and make sure you have some time blocked off to recharge and have some fun. Your work is important to the people you serve, and you can’t serve them if you’re fried to a crisp from working too much. Put your own air mask on first, right?

Here’s the news from this week I thought you’d enjoy. I post these items throughout the week on my Facebook page, so if you just can’t wait till Friday for important items hand-picked for you, come on over and join me on Facebook by clicking like.

Marketing Sherpa publishes such great charts! Here’s one on which tactics are effective at growing your email list.

Most Effective Email List Growth Tactics

You already know working too much is bad for you, but do you know just how bad it really is? Working too many hours is a big temptation for solopreneurs, but it harms our creativity and productivity as well as our personal lives. Get the facts here:

Don’t Melt Down

When you first start your business, there’s so much to do it seems like a reasonable shortcut to run your business finances through your personal accounts. This might be okay for the early phases of your business, but don’t make it a long-term way of doing things.

10 Tricks to Keeping Personal and Business Finances Separate

If you use and follow the use of social media for business, you’ve probably heard somebody tout the usefulness of Twitter for market research. Here’s an interesting study that helps support that. Twitter showed a high ability to predict box office success.

Twitter Can Help Predict Business Trends

Have a great weekend, and leave me a comment with your plans for recharging this weekend.

How long should a voicemail be?

I tend to leave longer voicemails than most, but let me explain before you hate my habit!

One of my favorite business topics to study and coach on is productivity. I try to always make sure I’m getting the most I can out of every effort I make. For both myself and the person I’m calling, this means that whenever it’s possible I leave a voicemail with all the information in it someone needs to answer my question and call me back. If I’m calling about a bill, I leave my account number, invoice number, my identifying information and exactly what my question is. That way, the other person can research the answer and probably leave me a voicemail with all the information I need. Two calls, problem solved. The alternative is leaving just a name and phone number and playing phone tag for days on end, which I dislike.

I got to thinking about this when I heard an “expert” say that he deplores my type of voicemail and that nobody should ever leave more than a name, number and possibly a subject. What an utter waste of time! People are busier than ever, it’s almost impossible to catch people by phone without an appointment and nobody likes phone tag – how many more reasons are there for leaving enough information to get what you need? Yes, sometimes my messages can go on for over a minute, but it’s voicemail – save it and play it whenever it suits you. I don’t understand the logic that days of phone tag taking much more than 2 minutes is preferable to a 1-2 minute voicemail.

To each, their own I suppose…. but you won’t catch me leaving a vague voicemail unless I’ve been specifically told to.

What kind of voicemails do you prefer? What kind do you leave? Post a comment and tell me about it.