solopreneur – Page 3 – Michele Christensen

Measure your results to improve them

From my book “Use Metrics to Know What Works“…

One of the hallmarks of successful entrepreneurs is that they take action. They don’t wait for the time to be perfect or for some mythical moment when everything lines up, they get busy and get going. This is a hugely important trait for success, but it can also be a curse. The problem is that many entrepreneurs are so action oriented that they go off in random directions with no plan. It’s not enough just to take action – you have to be taking action on the right things.

This is where a lot of entrepreneurs get into trouble. Yes, you do need to be taking consistent action, but if you don’t take some time first to determine what you should be doing there’s a good chance of not getting the results you want. The problem is that it is really hard for an action-oriented entrepreneur whose idea keeps him up at night to take a step back and do some research and planning. Later, the problem becomes taking the time to measure and analyze results when you would rather be doing more.

So many business operate like this:

Start doing something in hopes of growing your business
Sales don’t come as desired
Add another activity
Repeat

Can you see the problems with this approach? First, you can only repeat this cycle for so long. There is an absolute upper limit to the amount of activity that you can add to your business. At some point, you will run out of hours in the week. Second, if you keep adding new things without taking away anything you’ll end up with a bigger and bigger list of activities to keep up with. Your attention becomes split and you end up expending a lot of energy switching between and managing all your projects. Third and most serious is that you have absolutely no way to improve. There’s no feedback or indication of what’s working or not and how to improve. This is the biggest problem of all because testing, measuring and adapting is the only sure way you have of making sure you are on a path of continual improvement. Continuing to blindly add activities with no clear plan is like trying to get across town on your bicycle by pedaling faster and making random turns. If you don’t stop and consult a map before and during your trip, you won’t know if you are even heading in the right direction. All of that activity may actually be taking you further from your destination.

It’s almost impossible to get things just right on the first try. That’s where being action-oriented is an asset – as an action taker you just get out there and do something. However, the shortest path to success after you take action is to learn from that experience and adapt your next attempt.

When you take action with no planning, there is no way to measure and no way to close the loop. Everything you do will be just random shooting in the dark with no way to adapt and learn. Often the only feedback you get is “that didn’t work.”

For all of these reasons, metrics (i.e. measuring your results) is often one of the first areas I work on with my clients because we really can’t begin coaching and moving forward effectively until they have a feedback loop in place. As much as I wish I could, I simply can’t pull the right answers out of nothing. I need data to work with in the first place and a way to measure results once our ideas are implemented.

If you aren’t doing any metrics, or you want to see how metrics can help you, head over to the Kindle store and grab my book “Use Metrics to Know What Works.” This article is taken from Chapter 1, and the rest of the book teaches you not only the principles of metrics but how to do metrics for specific purposed in your business. Grab your copy here:

Use Metrics to Know What Works

(No Kindle device? No problem! You can download a free Kindle app for your phone or tablet, or install the free Kindle reader for your desktop.)

Learning without implementation accomplishes nothing

Ask Me Anything, Segment 8

(Prefer to read in stead of watch? Scroll down below the video player for the notes.)

Earlier this year, I gave my email subscribers the chance to ask me anything they wanted to about their business. In this video, I talk about the trap of learning too much and not implementing enough. Learning new skills to build your business is a great thing to do, but you have to implement what you learn for it to help your business grow. Learning without implementation does not help your business. This is Segment #8 in the Ask Me Anything series. You can find the entire series on my blog or YouTube Channel under Ask Me Anything. www.michelechristensen.com

(Note the event link I mentioned around the [2:00] minute mark does not show up on some views of this blog post. Here is the link: www.michelechristensen.com/blbp)

If you prefer to read instead of watch, here are the notes for this video:

Learning is fun, and implementing can be long, hard work so there is a big temptation to just keep learning and not take the time to implement.
The fun of doing new things begins when you finish them and they begin to work. If you want to be successful, you have to buckle down and implement what you are learning and not just jump to the next thing.
I attended a live weekend event last year and it took me 5 months to get everything from that event implemented. Make sure your time and money investment pays off when you attend a live event by implementing what you learn. For more information on the Big List, Big Profits event, click here.
The one thing to take from this video: implement what you learn or you are just wasting time.
If you like this tip, please go to www.michelechristensen.com and enter your name and email address so you can receive ongoing tips and strategies just for solopreneurs!

Automate Your Grunt Work – free sample chapters!

One of the biggest problems solopreneurs face is how to get it all done. There’s so much to do, and only you to do it. Even if you use outsourced help, there is still an infinite amount of things you could do to grow your business and you can only do some of them.

Part of managing your workload is making sure you are working on the right things and not wasting time on activities that don’t produce results. For the activities that do add value or simply need to be done, I suggest automating as much as possible. Automation has several advantages over doing it yourself or having someone do it for you, and some of those advantages are:

Automation can run with little or no management. Once you set up an automated process, it can often run with no intervention by you indefinitely.
Automation is cheaper. Many of the tools I use are free or very inexpensive.
Automated process are generally error free. Even the best and most conscientious human will make mistakes, but computers don’t. A well-designed process can save you mistakes later.

I believe that automation is important enough to solopreneurs that I’ve written an entire book on the subject. I’d like to offer you a free sample, so you can see how automation can help your business be more streamlined. If you are interested in getting two complete chapters from my book “Automate Your Grunt Work,” fill in the form below and the chapters will be on their way!

Fear of Missing Out (#fomo)

Ask Me Anything, Segment 7

Earlier this year, I gave my email subscribers the chance to ask me anything they wanted to about their business. This video explains how “Fear of Missing Out” or #fomo can drive you to spend way too much time trying to learn new things instead of growing your business.

The first two things to learn when you are just starting your solopreneur business

Ask Me Anything, Segment 6

Earlier this year, I gave my email subscribers the chance to ask me anything they wanted to about their business. In this video, I share the two things that I think are important for new solopreneur business owners to focus on learning when they are just starting out. This is Segment 6, and the link I mention in the video is here: http://www.getyourlistgrowing.com

40 Self-Care Practices to Keep You Well

Being stressed and overly busy are things that many people know well. As a solopreneur, we are vulnerable to stress and overwhelm because there are so many balls to keep in the air. If you run your business correctly, it is do-able to have a profitable business and an enjoyable life.

Part of running your business is taking care of yourself. When you ARE the business, you have to care for your most important asset – YOU. If you aren’t in top form, how will you serve others?

To give you some self-care ideas, I have a guest post from Tandy Elisala, Founder and CEO at The Center for Inspiring Greatness. This woman knows how to get things done and how to practice self-care. Check out the bio at the end to see what I’m talking about.

Here’s the article:

Self-Care. We know we should be good to ourselves and spend time taking care of ourselves. Sometimes we’re good about it and other times…not so much. Stress can have a serious impact on our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being.

“Harmony is the inner cadence of contentment we feel when the melody of life is in tune. When somehow we’re able to strike the right chord – to balance the expectations of our families and our responsibilities in the world on the one hand with our inner need for spiritual growth and personal expressions on the other…Usually, when the distractions of daily life deplete our energy, the first thing we eliminate is the thing we need the most: quiet, reflective time. Time to dream, time to think, time to contemplate what’s working and what’s not, so that we can make changes for the better… Learn how to pause.”

~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

I don’t know about you but when I am super, over the top busy is when I need to exercise the most self-care. It’s also the time when I tend to fall out of these habits. It’s the worst thing we can possibly do! It’s almost like the busier we get, the more stressed we get and the less time we take for ourselves. I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of this from time to time. The truth is… If you aren’t taking care of yourself, there will be nothing left for anyone else.

If you aren’t taking care of yourself, there will be nothing left for anyone else. Click To Tweet

Taking even five minutes a day on a self-care ritual will help your overall well-being. Here is a list of 40 simple self-care tips in no particular order:

1. Get enough sleep – 7-9 hours of sleep a night is what most people need.

2. Take deep breaths throughout the day.

3. Spend time with someone you love.

4. Spend time with a friend.

5. Take a walk.

6. Prioritize your day either each morning or each evening for the next day.

7. Read a book or watch a movie…preferably a funny one!

8. ASK for help.

9. Exercise.

10. Listen to music! Music is a universal language:-)

11. Take a vacation.

12. Reduce time on the computer and/or TV…and don’t eat while watching TV.

13. Eat slowly and with family.

14. Take up a hobby.

15. Review your goals.

16. Have a gratitude practice. Say, write or affirm three things you are thankful for each day.

17. Enjoy a bubble bath.

18. Enjoy nature. If you can’t spend time outdoors, open your doors or windows to feel the outside…unless it’s snowing or dreadful weather…then stay inside:-)

19. Meditate

20. Pray

21. Write, say, or silently affirm affirmations. Focus on all things positive.

22. Paint your nails

23. Get a massage or give yourself a foot or hand massage.

24. Get reflexology.

25. Get a hair cut.

26. Pet a furry animal (if you have a cat or dog, that’s perfect).

27. Make and keep doctors appointments.

28. Cook your favorite (healthy) foods.

29. Play card games.

30. Give yourself a facial.

31. Take a class.

32. Go see a local comedy show.

33. Take a nap.

34. Write a letter to a friend or hand write thank you notes. Yes, I said hand write.

35. Find a way to pay it forward.

36. Eat right.

37. Drink enough water.

38. Have an ‘evidence of success’ jar and put something in this jar DAILY that you are thankful for, something that went right that day or something you learned. At the end of each month (or wait until the end of the year), you can read all your notes and really feel blessed!

39. Attend a church service that speaks to your soul.

40. Set time aside to do all of your errands and block the time and get ‘er done. You’ll feel better knowing everything is done in one afternoon (for most types of errands anyhow).

There are countless ways and variations to exercise self-care. Making sure you have a self-care practice in place is key to maintaining balance…particularly when things get hurried in life.

Taking even five minutes a day on a self-care ritual will help your overall well-being.Click To Tweet

Tandy Elisala

Founder and CEO at Center for Inspiring Greatness

Tandy is a Certified Professional Success Coach, Mindset Mentor, Author, Speaker and Consultant. She is certified in various alternative-healing modalities including Hypnotherapy, Thought Field Therapy, and Reiki. Tandy has 25 years’ proven experience as a corporate executive, speaker and coach. Tandy was a full-time caregiver for both parents simultaneously while kicking cancer’s butt a third time and raising three children as a single parent. Tandy’s book, Healing Through the Chaos, helps families taking care of loved ones navigate the issues associated with caregiving. Tandy lives in Tempe, Arizona, with her three kids, amazing dog, and three cats. Order Tandy’s book at www.tandyelisala.com or www.amazon.com.

Brand new: Strategic Solopreneurs Facebook group!

Want to connect with other business owners rocking the solopreneur business world? Come join this brand new Facebook group that is just for people who love their one-person business.

Who is this for? Anybody who dreams of a successful, sustainable and profitable one-person business. It can be done and it is a joyful way to work. However, just because you’re a solopreneur doesn’t mean you can or should go it completely alone. Share your successes and challenges, get ideas and input and contribute what you do best.

Ready to join? Click the link below and request to join. Your request will be approved within 1 business days in most cases.

Strategic Solopreneurs Facebook Group

Want more information before you join? The group guidelines are in the “About” section at the link above, and a copy is pasted below for your convenience. See you there!

Welcome smart business owner! I’m so excited that you have embraced the simple and profitable solopreneur business model. In this group you’ll find a wide variety of businesses, but we share a common love of running a one-person business.

Here you can find connection and interaction that working alone can be lacking. We’re about helping each other and learning, not spam or promotion.

Questions are welcome! You can ask about best practices, which tools to use, what’s working now, or get opinions on your ideas. Please refrain from posting questions that are easily answered with a Google search. Part of being a successful solopreneur means that you are willing to do research when you need to learn something new.

You may post to the wall at any time, but there is a specific theme for each weekday. If you want to participate in that day’s theme, post your response in the comments of the post showing that day’s theme. Promotion is only allowed on Thursday when that is the theme of the day, and you may only post a promotion in the thread for the theme of the day. Promotion includes both paid and free offers.

Here’s a peek at the weekly lineup:

Metrics Monday – We’ll take a look at one thing you can be measuring to help you businesses
Social Tuesday – Connect and share on other social networks
Strategy Wednesday – Make sure you know why you are doing every single thing you do
Promo Thursday – Post your free and paid offers in the thread for today’s theme
Fun Friday – This will be all about fun and getting to know each other
Wellness Weekends – Thoughts on leisure, recreation, quiet time and time off.

To help you become more productive and feel less overwhelmed right away, I have a free report for you that gives you simple changes you can make to your daily to-do list that you can start doing today! Grab the report here: https://www.michelechristensen.com/daily

Smile and laugh to de-stress, calm down and boost your mood

It’s easy to let stress accumulate when you work from home and work mostly alone. Today, I have a guest post from Certified Nutritionist Trudy Scott on using smiling and laughter to feel better.

From Trudy:

My biggest stress-relief and mood-boosting tip is to smile and laugh! It is one of the many things I encourage my clients to do! And I personally love a good comedy and opportunity to smile and laugh! I almost feel like I need my “fix” of laughter by the end of the day. It really relaxes me, boosts my mood and helps me sleep better.

I was further inspired to make a commitment to laugh each day when I read all the research supporting the many and varied health benefits. Many days I’ll just take a break and engage in spontaneous laughter for no reason at all – just the act of laughing leaves me feeling SO good. I do food-mood presentations around the country and typically end my talks with a laugher session with the audience! It’s a great hit and they leave my talk feeling great!

A 2012 research paper in Physiological Science actually showed that if you smile, you feel less stressed. Also in a 1999 study, “Personality traits such as warmth, calmness, extroversion, and low anxiety were closely related to an attractive smile.”

Laughter falls into a similar category as smiling and is wonderful for improving mood and reducing anxiety and stress and pain. This 2012 paper. showed that laughter “is associated with feelings of wellbeing” and improved mood, likely related to “the release of endorphins.” The release of endorphins also reduced pain levels.

Recent research also shows that the “combination of a laughter and exercise program might have physiological and psychological health benefits for the elderly”. Laughter may also “be an effective strategy to motivate the elderly to participate in physical activity.”

Laughter is actually good for the heart as indicated by the title of a 2009 paper: “The effect of mirthful laughter on the human cardiovascular system.”

Here are some things to make you chuckle: a fun post I did awhile ago about a wonderfully funny and romantic blog called The Musings of a Romantic Comedy Girl and a video of a laughing baby. Enjoy!

And of course, the added bonus: if you eat foods that raise serotonin (like grass-fed read meat and wild fish like salmon), you’ll be happier and more inclined to smile too – and feel even less anxious and less stressed. Tryptophan or 5-HTP will help boost your serotonin levels and are wonderful if you do have low serotonin. You can check for low serotonin levels using this Amino Acids Mood Questionnaire from The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Trudy Scott (CN), Certified Nutritionist is the founder of www.everywomanover29.com, a thriving nutrition practice with a focus on food, mood and women’s health. Trudy educates women about the amazing healing powers of food and nutrients and helps them find natural solutions for anxiety and other mood problems. Trudy’s goal for all her clients (and all women): “You can be your healthiest, look your best and feel on-top-of-the-world emotionally!

Product Review – Business Marketing With Pinterest

My first exposure to Pinterest was through Facebook, where I would see some of what my friends posted. I enjoyed what I saw, which was mainly food, pets and fashion. Given what I was experiencing, I couldn’t see how I could use Pinterest for my business. Pinterest is all about beautiful images (or so I thought), and my business doesn’t readily create vivid images. I held out and didn’t jump in because I have a rule in my business:

I don’t add anything new until I know exactly how it will help my business and how to measure if it is working.

So, I waited and watched Pinterest grow. I saw the buzz and began to see case studies of people with businesses similar to my own getting amazing results. By results, I mean sales, leads and exposure to new people. I did some reading up and thought I understood enough to make Pinterest work for me and so I jumped in. I created my account and began pinning away. When I tried to measure my results, well, I couldn’t. You can’t really measure zero.

That’s right, zero. I got no new customers or leads, and very little traffic from Pinterest at first. I chalked it up as a failed experiment and moved on but kept my account so I could gaze at puppies, recipes I would never make and beautiful home ideas that I would never use. Fast forward a few months and one of my most trusted colleagues starts getting great results (traffic, leads and INCOME) from Pinterest and creates a training to help other people duplicate her success. Ok, now I’m intrigued. What did I miss?

I purchased Business Marketing with Pinterest by Becky Sangha, and committed to watching the entire thing and implementing every step of it. That last part is really important – as with any training, for it to do any good you have to consume it (watch, read, listen, etc) AND implement what you are learning. No training will help you if it sits on your hard drive or bookshelf and you don’t act on it. The same is true with this training.

What I learned was that Pinterest is a traffic driving machine! The very first week I checked my traffic stats after starting this training, Pinterest was in my top ten sources of referral traffic! Keep in mind that I had only just gotten started and hadn’t even done that much. By week two, Pinterest was my #4 source of referral traffic and my #7 source overall, and I still hadn’t implemented the entire system! After using the system for about a year, Pinterest is consistently in my top ten traffic sources every week.

What’s really great about Pinterest traffic is that these visitors are interested in what you have to offer! The very name of the site is a combination of “Pin” and “interest,” and you create pinboards based on interest. A person wouldn’t be following your boards or clicking your pins if they weren’t interested by what they saw. I find that Pinterest traffic tends to stay on my site for longer and look at more pages while they are there.

So the verdict on this training is a big thumbs up! Not only does it deliver great results, it’s laid out in a systematic way that makes it easy to follow and implement. Becky has a great teaching style and does something I think is really important – she explains the reasons behind everything she tells you to do. She also gives you everything you need to get completely up to speed. Even if you have no idea what subjects you could create pins about, she has you covered!

I suggest you grab this product if:

You want to use Pinterest for your business (don’t try to figure it out yourself!)
You have a website that you want more interested traffic for
You have a business that isn’t particularly visual and want to know how you can use Pinterest anyway
You already know how great Pinterest is, but don’t know what kind of pins to create for your business
You enjoy Pinterest for personal use but aren’t sure how to make the leap to using it for business

Check out Business Marketing with Pinterest and let me know what you think!

I’m a proud affiliate for this program, and the above links are affiliate links.

Save time by automatically pre-sorting your email

Almost everyone I know gets a lot of email. Being efficient at handling your email is a must for many professionals, and in this post I’ll give you one way you can use to save time by pre-sorting your email.

What’s pre-sorting?

One of the reasons that email can be so daunting is that what has to done to take care of an email isn’t always clear. An email might contain something to read, an invitation to decide on, a request for information or an actual task for you to do. You first have to determine the action that needs to be taken, and then you need to do that action. Sometimes, the action isn’t clear and sometimes there is more than one action to be taken.

In addition, emails can have different priorities. Anything from a customer or client should be a high priority. An interesting article may have a lower priority. Any bills to be paid that have to do with keeping you open for business have to be high priority.

Once you’ve established some rules about how to handle certain recurring emails, you can set up rules that separate your emails based on those rules. Anything with no set rule stays in your inbox until you deal with it.

How do I set this up?

Fortunately, Gmail has a simple way to do this using filters. When you find an email for which you’d like to set up a rule (filter), you open a drop down menu and follow a series of menus that tell Google what your criteria is and how to handle emails that meet that criteria. An example of a way you might use this is to create a filter for any email that comes from the domain of one of your customers. Emails from your customers could be labeled “customer,” and get higher priority than other email.

But what if I don’t want to use Gmail?

Gmail is hands-down the best email program I’ve used whether paid or free. However, some people feel that using an “@gmail” address makes them look less established. For the record, I don’t agree but since there are many people who do feel this way, I use an email that ends with my domain (“@michelechristensen” in my case). The good news is you can still use Gmail, the presorting feature and all the other cool things Gmail can do AND use your @mydomain email address.

One way to use Gmail and have your email come from @mydomain is to do a one-time setup that links the two addresses. In your host (where you get your @mydomain email from), set your email to forward to your Gmail account. In your Gmail settings, tell Gmail to use your @mydomain email address as the sender address.

Emails sent to your domain email address “pass through” that address and into your Gmail account, and when you reply your recipient sees an email from your domain not Gmail. Be sure to test this thoroughly to make sure it works and you don’t have any problem getting your email.

Here’s some help for you:

This pre-sorting is one of the automation strategies I share in my book “The Solopreneur’s Success Strategy: Automate Your Grunt Work.” In the chapter on pre-sorting your email, I give much more detailed instructions and you can get that chapter and one additional one for free! Enter your name and email address below and your free chapters will be on their way.

PS – Know someone who spends way too much time on their email? I’d love it if you sent them a link to this article