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Today I’m a guest poster on the Coaching Confidence Blog.  My topic is on narrowing your focus in order to be more successful.  I see so many solopreneurs who are doing far too much to actually be successful.  When you are spread so thin, you can’t really gain expertise in any given area and it’s hard to actually put enough time into any area for it to be successful.  I’ve spent a lot of time this year seeing what I can get rid of while improving my bottom line.   The answer is, quite a lot!

Below is a link to the article.  Give it a read and let me know what you think.

How Narrowing Your Focus Can Make You More Successful

Please use the Pin It and social sharing buttons below to spread the word!  Thanks.

 

Last week, I had the pleasure of doing a live Hangout with Jeff Zelaya to talk about entrepreneurship and what it takes to start your own business.  We had a great time and talked about some of the challenges facing people who want to be entrepreneurs.  The 26-minute Hangout was recorded and you can catch the replay at the link below:

Hangout with Jeff Zelaya and Michele Christensen

 

I believe that building an email list is one of the most important things a business owner can do.  This applies to almost any business and email marketing can be used for almost any type of product or service.  Just to be clear, the type of listbuilding I practice and teach is strictly opt-in – that means that each and every person has indicated they want to hear from me either by filling out a web form or by buying something.  Adding people to your list without their consent is spam and it makes you look bad so please don’t ever do it.

I started my listbuilding in 2010, about a year after I started my business.  My mentor at the time taught a really effective system that had gotten her great results and still does.  It also has served many of her clients well.  She teaches what I would call a “formal” email newsletter.  It has a specific format with some graphic design to it and comes on a regular schedule.  In between, you can do short focused emails as needed for specific events.  I used this model until January of this year, and while I had some success with it by this year I was just bored with it and had begun to dread that bi-weekly process of cranking out a newsletter.

I decided to switch over to shorter, more focused emails that went out when I had something to say rather than on a set schedule.  I would keep my emails short and usually with just one item.  I also used a plain text format to make it easy to load and read on any device.  I announced to my list that I was making the change and that I would try it for 3 months and decide at that point if it would be permanent.  You can read what I sent to my list here.

Well, the three months are up and I’ve made my decision.  Let me tell you some of the things that happened.

As far as I can tell, I lost no subscribers due to this change.  I saw no mass exodus and not even a spike in unsubscribes.

My open rates went way up.  If you are unfamiliar with what that term it means that a much greater percentage of people who receive my emails are opening them.

I’ve had a record-breaking quarter in list growth both in percentage growth and straight number of people.

It seems clear my community likes this format, but what about me?

I have come to LOVE doing my email marketing again!  I love just being able to jump on the keyboard and tell this amazing group of people about something I hand-picked for them whether it’s mine or someone else’s.  It feels much simpler, more linear, and more authentic.  I love being able to send a message if and only if I have something of value and not because it’s on the schedule for today.

So, the conclusion?  I’m sticking with my current format of short, focused, text emails.

Have you tried different formats for your email marketing?  What’s worked and why?  Tell me about it in the comments.

If you want to receive my emails, sign up using the box at the top of the sidebar to the right.

Finally, if you aren’t using email marketing or you are but don’t see any sales or results, mark the date May 7th on your calendar.  I’ll be doing a free training webinar with a special partner on that day.  Be sure to check back here, connect with me on social media or sign up for my email list using the box on the right to get your invitation to the webinar.

Around the beginning of the new year, there is a lot of drive and energy around changing things up.  It’s a great time to take stock of what is working and decide what will be different in the coming year.  Now that April is well under way, it’s time to take stock again and see how things are shaping up.  Are you where you wanted to be?  What’s done and what’s not done?

It’s also a great time of year to do some spring cleaning in your business.  In the same way spring feels like a good time to air out, clear out and deep clean your house, it’s also a good time to do the same for your business.

Here are a few places to get started:

• Revise your autoresponder messages.  Review, rewrite, change the signature, change the greeting, change the language if it no longer suits you.
• Update your information products.  What has changed since you first released it?  What have you learned that you can now add?  Is the price still appropriate?
• Freshen your social media profiles.  Are your pictures all current?  Is your bio and business information polished?
• Review your content calendar.  Has anything slipped?  Do you need to reschedule anything?
• Check your big picture schedule for the year.  Are you ready for your next big projects?  Do you need to rearrange anything?
• Clear your to-do list.  Are there any small, nagging tasks you could quickly complete?
• Empty your email inbox.  Now is a great time to get your email under control.

I recently completed one of these projects myself by revising the ebook version of my ecourse “5 Essential Skills for Solopreneur Success.”  It had been about 2 years since I last updated it, and I found lots of places to make improvements in it.  Check it out here.

What projects will you do to spring clean your business?

Here’s a great list of leaders in the solopreneur world for you to follow on Twitter.  I’m honored to be among them!

Check the list out here:

50 Solopreneur Thought Leaders to Follow on Twitter

 

A phrase I hear a lot is “get results.”  It’s used to encourage a specific action such as “Do XYZ to get results” or as a way to describe success as in “This program will get results.”  But what does “get results” really mean?

The bottom line in any business is, well, the bottom line.  If you are in business, you are trying to make money.  If you aren’t trying to make money, then you are running a charitable organization or you have a hobby.  However, since you are here, reading this article instead of an article on a get-rich-quick site, I assume your business is about making money while serving others.  Note that the two things – making money and serving others – are not exclusive and in fact should both be a part of your work.

A tricky part of running a business is that there can be a lot of steps to making that bottom line grow, and that’s where a lot of results are.  If you attend a networking event and collect a bunch of names of people who want you to call them, that’s a great result but not one that adds to your bottom line right away.  Yes, eventually, the goal is to make more sales or get more referrals but the effort to get those names yields no new sales until you start following up.  Ditto for building a social media following, growing an email subscriber list or getting publicity.

It can be easy to get discouraged or forget about the end result when you are working on getting results in areas other than sales.  It’s also easy to be led down a rabbit hole and lose sight of why you are doing something.  For example if you guest blog for someone for the purpose of getting more exposure, it’s easy to just measure how many people have seen the post.  It’s satisfying, concrete and feels good to see people reading what you wrote and as that number climbs you can say you are getting results.  However, if that added exposure doesn’t yield at least the possibility of new sales at some point then it may not have been worth it.

The big result in any business is whether or not it makes a profit.  However, there are a lot intermediate results that happen along the way.  There are things that contribute to your ability to make a profit that are important.  Always know what the desired result of your action is, and how it will contribute to the bottom line.

 

 

How many social sites do you use to promote your business?  Whatever your number is, it may be too many.

It’s easy to get on so many sites that you don’t have the time to do any of them properly.  That’s what I mean by being spread too thin.  The entire point of using social media for your business is to get results, and you need to put in enough time on each site to produce results.  If you aren’t putting in the minimum amount of time on each site to generate results, you are getting very little value for the time you do spend.  Sure, there is a small amount of value to just being on a site, but the where the big value lies is in getting to that critical point where you are doing enough to help your business.

How does this happen?  How do smart, successful business owners end up madly trying to keep their social sites updated?  Each day, a different people will tell you that you have to be on certain social sites or risk business death.  It can be scary when to hear this, and so the natural inclination is to rush in and get on whatever that site is.  That’s how you get spread too thin.

So how do you decide which sites to be on, robustly and fully, and which sites to ignore for now?

The first, and best answer is to test what works for your business.  Every  business, business owner and community is different.  What works great for someone else may not work great for you.  The only way to know for sure about any business tactic is to set some goals and test how well the tactic you are trying performs.  Know what it is you are trying to achieve from your social media efforts – is it traffic to your site?  Sales?  Awareness?  Once you know what you want to achieve you can measure if it’s working.

Aside from measuring your results, it’s important to consider which sites feel most natural to you.  Which site or sites do you just love being on?  Which ones feel more like play than work? Which fit what you sell?  If you can find the ones that fit your personality, you are more likely to keep them up.

It’s also important to look at bigger trends you hear from lots of sources with data, not just what somebody says.  If one person says a social site is hot or that it’s dead, I might notice and tuck that statement away for further analysis.  However, if I hear the same statement over and over from a variety of sources and those sources are supporting their claim with data, now they have my attention.  One person saying something doesn’t make it a fact, but lots of people supporting the same idea with data make that idea much more worthy of consideration.

A final, but equally important factor in picking social sites is where your customers are.  Instead of trying to drag the right people to the site you are on, find out where you potential customers tend to hang out and go there.  You won’t reach any of your social media goals if your content is in front of the wrong people.

Figure out the few social site where you need to be, and then do them right!  Stop scattering your energy so widely that you get no results.

As for my business, Pinterest is working great right now!  I’m getting high quality traffic to my site from Pinterest, and that means the visitors stay for a while and view more pages while there.  If you think Pinterest might be good for your solopreneur business, join me on this free training with Becky Sangha, creator of Business Marketing With Pinterest.  You’ll find out how to get traffic and increase your earnings by using Pinterest, and how Pinterest can be used by a variety of different businesses.  If time is short like it is for most solopreneurs, you’ll love her “10 minutes per week” strategy (that’s not a typo, she really has a strategy that works in just 10 minutes per week!).

Get details and register for the free training here 

 

As a solopreneur, there is no shortage of things competing for your time.  On top of the activities that make money, there’s a lot of back-of-house things to take care of.  Hiring help is one way to help get things off your plate, but if you aren’t ready to do that you can start by creating systems and processes for the common, repeated activities in your business.



A system or process doesn’t have to be complex or formal to be useful.  A system can be just a way you get the parts of your business to work together.  For example, you may have a system for tracking your social media reach.  A process can be as simple as a set of steps written on a piece of paper or in a document.

Systems and processes are valuable because they save you time and effort.  Instead of creating a process from scratch each time you do it, having something documented gives you a place to start at a minimum.  Once you’ve done something a few times, your process will be much more polished and precise.

Having a set way to perform repeated tasks frees up valuable brain space for more creative pursuits.  Instead of trying to figure out all the things you can do with your blog post once it’s posted, you can focus on writing a good post and then just run it through your process.

I encourage all solopreneurs to begin creating systems and processes as soon as they start their business.  Start creating your process the first time you do something, and by the second time you do you’ll have a process.

Your time and brainpower are too valuable to waste on reinventing the wheel for processes that can be done the same way each time.  Your creativity can serve a higher purpose than re-figuring things out.

Starting right now, observe what you do in your business and see what you can create a process or system for.  What is the first area you can improve?

Creating systems is on of the things I discuss for the very early stated of your business in my system “The ABC’s of a Successful Solopreneur Business.”  If you are just getting started or have never gotten your business fully set up, click here and check the system out.  

 

There’s a curious thing about being a solopreneur – in order to be successful and happy as a solopreneur, you have to like being alone and like people too.



You have to like being alone because much of your work will happen while you are alone.  The business is really built on you and what you offer.  You are the business.  From an outsider’s perspective, it might seem like the perfect fit if you don’t like people.  However, a one-person business is the possibly the worst place to try and hide if you don’t like people.

As a solopreneur, you provide the product or service your business sells which may or may not involve people.  You also provide the marketing and customer support, and those definitely involve people!  Any time you collaborate for publicity, co-creation or for any reason it’s you who is doing the collaboration.  As a solopreneur, there isn’t anyone who can take those meetings for you.  Even if you use outsourced help, those people are not the face of your business the way you are.

If you are thinking of a solopreneur business, be honest with yourself about how much you like people.  If your ideal is to sit behind your computer and never talk to anyone you might not be able to build a successful solo business.  If you like people and you relish quiet time alone, you might just find a business model you love!

This is one of the ideas I help you explore in my book “Is a Solopreneur Business Right for You?”  It’s available now in the Kindle store for reading on any Kindle device, on the free Kindle desktop reader, or on a free app for your tablet or smart phone.  

 

 

2014 is shaping up to be a year of books for me!  Not only am I writing the first book of a series, but I am reading a lot!  It’s been said that you have to read in order to be an author, and reading is one of my favorite ways to learn so I’ve been doing a lot of it.

My latest book is from copywriter Michele PW and is called “5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners Make When They Hire a Copywriter and How to Avoid Them.”  Michele is a copywriter herself and teaches other people not only copywriting but marketing and business savvy that come from learning copywriting.  I took a copywriting course with her called Juicy Online Essentials Marketing Bootcamp, and it proved to be a turning point in my business.  Not only did I learn a lot about creating my own sales copy, it helped me get really clear on what I offer and who I love to work with.  I’ve used the skills I learned in that class to help clients with their copy and marketing.

The book starts with an explanation of what copywriters do and why you would want to hire one.  In true Michele PW style, this section is a great example of direct response copywriting (i.e. copy that makes you want to DO something) and makes you want to read the rest of the book.

She also points out that since there is no certification or license, anyone can call themselves a copywriter.  What this means is that just because someone has designated themselves a copywriter doesn’t mean that you should infer any level of experience or skill.  She gives detailed steps on exactly how to determine if a person has the qualifications you need for your work.

Another thing I loved about this book is the emphasis on you doing your part of the work when hiring a copywriter.  The best writer in the world can’t work their magic if you don’t give them the raw materials they need.  You’ve got to be clear on exactly what you want from the copy, who it is for and how they can benefit before the writer even gets started.

The final point I want to highlight is that she wisely draws a line between writing marketing copy and creating marketing strategy.  Some copywriters do both, but you shouldn’t assume a writer can or will assess your overall strategy when you hire them to write a sales page.

The best news I have for you is that this book is free until Monday January 20th, so grab your copy before that sweet deal goes away!

Here’s the link to the book:

5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners Make When They Hire a Copywriter and How to Avoid Them