Self Employed Success

Many people quake in fear at the idea of writing a business plan. They imagine in their mind a 100-page document full of charts and financial figures. While it’s possible to create a business plan of that magnitude when trying to get capital for your business, a typical business plan for self-employed people should be less than 10 pages.

The purpose of a business plan, for a self-employed person who is financing his own business, is to have a central repository for all strategic thinking about the business for the coming year or two. Here’s what should be included:

• Your business idea in three sentences.
• Your target audience.
• The challenges that your target audience faces.
• The benefits of using your products and services to meet those challenges.
• Your company brand and image.
• Your projected revenue and expenses for a year.
• If you project more expenses than revenue for the first year, a statement about where the money will come from to pay for those expenses.
• A list of your major competitors, and how you are different from them.
• At least six markting techniques you’re planning to use over the coming year, when you plan to implement them, and what results do you expect from them.
• A list of people who you will need to hire to implement your business plan or marketing plan (unless you have the business skills and time, yourself, to do all the work).

You should review your business plan, and update it, annually. I recommend reviewing the marketing section of your business plan quarterly, so that you can gauge the success of your marketing campaigns.

In this great article by Christopher Knight, “Is EarthLink Dropping Your Permission-Based List Members?” you can learn more about the recently problems you may have been having with Earthlink email addresses suddenly bouncing from your mailing list.

When you see a lot of bounces from a certain ISP (like Earthlink, Comcast, or others), it’s a good idea to do a little manual research to find out what error message is really coming back from those ISPs. In Christopher’s case, the automated message he was receiving back was a request that HE fill out a request for the recipient to receive his email. What looked like “hard bounces” (email addresses that were no longer valid) were actually being captured by Earthlink’s challenge/response system.

This article is well worth reading if you send out email newsletters or other email marketing.

Good news to report!

I’ve been selected by Practice Pay Solutions to act as their National Education Director beginning July 1. I’m taking this position over from C.J. Hayden (author of “Get Clients Now”), who had been acting as Education Director for the past six months. I’ve been using Practice Pay Solutions as my merchant account and shopping cart for years, as have many coaches, and I can attest to both the quality of their services and the excellent customer service they provide.

My role will be to create and give free classes and teleclasses to PPS members, member associations, and the general public, on e-commerce, creating passive income, and automating your business by accepting credit cards for your services, workshops and information products. I’ll also be writing a lot of how-to articles for the PPS newsletter as well as some member association websites.

You’ll be seeing quite a lot of me all over the place! I hope you’ll be able to make the classes. They’re free!

I’ll be doing this new role a few hours a week, and still devoting the majority of my time to Passion For Business in my small business coaching role.

Recently, Susan Klein gave a teleclass to Passion For Business subscribers entitled, “Stress Makes Us Stupid.” Wow! What a great class!

Not only did she tell us why stress makes us stupid (biologically-speaking), but she tells us what to do about it. Great advice, good tips and wonderful stories…listen for free here:

http://www.passionforbusiness.com/teleclass/susan-klein.htm

As I sit here writing my “to do” list for the upcoming months, I can feel that weird little tingle in the pit of my stomach: Overwhelm. There’s so much to do! How will I get it all done?

Then I remember all the tricks and tips I’ve learned over the years of how to manage entrepreneurial overwhelm:

1. Breathe. Stop whatever you’re doing, and take several deep breaths. Close your eyes and take a visual and emotional break from the craziness.

2. Get Organized. Write down your “to do” list all in one place (instead of having all those little Post-It notes all over your desk). Next, write a priority next to each item on your list. Is it urgent (“U”)? Is it Important But Not Urgent (“I”)? Is it something that has to be done this month, or can it wait until next month?

3. Get Help. Look at your list and determine if everything on it must be done by you. Don’t fall into the trap of “Oh, it will take me longer to explain it to someone than to just do it myself.” Instead, think of the “explaining time” as an investment: once you explain it one time, the other person can document the procedure and repeat it over and over again.

4. Action Alleviates Anxiety. Pick one high-priority task on your “to do” list and do it. Nothing relieves stress better than getting off your butt and taking action. Don’t fall in the trap of picking a low-priority task just because it’s easy. Do the things that matter.

5. Just Say No. Look at your “to do” list and ask yourself if you can simply say No to any of these tasks? Remember, you are in control of your task list and your calendar. Only you can overbook yourself, so only you can say No to requests for your time.

6. Focus. Avoid the temptation to multi-task and choose instead to focus solely on the task in front of you. If you have to, set a kitchen timer and tell yourself you’ll work on the task for 15 or 30 minutes without taking a break or doing other work.

I think I’ll start by taking a nice long breath…

Technorati tags: entrepreneurship,overwhelm

According to this report, sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, over 464,000 new businesses were created each month in 2005. That’s over 5 million new businesses!

The highest increases were in the Northeast and Midwest, while the South and West actually decreased in numbers. I find this interesting, because it does not correlate to population growth and declines in those same areas.

In another report (PDF), North Carolina is increasing its entrepreneurial activity, especially among rural areas. The report also gives some “lessons learned” for effective rural entrepreneurship strategies.

A quick reminder for all of you in the USA who pay estimated self-employment tax on your Schedule C: Happy Tax Day! Today is the day you need to send in your quarterly estimated taxes.

Gee, what fun!

As many of you may remember, I had a lovely time a few months ago with people stealing text from my website. Now, someone has upped the anty by stealing the layout and logo design of my website.

I contacted the life coach who’s logo and banner layout was extraordinarily similar to mine, and within two days, she modified her logo and banner.

(Thanks to Barry for notifying me about this one. You’re a gem, Barry! I owe ya…)

In another instance, the entire text from my home page was on another coach’s website. Within three days, she had removed it and replaced it with her own text. In both these cases, they said it was their website designer who had stolen my ideas. Can we not trust website designers? Can we not have clauses in our contracts with them, stating plainly that they are creating original websites for us and any damages for copyright infrigment will be fully upon the website designer?

And why should I have to pay an attorney to get these modifications made, or to take people to court?

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Katherine Scott was the guest speaker in the June 2006 “Self Employed Success” teleclass, a series of free teleclasses that Passion For Business sponsors each month.

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Your Voice Tells Your Story with guest Katherine Scott

Every person’s life is a rich history of stories and your voice tells your story each time you speak. The sound of your voice is influenced by the perceptions you have about yourself and they, in turn, influence how listeners perceive you. The source of your perceptions comes from all the experiences that make up your life story.

To fully access the authenticity of your voice, the sound by which you communicate your story to the outside world must come from your inner being.

In this seminar we explored your voice on two different levels: the actual sound of your voice, and the compelling story or purpose you express with it. We investigated what you can do to integrate those two levels.

During the teleclass, we examined the following questions:

• What is your voice story?
• What is a voice field and how do you find yours?
• What’s in the gap between your thoughts and your spoken words?
• How do you authentically align your voice with your self?
• How do you achieve both power speaking and power listening?
• How do you build confidence and deal with performance anxiety?

Listen to the recording of the teleclass and pick up the notes here

I know you’ve heard it a thousand times: make your prospective customer feel welcome and safe while they’re learning about your products and services, and they’ll buy from you.

But when you actually see this in action, it’s a miracle to behold.

This afternoon, with several hours to spare before I had to appear at a speaking engagement in New York City, I wandered into Macy’s Herald Square. It’s one of the busiest department stores in New York, and it didn’t help that it was pouring rain and everyone wanted to get inside to dry off a bit.

So how does Macy’s welcome it’s customers? With the most brilliant — and inexpensive — solution that can be handed out at the door on a rainy day: Umbrella Bags. A very nice man in a very nice business suit stood at the door for hours, offering people plastic bags (with the Macy’s logo on it, naturally!) so that they could tuck their wet umbrellas away while they shopped.

You might think this is no big deal, but if you’ve ever shopped in a crowded store, trying to figure out what to do with your web umbrella is a real distraction.

Macy’s made every person who walked through the door feel welcomed and cared for. Net result: less distracted people who could focus on buying.

Now apply this to your business.

If you have an office or a place where you meet customers, how welcoming is it? What color is the decor? Do you see to their basic and common needs, like bathrooms, water, etc.?

If your business has a website, do you give them the information they’re looking for, in a simple and speedy way? Are your text, graphics and colors friendly and welcoming?

When you answer the phone, how is your voice modulated? When you answer emails, what type of reply comes off your keyboard?

Make your customers feel welcomed and cared for, and they’ll return again and again.