Self Employed Success

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and a Happy New Year!

May happiness surround your holiday season, and may peace and prosperity follow you into 2010.

Warmly,

Karyn & Aly

I’m sure you’ve seen it happen every year: your business slows down during predictable times, like the summertime months or year-end. For the self-employed who rely upon steady cash flow, this can be a disconcerting time. Should you just take a time off until things naturally pick up again? Or should you try to find the needle-in-the-haystack business that might be out there during slow times?

This year, vow to be different! Instead of languishing in no-business-never-land, get off your butt and do something to build the foundation of your business so that natural business cycles don’t affect you too deeply:

1. Clean your office. Go through all the piles of papers and magazines that have been sitting around and get rid of them once and for all. Remember the office organizing mantra: do it, ditch it or delegate it. File all your papers, dust and vacuum your office. Reorganize your desk and your office so that you can find everything you need in 60 seconds or less.
2. Take a mini-break from work. Walk away from your office and enjoy a day or two of renewal and relaxation. Go to a day spa. Take a weekend retreat. Go for a walk in the local park. Breathe.
3. Get ready for tax season. If your business slows down during December, no worries! Use that time to prepare your tax files so that you can whiz through tax season (it’s coming sooner than you expect!). Tally business-related mileage for year. Estimate your last tax payment for the current year (many self-employed people make quarterly estimated tax payments; the final payment is usually due on January 15). Send your final invoices for the current year.
4. If the slow time falls around the holidays, use them to your advantage. Get into the holiday spirit with your clients by mailing holiday cards and gifts to them. Make specially-discounted holiday offers to clients/customers. Offer them gift certificates that they can give to their family and friends for your services and products.
5. Do your accounting and bookkeeping. Enter all revenue and expenses into your recordkeeping system. Balance your checkbook. Set your budget and revenue goals for next year.
6. Become goal-oriented. Take this down-time to look at your current goals, to see how you’re doing so far and to write some new goals for the next 12 months. Create an updated marketing plan and budget. Make sure your budget includes a cash reserve to cover you during slow business times. Even if this business slow time falls mid-year, you can still spend time planning for the next 12-24 months.
7. Go back to school. List the topics you’d like to study, the classes you’d like to take, or the books you’d like to read, to keep you up-to-date with your industry and business skills. Use your quiet business times to read, study and add to your intelligence pool.
8. Get some personal chores done. Slow business times are ideal to schedule your annual dental and eye exams. It’s also a great time to clean out the attic, garage or basement. Remember, a strong personal foundation helps to propel your business forward.
9. Go shopping. No, not for personal items (though that’s always fun!), but for business items. Have you been putting off buying a new PC? Now’s the time to research what’s out there and determine your next computer purchase. Is your office chair uncomfortable? Spend some time at office furniture stores “butt-testing” for a quality office chair that will support you properly. Stock up your office supplies. Buy some music CDs to play in your office to inspire you.
10. Spend time with family and friends. When business is busy, it’s easy to sequester yourself away to get all that work done. Now that business is slow, come out of your cocoon and visit with family and friends. They’ve been wondering where you’ve disappeared to!

As you can see, slow business times can be used productively to prepare you for the next burst of business coming your way. Renew your business, your office, your Self, and create a firm foundation for the busy business days ahead! Always ask yourself, “How can I use these days wisely?”

I love to learn new ideas and new skills. The phrase Lifelong Learning truly defines the way I live my life.

Last week I wrote my “learning plan” for 2010, in terms of business topics I want to study … I also plan to learn to play the guitar! By asking a series of questions, I came up with a plan for what I want to study next year, which helps me to keep focused on specific topics and not go running around trying to learn everything at the same time, which leads to poor absorption and implementation of what I learned.

Here’s how you can figure out what to focus on for your learning plan:

1. Ask the question: What are my big goals for 2010 for my business? (My answer: fine-tune my information product marketing system for my business.)
2. Ask the question: What topics do I need to study to attain the goal in Step 1?
3. Of all the thing I can study, which ONE THING is the most important to start with?
4. How long do I want to devote to studying that topic?
5. What resources do I currently have available to study this topic?  (What do you have in your bookshelf or on your own hard drive right now?)
6. Where can I get further resources for studying this topic? What books are available? What classes are available? Who do I know who is a whiz-bang at this topic, so I can pick their brains?

My personal learning planning came down to one focus topic for January/February: Copywriting. I had taken a copywriting class five years ago, so I pulled out those recordings to re-listen to them. I have three books about copywriting on my bookshelf, so they got moved into my office within easy reach. My hard drive yielded a pay load of ebooks and audio programs on copywriting (or had a copywriting lesson in them), so those all got moved to a new folder accessible from my computer desktop.

Then I looked around for a juicy workshop on the topic of copywriting. I realized I had already taken a class on that topic, so I opted for the larger study topic of “information product marketing,” and signed up for a 4-day workshop in Atlanta called Niche Affiliate Marketing System (NAMS) in January. (Aly signed up, too. As my business partner, it’s important that we learn strategic topics together so we can plan campaigns.)

Then I repeated the process to pick a key topic for all the remaining months in 2010. For instance, in March I’ll be studying the psychology of marketing, in April I’ll be studying traffic conversion, and in May I’ll be studying how to create instructional videos. Then I’ll collapse in a puddle of happiness, with a full brain and lots of ideas to implement in June – August!

Special Tip: Having a hard time keeping track of all the notes you take on a certain learning topic? My friend and colleague, Pamela Wilson, turned me on to Evernote (www.evernote.com), a great web-based AND PC-based tool to help with keeping notes, including a way to tag each note with keywords, for easy look-up. Neato!

Take a moment right now: What topic do you want to learn more about in 2010?

Best of luck to you as you design your own Learning Plan for 2010! It’s exciting!!

When designing and delivering training classes, there’s only one question to ask: What is best for the students?

In a student-centric model of training design and delivery, a good instructor knows that it’s not about what I want to teach, but about what the student wants to learn.

There are many ways to deliver training material, but the two most important ones are the Lecture Method and the Workshop Method.

You’ve seen and participated in the Lecture Method thousands of times: the teacher gets up in front of the group and delivers the material, while the students listen and take notes. Occasionally the students ask questions. This works great when there is a lot of new, introductory material to be delivered and the students have no experience with the topic.

In the Workshop Method, a collaborative learning environment is established. The teacher uses hands-on exercises, Q&A, and discussions to help the student cement what they’re learning in a real-world environment and begin to apply it immediately. This method is ideal for adult students who bring a wealth of background experiences to a class, and helps them stay motivated.

Is one method better than the other? No. But the Lecture Method has the risk of being much more boring! An all-lecture class can easily put your students to sleep, especially if you’re teaching via teleclasses where they can’t see you.

Some teachers choose the Lecture Method because it allows them to be the “sage on the stage” instead of the “guide on the side.” Smart teachers choose the lecture method, wisely, when there is a great amount of foundational information the students are required to learn. Really smart teachers use both methods: the Lecture Method for the basics, then switching to the Workshop Method to allow students to process the material in a real-world atmosphere and apply what they’ve learned.

Here’s an example of how I use these two methods in one of the classes I teach:

In my Marketing Planning class there is a lot of foundational information to learn about the psychology of marketing and creating a marketing strategy for your business. These lessons are generally taught using the Lecture Method, but I throw in some discussion questions and allow a fairly large chunk of time for Q&A. When we move into the lessons about writing your own marketing plan, we switch to the Workshop Method.

Here’s how I apply the Workshop Method in class:

• I ask students about their specific situation and how they’ll apply what they’ve learned in class to their own business marketing
• I give them homework assignments which they can submit to me for review and comments, which keeps the learning going between class sessions
• Students write their marketing plan in a step-by-step format using a workbook I’ve designed for the class
• I ask questions related to the material where students fill in the blanks from their own life experiences (You’d be surprised how much you know about marketing just by having been a consumer all these years!)
• I ask students to debate the pros and cons of choosing specific marketing techniques

Getting your students active in their learning process keeps the energy high, keeps them motivated, and most importantly, keeps them learning at a peak rate.

And while you’re at it, consider this: When giving speeches, what if you combined the Lecture Method with the Workshop Method? Professional speakers can spice up their speeches by moving away from the model of I Talk To You and You Listen, too.

Two days after celebrating my mother’s 70th birthday in late October, my throat got that tell-tale scratchy feeling. You know the one. It’s predicts the advent of the dreaded November Bronchitis season for me.

I seemed to be able to fight off this first round in early November before it became full-blown, but the dry cough lingered all month, making for some very interesting teleclasses. “What would you do if <cough> your email campaign results <cough, cough> returned less than a one percent click-through rate <cough>?”

But my energy was up and I was lulled into a false sense of security, taking walks by the canal and visiting the new BJ’s Wholesale Club in town to take a gander at the high-def TVs. Big mistake. By last Wednesday, I had fever and chills, the lungs clogged up like a beaver dam, and I was forced to the doctor’s office once again. I had to miss the family Thanksgiving dinner, cancel a new class that was to have started on Tuesday, and cancel a speech I was to give at the ICF Conference in Orlando this week.

This happens to a lot of small business owners. We work hard, our adrenaline is up, and colds and flu seem to avoid us. But the minute you relax, the minute you take a vacation or end a big project, POW…you get sick. I used to think my annual bronchitis was tied to my airplane trips to England (my husband is from England and we visit his parents once a year). But I began to realize it wasn’t the airplane’s fault, per se, but it was because I was relaxed and on vacation — typically after working like a crazy person the week before to “catch up” before vacation started.

Now that I’m flat on my back this week, I’m going to ponder a new routine, a new way of both working and relaxing that keeps my equilibrium and my immune system in balance. First thing I did was take my six-page To Do list and reduce it to three pages. (Boy, that felt GREAT!)

If you’re like me, you get very excited about the projects you work on and enthusiastic about working with your clients and students, and your mind is always going a mile-a-minute with ideas. But there’s a price to pay for trying to do it all.

P.S. I’ll miss everyone at the ICF Conference! I hope you have a great time!

P.P.S Does this happen to you? What advice do you have for me?