Self Employed Success

Here’s a great guest post by blogger Lisa Rae Preston:

Securing a team of employees who’d work for you for FREE sounds like a page right from the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes for Entrepreneurs, but it’s a real possibility.

Enter the wonderful world of virtual interns!

Virtual interns typically work for 10-15 weeks for your business and can take care of activities like social media marketing, creating viral videos, copywriting, editing, contacting the press on your behalf, driving traffic to your site, etc.   As long as you can train the intern to do the work, the sky’s the limit on how they can serve your business.

College intern coordinators love to have companies contact them regarding internships.  Their students get real-life work experience with you, which can be included on a future job resume.

Interns are often paid a small salary, but unpaid internships have taken the stage recently.  In fact, 48% of internships in 2011 have been unpaid. (National Association of Colleges and Employers)

Unpaid internships aren’t about students working for free.  The training you give them as they work on  your projects can be implemented in another job post graduation.  Students often prefer virtual internships, as they can work right from their dorm room or campus library, and hours are usually flexible.

In order to approach colleges to secure your intern or team of interns, you want to have in place:

• A detailed list of all tasks you want the intern to do for you during the semester
• The documents, videos/audios necessary to train your intern for each task
• A job description and paragraph listing your qualifications for the internship
• And of course, a professional web presence and up to date company information

Internships offer solopreneurs a chance to share their knowledge and expertise as well as receive hundreds of hours of unpaid assistance in their businesses.  You can literally have an entire team of interns working with you every semester, taking care of a multitude of tasks like SEO, product creation, traffic generation, press-release writing and PR, and social media marketing.

Internships pull a triple win, giving colleges the ability to showcase training that can help students get hired faster, offering students meaningful work experiences and a letter of reference for future employment.  You as the business owner reap the benefits of part-time employees without payroll.

Guest blogger, Lisa Rae Preston, specializes in creating intern training programs for entrepreneurs, based on their virtual business needs. If you’d like to learn more information about how to secure interns for your business or about done-for-you intern training systems, visit Lisa’s Think For Success website.

In December 2011, I conducted a Learning Survey of small business owners to determine how their learning preferences had changed since the last time I conducted the survey in 2008.

1,647 small business owners and solo entrepreneurs completed the survey. You can download the results here.

I hope you find this information helpful in understanding your students and how they like to learn. Please leave your comments and questions below…I’d love to hear your thoughts!

P.S. If you haven’t taken the Learning Survey yet, there’s still time. Take it here and get 12 great freebies from 10 great business mentors, just for taking the 3 question survey.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KarynGreenstreetFan

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kgreenstreet

Does your business have a mission?

I don’t mean a Mission Statement. I mean a deep, true purpose for being in existence.

I’ve come up with this one for me and my business:

There are 21 million solo entrepreneurs in the USA, but only 9% make over $100,000.

My mission is to change that 9% to 10%.

What’s your guiding light in your business?

As more and more small business owners are leaning towards “on demand” everything (music, movies, books) to download or stream instantly, I’m noticing some changes in the way that small biz owners like to learn.

The ground is shifting very quickly when it comes to education and the delivery of training materials and information.

I’ve teamed up with 12 other small business mentors to find out exactly which ways you like to absorb new content, learn new skills, acquire new knowledge to help you run your business.

I’ve put together a quick, 2-minute survey with three easy questions. Yes, just three questions. It’s as simple as that.

But even 2 minutes is a lot when you’re busy, so we’re making it irresistible by offering you some practical, helpful educational bonuses, just for completing the survey.

How many bonuses? Twelve. Free. Just for taking the survey.

Can I ask you the favor of taking just 2 minutes from your schedule today to take my survey? Here’s where you can take it online.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/66ZWCMZ

(The link will open in a new window/tab.)

Thank you for your help!

P.S. Would you like to see a summary of the results of this survey? Once you complete the survey, you’ll be asked if you want a copy of the summary. I’m happy to share the findings of this research with you, and all I ask in return is that you answer the survey questions…just 3 of them. Take the survey here.

It seems to be a trend that’s growing: small business owners are getting distracted by too many ideas or the latest fad, going off in a million directions and never completing anything. This loss of focus is costing small business owners hundreds of hours a year in lost productivity, lost hours, lost dollars.

It even has a name: SOS – Shiny Object Syndrome. It’s not quite ADD/ADHD. It’s more that a new idea captures your imagination and attention in such a way that you get distracted from the bigger picture and go off in tangents instead of remaining focused on the goal.

We think of a new idea, we hear of a great new gadget or marketing technique, and ZOOM, we’re off! There’s great energy and excitement in starting something new.

Of course what happens is that that everything always gets started, but nothing ever gets finished. In addition, countless hours and dollars are wasted in pursuit of the new, shiny object without having thought through whether this new item, technique, service or product is “right” for your business. Countless people have started blogs and abandoned them within a year (or less!) because they got tired of writing posts — or worse, no one was reading the posts.

Lest you think that it’s only us small business owners who suffer from it, you’ll be happy to know that it’s rampant in many industries. Software and tech companies are notorious for following every cool new fad that comes along, without thinking strategically about whether it’s a good fit for their business model. TV creates shows around SOS, then dumps the show after 6 or 8 episodes. Big business follows every business development fad that comes out in books or from gurus, only to drop it when the next cool fad arrives.

I know it’s hard not to get excited about every new idea that comes past you. Some of them are very, very cool. But you are running a business and you must stop and ask yourself:

• Is this right for my business?
• Do my customers want this, and are they willing to pay for it?
• Do I have the time, resources, energy, and money to put into this to make it successful?
• Do I have too many open projects sitting on my desk that need to be finished before I begin something new?
• Do I have the ability to finish this new project, and implement it, and maintain it?
• What has to drop off my radar in order for me to start something new?

There’s nothing wrong with loving innovation and reinvention. Just make sure you don’t lose focus on what’s most important for you, your business and your customers.