Self Employed Success

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.

You know that ebooks are an important part of your marketing model as well as a great stream of revenue for your business. Whether you give away free ebooks to spread your message and build your list, or you sell ebooks to your customers, ebooks are a brilliant tool.

I have written five ebooks, and have many more in the pipeline. I also create all my student guides in ebook format.

But there are three problems:

1. How do you get started writing an ebook, figuring out the content, and standing out from the crowd with your topic?
2. Once you write it, how do you make it look professional and eye-catching? That’s tough work if you’re not graphically-minded or you can’t tell a font from a fondue.
3. And after you create the ebook and a super cover design, how do you market your ebook?

Lucky for us, Kelly Kingman and Pamela Wilson have created eBook Evolution to solve these problems. It’s chock full of solid advice, including a 41-page guide with step-by-step instructions on how to organize and write your ebook, a guide to create ebook covers and page layouts, a 69-page launch guide for marketing your ebook.

Kelly and Pamela also tell you how to get free software to create your ebook — and even free fonts, too. I’m so pleased they made the potentially cumbersome project of writing, designing and marketing your ebook easy and fun. (Lots of worksheets and checklists are included…very useful and concrete to keep you on track.) There’s nothing to stop you now from creating all the ebooks you want!

Plus you get 10-page guide for creating your cover page and ebook contents using the free Open Office software, and 2 ebook templates you can use right away: just add your content.

This tidy bundle of instruction and templates is immensely helpful to take your ebooks to the next level. Just looking at the way Pamela and Kelly have written and designed the eBook Evolution ebooks will give you lots of creative ideas for your own ebooks.

The nicest part is this…

You will design your own ebook, so whenever you want to make changes to it, it doesn’t cost you a dime. That’s a big problem if you have someone design your ebook for you, so a do-it-yourself mentality will save you up-front and in years to come.

I can’t wait to create my new ebooks from all I learned in this program — and I can’t wait to see YOURS, too!

Want to learn more about eBook Evolution? Check it out here:

www.stickyebooks.com/get-ebook-evolution

Note: this is not an affiliate link. No affiliates were harmed in writing this review.

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…

Whew! After 11 months of hard planning, multiple website graphics choices, and lots of coding (700 pages!), we launched the new-and-improved version of the Passion For Business website yesterday. Poor Aly, I think his fingers are whittled to the bone with all the website coding work he did. He gets a much-deserved vacation after this launch!

I know many of you are thinking it’s time to redesign your website, but you don’t know where to start or how to manage the project. Let me share my experience with you in hopes that it will make your website redesign process smooth and efficient.

1. First, know that this is going to be a long process, so find that extra bit of patience. It will pay off big time, trust me. There will be any number of times that you want to cut corners or give up an important feature that’s a pain to code. Stop. Breathe. Start again.
2. Make sure you DO need and want to redesign your website. Not sure? Take this self-quiz: Is It Time To Redesign My Site? (PDF).
3. Write everything down – don’t trust your memory on something this important. Keep your ideas and your To Do list in a Project Plan file so everything is at your fingertips in one central location.
4. Start the redesign process by asking the big questions: What are the goals of my business? What role(s) will my website have in reaching those goals? Who will visit my website and what do they need/want to find there? What is my business brand and image?
5. Decide what content you need on the site, then organize that content into logical “buckets” so that it’s easy to design the menu/navigation structure, and easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for. Make a list of each individual page and file that needs to be on the site.
6. Decide what extra features you need on your site: will you have a newsletter sign-up box, a free offer, sidebar advertisements, a blog, video files, audio files, social media, etc.?
7. Design the graphical page layout to include your logo and business colors, making sure there is enough room on the page for sidebar advertisements, sign-up boxes, etc. This is the time when a good website designer can make this process easy.
8. Remember, the reputation of your business relies on professionalism and a professional look — this isn’t the time to cut corners with do-it-yourself graphic work, logos, navigation, or website page layout. A good website designer can target your website graphics and layout to your audience, and can make it user-friendly. A poor website design will have people walking away from your site instead of sticking around. Read this blog post on How to Choose a Website Designer if you need more tips.
9. While your website designer is working on some preliminary designs, it’s time for you to edit and/or write your website text. Take a look at all your existing pages: are they talking to the audience and helping them solve a problem or reach a goal? If you’re not good at copy writing, consider hiring a copywriter to help you with the text updates.
10. While you’re busy writing, don’t forget SEO work to increase your rankings on search engines. Choose your keywords and make sure those keywords are in your text.
11. Once you choose the website design that works best for your audience, your brand and your business goals, now it’s time to start coding. You have several options when coding your website: your website designer can code it for you (typically in CSS), or you can use a platform like WordPress. Even if you use WordPress, there’s still a HUGE amount of coding to do, so if you are not deeply familiar with CSS or PHP, hire someone to do the coding for you. Typically you can find a website designer who does both the graphic design and the coding, or who works as a team with other professionals to get your site done.
12. DO NOT code directly to your existing domain, overwriting your existing files. Create a “testing” folder to put new files in.
13. Make sure you code the SEO meta tags, ALT tags, etc. in the behind-the-scenes coding to help with your search engine rankings. (Choose a website designer who has a lot of experience with SEO so that you can be assured this work is done correctly.)
14. Once the site is done with the initial coding, TEST the website in all the standard browsers to make sure it’s compatible: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. Test it in several versions of these browsers as well; not everyone is using the current version of browser software.
15. Test to see how your site looks on both PCs and Macs. (This is a good time to get your friends involved so you can see your new site on their browsers and machines.)
16. Test to see how your site looks on mobile browsers and phones, like BlackBerry, Smart Phones, etc.
17. After you do the testing, you’ll probably find that your site looks great in some browsers and awful in other browsers. This requires additional coding to test the browser version the visitor is using and write code to make the site look the same in all browsers. (Now you know why you pay a website designer to do this work! )
18. Okay, so now you’ve got your final website design. It looks great in all browsers and the text and graphics are extraordinary. Now is the time to test all links (both the links in the menu/navigation and the links in the text). Make sure all links open to the appropriate page, file and/or external websites. Patience, my friend, do this slowly and properly. If you have bad links on your site, you’ll lose visitors and Google doesn’t like a site with a lot of bad links.
19. Now test all forms. Sign up for your own newsletter, your own free offer, or any other form you have on your site (perhaps a Contact Us form?), and make sure each form does exactly what it’s supposed to do.
20. Sick of testing yet???
21. Now you’re ready to go live. But wait! I’m only going to say this once (loudly): BACK UP YOUR EXISTING WEBSITE and BLOG. Trust me. If you overwrite files and something blows up, you’ll be happy that you can easily put yourself back to the old site while you fix the problem.
22. Take a deep breath, and upload your new website design to your hosting.
23. Once it’s live, test again. All of it. Seriously.
24. Tell your audience your site is live, invite feedback, and tell them if they find a problem with the site to please let you know about it. It’s great to have a lot of people checking out your new site to make sure there are no mistakes.

Congratulations, you’ve done it! Have a huge party to celebrate! 

(If I’ve missed any steps, please leave a comment and tell me about YOUR website project experience!)

There appears to be two types of small business owners: people who jump right into running their business and marketing their products and services with little or no planning, and those who plan a strategy — and a service or product design — before they ever dream of offering it to the public.

Is one better than the other? Yes and no.

Planning often allows you the time to brainstorm and think through possible scenarios before you commit your time, energy and money into your business idea. Ninety-five percent of the time, I advocate planning, especially if you’re starting a new business or launching a new product or service. The time you spend with research and working through possible alternatives, as well as the time you spend thinking about how you might handle worse-case scenarios, will reap huge rewards later on.

On the other hand, over-planning often leads to inaction. A phrase I love that sums it up is, “Analysis Paralysis” — the inability to move forward on a project because you feel you don’t have all the facts, and the unwillingness to move forward until you’re 100% sure of success. Every self-employed person will tell you that there’s no such thing as being 100% sure of anything.

There is a place for jumping in the world of small business. Jumping allows you to be flexible, and to ride the wave of enthusiasm and passion. Jumping allows you to be 85% sure and then go for it. Good Jumping is action, combined with knowledge, courage and trust.

So when is jumping okay? Jumping is okay if you’ve already got a solid business foundation underneath you. This means that your finances are in order, you’ve already got a working business model that brings in reliable income and steady administrative processes that support your next great adventure. Jumping is okay if you’ve done as much research as you can and have a good sense that your project is advisable, even if you’re not 100% certain of its success.

In the end analysis, a combination of planning and jumping is required of all self employed people. The key is to find a balance point.