Key Business Functions for Solopreneurs
September 21, 2009
I promised in my last post to list for you the key business functions for solopreneurs. It’s understandable that people who work “alone” think they are all there is to their business. Understandable, but wrong – to have the reach you need for financial success, you must be a manager as well as a visionary. Take a look at this list and you’ll see the point I’m making!
Key Function: Visionary – you are the creator, the one who imagines, who sees the “need in the niche.” But unless you gain publicity for who you are and what you do, the most wonderful vision the world has to offer won’t ever be shared, and the people who need that vision won’t benefit. So……
Key Functions: Marketing. Whether you are Internet-based or not, you need copywriting so that you can tell about your business in presentations, speeches, and brochures (in the simplest forms of marketing). To make your copy interesting and available to those whose English isn’t strong, you need graphics, too. Are you counting? That’s 3 key functions in addition to your visionary function.
Key Functions: Web design. If you have a website (and who doesn’t these days?) you need copywriting and design for your site. You’ll also need to use the graphics you developed for your print media, perhaps slightly tweaked for web use. Your site is of no use, however, if no one can find it. So, as part of the web design you’ll also need keyword research and search engine optimization. These take time and experience to master, and few solopreneurs have the skills right off the bat. Your business is at stake, so you don’t want to fool around and experiment on your own success, do you? Count them up – that’s three more key functions!
Key Functions: Content writing. Along with copywriting (sales copy) you will need write what it is you offer. If you are a coach and you work from a particular system, you’ll need content that explains your system and how you use it for the benefit of a client. If you are selling a “how to” skill (how to negotiate, for instance) you’ll need content. Content writing is often what a solopreneur wants to do for herself, because, after all, she is the expert and holds the vision of what she wants to say. During or after the content writing, however, you will improve the content by having a copy editor review and help you revise and strengthen your message. We rarely can do a great job of editing our own copy. So, two more key functions identified here.
Key Functions: Sales. If you sell only in person, you are likely, at least at first, to be the sales person. This means that you are now wearing the visionary hat, the content writing hat, and the sales hat. And, since you are smart and know you need a team, don’t forget the manager hat. Surely by now you are realizing you cannot do this all by your lonesome self. You need a personal assistant at the very least, someone who can help you coordinate these key functions. She can help you find and install the merchant account system you need in order to support your sales. Your merchant account system will require telecommunications, your bank, and maybe a clearinghouse that acts between your bank and the merchant account.
If you are selling through the Internet, you will also need a shopping cart. Your shopping cart will integrate with your merchant account system and bank, and you’ll also need to set up a clearinghouse if you don’t already have one. Shopping carts require some technical expertise to set up, so at least at first, you will probably need to have someone handle this for you. If your personal assistant can’t do this, another team member can do this for you. You’ll also need copywriting for the autoresponders in your shopping cart (the e-mails that thank people for their order, give them shipping information, and so forth.)
Social media is an integral part of marketing, public relations, and sales in today’s world, whether you are an Internet-based business or not. Using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn (to name just a few) can be effective, but it’s also a place where you can waste a lot of time. As you grow and get more demands on your time, you will need to use your personal assistant or another team member to handle your social media campaigns. I count 8 key functions here.
Key Functions: Accounting. Your bookkeeping system is vital, because it lets you know exactly where you stand in your business at any given time. I recommend reviewing a cash flow report weekly, usually at the end of the week. To be financially successful, a solopreneur has to be profitable, sure. But you also want to be aware of cash flow, accounts receivable, your operating costs (your overhead), and the return on investment for advertising and other costs. This is one area that I often see solopreneurs struggle with, because they frequently want to “do it themselves.” But you’re not in business to sit at your computer and do bookkeeping, are you? And when you get busy (a sales opportunity) the first thing that falls behind is keeping up the bookkeeping. Before you know it, you’ve lost your handle on the money. I strongly recommend that you let go of the bookkeeping, AND get yourself an accountant who specializes in small businesses. Getting these two key functions in place is vital. Your bookkeeper can provide you with a weekly cash flow statement by e-mail. Do this and you’ll always have a good pulse on your money.
Key functions: Strategic alliances. As your business grows, you will want to form collaborations (often called joint ventures) with other business owners. In fact, you may decide to let other businesses affiliate with you and sell your products or services. It helps to have other business owners to think about these strategies with, so over time you’ll probably want to work with a coach or coaches. You might also want to be in a Mastermind group. These can be invaluable to you, so be clear about exactly what you want, and choose carefully. But DO choose – refusing to invest in your own growth is a sure path to keeping your business small.
You could also end up needing a business manager who handles customer service, designs customer appreciation campaigns, and special events. Sometimes a partner ends up fulfilling these functions. The key is to remember that these are important to your success, so if you don’t get around to them, it’s time to get help. I count 4 key functions here.
Key Functions: Home. My position is that having help at home is key to a solopreneur’s business success. If you decide to keep handling housekeeping, yard maintenance, and errands for yourself, keep in mind that there is an opportunity cost. One of two things will likely happen. You’ll make the excuse to stay home and take care of all home maintenance, missing opportunities to connect and market. Or, your home will get messier and less maintained because you are so focused on business. Both have costs to you and your business. It’s well worth it to have support in keeping your home a wonderful place for respite and work. I count 3 key functions here.
You can count these up for yourself, and get the point that it takes a team to grow a business. Thinking small keeps you small. Thinking you can do it all yourself is both grandiose and unwise. Remember that you’ve got four major hats to wear no matter what – you are the visionary, the sales person, the manager, and the content writer, at the least. You dilute your focus when you decide to take responsibility for much more than these core functions, and fuzzy focus leads to failure. Take some time to set up your key functions and who is going to handle them now – and watch your business flourish!
(c) Sue Painter
3 Reasons Solopreneurs Must Have a Support Team Now!
September 20, 2009
My hat is off to my friend Milana Leshinsky for her comprehensive list of ALL the functions necessary in a successful Internet-based business. I have my own list of functions, but her list is more comprehensive and useful – and makes me realize why, even with staff, I feel stretched a little thin sometimes.
Look, here’s the thing. Whether you are Internet-based or not, if you play cheap and small you will not play at all. Maybe I’ll write a marketing rap song….. dum da dumdum da, dum da dumdum da….
If you play small, you won’t play at all….
If you wanna fall, just play small….
You won’t make the leap if you play too cheap…
You can’t do it all, it’ll keep you broke and small.
OK, so much for my rap ability. 
But here’s the deal – I talk to solopreneurs every single week who really need to FOCUS on their businesses. And instead, they believe in scarcity for themselves and they are determined to stay stuck in fuzzy focus. They are exhausted, overextended, and spend hours trying to carry out every single business function themselves. This takes too much time, asks for skills they don’t have, and gives them poorly executed pieces of the business. Fixing it later costs more money and time than doing it correctly and well the first time. So if you are a solopreneur get out of your fuzzy focus and manage your business functions. Manage, not execute!
So here’s the 3 reasons……
- You are a solopreneur, but that doesn’t mean you work alone. To make it, you’ll need to manage others.
- You need to focus consistently and constantly on the very top priorities for your business. Literally, you cannot do that if you insist on doing everything yourself.
- The “do it myself” mentality means that you are buying into scarcity thinking, and you cannot build a highly financially successful business when you are stuck in the belief that money is scarce.
Think about it…..if you are unwilling to invest in yourself and your business, why would a customer be willing to invest in you?
Want to know ALL the business functions you have to manage? It’s a pretty impressive list. Stay tuned for the next post, and you’ll get a list that combines my list and Milana’s – and my thanks to her, again, for sharing her comprehensive list.
(c) Sue Painter
Are You Designing Your Marketing Backwards?
September 13, 2009
The hot new thing in marketing what you have to offer is social media. Social media means relationship-based, viral ways of communicating – like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter. Social media is “new” marketing, while industrial media (print, broadcast, and traditional filmmaking) is said to be “old.” The other big difference between marketing with social media as opposed to marketing with industrial media is cost. You can, for instance, send your clients and prospects an electronic newsletter for very little cost OR you can spend a great deal of money paying for a newspaper ad every week.
While it is great to have many new ways to market, designing marketing that works is the even bigger key. It’s a mistake to get enthralled with a certain way to deliver your marketing FIRST and make your marketing fit that delivery system. Why? Well, you’re not focused on your people. Marketing that works focuses FIRST on your peeps. You have to think from their point of view first and foremost.
Two social media marketing folks, Julie Ask and Charles Golvin, came up with a systematic approach to mobile marketing strategy that they called POST. But the truth is, POST applies to any type of marketing strategy, no matter whether it is old or new. Here’s the simple system:
- People (P)
- Objectives (O)
- Strategy (S)
- Technology (T)
Ask and Golvin remind us that we have to know who are people are, what our objectives are (what do we want them to know about what we have to offer), the strategies we might use (information, special offers, etc.) and only THEN pick the technology. If you’re trying to reach 75 year old guys, chances are they WON’T be reached effectively through social media. On the other hand, to market to a 25 year old guy you might want to use mobile technology.
Be enthusiastic about how you deliver your marketing only after you are enthusiastic about describing your market inside out and backwards and forwards. The more you know about your peeps, the better you’ll have a sense of what will serve them. The rest of your marketing will fall into place and be successful. Make sure you’re design forward, not backward. Your bank account will show the results!
(c) Sue Painter
6 Reasons Your Online Customers Click Away
September 4, 2009
Something called “Online Ad Fatigue” is one of the newer things being studied in marketing research. It used to be that you had about 6 seconds to capture a visitor’s attention when she hit your website, but that time has diminished significantly to about .2 seconds. That’s not a typo – a FRACTION of a second to sell the visitor is all you’ve got.
So, internet marketers designed ways to catch visitor’s attention quickly and engage more senses than only the eyes…..which in Internet marketing means sound, right? (Hard to touch, taste, or smell an Internet ad!) Visitors don’t react well to some of these techniques, in fact my bet is that YOU will tend to click away from them, too. When someone starts suffering Online Ad Fatigue she will get frustrated and click away, leaving you no chance to turn that visitor into a customer.
Here are the top 6 causes of Online Ad Fatigue.
- Ads that expand on the page and cover up what you are trying to read
- Ads that have a close or skip button designed to be hard to find.
- Automatic pop-ups
- Ads that automatically open if you scroll over them
- Animated ads that play automatically without your starting them yourself
- Ads that play music or have loud soundtracks.
Marketers use these techniques in a desperate effort to “catch eyeballs.” And here’s where the rub comes in for me. If you need a gimmick to sell your product or service you’ve got one of two things going, in my opinion.
- What you are offering is something nobody wants.
- You are a lazy marketer, relying on irritating gimmicks rather than good copywriting and knowing what serves your market.
Focus your Internet advertising in such a way that it is quick, visually appealing, tells immediately the problem you solve, and offers clear, simple calls to action. Those are what will gain you customers, keeping a visitor on your page without causing Online Ad Fatigue.
(c) Sue Painter
Four Ways to Flourish for Solopreneurs
September 2, 2009
It’s free.
It’s an opportunity to listen AND ask questions of four masters of the solopreneur world.
It’s a great way to get no-cost coaching to help you move from flailing around to flourishing.
It’s starting on Tuesday, September 29th.
It’s an event you do not want to miss, coming straight to your phone or computer screen.
It’s free, but it requires registration.
It’s found at Four Ways to Flourish. Go get it!!