The Solo Entrepreneur's Journal

The Solo Entrepreneur's Journal

Highlights from the Journal of Marketing Debate hosted by Jeremy Maggs with discussions that centered around issues like why you need a Web 2.0 strategy, how do you optimize your convergence, how to make online work for your business and much more.

Online Marketing Experts Debate at the Journal of Marketing Breakfast - 16 July 2009

If you are starting your own small business (especially if you are doing so for the first time), now is a good time to consider setting yourself up for success. You can save yourself a lot of unnecessary anxiety and sleepless nights if you lay out the main issues you want to look at to ensure success.

As a solo entrepreneur (coaches, trainers, speakers), you will soon find that you have to manage everything from marketing and sales to production and logistics on your own. Then there is keeping of the books and taxes. You have the same amount of time but now need to stretch yourself thinly to cover all the functional aspects of a business.

Where you may have been taught to specialise in your place of work in the corporate world, you now find yourself called upon to be a generalist and need to know enough of everything to get your business operational and successful.

That in itself can be rather overwhelming especially if technology is involved.

What might be something you must look out for lest you get sucked into panic and anxiety even before your business takes off?

Bottom Line, figures and capital investment. This is not just about your hopes and dreams. Business is very concrete and very tangible. One element of its success will have to be the figures. You would have calculated the kind of income you like to generate, together with on going operational costs and expenses. If this has not been thought through carefully, you will be thrown into anxiety and panic before long.

Stay on the Course: There is no overnight success. Usually you would have been working at it for a while and suddenly hit the sweet spot when things begin to take shape.

Too many start out with their new independent professional business on an emotional high expecting to break even in x months and start generating income. And when they don't see much happening they start getting discouraged and distracted and go on an all time emotional low.

Anxiety sets in when there is no significant increase in interest for your services. And you try to do more, work harder or try new ventures in an effort to speed things up. Or you may decide to switch market or product or maybe even drop out of your master mind or your mentorship and coaching too soon. Taking yourself out of the game before you complete the entire course has got to be one of the most common mistakes to avoid. Too often if you have stayed on for a little while more, you would have seen success.

Invest In Yourself: If you are starting your own professional business for the first time as a coach or trainer or speaker, you want to give yourself enough time to learn about your market, your clients and learn to use your tools effectively. Then you need to practice and strengthen your business judgments and instincts. You want to follow through a proven system and not give up half way. You do need time to build up the momentum and once you have that the rest of the activities can be much easier. You are investing in your business when you invest in yourself. So to stay profitable in your business, you need continual self development.

Be realistic: Release yourself from unnecessary stress of wanting to make it big in unrealistically short period of time. Persistence and perseverance is needed and it is usually a good idea to build your professional service on a part-time basis until you learned the ropes.

And there is no need to prove your success to anyone, not your family members nor your ex colleagues, not even yourself. If you keep your focus on how others perceive you and if you seek external approval, you WILL be adding unreasonable amount of unnecessary stress to your business and yourself! Instead focus on your system, work it, follow it, and see it grow, but if have to give it time.

Starting your own service based business need not take a lot of investment. And if you use the internet to help you, you could be looking at minimal investment if you know how to use technology to your advantage. But first you need to set realistic expectations and you may want to hire a guide to help you succeed in the shortest time.

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