When the Boss Gets Sick: Part 1

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I do not get sick very often, but I recently fell ill to the point that I needed to take some time off from work.  The great part about being the boss is that you do not need to file a vacation request or ask for sick leave.  However, the awful part about being the boss in a one-person firm (freelancer) is that if you take a break, the business may have to go on hiatus with you.  Of course this depends on the type of business, business model, etc., but in my case, the business was on break.

It happened the week of Christmas, so it was fairly easy to take the week off to recuperate and I had only planned to work 2 of those days before falling ill.  Although working as a freelancer I am a one-person entity, I do have a few things in place to help me out in case of illness.  One is fairly simple; my auto responder emails.  The bulk of my business comes from two places: through my website and via referrals.  Referrals either contact me directly, via email or through my website.  The first point of contact from me for inquiries through my site and referrals is via email and this is where an auto responder comes in.  When I am sick, on vacation or out of the office for an extended amount of time, I turn on my “out of office” email auto responder.  This lets those that contact me directly via email, know that I am out of the office and when I expect to return.

There is also an auto responder/reply email attached to each service inquiry form on this site.  Depending on the form that is being filled out, an auto reply email goes out to the submitter of that form either with additional information about the service they are inquiring about or a time table for when they will hear back from me.  If I had needed, I could have set all of the forms to send out a reply that I was out of the office due to illness for a specified amount of time.  Because of the way I have my business set up, the types of replies that form submitters receive, and the fact that it was a major holiday, I did not make this change.

While I was out for a week, because of the Christmas holiday, it did not have much of an impact on my business.  Auto responder emails are a simple and easily accessible tool that most solo-preneurs can use.  Tomorrow I will talk about the back-up plans that I have.

What is Holding You Back?

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Yesterday I talked about the dream I realized with my freelance business and today; I want to ask a simple question.  What is holding you back from realizing your dream?

For many, I think fear is the biggest factor; a fear of failure.  Sometimes thinking about the negative “what if’s” can be crippling.  What if I run out of money?  What if no one buys it?  What if I just can’t do it?  I think that it is a natural inclination to think about the negative implications.  I know for me, it is truly a challenge to try to think of the positive implications first.  What if I am successful?  What if this works?  What if I find true happiness?

The saying that you will never know failure or success if you never try or don’t start, is true.  None of the questions above will ever be answered if you don’t try.  You will never know until you do.

How to Make Your Head Explode

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If you are a small business owner, entrepreneur, solopreneur or a freelancer, you are constantly looking for ways to increase the profitability of your business.  This could be from a logistics standpoint or from a marketing standpoint, but no matter what, consuming information is the base to do so.  Why; because knowledge is power.  Knowledge can also make your head explode.  While it is a tool that can arm and guide you to make your business better, the wealth of information out there and available, can be overwhelming.

I have come close to the brink of a brain/head explosion plenty of times and I have also been the cause of an almost head explosion.  I read a lot and I have always been big into reading.  I was the kid that asked for books (and art supplies) for Christmas and I earned many free personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut, through their Book-it program.  As an adult, in addition to reading books and works of fiction, I now also read a lot of blog sites related to my industry and for business.  I have to be careful of how much information I consume and how quickly I consume it.

I have come to realize that my brain can only hold and process so much new information at a time.  There is a limit for me.  I have to let everything new that I have learned settle in for a bit, before pouring more information in.  I would liken it to pouring soda into a cup.  Because of the carbonation, you cannot quickly pour the soda all in at one time without it fizzing up and out of the cup.  You have to pour a little in, wait for the fizz to die down and settle, and then continue to pour.  This is what I have to do with my brain.  If I don’t, I fall into a place of information overload and I feel like my head is about to explode.

It’s not very productive.  All of the information and knowledge I have taken in is all for naught, because I am too overwhelmed to apply it to my needs or implement anything.  Instead, I throw my hands up in the air and do nothing.  However, if I consume in small bites, I actually do something with that information.  So what is the lesson learned?  Consume information in smaller chunks to keep your head from exploding.  It will also lead to a more productive use of the information you have gained.

The Best Gift Idea for Entrepreneurs: An Introduction

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‘Tis the season to be jolly…and to give gifts.  I recently read an article that was posted on LinkedIn by Adam Grant about the gift of giving an introduction.  In the article he wrote about the value giving someone an introduction can bring and the relatively low cost of doing so.  He also chronicled introductions given by people that lead to the evolution of some of the biggest brands to date.  For example, after an introduction by a friend, Steve Wozniack met Steve Jobs and Apple was born.  A classmate named Paul McCartney was introduced to John Lennon and, well you know how that story ended, with the Beatles.

I agree with what he said that giving an introduction as a gift is very often overlooked.  I am a big proponent of helping others and connecting people that might of service to each other.  Sometimes I have client’s that I think could use or benefit from each other in some way and I introduce them.  Recently, I was pitched by a freelance copywriter about using their services.  Not only did I feel that I had a use for them with some of my projects, I also thought of a client that could use them as well.  I introduced them and he ended up doing some work for both of us.

This holiday season, I am going to make a point of giving the gift of an introduction to as many people as I can and I encourage my fellow entrepreneurs and small business owners to do the same.  Who knows, maybe an introduction we give can spawn the birth of the next big thing!

2014 Marketing/Business Predictions

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I thought I would jump on the 2014 prediction bandwagon with a few of my own.  I think that 2014 will see some interesting shifts not so much in the type of marketing that we are seeing now in the digital landscape, but how it is done.  To explain, I will start with my first prediction:

More Quality Content

Content Marketing has been the big buzzword this year and I think it will continue to be a large part of marketer’s strategies in 2014.  With the advent of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm, we will see an end to a focus on blog content that is irrelevant, keyword stuffed, unreadable, and created just for the sake of ranking high on search engines for traffic purposes.  Instead, we will see a high focus on more quality and relevant content.  I think this shift in focus, will lead to job growth in the writing arena, which leads me to my second prediction.

Freelance Writers will be in High Demand

I think we will see a boom in the writing industry.  As marketer’s look to provide more quality content, they will also use more copywriters, editors, etc to create and write this content.  I also think this is the next industry that will see a large growth in the number of “professionals” that can provide this content.  I think suddenly, everyone will be a “freelance copywriter.”  I feel the beginning stages of this have already started to happen.

Every time a new marketing trend pops up, there is suddenly a crop of “experts.”  Some truly are experts, but a lot are “experts.”  When social media marketing was the new buzz word, a new crop of social media marketers appeared.  Digital marketing…digital marketers.  SEO?  SEO experts popped up making claims of first page positions.  Now, we have content marketers, managers and curators and I fear we will see many more “experts” in 2014.  They will be joined by freelance writing “experts.”  Again, I believe that there are a lot of very real experts, but I think the “experts” give the real one’s a bad name.

So, there you have it.  My predictions for 2014.