The Solopreneur's Guide

If you’ve been a regular reader on my blog, first, thank you, and second, you will know that I am a diehard believer in the necessity of banding together with other joint venture partners to create new opportunities and thus grow your business exponentially faster. I was recently introduced to some solo pros with a slightly different spin on the JV concept – a tribe.


As a solopreneur, you realize how difficult it can be to attract new business on your own. Some of the more common methods for attracting prospects include the following:

• Opening a brick and mortar location
• Setting up a web site
• Sending mass email blasts and direct mail pieces
• Blogging on a weekly basis (or more)
• Buying offline and online advertising
• Networking

 


But, what is the #1 form of marketing? Word of mouth. People always trust more what others say about you than what you bloviate about your own business.


Before we go further, let me define a joint venture partnership and a tribe.


Joint Ventures

JVs entail finding other individuals who have a similar target market with complementary products, services, and strengths to join you in the formation of a new business with shared marketing, expenses and risks, and ultimately shared profits, without giving up your own individual business.


Tribes

Tribes can often (and in my opinion should) include a JV partnership, but can remain as basic as a small group of people, syndicating and recommending each other’s content on their individual blogs.


For example, let’s say you’re still going solo trying to build an audience and a business by creating your own content –a health and beauty blog. After a couple of months, let’s say you create a list of 100 followers who trust what you have to say and enjoy the quality of your content. You can keep churning out content every other day or once a week speaking to those same 100 people. Maybe you add a couple more people a week. You could spend more time and money on some of the common marketing methods mentioned above or you could build a tribe.


Let’s also say you find four other solopreneurs doing the same thing with a similar sized list of loyal customers and readers. Seems somewhat silly to be redundant, doesn’t it. Why not group together, share content and have each member recommend the other tribe members blogs to their readers? Through this, you decrease your writing up to 1/5 and increasing your readership 5x.


Since each member holds sway over their audience, you have a much greater chance of capturing those new set of eyes than if you went out and promoted yourself. How do you get this done?


Six solo pros answer that question and more in an 8-week training course called the Tribe Mastery Intensive 2.0. Imagine if instead of taking one year to build your business, you could create the same following in three months or six months.


Here’s an excellent opportunity for you to decide if learning from these pros is worth your time and money, a free 90-minute webinar.


Date:  Thursday February 4th

Time:  6:00 PM PST


Do yourself a favor, don’t let your ego tell you that you don’t need anyone. Take the time to learn how to grow your business quicker through building a tribe. Sign in now to secure a seat at this free webinar, by clicking on this Tribe Mastery link. I’ll be there.


All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide

Today, we’re catching back up with Judy Schramm, CEO of ProResource, LLC. You can check out the first interview with Judy here. If you recall, Judy is a seasoned outsourcing pro – both as a customer and a provider. ProResources teaches how to avoid the potential pitfalls associated with outsourcing for predominately solopreneurs and small businesses.

Let’s see what she has to say about what’s new with ProResource, and how this can help you if you are think about or if you are in the midst of an outsourcing project.

TSG:     I know your New Year includes some new changes. The first striking change is the “Help Without Hiring Toolkit” posted prominently on your home page. Can you let the readers here know what the tool kit covers?

JS:     There sure are a lot of changes. Thanks so much for asking about them! The Toolkit is designed to help small business owners – particularly solo business owners – to bring in people to help them in their business. That might be an assistant, like a virtual assistant, or freelancers – or it might be someone local – possibly a neighbor who has agreed to help out or a student working part-time.

We’ve got 50 templates, checklists and worksheets that we have been using for years, along with some new materials we created just for this purpose. They’re all focused on making it easier for the business owner to start delegating work.

They help with the 4 steps the business owner needs to go through:

1. Figuring out what to outsource (where to start),  
2. Finding the right person to do the work,
3. Getting them productive quickly,
4. Making sure the work is done right.

TSG:     If an interested person clicks on the kit graphic or the “Learn More” and “Preview” buttons on the home page, they will notice I gave a testimonial on the right side of the linked page. Yes, I did review all 50 templates, checklists and worksheets included in the package and believe there is real value in the kit. This wasn’t a paid quote or one solely for publicity sake.

With that said, let’s talk about the Creative Brief for a moment. It’s one of my favorite documents in your kit. Do you think a business can effectively engage in an outsourcing program if they can’t answer all the questions in this document?

JS:     Well, yes, I do. The Creative Brief is designed for marketing projects. I know that’s your area of expertise, and I think you and I have a deep appreciation for how valuable this information is for anyone who is doing marketing. When a business owner can provide that level of insight into their business and their target market and what they want to achieve, it becomes so much easier to deliver really good results for them.

Plus, a Creative Brief helps you get organized for a project because it gives you a list of all the information you are going to need to provide to a freelancer or agency who is handing the project for you.

But it is certainly possible to outsource effectively without it. For example, if you are outsourcing something other than marketing – such as hiring a virtual assistant or a bookkeeper – then you wouldn’t need to give them the Creative Brief. Or if you are doing very small, simple marketing projects, you might not need it.

That’s why we have both the Creative Brief and the About My Company templates. The About My Company is shorter and simpler. It’s kind of a Creative Brief Lite. It has the information you want to share with anyone who works for you but it only takes about an hour to fill out.

Thank you very much for the testimonial, by the way. It was very nice of you to share that with us.

TSG:     Over my career, I’ve done hundreds of interviews for hiring employees, temp works, and outsourcing partners. My philosophy was hire hard – meaning take more time upfront to find the right freelancer or company and it makes the rest of the work easier with better results. According to your “Avoid 13 Common Mistakes People Make When They Outsource”, it sounds like you would agree, correct?

JS:     Yes, I do agree. And I think most hiring experts would agree with you. It’s hard-won experience for all of us, I suspect.

It does make sense to invest in getting the right person, even if it takes a little longer up front, because you have a much greater likelihood of successful results, as well as a lot less aggravation and frustration.

If you think about it … if you just hire the first person off the street, odds are they won’t work out, and you’ll be looking for someone again down the road – after you’ve lost time and opportunities. You might as well do it right the first time.

We’ve taken our experience and a lot of tricks we’ve learned and built them into the toolkit, so business owners can spend a lot less time and get to that right person faster.

TSG:     The other thing I appreciate about the “Avoid 13 Common Mistakes …” document is it sets appropriate expectations for people considering outsourcing as an option. From my own extensive experience, I think you nailed the key issues. In your opinion, does the burden for establishing realistic expectations fall on the customer or the outsourcing provider?

JS:     I would say it probably falls primarily on the outsourcing provider, because outsourcing is a core competency for them – it’s what they do for a living – so they are better positioned than the average business owner to know what it takes to make it work successfully.

But there are a lot of freelancers, consultants and virtual assistants who don’t educate their clients. Sometimes they just want to start work and they don’t take the time up front to make sure each new client fully understands what to expect and what it will take to get successful results.

TSG:     Another cool tool included in the kit is the ROI Calculator. When quoting copywriting or consulting rates to customers, I find in a high percentage of responses, customers have a preconceived price in their head based upon something they heard somewhere about what it should cost instead of deriving a budget based upon the expected results. Do you find this to be true as well?

JS:     Yes, yes, I do. Sometimes that number comes from other vendors they have talked to. Sometimes it is something they read somewhere which may not have any applicability to their situation. But a lot of people also have no idea what price is reasonable for a particular type of work and level of experience.

Again, I think it falls to the outsourcing provider to explain what their rates are and to show that the business owner gets value at that rate.

But the main purpose of the ROI Calculator is not to provide rates as much as to encourage business owners to have a realistic understanding of what outsourcing will cost, and a plan for increasing revenue by more than that amount.

TSG:     If a customer were to ask you whether they should pay an outsourcing partner by the hour or by the project, what would you advise them to do?

JS:     I typically prefer paying by the hour. I have just seen far too many projects where both sides agreed to a fixed price and then the scope of the project grew but the price didn’t. Then they end up stopping work at some point because they are no longer making money. That’s annoying for everyone.

The reality is that most outsourcing providers are really bad at pricing. They estimate how long a project will take based on an ideal situation, and then when it turns out not to be ideal (which is at least 2/3 of the time), they lose money.

To be fair, many business owners are not particularly good at explaining what they want. So projects always evolve, and you have to keep the pricing in line with the amount of work that is being done.

That’s why most of the good outsourcing providers either quote an hourly rate or put a limit on how many changes they will make before the price goes up.

For what it’s worth, project pricing can work well where the project is fairly stable and fixed in size. It is also useful where the outsourcing provider truly dislikes keeping track of their time. Sometimes the convenience of not having to worry about timekeeping is worth the risk of not getting paid for all the hours you put in.

TSG:     Do you still offer the Outsourcing Fundamentals course?

JS:     Yes, we do. In fact, we’re just wrapping up the January course. The February one starts February 10. We’ve got it down to 4 weeks now – it’s nice and tight – packed with useful information that helps people learn how to put outsourcing to work in their business.

TSG:     Does the “Help Without Hiring Toolkit” and Outsourcing Fundamentals course overlap or do they work in conjunction with each other? Is there a difference between the course and the toolkit?

JS:     That’s a good question. The Toolkit is the full set of templates. The course walks you through how to use the templates, and it helps you develop a roadmap for getting started with outsourcing in your business.

TSG:     Are you seeing any change in the types of businesses looking for education on outsourcing? For example, are you seeing more solopreneurs enter the market looking for services or are there more small to medium sized businesses downsizing staff in favor of outsourcing?

JS:     Well, our target market has always been solo businesses. You’re right, there are more solo businesses today than ever before. Technology has made this a viable option for just about everyone, and a lot of people are taking advantage of that to live their dreams.

I do have to say that we are seeing small businesses interested too. I think everyone is doing more with freelancers these days.

Outsourcing just makes sense on so many levels. It lets you be more responsive to the needs of your business, and it helps control costs. Plus you can get great people with amazing depth of experience, who you could never afford otherwise, but you only pay for the amount of their time that you use. It’s a win-win.

Thanks, Judy, for letting us catch back up with you.

As I mentioned earlier, I was fortunate enough to have reviewed ProResources new Help Without Hiring Toolkit. As an experienced outsourcing provider for small business consulting and copywriting services, I think it is a wonderful package and an excellent value for the price, without a doubt.

If you want to get a hold of Judy or purchase the Help Without Hiring Toolkit or ProResources Outsourcing Fundamentals training, here is the contact info:

ProResource, LLC
Judy Schramm, CEO
5911 Skyline Heights Court
Alexandria, VA 22311
P: (703) 824-8482
W: http://www.proresource.com/

All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide 

Next up in the series of checking back with solopreneurs I interviewed in the past is Paul Pennel of Minnow Web Design. If you recall, Paul is a talented web designer focused on servicing you, the solopreneur. To check out his original interview, you can click here.
 
 
TSG:     Happy New Year, Paul. Did the New Year bring any new revelations?

PP:     Thanks, and Happy New Year to you too, Doug. I’m not sure about any revelations, but I did set a goal to produce 20 new websites this year. At the beginning of last year, I was hoping for 10 clients and I met my goal. I’m happy with that for my first year in business, but I need to set my sights higher. I think doubling my clients will do that.

I have a full time job in addition to my Minnow Web Design work and I plan on growing my business to the point where I can make that part time. Eventually, I want to get to the point where Minnow Web Design is my full time business and I’m able to support my family. With a full time job and Minnow Web Design, I don’t get a lot of sleep, but I’m finding that sleep is overrated.
 
 
TSG:     Are you offering any new services this year or are you still focused on offering the same services to the same market?

PP:     After one year in business I have decided to narrow my focus, not to the exclusion of all, but following the 80/20 rule. I would like about 80% of my business this year to be from small companies wanting a new or updated basic website that is EASY to update. I have a Minnow Web Design CMS (Content Management System) that makes editing existing pages easier than any other product I’ve seen out there.

To help drive 80% to my preferred service, I have changed my Pricing page. It had been a laundry list of all my services, which has now been simplified to a checklist of 3 different packages and what comes with each. The second option offers a new website, an easy to use CMS and 6 months of hosting free all for $649. This price is VERY competitive with any other company out there. I believe this will help me build my customer base, which I will need to make Minnow Web Design a full time job for me. I still am happy to do any of the services that I had previously listed, but I believe I provide the most benefit for the money in the second category.
 
 
TSG:     I recently saw an announcement that you were running a promotion. Tell us about it, please.

PP:     I have a group in Facebook for Minnow Web Design. In order to keep Minnow in the front of people’s minds, I asked everybody in the group to say what small business they would open if money was no option. Their responses went on the Minnow group wall, and the winner was drawn randomly from all of the entries.  The winner got a $50 Amazon gift card. I plan on similar promotions throughout 2010.
 

TSG:     How much does Facebook play a part in marketing your business?

PP:      I think obviously face-to-face is the most important part of marketing my business. Facebook is an excellent supplement to that though. It allows me to keep others, especially those who don’t live nearby, abreast of Minnow Web Design’s progress.


TSG:     Do you think enough companies are using Facebook appropriately to market their businesses?

PP:     The great thing about Facebook is that people are only on Facebook when they have time to spend so they are more receptive to viewing your messages. I don’t think that enough companies are using Facebook to market their businesses. Not only does Facebook have a lot of users, but those users tend to spend a lot of time each day on Facebook.  On a personal note, one client found me because she knew the brother of somebody who was a member of my Minnow Web Design Facebook group.


TSG:     What other social networking sites do you use?

PP:     I am also on Linked In. I use it to keep in touch, like on Facebook, but I keep it very professional since Linked In is mostly a professional rather than social / fun website. I have been too busy to spend much time on social networking sites, so I’ve concentrated on these two to make sure I’m doing it right.


TSG:     What do you see as a hot trend in web site development and design?

PP:     One thing you may have seen emerge already are websites which look and function like a desktop application. New technologies, among them AJAX and great javascript libraries, over the last several years have made it much easier to create web based applications. One well known example of this is Google Maps. This style is generally called Rich User Interface (RUI). I think this will continue to develop more over the years.


TSG:     What in your opinion is just hype?

PP:     As print media continues to die off, many magazines are turning towards the web to display their content and advertisements. This has lead to what I think is a disturbing trend, websites that look like a magazine. The decision to go “magazine” layout is often made without any thought other than, “well we look like this on paper so we should look like this on the web”. I don’t see this trend going away soon, but the logic behind the design is misguided and will probably begin fading away. The web is a very different medium than paper / magazine and should be treated as the unique medium that it is.


TSG:     Do these types of sites reduce a reader’s functionality? Do they affect the way web spiders find keywords, reducing a sites ranking? Are there other downsides separate from disliking the look and the layout?

PP:     They often make the website harder to navigate. It also leads to a lot of extra clicking to read an entire story since the content is rarely all on the same page. The websites ranking would be affected. The main thing is that spiders put less ranking on a page the deeper it is in the website. So if you have to click on three links from the front page to get to a story, that spider will assume that story is not very important. I actually think the looks of the magazine sites are often very well done; it is the functionality that I have a problem with.


TSG:     Let’s talk about some of the services you have listed under Additional Features. What’s a Wiki and who should add it to their site or blog?

PP:     A Wiki allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Basically it is a place a small business can store internal information and documentation. This allows users to update and access information from any computer while keeping it secure. The Wiki’s I’ve created have all been password protected.


TSG:     What about the 1-hour maintenance option, what sort of work do you do if a customer chooses this option?

PP:     This is usually used for small changes to the website to keep it current or seasonal. It is also a great way for my clients to get their questions answered without getting nickeled and dimed to death.  E-mails from clients that I can answer quickly and easily would not count towards the one hour.

I’d like to thank Doug once again for taking the time to interview me. Good luck this year to all of you solopreneurs out there, and remember to keep me in mind for your website development needs.


Thank you, Paul, for catching us up on Minnow Web Design. I agree with Paul’s comment about being cost effective. I’ve researched a number of web designers and believe Paul’s pricing is an excellent value for the quality of results you are investing in.


Here’s Paul’s contact info for further service inquires:


Minnow Web Design
Paul Pennel
Owner and Designer
P: (314) 249-4690
W: http://www.minnowwebdesign.com/index.php


And remember, he specializes in helping you, the solopreneur.


All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide