I wrote a piece at the beginning of the year titled, “The Sweat Equity of Social Networking” after speaking with a number of solopreneurs and small business owners who were feeling numb from their experience with social networking.


Some were numb from putting in long hours without feeling the love, while others were simply drained dealing with overwhelming spam offers from gurus with guaranteed results when they still didn’t believe social media would help their business.


My post focused on the first set of struggling social media solopreneurs, but I wanted to back up my ideas with some data for the second set of small business owners.


Normally, I like writing my own posts, but sometimes I come across other pieces that seem to hit all the right points. Here is a well-written write-up on SocialMedia Examiner titled, “Top 5 Social Media Myths Debunked”, by Peter Wylie, that I believe accomplish just that.


If you are struggling with whether social media is useful for your marketing campaigns, read through Peter’s article first, followed by a read through of my post mentioned above.


If you have any questions, please leave a comment below or write to me at thesologuide@gmail.com.


All the Best,


Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide
Small Biz Break

Are elevator pitches only for major corporations or do they apply to solopreneurs and small business, too?


I believe they do.


First, in case you’re a little fuzzy about elevator pitches, the premise is if you only have 30 – 60 seconds (basically the length of an elevator ride) to tell someone enough about your business to get them to want to hear more, what would you say.


If you do a search by elevator pitch templates, you will find a couple of different schools of thought. Some prefer the more traditional, conservative approach. Others favor a different, personal approach.


Here are two samples for the same business, Small Biz Break, taking those two different approaches. Sample 1 is the conservative style content and Sample 2 is for those who prefer the personal approach.


Sample 1
“Small Biz Break helps new and struggling small business entrepreneurs achieve, ‘Simple, Spontaneous, Success’. With a high unemployment rate and a lack of job fulfillment on the rise, many talented people are choosing to stop living someone else’s dream and start living their own.

The greatest success comes from creating a business that is an extension of who you are … your strengths, your experience, your passions, your financial needs and your personal goals. Small Biz Break helps you achieve your ‘Simple, Spontaneous, Success’ with our free business forms and templates, ebooks, personalized consulting and professional writing services.”


Sample 2
“Michael, feeling trapped in an unfulfilling day job, decides it’s time to start his own small business. What’s a good business idea for him to start? Emma started a small business, but she’s struggling and can’t wait for the economy to improve. What can she do to restructure her business and get it growing again?

Who can help led Michael and Emma to ‘Simple, Spontaneous, Success’? Small Biz Break.”


So, the first questions I have for you are “Which do you prefer / feel is more effective? And why?” You can leave your comments below.


Next question, “Why is developing an elevator pitch important for your solopreneur small business?”


You may be thinking, “Doug, I already have enough to think about with marketing, why do I need to do more?” I agree; there is quite a bit for you to consider with your marketing campaigns, which is exactly why I believe you need to develop an elevator pitch.


If you can’t articulate what you do, whom you do it for and why it benefits them in a quick 30 – 60 second statement, then how are you going to focus your marketing activities? This doesn’t mean that all of your marketing communications need to include your elevator pitch. You may do campaign series that breaks down your elevator pitch into various key elements with each ad or spot focusing in on one element at a time. However, the series as a whole still relates back to the essence of your elevator pitch.


So before you move forward with more marketing, take a minute or so and decide if you have a strong elevator pitch. If you need help developing one for your business, just ask for help by writing to smallbizbreak@gmail.com. My partner, Maria, and I would love to help.


All the Best,

Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide
Small Biz Break

My Small Biz Break partner, Maria, recently posted a great topic on her blog at Multi Entrepreneur Ideas, asking small business owners if they have a disaster plan in place. This question is especially crucial for solopreneurs.


Besides the lagging economy, there are a number of other factors that create risks, potentially disastrous risks, for your business. And I don’t say this to scare you. I say this to inspire you to take action, hopefully.


Let’s list out a couple of real life scenarios:


Your computer crashes and you can’t access your information – or possibly lose all of your data. How many times have you heard this story?


You become ill and can’t work for an extended period of time. It happened with my wife when we owned our restaurant. She developed a sudden, major illness that didn’t allow her to work for a couple of years. This impacted our business drastically.


You have your new marketing campaign planned out and save a budget for it, but then suddenly, you need to divert your cash reserves because you lost a major customer or a piece of equipment fails and you need to replace it.


No, you don’t want to spend your time constantly worrying about what could go wrong with your business. This will keep you from focusing on growing your business. To avoid this situation, take the time to review your business and protect your critical areas.


Even if you have limited funds you can still research and have ready the following:

• Outsourcing providers
• Software packages
• Data backups
• Health Insurance
• Business Insurance
• Access to loans

The worst time to figure out how to handle these scenarios is when the s*** hits the fan. Do yourself a favor and have a plan in place so you can keep your business moving forward if disaster strikes.


If you need help creating a disaster prevention / recovery plan or if you have a business disaster story you would like to share, please leave a comment below. The other readers would love to learn from it.


All the Best,


Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide
Small Biz Break

Before we get into the post, I want to clarify what I mean by “better traffic”. Everyone wants more traffic to their site, but more of what kind of traffic? For the purpose of this post, I am going to focus on valuable traffic – traffic made up of prime prospects, not looky loos.


There is a variety of ways to get more traffic. As a solopreneur consultant and copywriter, I can put together a solid marketing campaign to get you more traffic, but before I would ever put a proposal in front of you, I would ask you these six basic questions to make sure you get valuable traffic:


1. What focused group are you trying to attract?

2. What message do you want to delivery that is of importance to them?

3. Do you have something of value specifically for their needs when they arrive to your site?

4. Do you have a persuasive offer ready to convert visitors into customers?

5. What expected results do you hope to achieve from this new campaign?

6. What have you tried before to bring traffic to your site and what were your results?


Volume of traffic is secondary to value. Yes, you want both, but if you start focusing on volume over value, you are at high risk for blowing your marketing budget and losing potentially valuable prospects in the process.


If you are struggling with solid answers to these questions, get help. If you hire an Internet Marketing pro or SEO expert, they need to help you answer these questions before you kick off your new marketing campaign. Don’t hire them to simply get you more traffic and hope that your products and services will sell themselves.


It is possible (and sometimes beneficial) to have two answers for questions two, three and four, while you need to have one answer for questions one and five per campaign. You may have multiple answers for question six.


You can have two answers for questions two, three and four, if you are trying to test the market to see which campaign and offering performs the best for generating sales. For example, you may have recently written a new ebook and you choose to offer it as a stand-alone product for $49 and as a bundle with other products and services for $99. Will your target market prefer to go for the lower price or favor the value of the bundled option?


So when you next choose to kick off a new marketing campaign to bring in better traffic, remember to answer the six basic questions above and focus on value before volume.


All the Best,


Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide
Small Biz Break

My last post titled, Simplifying Small Business, announced my new joint venture, Small Biz Break, with Maria Smith-Alvira. As part of my marketing, I recently polled some entrepreneurs with a question, “How would you like to see starting a small business simplified?” I received some interesting answers.


One respondent stated that he didn’t want the process simplified because he thought it was best people realized how demanding starting a new business can be. I understand where he’s coming from, but I don’t agree.


Let me clarify, with Small Biz Break, Maria and I are not selling magic dreams of a one-sized-fits-all, instant formula for success. Simplifying isn’t synonymous with simplistic.


Starting and running a small business takes dedication, vision, focus, talent, and resourcefulness, among other things. It is work.


While I believe working by the beach for an hour or two a day making a six-figure income is a nice thought, we don’t believe it’s a healthy expectation to set for your start-up. And this isn’t our vision with Small Biz Break.


Our passion is to help novice and struggling entrepreneurs clear up the clutter of options and activity that can overwhelm them and replace that scattered existence with focus … focus on actions that are specific to moving their business forward.


Work can feel less like, well, work, when you create a business that is an extension of your passion, leverages your strengths, while meeting your financial needs … and has a focus. That’s why we created the New Business Idea Questionnaire and Personal Finance Worksheet.


As business consultants and regular contributors to various online business forums, a common question we’ve experienced is, “I have a business idea, but I don’t know what to do next?”


To help give these entrepreneurs focus, we created the Small Business Start-Up Checklist, the Start-Up Costs Spreadsheet, the Mini Business Plan Outline, the Formal Business Plan Outline and the Marketing Plan Outline.


Another common call for help comes from entrepreneurs that started a business, but didn’t see their business dreams become reality. Some of these entrepreneurs need to take a step back and review their business model, their UVP (unique value proposition), the definition of their target audience and do a revamp of their planning. They can utilize the previous forms I’ve mentioned.


Still others struggle with setting goals and objectives, and time management. For these suffering entrepreneurs, we created the Task Management Worksheet, the Weekly Goals and Objectives Template and the SWOT Analysis Template.


And for those who need more than forms and templates, we currently offer private consulting and will soon provide the option of downloading Small Biz Break ebooks and participating in live Q&A sessions where we will drill down into how these templates and forms apply specifically to their businesses.


We aren’t promising a package that anyone can buy into and do little work to earn a big income. We are promising to provide you value and experience to make starting and growing your business easier.


If you are a first-time entrepreneur or struggling with a small business you already started, check out the Small Biz Break site or write to Maria and me at smallbizbreak@gmail.com with your questions.


All the Best,


Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide