When was the moment after you started your business that you said to yourself “I’ve made it; I’m a successful entrepreneur!”


My Small Biz Break partner, Maria, and I are looking for entrepreneurs (and of course this means you, my solopreneur friend) to help us answer this question in our latest book. You have the opportunity to inspire, motivate, and help others who are struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel. All you have to do is answer the question within two pages. We will edit it, create the cover art and provide you a professional eBook. 


What’s in it for you?
Aside from giving back to your fellow entrepreneurs and supporting the American dream, you get to be part of a book branding you as an expert in your market.


Here are some additional benefits for you:

1. Add “author” to your roster of accomplishments.
2. Small Biz Break and 29 other authors will be marketing this publication through multiple networks giving you greater exposure.
3. Small Biz Break will select six (6) participants for interview on our Blog Talk Radio show. All interviews will appear on our Small Biz Break blog, too.
4. You will get an eBook copy that you can use as a marketing piece, or sell it for whatever price you want and keep 100% of the profits!

Limited Space
We can’t accept hundreds of submissions; we will only select the best to ensure the quality of the content for all involved.


Please contact Small Biz Break by September 30^th, 2010 at contact@smallbizbreak.com if you are interested in participating and to get more details.


We will notify candidates of their acceptance by Monday October 11^th, 2010.


All accepted authors must submit their stories to Small Biz Beak at contact@smallbizbreak.com by November 19^th, 2010.


We look forward to having you share your experiences with others. This is your opportunity to bring your struggles and success to the pages of a book while gaining great exposure and recognition. Plus, you’ll receive an excellent market piece or additional source of passive income.


All the Best,


Doug Dolan
The Solopreneur’s Guide
Small Biz Break

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