It Sure Beats Working

(star)-Bucking The Trend

There I was in Starbucks, not  20 minutes ago, walking over to a table to sit down. 

In my left hand I held a $1.65 cup of black, French Roast coffee.  In my right hand I held a $10.95, 16 ounce bag of French Roast coffee.

Pretty dumb if you ask me.  After all, the pound of coffee will probably lead to 60 cups in my office over the next month or two.  I'm no math genius, but that comes out to about 18 cents a cup. 

So how is it possible that they can get me to spend nine times as much on a cup as on a bag (at the exact same moment, no less) when I have a demonstrated ability to brew it up on my own?

You know the answer:  Convenience, comfy chairs, a home away from home, a chance to run into other people in town, nice music, etc.

If you think your prices are the reason more clients aren't hiring you, I'd like to suggest that you're looking in the wrong place.  Figure out how to make the experience easier/faster/less risky... nicer (!!), and maybe they'll pay you nine times what it costs to do it themselves as well.

What Do You Recommend?

I asked the guy who maintains my rider lawnmower what he thought:  "Should I pay to have this fixed or just buy a new one?"

"It's your decision," he said.

I knew it was my decision; that wasn't what I was asking.  So I asked him again.  Same answer.  I finally moved on, knowing that I wasn't going to get his expert opinion.

That's too bad, since expert opinion is what people are willing to pay a lot of money for.

When my lawnmower guy refuses to give an answer that could help me make a big decision, he's relegating himself to "hourly fix-it guy" status.  That's okay, but there's not much leverage in it... the best he can do to earn more money is raise his hourly rate a bit or work a few more hours.

If, instead, he thought of himself as my "small engine adviser," and helped me make decisions in that realm on my lawn mower, snow blower, chain saw, etc., he could earn more money while offering me more value.  Maybe I'd start buying used equipment from him.  Maybe I'd pay him a monthly retainer just to have access to his advice.  Maybe I'd never consider replacing him for someone who could do the work for $5 an hour less.

The point is, you've got an opportunity with your clients to be much more than just an hourly producer.  Look for ways to offer perspective, and when someone asks, "What do you recommend?", recognize it as the HUGE opening that it is.

Improving As You Go

For the first seven years I was in business, I dutifully filed away my bills and receipts by type: Electric, phone, bank statements, etc...  I put them all into their proper folders each month.  At the end of each year, after filing my taxes, I'd dump everything into a box, label it with the year, and store it in my attic.

At the start of this year it dawned on me that I never seemed to need any of those paper records once they'd been filed. (Everything was tracked in my Quicken software anyway.)  So I just stopped doing the filing -- now I just drop the stuff directly into a box.

The point is, there are things about the way you operate your business that may no longer make sense (in my case with the bills and receipts, it never made sense at all).  The hard part is realizing where you're wasting time and effort.

How about you?  Are there things you're still doing that add no value???

Much More Than Just A Job

I got to my office just now and found a small box sitting outside my door.  Turns out it was a gift, sent to me by a client in England (I'm in Boston) whose newsletter I had just finished working on.  Wow, that really made my day.

Many people who go off on their own to start a business (myself included) have no idea that this kind of thing even exists; that people who hire you can be so happy with the work you do, that in addition to paying your fee, they give you a gift on top of it.   

That's too bad, because it seems to me, that's what everyone's working life should be about:  A standing ovation from the same people who just waited in line and paid a lot of money to see you perform.

Fastest Check In The West

The generally accepted turnaround time for invoice payment on professional services is 30 days.  Some clients take a little longer, very (very) few pay more quickly, and the majority are right on the money at 30 days.

Not me; I'm a super-fast payer.  Not for people like the phone company or gas company, but to another professional -- particularly if it's a solo person -- I pay the minute I get the invoice.

Why?  Because it's a nice gesture that costs me close to nothing and yet is always noticed on the other end.  The way I look at it, being viewed by the professionals I depend on as a fantastic client is worth more in a pinch than having the money sitting in my bank account for another 30 days.

Try it.  Next time you call for a favor, I'll bet they go out of their way to help you too.

Gather Your Team

For a long time, when people asked, I always said that I work alone.  I like the flexibility and freedom that selling, creating and delivering a service all by myself gives me.

Recently, I've come to realize that what I've been saying isn't exactly true.  Because while I have no employees or even colleagues with whom I partner, I do have a team of people supporting me who keep the business running. 

These people allow me to focus more on client work (i.e. where the money comes from) and less on the minutia of day-to-day.  They include (in the order I brought them on): My accountant, attorney, business coach, personal assistant, IT support, and financial planner. 

Sometimes, regarding the creation of a solo professional practice, people ask, "What would you have done differently if you knew then what you know now?"  Bringing these other professionals on sooner is number one on my list.

Love Your Office

Today, for the first time in five days, I left my house.  I had knee surgery last Thursday, so I've been working from home.

You'd think it would make no difference -- after all, all I do anyway is type at a keyboard and talk on the phone -- but I've been almost completely unproductive these last few days. 

This morning (actually, about 15 minutes ago), my wife dropped my off at my office and I'm loving it.  Something about this place just puts me in the groove instantly. 

And that's my point: You need to do whatever it takes to create a space that you love to work in.  The benefit of doing so, even if it costs you a few dollars more a month, is better focus, better results, and, maybe most importantly, a great feeling about your work.

Gotta go.  She'll be back for me in four hours and I'm looking forward to enjoying every minute of "work" today!

Going The Last Mile

We hired a landscaper last fall to clear and level our side yard.  I didn't really need more lawn to mow, but we build an ice skating rink each year and I wanted a more level surface to work with.  That's what I told the landscaper.

I got home the night after the work was done, however, and the lawn wasn't level.  Not bad for a lawn, but when you've got a 60' x 35' rink, even a little slope adds up to a lot.  So I called the landscaper to see if we could do anything to improve it.

Yikes.  He wasn't hearing it.  The work was done, the seed was thrown and he argued that I didn't explicitly state that it had to be 100% level (I didn't).  We went back and forth for about 10 minutes until finally I just said "forget it."   I'm not even sure what I was looking for from him, but certainly more than a stone wall from a guy who clearly wanted to move on. 

Today, six months later, a neighbor called and asked about "the guy who did your landscaping."  She has a project in mind and wanted a recommendation.  So I told her my story.  She thanked me for the warning.

First impressions certainly matter, but last impressions do too.  Maybe even more, since that's what we seem to remember.  I don't think about how nice the landscaper was initially, how he accommodated our schedule to get the work done, the price he charged, or even the quality of the lawn.  I just remember that last conversation we had.  When my neighbor asked for my opinion, the word of mouth train stopped cold.

Even after the work is done, you have the opportunity to send clients off singing your praises or send them off telling others to "watch out."  The easiest -- and yet in some ways the hardest -- part of a job is the end, when you make sure you don't disengage until you're sure your client is happy.

Blogging On Empty

Forgive me readers... it's been 14 days since my last post. 

And that, I've discovered, is a fundamental weakness with blogs as a tool for marketing your business. 

Here's what I mean.  Unlike their e-cousin, the electronic newsletter, which if done properly comes out like clockwork every single month, blogs can come out as often -- or, as I've come to discover, as infrequently -- as the blog writer likes. Your blog is never on fire; it never has to be written today.  Which means it often gets pushed to the back burner.

Try this little test: Choose any five blogs at random and track the publishing frequency from the beginning until now.  In all but a very few, you'll see a slowdown in posting activity (if not outright death) from when the blog first launched.

I'd like to tell you that I have a great solution to this problem, but I don't.  Among my e-newsletter clients, the single biggest obstacle to success is getting them to continue publishing... and that's just once a month.  If I told them instead to "publish whenever," most of these busy professionals would rarely get around to it.

It seems to me that a blog's scheduling freedom is like a health club that boasts of being open 24/7.  That's nice, but for all but the most fanatical, the obstacle to staying in shape isn't enough hours of health club operation... it's getting yourself in the door on a regular basis.  Same with blogs.

How about you?  Do you have a secret to blog-gevity for the rest of us?

Burn The Ships

I didn't have a really good reason to leave my last job -- that was part of the problem. 

It was kind of nice.  Nice people, nice work, nice money, nice commute.  Nice, nice, nice. Not an oppressive environment by any means, and not a lot of reason to go elsewhere. 

But somehow, at some point, the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I should be doing something else, fought its way to the front of my mind.  Eventually I just had to leave.

Knowing, however, that early discouragement might scare me back "inside," I did what I could to complicate my retreat:

- A signed a one year lease for office space. 
- I joined professional organizations.
- I incorporated my business.
- I even got vanity plates for my car with my company name on it (it would be pretty embarrassing to drive around with those after the fact, I figured).

In retrospect, these kinds of things helped quite a bit.  In addition to barring (if not locking) the door, taken together, they showed me that I did in fact have a "real" business... long before I had the client list and revenue as proof.

How about you?  What have you done to help yourself stay in the solo professional game?