I was recently a presenter in a Telesummit and even though I had a specific topic to present on, the hosts also felt it would be appropriate to talk about some of the biggest challenges and mistakes that I faced (and still do face today) along my path to solopreneurship!

These are the same issues that EVERY solopreneur faces at some point or other in their business so, in case you missed my presentation, I thought I’d share those challenges and mistakes with you here in the hope that you can learn from them, and also know that you are not alone.

Challenge/Mistake #1 – Creating Balance

The main reason I started my business in the first place (way back in November 2001) was so that I could choose my own schedule – I had two young children at the time and needed to have a very flexible schedule that would allow me to be around for them, particularly during school holidays.

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Hosting teleclasses is one of my absolute favorite list building strategies. Apart from being easy to do, it’s a great way to interact with my audience and get to know them, and also let them get to know me. But as with anything new there’s always a learning curve involved.

Over the years I’ve developed my own style for hosting teleclasses and found some shortcuts that allow me to present my content so that everything flows smoothly. Today I’d like to share with you my top six dos and don’ts for hosting teleclasses so that you can shorten your learning curve when you’re ready to host your own teleclasses:

1. Do prepare notes and timings. Even though you want your information to flow naturally from one point to the next, it’s also really important to have a plan and something to refer to so that you can stay on track. Planning out your topic timings means that you’ll also be able to deliver all of the information that you want to share, and within the timeframe that you’ve allocated. It also shows that you respect your attendee’s time too by sticking to your published schedule.

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When you’re an online solo service professional (solopreneur) it’s crucial that you move away from the hours-for-dollars business model and create a multiple streams of income business, i.e. your income comes from a variety of different sources:

1. Passive income through the sale of information products.
2. Leveraged income by creating and running group programs.
3. One-on-one client income; this is your highest level service and you only work with a few clients at this level.

Creating passive income in your business through the sale of information products is at the heart of a multiple streams of income business. And once sales are going well you can be generating a consistent income each and every month.

Sometimes, though, you need to give sales a little helping hand, particularly if you’re launching a new product. Today I’d like to share with you three ways in which you can increase your product sales through using special offers.

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When you start developing your multiple streams of income business by adding products and programs which are available on your website, there’s a very specific policy you need to have in place … and that is a clearly defined Sales Policy.

Before we get into what this is about and why you need it, let me just take a minute to ask you how you would handle the following scenarios:

• You offer a discount to prospective clients of either a dollar amount or percentage off the price of your product/program if they purchase before a certain date.  A client comes to you after the deadline and says they didn’t read your email in time, can they still receive the discount?  What do you say?
• You are offering quite an expensive program so decide to make things easier on your clients by offering a payment plan.  Part way through the payment plan one of your client’s credit cards gets declined.  What do you do?

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Your strategic Marketing Action Plan (MAP) is a document that is used to plan your day-to-day marketing activities/strategies for running your online business; in other words it’s your MAP to online business management success. And just like a real map, your MAP tells you exactly how to get from point A to point B and the route you need to take in order to get there.

When you have your MAP in place it eliminates the guess work – you always know what you’re doing, when you’re doing it, and how you’re going to implement the strategies.

Creating a Marketing Action Plan can seem very daunting if you’ve not done this kind of detailed planning before; it can be difficult to know where to start.  My favorite tool for creating my strategic MAP is a spreadsheet because of the row/column formatting that spreadsheets use.

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Once you’ve mastered your online marketing system and you’re growing your list on a daily basis, this is a good time to then set about creating additional offerings for your subscribers.  This is where you start to look at your Product & Marketing Funnel and see where the gaps are and where new products can fit.

If you’re like most solo service professionals you’ll have something at the top (i.e. the widest part) of your funnel, which is usually your free taste, and then you’ll have something at the bottom (i.e. the narrowest part) of your funnel, which is usually your most expensive one-on-one services, but you won’t have anything in-between.

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For many solopreneurs a large part of their business is working one-on-one with clients, and that means having a way of keeping all of their client information organized and easy to access.

In this article I’m going to share with you my top three tips for keeping everything together, so that you can easily access your client information and know exactly where your clients are in your programs.

1.  Physical: Create a Client Contact Sheet

For most business owners there will be a physical client file that you’ll need to create. One of the simplest ways of creating this file is by using a manila file folder in which you simply drop your paperwork into.  This file will contain things like the agreement form from your client, assessment forms, or details of any projects that you’ll be working on.

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Many business owners make the mistake of picking one or two online marketing strategies, trying them for a couple of weeks, deciding that they don’t work because they’re not bringing in new subscribers, and then moving on to the next hot online marketing strategy that they’ve heard about.

Don’t make this same mistake!

There are many, many, different online marketing strategies you can implement to grow your business and attract new subscribers to your list, but the key to making any of them work is consistency and persistence. It simply isn’t good enough to try one for a short time, decide it’s not working, and then move on to the next.

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One of the best ways you can give your list building efforts a HUGE boost is to partner with other solopreneurs to create a giveaway event … also known as a joint venture (JV).  If done right this strategy can literally add hundreds of new subscribers to your list in a very short period of time.  I’ve been involved in this strategy a number of times over the years and have welcomed several hundred new subscribers into my community in a matter of days. The latest joint venture I participated in added 115 new subscribers in just ONE day.

Today I’d like to share with you my all-time favorite type of joint venture – the giveaway event.

What is a giveaway event?

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There comes a point in every solopreneur’s business where they need to sit down and plan … and I mean, really plan! Not just write down a few ideas on the back of an envelope and hope for the best, but really map out a long-term strategic plan for their business.

Creating this kind of business plan is so important as, for one reason, it immediately eliminates a lot of the overwhelm and frustration that you’re probably feeling, but it also allows you to:

• See where you’re going;
• Know how you’re going to get there; and
• Lays out exactly what you need to do along the way to get from Point A to Point B

How do you know when you’ve reached this critical business planning point?

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