By John Maddin
Are you a working mother who believes that her small business will be the next “overnight success? Are you a solopreneur or freelancer counting on that call from Oprah or QVC to catapult your revenue into 7 figures? Sorry to break it to you but most “overnight successes” spend years developing their businesses. This means that to be successful, solopreneurs and freelancers have to create and implement their own business improvement plans.
Malcolm Gladwell in his latest book, Outliers asserts that successful people have devoted at least 10,000 hours to their pursuits. He indicates that numerous studies show that this magic number shows up regardless of the person’s profession—musician, athlete, author, computer programmer. 10,000 hours is a lot of time to focus on one thing. If you dedicated 20 hours a week, to perfecting one skill in one year you would log 1,040 hours. At that pace, it would take almost 10 years of constant effort (9.61 years to be exact) to get to 10,000 hours.
As a working mother and solopreneur I don’t have the luxury of devoting twenty hours a day to perfecting only one skill—I’m running a business and taking care of my family. I have however realized that success is not something that just happens. It requires commitment and diligence to learning about the various elements that make your business function, whether you are an author (like I am), a graphic artist, a web designer, an interior designer or a real estate agent. It also requires that you prioritize your time to get those valuable “practice hours” into your daily and weekly routine.
One way to get your practice time in is to establish a weekly improvement program. Figure out the four key elements of your business. For instance it could be: customers, employees, products/services and marketing. Throughout the week take notes and jot down ideas as to how you can improve your business. (Improving could mean outsourcing a particular task/duty to someone more competent). Once a week devote 2-4 hours to reviewing the ideas that you’ve collected and figuring out how to use the solid ones to use in your business. By continually honing your business it’s conceivable that in a year (or even less) you will begin to see the fruits of your labor.
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As a freelancer I spend a lot of time marketing myself. I set aside two days every week where I work only on my marketing to bring in new business. That’s about as “improvement plan”-ed as I get, unfortunately.
I’m sure I could do better though. I think something that might help me is to have a goal written above my desk. Maybe “Hire 1st Employee By Jan 1″. I think I could do that pretty easily.
Hi Meagan:
Marketing is VERY important for freelancers and solopreneurs…so hats off to you. In terms of an improvement plan, perhaps you could think about ways that you can make your business more attractive to potential clients. Those ideas could then be incorporated into your marketing.
Finding time is always a problem with you have kids that always seem to need you to drop-off/pick-up, so late night working is my best option. I like to focus on Marketing also, but also need to for reading, planning.
Thanks for the post Yvonne. Gave me alot to think about, especially since I will begin to write my book before the end of the month.
Careful planning is fundamental to success, even when you are a solopreneur or working as freelancer. Especially for moms who do their kitchen work and bring up their children, but also have to cater their financial obligations.
IMO a written guide to starting and running business successfully is essential. It could help solopreneurs to identify their goals, and could serve as operational plan to achieve them.
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