Have you ever wondered what to call yourself when you’re at a networking event? Are you a solopreneur or an entrepreneur? There are subtle differences, but there are also similarities for anyone who wants to run a successful business.
At its core, a solopreneur is an individual who runs his or her own business and “does it all.” A solopreneur doesn’t have partners and typically doesn’t have any kind of support staff unless they hire contractors for specific tasks. An entrepreneur may have partners, a team and leverages capital to achieve business growth.
Are You A Solopreneur Or An Entrepreneur?
A solopreneur wears all the hats. They are the boss and the employee. They are typically the one who has all the interaction with their clients. Not all solopreneurs know how to do everything, and the savvy ones will hire out and delegate those tasks in which they don’t excel. An entrepreneur hires staff so he or she can focus on business growth.
A solopreneur holds all the financial risk, but they typically start smaller so their risk may not be as great as an entrepreneur who is hiring staff, renting space and more.
A solopreneur typically focuses on one specialty. An entrepreneur has a specialty of business growth and hires staff or contractors to bring that growth to life.
A solopreneur may start as a side gig with the idea of growing into a full-time business owner. An entrepreneur typically jumps in with both feet and seeks fast growth that is as profitable as possible as quickly as possible. This is not to say that solopreneurs cannot take their solo endeavor to full-time and more than a profitable business.
Both solopreneurs and entrepreneurs need to bring in customers. Without customers, there is no business.
Regardless of whether you’re a solopreneur or an entrepreneur, you could benefit and thrive under the tutelage of a knowledgeable business coach. If you’re looking for higher growth, are stuck in a rut or simply want a sounding board, reach out to Rex Richard and his team.
Do your friends, family and your employees shy away from you? Is it hard for you to have a conversation with a staff member without them thinking, “what did I do wrong this time?” Do you have a toxic personality? It’s not a question many people want to ask themselves.
Do you have a propensity for toxic perfectionism? They go hand in hand. Perfection is certainly not a horrible trait, but taken to extremes can be detrimental to your health and the health of your business and relationships.
I’m not saying you want to put out shoddy goods or services, but you do sometimes need to adopt an attitude of, “this is good enough.” This is especially true if you’re seeking happiness and satisfaction in your business and your life.
If you have recognized that you have a perfectly toxic syndrome, what can you do to break it? Well, to take a step back… you need to recognize it in yourself before you can address it.
Do you have a toxic personality?
Are you competent and experienced but believe that is more crucial to success than perfection? As an entrepreneur, you can easily drive away staff and vendors if you’re striving to continually be perfect rather than competent. Competency may not be the only factor to your success but if you’re striving for only perfection that certainly holds you back. Instill confidence in your team through your actions, not through unreasonable demands for perfection.
If you don’t have all the answers and if you can’t see all the potential ways for success and failure, does that mean you don’t do anything? You don’t have to know everything — life and business are trial and error. Just because you write the paycheck doesn’t mean you need to have all the answers. It’s all right to say, “I’m not sure, let me find out.”
Do you believe that only perfect people can be business successes? That is a lot of pressure to place on yourself and those around you. Don’t let a toxic personality and a toxic drive for perfection stop you from achieving your goals and growing your team. Success means you may stumble along the way and that’s all right!
Do you have any limiting beliefs that are holding you back from success? How have you overcome them or are you still struggling to rid yourself of the perfectionism trap?
If the pandemic taught business owners anything it’s that much of their work can be done remotely and their staff — many of them — would prefer to continue working from home. At first, remote work was such a foreign concept that it sent employers and workers into a tailspin. If you wonder how to make remote work viable, we can help.
Employers wondered… will the work get done? Will the staff be productive or will they be taking afternoons off?
Employees wondered… where will i work? How can I get work done when I am at home? How will I draw a line between work hours and home hours when my employer knows I have everything at my fingertips to keep me engaged?
How To Make Remote Work Viable
The hybrid workplace has become more commonplace with employees choosing to come in a day or two a week and WFH the other days. This seems to give the employer peace of mind that the work is getting done. This situation also seems to suit the employee who relishes in person interaction and watercooler talk. Being in front of the boss is also a great way to stay front of mind when you’re trying to move up the company ladder.
If you’re still struggling with remote work, here are our tips:
Have a clearly defined workspace. Even if you’re on the kitchen table, claim it and work from there. At the end of the day, pick up, pack up, and transition yourself into home – even though you don’t have a commute.
Draw a line in the sand that your work hours are from X to Y and you’re not going to be on call 24/7
Make sure your family understands that you’re still working even though you’re home. They need to understand the importance of that.
Don’t give in to the impulse to clean the house, wash the dishes, mow the lawn or run errands. If you want to do those chores, do them before work, during your lunch or after work. Treat your workday as a workday.
Attend meetings. Get involved in zoom chats with fellow employees and staff. Stay front of mind by contributing to conversations.
Know whether your ideal workday involves staying home all day, every day. If not, let your employer know. Conversely, if you know you don’t want to be in the office full time, then talk with your employer and see what can be worked out.
This is still a strange new world in many ways and you may still be navigating it. Give us a call and talk with Rex Richard if you’re struggling to keep your business afloat in the new work from home world or about any business concerns you may have.
If you’re not an extrovert you can’t be a successful business person. What? Do you need to be extroverted to be an entrepreneur? You don’t. While you do need to be able to network, shake hands, host virtual get-togethers and talk on the phone, you can be an introvert or an ambivert and be successful!
Introverts can be great entrepreneurs, but their business style is different than the style an extrovert exhibit. The world goes around because of all the different personalities. In fact, a client of yours may work with you because you’re an extrovert or vice versa. Your personality may just mesh or clash and it could be because you’re an introvert, extrovert, or ambivert.
Do You Need To Be Extroverted To Be An Entrepreneur?
What are some of the benefits that extroverted entrepreneurs have?
Casting a wider networking net just because they are more likely found outside of the office, rather than sitting in the office.
Extroverts are also more likely to strike up a conversation in line with a stranger and that could lead to business conversations.
They more regularly interact with their teams.
They might be more charismatic than introverts because they are the life of the party.
What do introverts contribute to the business world?
They are focused.
The relationships they build are constructed over the long term.
They may be more niched and this could enhance their expertise.
They may be better listeners and ask more probing questions.
Build your team and fill it with xtroverts and introverts. Find team members who complement and contrast with you.
It is rare to find an entrepreneur who is 100% introvert or 100% extrovert — just as it’s rare for any person to be completely one personality or another. Everyone is nuanced and everyone brings strengths to the business table.
Are you an extrovert or an introvert or both? Knowing what you are will help you find people with whom to work that will help your business thrive.
There’s no getting around it. A blog is not a fad. Your business blog is not going away, nor should it. If you have a business blog and haven’t been working on it, you need to make that a top priority this year. Why? Remember when Facebook shut down and no one could communicate with friends and family? Well, many business owners couldn’t connect with clients. If you had a blog and an email list, you would have been all right with the shutdown. Were you? You need a blog and we have tips to help boost your business blogging efforts.
Some of these tips may seem basic, but if you’re new to blogging or if you have a blog, but don’t write posts, you may need this reminder to motivate you. If you don’t have a blog and know you need one reach out to Rex Richard and his team to discuss a blogging strategy to help market your business to its greatest heights.
How To Boost Your Business Blog
Make sure your content is of the highest quality. If you have typos and grammatical errors, a potential client may think you’re sloppy in the other services your business offers.
Write content your audience/potential customer wants to read. Teach them something. Solve a problem. Show your expertise and how you should be their go-to person.
Make an editorial calendar. This document is worth the time you put into it and will make content creation easier than you’d originally imagined. An editorial calendar will also take away the fear of the blank screen and the thought of, “what am I going to write?” Your calendar lays it all out.
Make the content readable. Use subheads. Bullet points. Numbered lists. Many blog readers will consume your content on their phone or tablet and subheads and lists make it easier.
Use SEO best practices. You don’t need to be an SEO expert, but you should know what your business should be using as its search engine optimization keywords and key phrases. If you don’t know what keywords to use, reach out to Rex and his team for an SEO audit. SEO will help your blog and your business show up in a Google search.
Use video or audio. If you don’t want to write, make a video. Record an audio. Keep in mind though if you just embed a video or an audio on your site without any text, it will not be searchable. Write content to go along with the video or audio. You may want to consider hiring a transcription service to transcribe the audio – this is ideal for those individuals who don’t want to listen to audio or watch a video.
Share your blog post on social media. I know I said that social media is not quite your friend, but if you’re on social media with your business and you’re writing new content you want people to know about it, find it and read it, right? To do that you should share that content on social media. Add a bit of a teaser content on social with a link to “read more.” Your ultimate goal is to get people to your blog.
If you need expert assistance starting or reviving your blog, reach out to us, and let’s strategize content marketing to grow your business in 2022. Rex Richard – Founder and CEO, Peak Dynamics LLC Innovator, WordPress and Multisite “Niche Market Master”, Writer, Speaker, Trainer, Business Coach, Serial Entrepreneur.
Here it is. The time of year when my clients and friends and family decide that what they did the past year wasn’t good enough and in order to be happy in 2022 they need to change almost everything. They sit down and write down resolutions that are impossible to keep because they’re impossibly vague, too overarching and aren’t based in reality. I have 5 ways to succeed in 2022 and they involve being true to yourself.
I am a believer in visualization. Visualize your success. Visualize what you hope will happen, how you want to make it happen and then write down how to make it happen. Before you do that though you should look back at the resolutions or goals you’ve previously set and see why, if they didn’t, manifest. Did you not visualize them? Did you not have the infrastructure in place to make it a reality? Before you move forward you need to reflect backward.
5 Ways To Succeed In 2022
Write. It/Them. Down! I cannot stress this enough. Don’t let your goals be vague. Get them out of your head and down on paper because then you can see them — visualize them — and come up with a plan to make them a reality.
Just make a decision. You can lose opportunities when you don’t move on them. If you’re going to make a mistake you will make it today or you will make it a month from now. Make it, learn from it then move on from it.
Remember…the customer is NOT always right. For example if you offer XYZ and you’re great it and a customer insists that you start doing ABC, don’t. They’re not right in getting you to pivot and offer something that may be outside of your core competency. Also, if you have a customer who is rude or is never happy or treats your staff poorly, it’s time to cut ties. That negative energy will drain you and everyone around you.
There isn’t a true thing as a work-life balance and I say that because if your’e at work, you’re at work. If you’re at home, you’re at home. What you need to do is plan for both so you’re having a balance that makes you happy.
Be positive. A good attitude can flip the switch on a bad day to a good day. I am not saying to push all negative feelings under the rug, what I am saying is to embrace your good and when bad comes up, look at it determine the how and why and move on.
