I just read the article “The 11 Harsh Realities of Being an Entrepreneur.” Some points in the downright depressing blog I agree with. Some I don’t. And, at other times, the “harsh realities” of being a small business owner has more to do with perspective.

Here are my Facts About Being an Entrepreneur…

1   It never turns out like you think it will.

2   Everything takes a least twice as long to complete.

3   You can’t do it all yourself. You need a team, even if you are a home-based business owner.

4   There is no such thing as an overnight success.

5   You will make many mistakes.

6   Change happens constantly.

7   By the time it is perfected, it’s out dated.

Some people aren’t cut out to be a small business owner; others won’t know deep satisfaction, regardless of what is deemed success unless they are. Know yourself and you’ll have a better handle on whether the entrepreneurial career is the right one for you.

If you need help with your small business, contact Vickie Champion for a discovery coaching and consulting session.

I coach many solopreneurs. You know, those entrepreneurs or solo business owners that prefer to go it alone. The path can be both difficult and rewarding and I’ve noticed that successful solopreneurs often share the same tendencies.

Here are some of the Traits of a Successful Solopreneur…

They …

1  Have no problem working an 8-hour day 5 days a week.

2  Are not afraid to make mistakes.

3  Don’t let personal matters distract them during work hours.

4  Set work priorities and follow them.

5  Enjoy working alone and when they get a case of isolation disease they take steps to cure it quickly.

7  Love problem solving.

8  Often use their intuition when making decisions instead of asking others.

If you recognized yourself in these traits, you have the self-motivated personality of the successful solopreneurs I know. If some of these traits elude you, you may only need to develop them.

You can also contact Vickie Champion for a discovery coaching and consulting session.

You won’t find this in “How to Start a Business” books or any classes. And yet, I have found this one thing can cause more harm to a home-based entrepreneur’s success than anything else. The majority of my solopreneur coaching clients suffer from it and some battle it on a daily bases. I have run a home-based business for 16 years now and still encounter episodes. What is it? Isolation Disease.

Here are the Symptoms of Isolation Disease…

• Can’t get motivated.
• Start adopting the “What’s the use” attitude.
• Believe you are the only one suffering from this disease.
• Unable to get excited or even work on projects.
• Worry way too much about the future.
• Feel the business’ success depends entirely on you.
• Work hard or hardly at all, but get very little accomplished.
• Experience paralyzing overwhelm.
• Lose your creativity.
• Visualize nightmarish stories about your problem situations.
• Start gaining weight or becoming ill.
• Often have a time management problem.
• Loss of energy.
• Start doubting yourself and your abilities.

Here are the Risk Factors…

• Having a home-based business.
• Having infrequent human interaction.
• Living alone or having a roommate/spouse that is often absent.
• Getting very little exercise.
• Watching TV, working, reading, eating or surfing the Web in your spare time.
• Ignore the concept of building a team.
• Usually don’t attend workshops, networking events, or meet with potential clients.

Possible Cures of Isolation Disease…

• Get out of the house.
• Spend some time working at a coffee house, library or a park.
• Find other solopreneurs to bounce ideas off of.
• Interact with people other than on Facebook and Twitter.
• Take a walk or exercise.
• Hire a life or business coach or a consultant.
• Attend workshops, not webinars.
• Hire a bookkeeper, housekeeper, virtual assistant, copywriter, or marketing specialist.
• Go out to lunch.
• Take frequent weekend trips or vacations.

Like any business problem, the difficulty comes in diagnosing it. Once you realize all you have is a case of Isolation Disease, you can take steps toward the cure. From there, recovery is easy!

You can also contact Vickie Champion for a discovery coaching and consulting session.

In the previous three blogs I explained why building trust is so important for our business and ways to use photos and text on your website to build trust.

Remember, for the last few decades businesses have gotten away with keeping little secrets and telling half truths. Not anymore. To build trust, businesses now have to show they have nothing to hide and are unafraid to be open.

We Will Continue with Other Ways to Market Your Business to Build Trust…

• Get active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It builds credibility that you are a legitimate business, especially to people using them and to anyone under the age of 40.
• Put headshots on business cards and social media sites.
• Make your company easily accessible if current and potential customers have questions or problems.
• Give guarantees.

Send birthday cards with personal messages. I did a survey in one of my How Marketing is Changing, and Why we Need to Pay Attention workshops. The question was “Do you appreciate getting cards with just a handwritten signature on them?” Most of the participants said they considered canned cards junk mail and threw them away. If you are going to take the time to send a card, write something personal to the recipient. If not, don’t waste your marketing budget on something no one will appreciate.

• Start using video conferencing, like Skype. It builds trust quicker, the way a face-to-face meeting would.
• Make and send video e-mails.
• Give genuine compliments.
• Let customers critique your services or products.

Check out the entire Running a Business section.

You can also contact Vickie Champion for a discovery coaching and consulting session.

In the previous two blogs I explained why building trust is so important for our businesses and ways to use photos to build trust.  If the purpose of your website is partially to attract potential clients, then gaining their trust invites them to contact you.

We will continue with another important method to gain trust, text.

Here Are Ways to Use TEXT on Your Website to Build Trust…

• Attach a blog and get serious about adding posts on a consistent basis. Most of my website visitors are now originating from my blog posts.
• Make your company available. I suggest by e-mail on your contact us page and having a phone number on every website page. See my Contact Vickie page for an example.  If you have a location and hours of operation, then put your address and map.
• Take out the spin and fluff in your websites written text. To build trust, your visitors should be able to understand exactly what you do. Better yet, write it down as if you were saying it, in your own words.
• Give potential clients a way to contact individuals who gave you testimonials, so they know they are genuine. On my testimonials, I link potential clients to their business websites.  It helps the people who gave me the testimonials with their websites search engine rankings and legitimizes my testimonials.
• Write the text in 1st person using words like “I”, “my”, and use “we” only if your company has more than one employee. Remember, people are really getting tired of little deceptions.
• Tell stories, especially on your bio. “How you got into this business” and “why you love it” are good for starters. On my Meet Vickie page  I divided it into four mini stories, each one telling my website visitors something they might want to know to start trusting me.
• Offer guarantees.
• Don’t be afraid to write the pros and cons of using you or your business. It doesn’t build trust when your website gives the appearance that you work with just about anyone who needs your product or service. By the time a website visitor contacts me they have a really good idea of what I do and also who I won’t accept as clients.

Building trust using your website is accomplished by being more open, being easy to approach, and not being afraid to give an honest assessment of whether you or what you sell is the right fit for the customer or client.

You can also contact Vickie Champion for a complimentary coaching and consulting session.

We can set our own hours, get a massage in the middle of the afternoon and avoid the hovering boss. This much we know about working from home. But working from home has some subtle, not-so-obvious perks as well. Though small and even overlooked these advantages can influence our mental, physical and emotional health.

Here are Some Not-so-Obvious Benefits of Working from Home…

We can…

• Multi-task during boring conference calls.

• Provide companionship to our pets.

• Go shopping when we don’t have to wait in lines.

• Forget what terms like office pod means.

• Keep our office at the perfect temperature for us and finally stop wearing sweaters.

• Say goodbye to annoying co-workers.

• Spend our time more productively, instead of gossiping in the break room.

• Take first pick of items at big sales, instead of picking over the leftovers after work.

• Avoid having to donate to every office birthday, going-away, retirement and baby shower gift-giving collection.

• Spend more time with our family instead of our co-workers.

• Listen to our preferred music instead of elevator music or better yet, work in silence.

• Maintain our diet easier because we don’t eat lunches out.

• Stop pretending we care about what some co-worker did over the weekend.

• Show our kids by example how to have self-discipline.

• Wear comfortable clothes, like t-shirts, jeans and sweat suits.

• Stop using prescription drugs to relieve stress.

• Finally learn to set boundaries.

• Because of all of the above, be happier.

Can you think of any others?

You can also contact Vickie Champion for a complimentary coaching and consulting session.

When I started my own business years ago, I noticed quite a difference from working in an office environment and working from home. I was use to the hustle and bustle of a busy office with the phoning ringing off the hook, unproductive meetings and my team constantly wanting something or another.

Here is What I Think are Benefits of Working from Home…

We can…

• Save hours a day in commuting time.

• Relax. No one’s looking over our shoulder, monitoring our every move.

• Eat healthier.

• Schedule dentist and doctor appointments easier.

• Work in our robe. There’s no longer a dress code.

• Save money and time with our cars in gasoline, repairs, tires and general wear and tear.

• Take on the “I’ll do it all” attitude and eliminate child care.

• Save our company relocation and overhead expenses.

• Save money on lunches out.

• Take the family to Hawaii with money saved on business suits and dry cleaning.

• Have an office with a window.

• Gain a tax deduction on a portion of our mortgage and utilities, if we are self-employed.

• Listen to our intuition easier because there are fewer distractions.

• Focus because no one’s interrupting us every second.

• Set our own work hours.

• Enjoy closer relationships with our family.

• Don’t have to take time off work for repair people to come to our house.

• Work from a comfortable chair and desk that we like and is perfect for our needs.

• Do more in a lot less time.

• Schedule time for exercise easier.

• Have a larger and nicer office, decorated just the way we want it.

• Live anywhere. (I have coaching clients in Los Angeles, New York City, Orange County, Toronto, and for a time, in London.)

• Because of all of the above, produce a higher quality of work.

After writing this blog, all I can say is, I really appreciate working from home. I didn’t realize how many advantages there are.

If you have a home based business and need help, contact Vickie Champion for a complimentary coaching and consulting session.

In the all the years I was a small business coach, I noticed some disadvantages that women business owners faced far more often than men. It must be the way we were raised and a belief system we bought into. Or maybe we don’t feel we are as worthy of success. I think these are among the primary reasons we aren’t as successful as a whole in business as men.

Here’s Some of the Disadvantages Being a Woman Entrepreneur-

We have a tendency to…

• Think multi-tasking is normal and pride ourselves at being good at it.
• Have an “I’ll do-it-myself attitude.”
• Not even consider hiring a team of helpers like housekeepers, personal assistants, accountants, virtual assistants and business coaches until it’s absolutely necessary.
• Have a problem receiving. So we either charge less than our male competitors or forget to put ourselves on the payroll.
• Focus almost completely on the day-to-day tasks and are reluctant to set goals or make business plans.
• Want our work to be perfect more than we want it to be profitable.
• Not really know what our business dreams are.
• Believe the act of self-care to recharge ourselves is selfish.
• Delay success by focusing more on “why” we are not doing something rather than pushing through the fear and just doing it.

All we have to do to overcome these disadvantages is change our mindset.

Are you ready to change your mind?

This self-study program helps you change the mindset you have about yourself and the world around you. You will be able to finally feel worthy and deserving. For more details.

Also check out the Quiz, How Worthy Do You Feel?

Before you charge ahead and start your business, consider the stumbling blocks first. Your business success depends on how well you adjust and resolve these disadvantages.

Here are Some of the Many Disadvantages of Being Small Business Owner…

• You can’t blame the boss.
• Things constantly change, especially with this economy.
• You’ll have to learn to like marketing and sales, whether you supervise or do it yourself.
• To be successful, you must make and follow a budget.
• You have to make lots of decisions quickly all of the time.
• More than likely you will battle isolation disease.
• You have to be a self motivator.
• There is a tendency to have a do-it-yourself attitude which causes extremely late hours and several problems in the long run.
• It’s very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks and forget about making goals.
• Most entrepreneurs delay paying themselves which is one reason they are not as successful.
• You can work flexible hours, sometimes taking too much time off without realizing it.
• No one keeps you focused and helps you avoid pitfalls, except if you’re smart and hire a business coach.
• You forget about listening to your intuition or gut instincts.

I can’t stress this enough: Almost every small business owner I know has needed help mastering these disadvantages. Join associations, attend workshops, take classes, read books and hire a business coach.

If you have a small business or a home based business and need help, contact Vickie Champion for a complimentary coaching and consulting session.

I just heard recently that the Arizona Small Business Association (located in Phoenix and Tucson) added 700 members in a little over six months. Wow!  Either ASBA has a really effective marketing plan, or there are lots of people sick of job insecurity. Maybe people are lost and just don’t know what else to do but start their own business. Or what I like to believe, lots of people are finally going for their dream jobs.

Here are Some of the Many Advantages of Being an Entrepreneur:

• No one can fire or lay you off.
• There is a variety in your daily work tasks.
• You can work flexible hours, taking time off to be with your kids, go to the doctor or take a Yoga class.
• Running your own business gives you the final say in every decision to be made.
• You are in charge of setting your own deadlines. And enforcing them.
• Being an entrepreneur gives you the power to give yourself raises as often as you want for no reason.
• You can easily take advantage of going with your intuition or gut instincts.
• You hardly ever get bored, because there is little or no time to sit back and take it easy.
• You can get over your fears quickly by facing them head on.
• You don’t have to loose sleep over an upcoming performance review.
• Being a business owner forces you to finally learn how to make and follow a budget.
• And the best advantage of all, no one tells you what to do.

Do you know of other advantages of being an entrepreneur?

If you are a small business owner or have a home based business and need help, contact Vickie Champion for a complimentary coaching and consulting session.