When you live by the dictates of other people’s whims, it is difficult to schedule. Sometimes there is no help for being overloaded, and getting behind!

We keep being advised to hold our clients to a schedule. If we worked with a different clientele, perhaps we could. But our clients are less able to keep to a rigid schedule because they themselves are sole-proprietors. They often have to balance emergencies in their own business, with no one to fall back on. The web work gets set aside, as lower priority.

We understand that. We really do! Which is one reason our policies have developed to accommodate that. One of our selling points is that the client sets the schedule more than we do. But we did have to change the way we explain things to them!

Generally I try to keep about half of my day unscheduled, and unplanned. Most mornings I wake to find that my inbox is full of plans for the rest of the day, and sometimes for a few more days as well! As much as possible, I try to get their work done quickly. But if it has not been scheduled ahead, it just has to go in the queue. Some clients aren’t so understanding about that!

But really, if they delay, and delay, and I have no idea of when the work is coming in, they cannot complain if I am overbooked when they finally turn it in.

The solution for us has been to communicate better with our clients, both before the contract is signed, and after. Letting them know when they turn something in, whether we are caught up, or running behind. I suspect our business will always be a feast or famine business, and we won’t be able to easily offload work onto other people. It is just the nature of working with very small businesses.

In spite of the problems, I really like working with our clients. They are amazing people, hard working, and perfectly willing to be reasonable as long as our emails are not filled with excuses.

While I cannot demand that they keep to a schedule, I can help them understand that they must work within my schedule once the work is turned in.

Offline networking has the powerful advantage of face-to-face opportunity. Compared with online networking, offline networking has the potential to be faster, and more effective.

It still takes time. The critical factor of networking is always building relationships. And that is something that just cannot be hurried.

I’ve heard people tell me they joined a Chamber of Commerce so they could gain marketing benefits. Then they quit it, because it didn’t do their business any good. When asked what they did with their membership, they say they did nothing.  No wonder it didn’t work!

Our local chambers have been some of our most powerful marketing dollars. We get contracts from them. But we don’t just sit around waiting for referrals.

We got to know the chamber leadership. We made ourselves useful to them – offered small things free. We attend Business After Hours, we volunteer to teach classes. We get out of our own comfort zone, and shake hands when we’d really rather stand in the corner.

We set up a booth at local events. We make sure we leave people with something, even if it is only a business card.

Twice, we’ve gone beating the streets, dropping cards and brochures at local businesses.

We’ve taught classes through the University Enrichment Program. And we’ve done other things to develop a local reputation.

I also attend local Women’s Roundtable meetings once a month – I didn’t just go once, I keep going. And I keep introducing myself.

Offline networking is very powerful once you get the hang of it. It is really about two things:

1. Meeting people and getting to know them. You develop relationships with people, and become friends. It takes time to get past the initial suspicion in networking circles – they won’t trust you as a friend until they know for sure that there is more to you than an advertising tagline.
2. Let them know what you do – not in a pushy way, but matter of fact. “Hi, I’m Laura, I am co-owner of Firelight Web Studio.” My business is part of who I am, so I just include it when I say my name. I wear a nametag – a custom one, not handwritten – that also announces my name. When I leave someone with something, it has my name on it also, and my company name. My business is part of me, and I want them to think of it along with me. I don’t get obnoxious about it, it is like the sig line at the bottom of an email – it is just THERE, if you choose to pay attention, but I don’t beat them over the head with it.

Over time, as you KEEP showing up, and keep doing things, it sinks in. You become part of the fabric of the business community. That takes repeat appearances though.

There are a HUGE number of companies that come and go. They show up, and then disappear. People do not remember them, and networking circles go right on without them. So when you show up for the first time, people welcome you, and then promptly forget about you. They’ll dismiss you completely and not even consider you, even if they have that very need the next week.

Why do they do that, when you just told them what a new and neat thing you do?

Because you have not proven yourself. They won’t take you seriously until you do! You have to KEEP showing up. You have to be there, with a smart answer, whenever they have a question. You have to show up where they think you ought to be more often than you are absent. THEN they remember you. Then they know you take your business seriously, and they’ll admit you to the circle of “real businesses”. If you don’t do that, they won’t bother – because they can see that you don’t bother.

Half of networking offline is BEING there. And this is the real advantage over online networking. You can visit a forum and be a lurker, and nobody will ever know you are there. If you just SHOW UP at a networking function, someone will eventually notice you, and introduce themselves. Just by being there each time, you gain ground, and learn to make it work. Pretty cool!

Find a networking venue. And then BE THERE!

It seems pretty easy when you first start a business, if that business is not your sole source of income. You have no particular need to develop intense efficiency, you can dabble at some things, network when you feel like it, and explore new avenues just because they are there.

Moving from hobbiest to professional though, means that certain things must change. You have to think about working in the most efficient and productive manner.

You have to consider which networking is effective, and which is just enjoyable, and sort between the two. There isn’t a lot of time for idle chatter anymore, yet there must also be casual conversation and not just business conversation if you are to build friendships around which network marketing thrives.

Productivity becomes a huge issue. If you move into working full time and living off your business income, the dynamics of productivity change. You end up analyzing on a regular basis, to see if the prices you are charging are sustaining the amount of work you are putting in. If they are not, you have only two choices:

1. Raise prices. This is only possible if you have not reached the top of your value bracket. Eventually, there comes a point where you cannot raise prices any more without pricing yourself out of your target market, or pricing yourself beyond the value of your product or service.
2. Become still more efficient. Find ways to reduce the time you put in, without reducing the value. This is hard, and every serious company goes through this pretty much constantly, assessing, reassessing, looking for ways to shave a little time here, a little cost there. This attitude is, in fact, more of a determiner of a true professional than just raising prices. It comes from an understanding of your clients, and caring for them, as well as a desire to survive in business.

In addition to this, you learn how to schedule, and how to organize task tracking. You may need good tools to do this. Notesbrowser (Google it) is a nifty tool to start out organizing information and tasks. But eventually you may need more. A full scale project manager may eventually be needed. If you work with others, they may need to learn to use a group project manager (these are available online, or a web professional can install one for you into your own hosting space).

Once you begin to make the transition, it will never end. You will, from then on, be engaged in regular adjusting to manage better, track better, get more done in less time, and re-evaluating your solutions to make sure they are keeping up with the ever changing needs of business.

Large corporations deal with these issues every day. Tiny startups don’t. And in between the two, there is a wide gulf where enterprise solutions just aren’t needed, but SOMETHING more than a pad and pencil is required. We transition step by step from one extreme to the other, and it is largely our ability to survive the middle stages that determines our ability to grow beyond a certain point. This is, indeed, why many sole proprietors choose not to grow beyond that point. If you intend to, you must survive those transitional years.

Vision is nothing more than a complete plan. Being able to see ahead of time, the full scope of your goal, and what it will mean to achieve it, as well as the steps to getting there. All of those elements are necessary, and there are all sorts of ways to gain a full vision of where you are going.

A business plan is nothing more than a detailed documentation of your business vision, completed with the components necessary to get you there. Many people who begin a business do not have an idea of where they are even going, much less of how they will get there. If you ask them, they will reply, “I want to be rich and famous.” But if you ask them what that means, they don’t really even know.

Between vision, and accomplishment, lies the wide gulf of work, determination, and smart adaptation. Many people start out with a good idea, but fail to achieve. The quote about planning to fail and failure to plan is not the full truth – many who plan, fail to plan completely, but even more, fail to DO.

The thing about doing is, you have to KEEP doing. Some people don’t even get off the ground. They’ll make a first step, then abandon it. Others will make an effort, but when it proves harder than they’d though, they let it dribble off into nothing. Still others get somewhere with it, until they meet an obstacle which requires that they adjust their plan, at which point they are incapable of doing so. It is the exception that succeeds, by passing all of these challenges and embarking on a lifetime of growth, learning, and adjustment. Business is all that, and more.

A good business vision will be crafted with the understanding that there will be unexpected challenges. That the entire course may take longer than anticipated, that opportunities may present, or roadblocks may arise which necessitate a change in course, either temporarily, or permanently. Most successful businesses are in a constant state of flux and change. The changes keep them moving in the direction they need to go to grow.

It does begin with a vision – the steps, the pieces, the end concept. Getting that means you need some quiet time, and maybe a way to draw, write, or diagram your grand plan. Any way that makes sense to you is fine.

Then you focus on what you need to do now, to make your vision a reality. A list of prioritized tasks. A planned time each day to fit in the work.

At that point, you are still dead in the water if you do not get up the next day, and go to it. Start down that list of tasks, and accomplish them one by one. Keep getting up each day and working through your tasks, keep adding to your task list, prioritizing, and crossing off as you achieve.  Get used to it. It has to happen every day that you intend to be a successful business person. Without consistent, repeated, intelligent action, no business succeeds.

There are no shortcut systems. Anyone who promises that there are wants your money, and doesn’t care whether you gain from it or not. It is against the laws of nature to get return without work. If you want success, roll up your sleeves and get to it.

What is your vision? And what are you doing about it?