Are you tired? Do you run a business? In that case you’re not alone. I’m constantly googling ‘ways to beat tiredness’ or ‘how to have more energy’. Then I remember I have two small children and I’m self-employed. Being tired goes with the territory.
Before anyone says it, yes, I know that combining children and employment is tiring too. So is staying at home with the kids. But running your own business brings its own unique challenges.
At some point, we all feel as if we might be invisible. Our Facebook posts sink without trace, blog posts are ignored and the phone never rings. You probably just need to improve your marketing, but how?
That’s when the doubts start to creep in. Maybe we’re just not cut out for self-employment. Why would anyone choose to work with us when there are better people out there?
I get it. Sometimes the ups and downs have nothing to do with the facts and everything to do with our own brains. So what can you do?
Everyone has tasks that they absolutely dread. They could simply be deeply dull. When I do something I find difficult it seems like I’m wading through mud. If I delegated to someone with a different skill set they’d be racing ahead.
Do you think of yourself as being part of a community? Sometimes it feels as if modern life is increasingly isolated and we’re all living in our own little bubbles. For me, that notion disappears as soon as I arrive at the school gates or my local toddler group. I suppose that’s one of the benefits of living in a village, although sometimes the level of gossip gets a bit overwhelming.
For me, building community means seeking out people who share my life experiences. I feel at home amongst other tired parents and busy business women. There’s just a level of understanding that makes communication more straightforward.
Increasingly, I’m finding my communities online as well as in the real world. That’s particularly crucial when it comes to business. There are a fair few self-employed people in my village but there are loads of them online.
Working from home can be hugely stressful. That’s not to say that working outside the home isn’t, the challenges are just a bit different. At least if you’re going out to work there’s a clear distinction between home and work. You’ve left the house and can’t be expected to load the dishwasher or hang the washing out to dry.
When your home is your workplace you can start to find that work tasks start to seep into the rest of your life. Often, that isn’t the real issue. You can start to find that you’re expected to do the household tasks or take phone calls from your friends and family because you’re “at home”. The fact that you might have a mountain of work to get through doesn’t seem to register.
So what can you do? There are, as you might expect, some practical things but you might have to have some difficult conversations too.
Do your blog posts go unread? Is your Facebook business page like a graveyard? If you feel like giving up on content marketing, you’re not alone.
Trying to market yourself on social media these days is an uphill struggle. Business related posts get thrown in with updates from your friends, other people’s adverts and viral cat videos. The nearest I’ve got to going viral was when my kids had chicken pox.
The rules are constantly changing. Even if you have amazing content it can be difficult to get anything seen, much less read. However, there is one simple thing that you can do to give your posts the best chance of being seen by your potential customers.
I know what you’re thinking. “But I’m great at multitasking! If I wasn’t I wouldn’t get anything done.” It might feel like that, but in reality the opposite is true.
Have you ever heard the term ‘context switching’? Even if you haven’t you probably do it all the time. Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a piece of work and then you hear your email alert sound? It probably isn’t anything urgent and you know you could wait until you’ve finished what you’re doing. Yet somehow, you find yourself clicking onto your email to see what’s there. Does that sound familiar?
You might be surprised to know that even a few seconds looking away from the task in hand could really cost you in terms of time.
Have you ever thought about working with a freelancer? Your view is likely to be influenced by the type of business you’re in. IT and software firms use independent contractors as a matter of course and often on long term projects. Creative industries will put together a freelance team to work on a short term project then everyone goes their separate ways.
You probably already know that email marketing is the most effective way of connecting with your customers. That said, you don’t want to be a spammer (trust me, you really don’t). So, how do you persuade people to sign up to receive your pearls of wisdom directly into their inbox?
Answer: offer some bait. That sounds awful, but it isn’t. An opt-in, or lead magnet, offers your potential customers something that they’ll find useful in exchange for their email address. There’s no obligation for them to buy, they can just get your freebie and walk away if they want to. Hopefully they won’t.
Do you recognise the girl in the picture? If not, I’ll enlighten you. That’s me, with my maiden name, 15 years ago, appearing on ‘University Challenge’.
I had always lacked confidence because I was a generally unpopular, bookish child at school. Things improved in my teens and I had a much better time when I eventually went to university.