Every online entrepreneur wants to create products and services that will be popular. Unfortunately, many of us have a huge lack of confidence in our products.
Sure, you may think that a new course or workshop is a great idea, but how do you know it will sell? Will other people in your audience find it as useful as you hope it is?
Imagine spending weeks or even months of time—plus the cost of design, video editing and all the other pieces that go along with it—only to discover it’s not what your audience wants or needs.
How frustrating would that be?
You don’t have to leave it to chance, though. There are plenty of ways to test your idea before spending the time and energy on a full launch.
Below are three methods to research your audience to create in-demand products, services, and even affiliate offers from related creators.
Table of Contents
Survey Your Audience
This is the simplest way to get a feel for what your market needs and wants. Ask your audience what they’d like to see directly.
You can create a survey and send it out to your mailing list, Facebook page or group, and other social media profiles. Use form apps like Typeform, Survey Monkey, or Google Forms to create your survey.
I’ve had success with adding a survey on my website’s homepage as a way to get in touch with new visitors, too.
Don’t forget to provide a way for those who take your survey to subscribe to your email list. That way you can grow your list with any new people who are looking for help as well.
For best results, keep it short. Getting people to start a survey can be hard enough, but the more questions you have, the fewer responses you’ll get.
Keep your survey at around 10 questions or less. If you can do it in half that, that’s even better.
Don’t forget to ask essential questions such as:
What they’re struggling with
Their preferred learning method (video, text, audio, etc.)
What they feel the training is worth (what would they pay)
These three questions will tell you everything you need to know to create a program that’s practically guaranteed to sell.
Listen to Complaints
Find communities where your ideal clients or customers hang out. Pay attention to what people are asking or complaining about the most. These are the things they need help with.
For example, let’s say you’re a business coach. Your Facebook group is filled with questions about running Facebook ads. There are comments on how they’re struggling to achieve the results they know are possible.
If you pay attention to what’s being said in your group, it’s clear that there’s a need for some training about Facebook ads.
You can then create training materials, to answer all their questions like an ebook, course, or video series. On the other hand, you can seek out another creator who’s willing to sell their course to your audience with you as an affiliate.
Study Your Competition
Hopefully, you have a list of competitors and you’re reading their blogs and emails, and lurking in their Facebook groups. This is a great way to gain insight into what they’re doing—not to copy them but to discover what’s hot right now.
Consider checking out their paid products as well. Again, you should never copy them, but you can either:
Promote them as an affiliate
Create a better, more comprehensive version with your own spin
Create a lite, lower-cost version (again, with your own spin)
Coming up with ideas in a vacuum is a great way to waste a lot of time and money on programs that won’t sell. Instead, pay attention to what your market is asking for, find out what they’re willing to pay, and delve into your competition’s offers.
Recap: Create Products & Service for Your Audience
Use one or all these three methods to get a better understanding of your customer before you create a new product or service:
Survey your audience
Listen to complaints
Study your competition
The information you gain from these three activities alone will give you incredible insight into your market. It will show you what they want and need and make easy it for you to create your own hot-selling products and services.
Gather your info, and all that’s left is to create your amazing product.
One thing no one really mentions much about starting your own online business is how stressful it is. Everyone seems to think that it isn’t just because you can set your own hours, make money while you sleep, and have your favorite PJs as your dress code.
The truth is… there is actually a lot of stress involved.
But isn’t adding more stress to your life the last thing you want to do to now that you’ve decided to finally leave your day job? Isn’t that why you took the leap to build your own business in the first place?
You’re looking for freedom from your awful boss, nasty coworkers, and the limitations of a fixed salary. But if you’re trading all that in for a different kind of stress, what have you really gained
If you haven’t actually kissed your cubicle goodbye yet, be sure you first build a solid foundation to release the number of potential stressors as you build your own business—and I don’t just mean business-wise.
Nothing stresses us out quite like worrying about money. Whether you’re concerned about those college tuition bills you’ll be facing in a few years, or worse, not sure how you’re going to make the rent, it’s easy to lose your business mojo.
As a new business owner, you certainly don’t want money trouble casting a shadow over your entrepreneurial dream. In order to save time and grow your business a quickly as possible, you’ll need to be able to invest in yourself, even if it’s just a couple hundred dollars to start out with.
Before you turn in your resignation, set aside some cash in case of a rainy day. Aim for at least three months of living expenses but more is definitely better.
Hopefully, you won’t need it but having some cash on hand will definitely relieve the pressure of having a new business that’s not earning its keep—yet.
Make Sure Your Family is on Board
Money troubles are bad, but there may be one thing that’s worse: an unsupportive (or downright hostile) spouse, member of the family, or even a friend.
And as any entrepreneur will tell you, not everyone understands the drive to be a business owner. In fact, most people find it pretty scary to step away from the security of a regular paycheck to chase after a dream.
If that sounds like your spouse or someone in your circle, try not to take it personally. They’re not making a statement about your ability. More than likely, they’re just worried about what the future holds.
Do your best to understand where they’re coming from, and be sure to clearly explain your ideas, why you are confident it will work, and how you plan to cover the start-up expenses and manage the risk.
If they’re still not on board, consider starting slow, with a part-time business while still working your day job. That will give you the opportunity to prove your idea is workable, and might just help your spouse get as excited about it as you are.
I’ve seen many bloggers and business owners in this exact situation. It sucks to have to prove yourself, but your family is just trying to look out for you. There’s always a chance of pushback with anything risky.
Take Time for YOU
No matter what’s going on with your money, your spouse, or your business, you always need to take care of yourself first. Be sure to schedule some “you” time.
No one can work all the time, regardless of how driven you are. And no one can stay healthy while maintaining a nonstop schedule.
Go for a walk, hit the gym, get a pedicure or just binge on your favorite brainless television show.
The point is simply to take time away from your desk to rest and rejuvenate. Without it, you’ll soon find yourself overwhelmed and stressed, even if you truly love your new business.
Recap: Make your transition to entrepreneurship stress-free
Follow these three tips to go from 9-5er to business owner without worry:
Create a financial safety net
Get support from friends and family
Remember to take time for you
It will definitely be tough and you may still experience some sleepless nights, but the freedom you gain once your business starts taking off will be well worth the work.
Do you own a blog that you make money with (or wish you were)?
Do you sell your services to others online?
Do you want to cash in on selling digital products?
All of these things are considered home businesses (or at least if home is wherever your laptop is). But most people make the mistake of not treating these things like a business.
Which means that they never really take the time to write out an actual business plan.
Maybe it seems “too real” for a call business like yours. Or you simply have no idea that it’s a thing let alone where to begin with one.
Or maybe your business started as an accident. If you got this far without a business plan, then that means you don’t really need one, right?
Wrong. 100% wrong!
Especially if you want to grow. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t want their business to grow?
It’s a big mistake to skip this crucial step in creating a business, as a business plan can greatly increase your chances of success.
Even if you’ve already started your business, it’s never too late to create a plan. You should review and modify your business plan as your business grows, anyway (once or twice a year works fine).
Are you convinced yet? If so, you can step over to my post on how to create a simplified business plan. This will make the writing process easier for your first business plan.
If you still don’t really get why this is so important, keep reading. I’m going to drop 5 reasons why every business, especially yours, needs to put a business plan into writing.
Directions for the future
A business plan maps out your future. If you’ve decided you’re ready to start a business, your first step should be to write out your plans for that business. This includes what you want to do and where you see your business going in the future.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” That”s also true when it comes to your business.
While you may see some success while just winging it in the beginning, it comes faster and easier with planning. The more planning you do, the greater success you will see in the future.
Business financing
Online businesses are the cheapest to start, but depending on what your business is, you may need some extra capital as you grow. Especially if work with physical products or need to pay employees or contractors.
If you decide to take your home business to the next level, a business plan can help you secure financing. A financial institution will want to see, in writing, the reasons that they should loan you money.
Simply walking in and telling them why you know you’ll be a success isn’t good enough.
However, if you can hand a lender a document that states…
your business idea,
your business goals,
a list of steps you plan to take in order to reach your goals, and
your estimated earnings,
…you will be seen as a professional and the lender will take you more seriously.
A plan of action
Your business plan will also help you determine what actions you need to take to move forward with your business. An action plan consists of the steps you plan on taking in order to achieve your business goals.
This is another task that people usually sidestep. Instead of “just kind of knowing” or “having the ideas in your head”, you should take the time to put them on paper.
The reason this part of your business plan is so important is because it literally walks you from point A to point B.
While your business plan serves a map, your action plan is the turn-by-turn GPS directions.
A plan for learning
Your business plan will also help you figure out what you don’t know you need yet. It forces you to think about all the necessary things to create a successful business. This means you have to find a way to deal with the things you don’t know, too.
For example, let’s say you have no clue how you’re going to market your products and services. You should first plan to figure out what options are available for marketing and then learn how to use them for your business.
Will you hire someone? As a solopreneur you probably won’t, at least not right away, so you’ll have to learn how to do these things yourself.
Your business plan will show you what you need to learn and when you need to learn it. You can purchase courses that will actually make a big impact on your business at the right time.
This keeps you from spending money on something that may be good to have but isn’t quite right for where you currently are in business.
A business plan and a comfort plan
Having the support of your spouse, other family members, and your friends can really motivate you and help you find success.
There’s nothing worse than having an idea and then not having the people who you thought would support you on board. It may be easy to ignore your friends, but an unsupportive spouse can really hurt—both your feelings and your chances of success.
Having a business plan can help your spouse realize your business idea is more than just a hobby, especially if your spouse is skeptical. They can see that you’re serious and might become more helpful and more encouraging.
You’ll be able to make decisions based on your plan, which is useful when you want to make an investment. It won’t be an impulse buy; it’s something that directly fits into your business plan.
When you have a clear reason and plan for a purchase, your spouse is more likely to be on board.
Recap: 5 Reasons Why You Need a Business Plan
Here are those 5 reasons why business planning is necessary for you, even as a solopreneur:
Gives directions for the future
Creates a financial plan
Creates a plan of action
And a plan for learning
Shows others that you’re serious
It may not be the sexiest thing you do for your business, but it is the most necessary. Whether you’re a blogger, freelancer, or just plan to promote affiliate products, having a plan will increase your chances of building a successful online business.
Or if you prefer some step-by-step guidance, you can check out the Success Mindset Business Planner. This will guide you through the process of creating a goal-based success plan for a business that supports your dream life.
Are you always wishing you had more time? Welcome to the club! Or maybe you’ve been a member for quite some time already. Having good time management isn’t necessarily a skill you’re born with.
For those of us looking to either start or grow our online businesses, this feeling is compounded by the fact that we often have to do everything ourselves, at least until we can afford to hire out.
The truth is, you probably have plenty of time to work on your business, even if it’s a side hustle. You just need to stay focused, practice better time management, and work on actions that truly make a difference.
Yup, that’s means if you’re trying to drive traffic to your blog or sales page, you probably shouldn’t be focusing on growing your Instagram followers (especially since it’s probably the worst social platform for linking).
Everyone has the same 24 hours in each day, so how is it possible that some people can accomplish much more than you do? How are they still able to be on time for all of their commitments?
If you’re struggling to meet deadlines, complete projects, or actually gain traction in your business, here are a few reasons why you need to take a closer look at how you approach your time management.
Table of Contents
8 Reasons Why You Suck at Good Time Management
Chances are, you do have the time to do what you need, you just need to take a closer look at how you approach your time management. It’s likely that you waste time in small periods throughout the day—5 minutes here and 3 minutes there—but these little moments really add up.
Go through each item on this list and take note of which ones apply to you and how you can change your behavior. It’s worth paying attention to the ones that you think may not apply to you, too! You may get ideas for improving what you are good with.
You fail to prioritize
One of the most important parts of a good time management strategy is the ability to prioritize high impact tasks and things that must be done before you can start work on others.
You should always have an idea of what’s the most important activity necessary to complete an objective. If you’re not, then it’s likely that you’re not truly working on tasks that have the most impact.
Without prioritizing, it’s easy to stay busy but fail to accomplish anything.
Ask yourself, “What is the most important thing I need to accomplish?”
Then ask yourself, “What is the best way for me to accomplish that?”
Sometimes, you’ll have to do a little bit of learning to find out what you should be prioritizing, but once you know, your focus should be on constantly moving forward instead of around in circles.
Wasting time is probably the most obvious way to improve your time management. It’s also the most common way we fail at managing our time. Everything else is just so tempting!
You may waste time due to procrastination or inefficient work habits. Maybe you frequently get distracted by social media or Netflix.
Whatever your vice is, make choices to avoid wasting time. Make quick decisions or put in the time to work when you’d otherwise be aimless browsing the web or watching your favorite show for the 5th time.
You’re disorganized
Becoming more organized is a good way to boost your time management skills, as well. Disorganized people never seem to have enough time, and they’re frequently late with their work.
When you’re not organized, everything takes longer than it should. You spend time looking for a pair of clean socks, your car keys, searching for files you printed, and trying to pull off things at the last minute.
The same is true for your digital workspace. If you don’t properly organize files on your computer, misplace or forget passwords, or forget where you saved that certain bookmark, looking for these things can slow you down.
Make an effort to organize your life and yourself. There are many available resources that are dedicated to organizing your life. Use them!
You have too many distractions in your life
It could be low-quality social interactions, TV, hobbies, noisy kids, clutter, or your prize-winning rose bushes. Having too many things in your life takes up a lot of time.
Remove the things from your life that are unnecessary. Minimize the distractions you can’t remove, like your children.
Lock down apps or websites that distract you with apps like RescueTime and put your phone on silent or place it in another room so it’s not as easy to grab every 5 minutes.
You don’t start your day early enough
Most of us don’t get much done in the evening. You might spend this time relaxing, just lying around the house or staring at your phone.
This is why so many highly successful people skip the evening hours by going to bed and waking up extra early. Your brain tends to shut down by the late afternoon, whether you started your day at 9:00 AM or 5:00 AM.
Give yourself a few extra productive hours by getting up early and going to bed early.
You don’t track your time
It’s impossible to practice good time management without some form of time tracking, but for this, I want to talk about tracking how you spend your time now so you can find and eliminate time-wasters.
Do you know how you actually spend each day? Are you aware of when you feel most energized and when your energy levels are low?
Track how you spend your time each day. Keep a simple journal for at least a week and make a record each hour of how you spent the last 60 minutes.
What did you do? How did you feel?
After a week, you should be able to notice some patterns and see where you may have some extra time in each day to work on your business. Try to rearrange your free time so it’s later in the day or out of a time when you feel energized.
Your day shouldn’t be random or determined on the fly. To get the most out of your time, you need to have a plan instead of trying to just wing it.
It’s best to create a detailed plan before you go to bed each night. It could be the last thing you do before you stop working for the night or a part of a nighttime routine.
Then, when you wake up in the morning, you won’t waste any of those precious daylight hours on figuring out what to do next. You’ll already know exactly what you want to do.
All you’ll have to do is spend your day executing your plan as well as you can.
You’re not focused
You’ve probably been told to “focus” or “concentrate,” but do you really know how? If you sit down to work on something for an hour, how many minutes is your attention truly focused on that task?
You can come up with plenty of time to accomplish everything you need to do each day if you focus on a higher level than you’re used to.
Focus is built through practice. You need to get used to finding your “zone.” Getting into your own state of flow.
If you struggle to stay focused, try using a timer to practice. Start with 5 or 10 minutes and work up from there. Use the tips throughout this ebook to minimize distractions to help you focus better on what you’re doing.
Using the Pomodoro Technique is a great way to practice focusing while also working on planning ahead and prioritizing—many of the necessary components of a good time management strategy.
Recap: Why You Fail at Good Time Management
Let’s quickly go over those 8 reasons one more time:
You fail to prioritize
You waste time
You’re disorganized
You have too many distractions in your life
You don’t start your day early enough
You don’t track your time
You don’t have a plan for your day
You’re not focused
Just like everybody else, you have 24 hours in each day. Be sure that you’re using those hours as wisely as possible. Go through each item on this list to evaluate your own time management skills.
Make the most of your time by prioritizing, removing distractions, and learning how to focus. You have all the time you need to build your business—even if that’s just slow and steady—if you’re willing to make the necessary adjustments to yourself and your life.
Help me share these tips! Add this Pin to Pinterest.
My story begins like many new bloggers: building a list but feeling uncomfortable about sending emails. Twice I’ve built an email list—one of nearly 1,500 people and another of over 800—and totally squandered it.
I did better with the second one. I even made some sales! But in the end, I still felt bad about emailing my list and eventually quit emailing them.
This whole thing seems kind of weird considering how I’ve managed a list of over 7,000 in my other business. That was a little different because they were specifically expecting sales notifications from me and it wasn’t necessarily through email.
Or at least, that’s what I told myself. That it was different.
Spoilers: it’s not really that different. I was just focusing on things that didn’t attract the right kind of people (buyers and people who wouldn’t mind my commercial offers) to my list. (Another way to self-sabotage, by the way.)
That’s why with this business, I decided I’m going to do things differently, starting with my all-important email list.
I have a long welcome sequence that goes out to every new subscriber, so when I do have new content or something to promote, I know every person on my list has heard from me regularly.
I took what I knew I struggled with and found a way to overcome it. This is how you deal with self-sabotage!
Do you have a story similar to what I just shared?
Maybe it’s exactly the same thing. You’re afraid to email that list you’ve built with new content notifications, let alone trying to sell to them.
Or maybe it’s something else. You’re easily distracted, struggle to make decisions, or you’re quick to quit if you don’t see results right away.
If you’re struggling with your business, it might not be whatever it is you’re blaming your struggles on. It could be something that you’re doing. And if it is, that’s great news because it means you can change your behavior to do better.
So keep reading to discover 6 different ways you could be sabotaging yourself and your business and a solution for each one.
Distractions
The tasks that need to be done in order to be successful are typically less appealing than watching Netflix, browsing Facebook, or spending time with friends. We’re experts at distracting ourselves, and the urge to seek out distractions increases with the unpleasantness or difficulty of the task.
Solution: Allow yourself to have distractions, but control when, and how long, you engage in them.
You might give yourself 30 minutes of distraction time after three hours of work. Or, you might limit distractions to the evening after your work is done for the day.
Try the Pomodoro Technique as a work method that allows you to partake in distractions, but only after you do 25 minutes of work.
Procrastination
Distractions are one way of procrastinating, but there are countless other ways to procrastinate, too. Basically any time you’re doing something other than what you actually should be doing.
That means that yes, even doing other work can be procrastination.
Solution: Be clear on what needs to be done and why. Focus on just getting started, which is often the most challenging part of working.
Having trouble getting started? Tell yourself you’ll just work for 20-30 minutes. Use a timer and see how much you can accomplish in that 20-30 minutes. By the time that time is up, you might be so focused that you just continue working.
You may enjoy working on your projects but are you avoiding the most important tasks? This is one way that self-sabotage can creep up on you. It seems like you’re busy, but you’re working on all the wrong things.
The most important tasks are often the least enjoyable, so it becomes easy to just avoid them. Instead, you tackle the less important tasks because it makes you feel like you’re still making progress.
This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that doing work can be procrastination.
If you need to work on marketing tasks, work on marketing tasks—not your next blog post. Because we all know that it doesn’t matter how many blog posts you write if you’re not getting out there and marketing each one of them (or at least you should know that).
Solution: Start working by priority. Have a list of tasks to do each day ordered from most important to least. Start at the top of your list and work your way down.
Make planning the next day a part of your work routine so you can get started right away when you begin the next day.
Indecisiveness
Indecisiveness is also a self-sabotaging success killer. When you can’t make up your mind, progress comes to a stop. If you wait until you have all the wisdom and information necessary to make a perfect choice, you’ll be waiting a long time.
You have to pull the trigger and move forward. You can never collect all the wisdom without going through the experience.
Solution: Be clear on what needs to be done to accomplish your objective. Understand what will happen if you don’t make a decision.
Give yourself a time limit. You might give yourself 10 minutes or a day to make a decision. Then just decide and do your best.
Fear of Success
For many people, the closer they get to success, the more negative thoughts they experience. What if you can’t handle the growth? What if you become overwhelmed with all the people you’ll have to deal with?
For me, I’m terrified (sort of) of having affiliates. I’ll have to deal with paying them… which means I’ll have to deal with tax forms. That’s so much.
But I keep telling myself that when I get to that point, I can always hire someone to do that for me. In the meantime, if I create my course through Teachable, they’ll handle the affiliate payments for me.
Phew! A solution.
Solution: Take things one step at a time. Don’t be afraid of what’s going to happen when you reach a certain point in your business. There’s always an answer for something, you just have to figure it out.
And if you can’t figure it out, you can always hire someone who can. There are also all kinds of tools and services available that focus on helping solopreneurs just like you.
Negative Thoughts
Negativity is a big way to self-sabotage yourself, so much so that I’ve split this section into three parts.
It’s easy to get in your head about your failures, your mistakes, and even your successes, but you have to push past it if you really want to achieve success.
Ignore the random noise of your mind. You don’t have to engage with your random thoughts. You can choose to ignore them or turn the negative thoughts into positive ones.
Here are three ways your own negativity could be killing your business and—like the rest of this article—what to do about them.
Self-sabotage also comes in the form of negative thoughts. They may creep up on you due to negative self-esteem. You might say bad things about yourself, like “Ugh, I can’t believe I messed this up! I’m so dumb!”
If you’re thinking thoughts like “I’m so bad with technology,” it’s going to be easy for you to give up when technology inevitably goes awry.
And trust me, it does often. It’s not a problem with just you.
Solution: Take control of your mind and think thoughts that are useful to you. Cheer yourself on rather than criticize your actions.
Turn “I’m so dumb” into “Okay, now I know that doesn’t work. Let me try something else.” You’re not stupid or dumb, you’re trying something you may not have ever done before. Give yourself some time to figure it out!
You can also try using positive affirmations whenever you need a pep talk or just as a part of your daily routine. Repeating something positive to yourself will help you really believe it and realize that you actually do have what it takes.
Fixed mindset
If you tell yourself you can’t do something because of a “way that’s always been,” you’re trapped in a fixed mindset. This is saying things like:
I’ve never been a good writer, so I should avoid creating a blog.
I don’t know how to edit audio, so I shouldn’t create a podcast
No one is buying my product, so it must be trash.
All of these things are fixable. You can practice writing, you can learn how to edit audio or hire someone to do it for you, and you can do better research or marketing to sell your product.
Solution: What you need instead is a growth mindset. Realizing that you can do all the things you need to do or accepting that you may need help doing them is how you can turn a fixed mindset into a growth mindset.
Make a list of all the things you need to improve on and the steps you can take to either learn more or outsource to someone else. You don’t have to do everything in your business alone, and it’s okay to get help for the stuff you need to learn.
Impostor syndrome
Have you ever said to yourself, “I really don’t know what I’m doing. I was just lucky to get this far. Why would anyone listen to what I have to say?”
Are you thinking this in spite of the fact that you’ve got years of experience?
This is another form of negative thinking that a lot of bloggers and other entrepreneurs experience. It’s called impostor syndrome.
It’s the feeling that even though you actually do know what you’re talking about, you still don’t know enough. That your achievements are only due to luck or being in the right place at the right time. That people are going to find out you’re the “fraud” you think you are.
Solution: Recognize your achievements and how you got them. Think about the work you did to get where you are now.
You have valuable experience that people want. This why they hire you. It’s why they buy your courses, and it’s why they consume content through your blog/podcast/video/whatever.
Understand that you don’t have to perfect or the top #1 expert to provide value to someone. As long as you’re at least one step ahead of someone, you can help them!
Quitting
Finally, we have the ultimate self-sabotage behavior: quitting! You can’t achieve anything if you quit before you’ve had a chance to become successful.
Many people have a habit of quitting right before achieving success. They probably don’t know that they’re at the tipping point, but it happens a lot.
I can think of quite a few times when I realize now, looking back, that if I’d kept going, I could have found an entirely new level of success.
Solution: Develop the habit of finishing what you start. Avoid caving into the fear that crops up when you’re about to find out if you were successful or not.
Remember that you can always try again, regardless of the outcome. Many entrepreneurs go through lots of failures before finally finding that success that they crave.
Let’s Recap: 9 Ways You Self-Sabotage Your Success
Relatively, self-sabotage is actually a great problem to have. That might sound backward but think about it. If your success is out of your reach due to one of these reasons…
Indulging in distractions
Procrastinating
Failing to make decisions
Fearing success
Focusing on the wrong tasks
Listening to negative self-talk
Having a fixed mindset
Falling to impostor syndrome
Quitting before you can achieve success
…then your problem isn’t your business, it’s something you’re doing.
If the biggest problem in your business is yourself, then that’s much easier to deal with than trying to change anyone else. The person responsible for your success is staring at you in the mirror each day.
The entire issue is your own responsibility. This might sound disheartening, but it’s easier to change yourself than it is to change someone else.
Keep the tips this post in mind as you go through your day and soon, you’ll find yourself enjoying your successes instead of bemoaning your failures!
Either way, like many small business owners, you probably feel overwhelmed just by the idea of creating a business plan. Fortunately, as solopreneurs or small team businesses, it doesn’t have to be as hard as our brains are telling us.
(Or as complicated as Business 101 made it seem, in my case.)
I’ve made 2020 my year to get more intentional with my business and reviewing my business plan has been the first step. Reviewing your plan each year is a must since it should grow as your business grows.
Before, I had a less formal plan, so this year I wanted something a bit more structured. I wanted to stop struggling with deadlines and have an idea of what I wanted to do for every month so I could get way ahead of those deadlines.
But before I tell you that, let me show you how you can ease into business planning by using just one page.
How to Create a One-Page Business Plan
Unless you’re looking for major financial funding from a bank or other loan institutions, a simple business plan that includes answers to the following questions will be perfect for your small business purposes.
Where am I now with my business?
Where do I want to be with my business?
If you see your deadlines in front of you as you work your business, you’ll be more likely to meet them. Break this answer down into a timeline to make it easier, using 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, or whatever times work for your particular business.
And then bam! Your simple, one-page business plan is done. You’re that much more organized than you were before you started.
But you don’t have to stop there. Maybe you saw how easy that was and now you want to get a bit more detailed with your plan. Keep reading to discover how you can expand your business plan into something a bit more in-depth without feeling overwhelmed.
You can still make your business planning easy by devoting no more than one page to each of the following sections.
Page 1 – Overview
Include your vision (possibilities) for your business, the purpose (why you started your business) of creating the business, and the mission (what you plan to achieve) of the business.
Page 2 – Business Information
Here is where you include information about yourself including name, business name and entity, address, and phone number. As online entrepreneurs, while you may not have a physical address, you can include your website address, email, or even the PO Box for your email list.
You’ll also want to summarize your business objectives on this page. List your goals and how you plan to reach them. This includes what you’ll do to create a profit and what tools and resources you plan to use to do so.
Page 3 – Target Market & Customers
Int his section of your business plan, you want to focus on your target market. You want to clearly define who they are and why they need you.
Answer the following questions in this section of your plan:
Your target market – Who are they? Where are they? How many?
What do you need to know about them? Why do they need your service?
Is the market for what they need growing?
Give specifics about growth and spending habits. Do as much research on your market as you can and put it in this section, including any barriers or hard to overcome issues.
Page 4 – Competition
Who are your competitors? What makes you different and the same as those competitors?
How are you competing with them? With price, quality, etc? How will your market feel about you compared to your competitors?
Next, consider your USP—Unique Selling Point. What makes your business different from your competitors? How does your personal experience make your product or service unique?
Page 5 – Finances
Most businesses will apply for a business loan to cover startup costs, but as online entrepreneurs, our startup costs are low enough that we can pay for them without a loan. If you do want to go for a loan, that’s up to you, but I’ll be writing this section for the many of us who will be starting our business on our own.
Consider what will cost to run your website, your email list, your shopping cart, and any other necessities and include them in your business plan. This will help you understand how much you need to make or invest on a monthly or yearly basis.
You might also want to create budgets for certain areas of your business. So hosting costs could be one budgeting area, while advertising, outsourcing, and marketing could be some others. Budgets are great because they force you to spend the money you have set aside for each area on those specific things.
Even if you can only afford $10 or $20 on extras outside of hosting costs, that’s a lot better than nothing. You can always save that money for a larger purchase as well.
Page 6 – Marketing
This is a bit like your competition section because you’ll want to discuss how you’ll market your business products or services.
What social media will you use? Will you manage it yourself or hire someone else? How will you handle scheduling?
How will you set up your email list? What discounts or freebies will you offer to entice people to sign up for that list?
What holidays are most relevant to your business and how will you market your product in conjunction with those holidays?
Will you use affiliate partners? How much will you split with them and which products will you offer to affiliate?
All of this should in the marketing section of your business plan. This will likely be a meaty section since marketing is the most important thing you can do for your business, so it’s okay if you can’t fit it all on one page!
Recap: Simple Business Plan Outlines for Solopreneurs
Try the 1-page plan: Answer where you are now, where you want to be, and set the necessary goals to get there. This is an excellent way to start if the idea of a business plan scares you.
Create an in-depth plan: Dedicate pages to each part of your business plan. Include
Your business overview (what it is and what you hope to achieve),
Important information about your business,
Your target market (demographics as well as what they need),
Who your competition is and how you differ from them,
How you plan to finance your business expenses, and
How you’ll market your business
No matter which method you use to create your business plan, be sure you’re answering each question to make it efficient for its purpose. Whether it’s for you or someone else, the ultimate goal of a business plan is to keep you on track and focused and working toward growth.
As your business grows don’t forget to update your plan to grow with it as well! Revisit your plan once or twice a year.
At the end of every year, most businesses take time to review how well they’ve done in the past year and look towards the future. They review their business and marketing plan and make changes when necessary.
Have you taken stock of your business goals? Have you created a marketing plan that prepares to you achieve those goals?
One of the most important tasks you can do during this evaluation is to plan your marketing and promotions for the new year.
Even if you’re just starting to get serious about your business in the middle of the year, creating a marketing plan for the next 12 months is beneficial. You can always review and edit it at the end of the year so you can start fresh in January.
The important thing is that whatever time it is during the year, you work on getting started now. So here we go!
Creating a marketing plan months ahead of time is the best way to help take your business to the next level. It will serve as a road map of what you need to do and when. If you’re working with other people, such as colleagues or joint venture partners, it keeps everyone on the same page.
It also helps you manage your 4 main marketing areas:
Your website or blog (content marketing)
Email marketing
Social media marketing
Special sales and promotions, including important events like product creation and launch
These work together to drive traffic, generate leads (get subscribers) and make sales.
Promote Your Products
Before you start thinking about how you’re going to market, it’s helpful to know what products you have currently available. You should also use this time to get an idea of what you’ll create in the future.
It’s important to pencil in all the key dates related to your launches in your marketing plan. This helps you make sure nothing gets missed or left until the last minute.
Product creation and launches should be the most important points of your promotional calendar. Research what your target audience wants and needs and build a product around it.
You should also schedule in time to promote products you’ve already created. You don’t have to constantly create new products, just keep promoting the ones you already have.
Build your email list around your products as well, so you can let them know when the products are launching. This will help them sell well right out of the gate.
Create Content Around Your Marketing Plan
Your marketing plan should also include what content you’ll create. All marketing is content marketing. It’s just a question of the format of the content.
Imagine you have a fabric and notions brick-and-mortar store, but want to drive traffic to your physical store and also get customers online.
You create helpful content about quilting, making your own clothes, fun holiday crafts to give as gifts, and so on. This gets local customers to come in and online customers to buy. You could even put together reasonably-priced kits with everything they would need for each project to encourage sales.
For international customers who may not wish to pay a lot for shipping and handling, you can sell digital products, such as patterns, video lessons and so on. All of your content would be the context for making a sale.
Other content marketing methods
Email marketing also requires content and provides a context for making a sale. Send an email with information similar to what’s on your site and include a link to buy a product related to the content.
Social media marketing can drive traffic to your site and subscribers to your email list. Once they’re on your list, they can receive your content and amazing offers.
Use special promotions
Your offers will also include your special promotions—events where you offer a discount or bundle to increase the value of your initial offer. There are three main reasons you may decide to have a special promotion:
Launch a new product
Create a seasonal or holiday-related promotion
Stimulate sales during a slow period
We’ve already gone over launching, so let’s look at seasonal promotions and handling slow periods.
Seasonal and holiday-related promotions are always a good excuse for a special promotion or sale within your marketing plan. They mark an occasion and it’s easy to tie in your products and services.
Returning to our fabric store example, you might create an American flag quilt potholder pattern kit to sell for the 4th of July. Or you can use the pattern as a free download to get people to subscribe to your list. Announce the special promotion on social media and perhaps even run an ad about it on Facebook or Pinterest.
The 12 Days of Christmas is another very popular promotional opportunity, with 12 days of sales items if you wish. This can be the perfect way to stimulate sales during a time when prospective customers might be focusing on gift shopping, or ignoring you because their money is earmarked for other things.
You can promote the usefulness of the item as a gift, a bargain, or something people really need that they haven’t treated themselves to yet, but could make all the difference in their lives.
Start planning for holidays early
Some holidays are fixed, like the Fourth of July or Christmas Day on the 25th of December or Kwanzaa on the 26th. Others fall on different days each year, such as Easter, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, and so on.
Top marketers and magazines will tell you that Christmas starts in July or August—that’s how far they plan ahead with the help of their calendar.
To help you create a marketing plan for the holidays, you can create and download free PDF calendars to print out from timeanddate.com. You can toggle the various choices, such as including all US holidays.
Print out 1 copy of the calendar for each marketing initiative, such as the editorial content for your blog, email marketing mailings, and product launches. Then start penciling in your ideas.
Dealing with Slow Periods
Every business is going to hit a slow patch from time to time. If the summer is dragging on with barely any sales, it’s time for some extra marketing to maintain a decent level of sales and profits.
Using the fabric store again, you could think of 12 weeks of projects that kids can do while they are on summer vacation. You could also market these as useful gifts to give to others. You’re promoting your products by getting parents to teach their kids the power of giving.
It may take some time and creativity to come up with winning ideas, but your marketing plan will keep you on track. This will make it easier to do everything at the right time and in the right order.
Build on Your Successes
Another reason to revisit your marketing plan at the end of the year is to evaluate your best promotions. Look back at the ones that generated the most income and plan to recycle them during the next year.
You can even copy and use the same content you used before. Set the dates and queue them up in your blog or email marketing platform and you’re ready to go.
Make Use of Affiliate Products in Your Marketing Plan
If you don’t have a product of your own to sell yet, that’s perfectly okay! You can start working on creating your first product while you’re promoting affiliate products. With your own product, you can keep 100% of the profits for yourself.
One way to test your product idea is to find a similar product and promote it to your audience. If it goes well, consider developing a similar product of an even higher quality and your own ideas (but don’t steal, of course!).
Even if you do already have your own products, adding affiliate products is a great way to create a new income stream. You can easily become an affiliate for products related to your niche that your audience will find useful and you don’t even have to worry about shipping or supporting the products. Yay!
Popular choices for affiliate marketers are Amazon and affiliate networks like ShareASale or Awin. You can earn a commission anytime someone purchases through your specially-coded links.
Keep adding promotions to make sure you have a full calendar. Affiliate programs usually have a newsletter sent to keep you up-to-date with current promotions. Use this information about special offers, flash sales, and forthcoming holiday sales to get ahead of other affiliates who may not be paying attention.
Share a calendar with your own affiliates
If you have affiliates yourself or are trying to get more, an affiliate calendar will show you’re prepared and have everything well-organized. The calendar can help you make sure your supporting material for your affiliates is all ready in time for the holidays or for your next product launch.
Your calendar can also be an invaluable selling point if you want to get joint venture partnerships. This is an agreement in which two partners cross-promote and split the profits. JV partnerships usually have a higher split than regular affiliates, such as 60/40 or 50/50.
For example, you email a special offer from them to your list and they email an offer from you to their list. With both of you marketing your newly launched product, for example, you could double your chances of success.
Track Your Promotions
You should also keep track of traffic to your content and pay attention to which channel is generating the most sign-ups or sales. This can be useful for the next time you release a product. If you notice a video is generating a lot of sales, you may want to put more effort into creating video content for the next product.
You can also share this content with your affiliates and JVs so they can share them with their own audience.
For example, most affiliate software allows people to create links directly to any page on your website (this is called deeplinking). This means any of your affiliates could share an affiliate-enabled link that leads to a blog post rather than directly to a sales page.
So let’s say you have that video from before embedded in a blog post. You can ask your affiliates to help you drive traffic to this post through a deeplink because it’s converting well. They’ll love this, too, because it means more commissions for them.
Recap: Create a Marketing Plan to Promote Your Business Throughout the Year
Creating a marketing plan, either on paper or digitally, is one of the best things you can do for your online business.
After reading through this post, you should have a good idea of why! It’s an easy way to plan and promote both new and existing products and services and recycle the most successful marketing campaigns you’ve launched.
Don’t forget to:
Create a plan and set your goals ahead of time
Use both your own products and affiliate products
Take advantage of seasonal events and holidays
Build on success and recycle successful marketing campaigns
Create a promotion calendar
Share your promotions and successful content with your affiliates
Set your business goals for the new year and start planning so you can take action to accomplish those goals or even exceed them! For some extra help with creating your own marketing plan, check out my 12-month Cash Flow Marketing Planner.
It’s not enough to dream of success. It’s not even enough to set goals.
The only way to truly achieve your dreams and build the business you’re meant to build is to sit down and just do it. You have to take action!
That’s where many of us “fail.” Fail is a strong word, but that’s the reality of it. If you don’t take action, you’ll never achieve your goals.
And yet, it’s the whole “taking action” part that usually trips most of us up.
We overbook our calendars until today’s to-dos become next week’s past dues.
We procrastinate on the things that are most important while attending to things that are merely “nice to do.” (I’m super guilty of this one.)
And sometimes we simply take on too much—even when we know better.
And then what do we say? That we “don’t have time” to grow our businesses, to find new clients, or to write new blog posts.
The truth is, you do have the time. You have the same amount of time that other successful people have. You just need to learn how to be more productive.
The problem is that you’re bad at managing that time. You waste time in ways that you don’t even realize yet.
So what do you do? Embrace these five productivity hacks that even top coaches use to get more done in less time.
Create routines and habits
Simply put, a ritual or habit is a consistent way of doing something. You may have:
a morning ritual—wake up, brush your teeth, work out, shower, and head to your office);
an evening ritual—check homework, tuck the kids in, watch the evening news, and hit the sack;
a weekend ritual—sleep late, mow the lawn, catch a movie, visit your mom;
or many others for different types of situations.
However, if you’re not careful with your rituals, they can turn into productivity killers. Is checking Facebook or email a part of your morning ritual? Is turning on Slack a part of your at-work ritual? Distractions such as these can turn even your best intentions into hours of wasted time.
Take a good look at your rituals. What are you doing that you shouldn’t be or that should be moved to another part of your day? Make your rituals more efficient and you’ll automatically get more done.
Fill in all your client calls, your business administrative tasks, time for meals and breaks, outside appointments, and everything else you’re committed to.
The time that’s left might just shock you.
Make it a habit to block time in your calendar for every commitment, and you’ll never again over-promise or over-commit.
Learn to let go
This just in: you do not have to do everything in your business. You can (and should) hand off those low-level tasks to someone else.
Hire a VA to create your documents and manage your calendar.
Let your tech support person manage your blog and email.
Turn over your bookkeeping to an accountant.
Business productivity is all about delegating the tasks you don’t have to do or simply don’t want to do. The time you free up will allow you to work on what’s truly important—and that only you can do.
Work hard, play harder
You are not a machine.
You can’t work all day every day and hope to be at your best all the time. Take a day off! You need it.
Get some rest, or relax on a long, slow hike. Take a friend out to lunch. Go shopping with your kids. See a movie or a play. Do something—anything—other than work.
Not only will you return to your home office feeling much more refreshed, but you’ll find yourself more creative and productive than before as well.
Feeling stuck? Take a break. You know the saying: fresh eyes help, and all.
Build your focus
True multi-tasking is impossible. You cannot efficiently create a new product while you’re simultaneously surfing Facebook, keeping an eye on the kids, and answering the phone every time it rings.
Instead, use your calendar to block time off for important tasks, then turn everything else off so you can focus.
Let people know that you have set work hours, even if you are at home. The benefit of working at home is that you get to set when those hours are and that you’re available for emergencies.
Other than that, no phone, no Facebook, no kids or husbands or neighbors or pets demanding “just a minute” of your time. Tune everything out, and you’ll find your work getting done much faster, which in turn means more time to actually focus on those things and people that you love.
Recap: Top Productivity Tips for Entrepreneurs
Managing your time and turning up your productivity isn’t something that comes naturally to most people but you can always get more practice. When you learn to master this skill, you’ll find your business grows right along with you.
Remember these 5 productivity tips…
Create routines and habits
Calendar management
Learn to let go
Work hard, play harder
Build your focus
…and you’ll be on your way to getting more done and living the life you dream of building with your business.
Want to know what sets the ultra-successful apart from the wannabe entrepreneurs?
It’s not money, or brilliant ideas, or even powerful friends.
All of those things (and more) are nice to have, but they’re not a requirement of success.
What is a must-have, though, is a good attitude! Without the proper mindset, you’ll be constantly battling your own brain.
You’ll allow yourself to believe your ideas are no good
You’ll remain convinced that you aren’t smart enough
You’ll be certain that someone else did it (whatever “it” is) better
I don’t know about you, but all of this is pretty exhausting and quite frankly, a bit depressing. Trust me, I’ve been there plenty of times.
Before you know it, you’ll have talked yourself right out of launching your new program, asking for a JV partnership, or writing your book. In no time at all, you’ll be back at your day job, working away on someone else’s business because you don’t have the confidence to create your own.
I opened this post with the phrase “it’s all in your mind,” and this is so true when it comes to how you approach your business. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up sabotaging your own success.
Yikes!
A simple mindset shift can make all the difference. I wanna share three tips to help you confidently face each day and instead of secretly crippling your chances, sometimes before you’ve even begun.
Dress for Success
When we work at home, it’s easy to fall into a habit of wearing sweatpants and t-shirts to “the office”. After all, why dress up just for the dog?
But if you’re looking for something that results in an instant mindset shift in the right direction, ditch the sweat pants and break out the business casual attire. You’ll suddenly find you feel more professional, more confident, and probably a little sexier, too.
That last one won’t help your business, but it will improve your self-confidence. That’s also something that’s good to have in business!
Never Let Scarcity Drive Your Decisions
Too many would-be entrepreneurs operate with a scarcity mindset rather than approaching business from a place of abundance. In business, you should always think about doing more so you can achieve more.
Entrepreneurs should be prepared to take a certain amount of risk but also think of ideas to offset the cost of that risk. The way they think about money and opportunities to make money is different than the average person.
While most people may normally be in the mindset of staying within their means and using what the have, entrepreneurs look for solutions that will grow what they have so they can increase their means.
Turn Scarcity into Abundance
Whenever you catch yourself thinking negatively, work on reframing your scarcity mindset by turning “can’t” into “what do I have to do to make this possible?”
Rather than thinking, “I can’t afford to attend that event,” ask yourself, “How can I earn the money to invest in this trip?”
Rather than saying, “I have to do everything myself because I can’t afford to hire a VA,” remind yourself that your hourly rate potential is much more than you’d pay a virtual assistant. Then fill those hours you’re saving by outsourcing with money-making tasks of your own.
This is how an entrepreneur thinks. They look for opportunities for the future rather than settle for how things are in the present.
By reframing your thoughts, you’ll turn that negative talk into positive solutions that help you grow your business.
Are you ready to take your online business to the next level and watch some explosive growth unfold over the coming months?
Of course you are!
But before you start to plot and plan what you want to do to make that happen, it’s important to stop and look at where you are right now so you know what you need to work on.
For example, let’s say you want to increase your income. If you know your offer is converting at a high rate, but see that you don’t get much traffic to that offer, you’ll know you should focus on building traffic rather than trying to create more products.
Business planning for future success is all about data. You can work most efficiently and spend your time and money most effectively if you know exactly where you’re starting from.
By recording data, you can start to see what’s working, what isn’t, and what trends are starting to play out. It all starts with keeping a record of where you are right now.
Before you dive in, you should decide how you want to record this information. You can write it down by hand in a notebook, open up a Word document to do it digitally, or use a spreadsheet.
I like to use a spreadsheet I created in Airtable because I have the option to have it calculate fun additional information like weekly and monthly averages and even map it all out in graphics to help me get a clearer picture.
Pick a method that you can stick to and that what feels best for you. While I love spreadsheets, you may prefer to write everything down on planner pages.
Whatever you choose, remember to keep your records organized so you can easily go back to them and check your numbers.
What to Track
Let’s take a look at some of the things you’ll want to keep track of.
While I realize that you could just look at most of this data in various different places like Google Analytics, your shopping cart, and your autoresponder service, it’s important to have it all in one place.
This makes it much easier to connect the dots and see the relationships between the different sets of numbers. Plus you don’t have to log in to 50 different services just to see your numbers. Keeping everything in a single place creates a nice overview.
Traffic
To grow you need to expand your reach. That means getting more traffic but also engaging the people that come to your site by encouraging them to click around and read more.
Good things to keep track of are the total visitors, unique visitors, bounce rate, and of course where the traffic is coming from.
Email List / Subscribers
Once you get people to your site, your next goal is always to get these people on your list.
Here you want to track the total number of subscribers, conversion rates for each of your opt-in forms and pages, open rates for your emails, and also unsubscribes.
As you start to collect and review this data regularly, you’ll get a much better picture of your subscribers.
Customers
Subscribers are great, customers are better!
Start by keeping track of how many total customers you have and how many purchases per day, week, and month. Other good numbers to look at are the total lifetime value of your average customer, repeat purchases, and refund rates.
Income & Expenses
Last but not least, take a look at your bottom line. This is your typical accounting data.
You want to keep track of your income as well as your expenses. With those two sets of numbers, you can easily calculate your overall profit. I find it helpful to look at your profit for the month, but track income on a daily basis.
Update Regularly
Now that you have your initial data collection set up, make it a habit to update the numbers regularly. This makes it easy to see what’s working, what isn’t, and how much you’re growing as you move through the coming months and years.
Whether your business experiences growth, stagnation, or a regression, make a note of what happened that month to cause that result. You’ll be able to track why you had this experience so you can plan appropriately for future attempts.
For example, if you see a dip in website traffic, it will be easy to attribute to how you spent less time promoting your content than you did the month before. That should be motivation enough to get you to work harder on promotion for the next month.
Or on the other hand, maybe you have a huge boost in email subscribers during one month, but only half as many the next month. Rather than feel like you’re failing to continue to grow, you’ll know that spike in growth was due to a contest you held and you won’t see that level of growth continuously.
At least not yet! You’ll get there if you keep it up. Good luck!
