Solo Business Model: Chicken, Hiccup or In Between.

The end of this post will have more information about the paid newsletter version of the Solo Gazette - stay tuned.

Let's get to it -
What business model are you choosing for your business?
Business books stress 'You Must Have a Business Plan' when you start your business. The problem with this idea is it's made to appear this should be some big thick 300 page cracker you'll do once and that's that.

Of course they miss the most important part: Finding out if there's enough people interested in what you want to sell! Believe me, I know about the 'perfect business plan' and diving head first into a lousy market!

Starting a business, solo or otherwise requires more than an idea with 25 PowerPoint slides and "historical" sales projections. Recently while writing a business overview guide, I came across a few examples of working business models.

If you have no idea what a business model is and why you would want one, here's an explanation (about time?!) I found on the Digital Enterprise website:

A business model is the method of doing business by which a company can sustain itself -- that is, generate revenue. The business model spells-out how a company makes money by specifying where it is positioned in the value chain.

What??! It's how your business will make money consistently for a very long time. Picking a model is where it gets a bit more complicated.

It takes effort to start and operate a profitable business. As a solo entrepreneur you know it takes more than getting a business license or throwing up a website to create a profit making business.

Robert Ringer shares one type of business model that I see many new to how a business works start. One look around the Internet and you'll see plenty of these - Hiccup Business Models. Here's what Robert had to say about this model:

What makes a company qualify as a hiccup business is a flawed business model. It’s a model that requires selling a product or service to the masses at artificially low prices in order to maintain unrealistically high sales and razor thin profit margins.

GS: A quick example would be selling a $7 product. Keeping it simple with $1,000 a month overhead (living indoors, eating food, etc) on a monthly budget of $1012, you need to sell 145 products a month and with absolutely, positively No Returns! Miss one or two sales a month and your business model falls apart. Sounds too much like a "Maalox Moment' to me!

Another example comes from Michael Masterson and describes the preferred method of many solo entrepreneurs who are working full time jobs - Chicken Business Model.

A person who somehow manages to start and grow a successful business but who is unwilling to take any risk. I call such people chicken entrepreneurs because they are so extremely risk averse.

If you're reading this blog, you are looking at an example of a chicken entrepreneur. Debt is not my idea of a good time and solo entrepreneurs who have had "brick and mortar" businesses feel the same way.


For those of you wondering about online business models? Here's a jiffy quick video that shows one business model others are using and that are working online. You'll need to give your email address to access the others, and they are marketing a membership for access to other products they sell but it is worth a look: Free Business Model

No matter which model feels right to you, it still comes down to good old elbow grease, spit and Duct tape. You pick what is going to get you where you want to go, roll-up your sleeves and get busy.

Subscription Newsletter Update
This is weird but understandable. I received an email asking why there will be a paid version of the Solo Gazette instead of letting everyone have the information free on the blog?

Here's my answer (and yes it's long winded - so sue me!): Because a paid newsletter appears to be the best model to help solo entrepreneurs committed in creating a lifestyle business survive during their critical first year.

According to the US Census and Fortune magazine, the odds of surviving that critical first year for many who start out creating a home based business are really low.

How low? Out of 100 solo home based businesses that start this year, only 38 will make it to their first year anniversary?

Calvin, I hope that answered your question.

Resources You Can Use
One resource I have for you is available for immediate download that you will want to print and read with a pen in your hand. It's a freebie but don't let that stop you. Sometimes the worth you get from something is what you put into it, not the price.

You know I have a thing for Seth Godin (bald, smart and a solo entrepreneur! What's not to like?!)...the Bootstrappers Bible can help you focus and take a bit of the shine off your rose colored glasses.

These links will give you a different take on becoming a solo entrepreneur and if you've started, help you keep going.

Small Business Forum
Up and Running Entrepreneur
Home Office Voice
Small Business CEO


As always, take what you can use and leave the rest.

That's it for today and I leave you with this:

"Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men/women wait for opportunities; strong men/women make them." ~ Orison
Swett Marden

Copywriting Excellence

Yeah, this post is early but I had to share this with you. Copy writing is a
learned skill, and one you will get better doing the more you do it.

Most of you running a business know it's not 'what you say' but 'how
you say it' that gets customers and clients to take action.

I'm still learning this, probably why there are no comments on my
blog posts.

Anyway,I've been a long time reader of Clayton
Makepeace's work because he's an excellent
copywriter and I can use the lessons!

On his blog this past couple days, he has over 60 comments to
one post he made with a tile of 'Lincoln Was Wrong'.

Don't make any snap judgments until you read the post, it's
why learning to write sales copy from 'old school' direct
marketers is how to make your sales really grow.

It got heated - down and dirty in a hurry!
My piddly rants here are nothing compared to
where he went with this post.

And here's what I want you to get
from his post: What did tactic did he use to
get 64 people to post comments on his blog?

This is the kind of copy writing you want to do for your
business and I'm still learning to do.

Go here and read the entire page:
Lincoln Was Wrong

As always, take what you can use and leave the rest.

Here's to good reading!

If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just
keep putting off doing it.~Olin Miller

When Will Your Someday Arrive?

Today is my birthday, so I'm taking this time off and sharing an article from Michael Masterson of Early To Rise.

When it comes to getting going, many times we sit back and sorta-kinda take a stab at what we really want to do. This article may help and if not, as always - take what you can use and leave the rest.

How to Become What You Want to Be
By Michael Masterson

"If you want to be a writer, you have to write."
I was 16 years old when my father said those kind-and-cruel words to me. I never forgot them.

The first time I can remember wanting to be a writer , I was 11 or 12 years old. I'd written a poem for Sister Mary Something at school. My rhyming quatrain (AABB) was titled, pretentiously, "How Do I Know the World Is Real?"

I was at the kitchen table when my father started reading it over my shoulder. I felt anxious. My father was a credentialed writer, an award-winning playwright, a Shakespearean scholar, and a teacher of literature, including poetry. I'd seen him, on Saturday mornings, hunched over student essays, muttering and occasionally reading out loud passages to my mother that sounded perfectly good to me but elicited derisive laughter from them.

My father understood the secret-to-me clues of good writing . I didn't feel at all comfortable having my fragile young poem exposed to the awesome danger of his critical mind. So there I sat, hoping he would go away. But he didn't. I felt his hand on my shoulder, gentle and warm. "You may have a talent for writing," he said.

I wrote lots of poetry in the months that followed, and began to think of myself as a writer. I liked that feeling. But soon other interests - touch football, the Junior Police Club, girls - crowded themselves into my life. Gradually, I wrote less and less. I still yearned to be a writer and so I began to feel guilty about not writing.

To assuage my guilt, I promised myself that my other activities were "life experience," and that I needed life experience to become the good writer I wanted to be. In developing this excuse for not writing, I was building a structure of self-deception that many people live inside when they abandon their dreams. From the outside, it looks like you are doing nothing. But from the inside, you know that you are in the process of becoming, which, you convince yourself, is the next best thing to being.

That was the shape of my delusion when my father said, "If you want to be a writer, you have to write. A writer is someone who writes."

So many people live their lives failing to become what they want to be because they can't find the time to get started. How many times have you heard someone say that, one day, they will do what they always wanted to do - travel the world or paint paintings or write a book? And when you hear sentiments like those, what do you feel?

Happy because you are confident that one day they will accomplish their long-held goal? Or sort of sad for them because you are pretty sure they never will?

And what about you? What is it that you want to be but haven't become? What goal or project or task do you keep talking about accomplishing yet never do?

When my father told me that "writers write," he was saying two things:

* I had lost the right to call myself a writer when I stopped writing.

* I could regain the title the moment I started writing again.

If you spend a while ruminating on this, you may find it both disturbing and liberating.

I was disturbed, because I wanted my father to say that the way to become a writer was to read books about writing and then take courses on writing and then perhaps become an apprentice to a writer and then begin writing little bits here and there. And that, finally, after 3 or 10 years of education, preparation, and qualification, I would somehow automatically be a writer.

But as long as I was studying writing or preparing myself to be a writer - and yet not actually writing - I wasn't a writer. It was as simple as that.

Lots of people feel that they can keep their dreams alive and derive some of the ego satisfaction they hope their dreams will give them simply by living in a state of becoming. "I am not yet the person I want to become, but so long as I continue to express a wish to become that person, I keep that possibility alive and deserve credit for doing so."

To become a writer, the first thing I had to do was refuse to accept any psychological credit for wanting to be a writer. After the initial disappointment of giving up the delusion that becoming was as good as being, I had no choice but to jump over the becoming stage and simply be.

I did that by writing. Every day. And when I learned the secret of getting up early and writing first thing in the morning - hours before other people trailed into work - that's when I began to really live my dream.

These days, I usually get to the office between 6:30 and 7:00, and the first thing I do is fire up the computer. There is no better feeling than to get going when the office is dark and quiet, usually by making entries into my journal but sometimes by tackling something tougher, like a book chapter. Of the many pleasures of being a writer - finishing a manuscript, collaborating with editors, seeing a copy of the book for the first time, and even making it to best-seller lists - the purest and finest for me has always been the first few hours of the morning when I am in that writerly groove.

The best part about being a writer, I have discovered, is the writing. (It is also the worst part, but that's another story.) And this is true, I think, for every skill or profession.

The easiest way to become something special is also the fastest: Just start doing it. Don't wait for the "right" time. Don't worry about not being qualified. And don't worry about getting paid for it. Just start doing it.

That's it for now and I leave you with this -

Someday is not a day of the week.~Author Unknown

Update & Knowing Your Fears

Solo Gazette Update
Got stuck in a time warp over the weekend but here I am!
Many of you know the Solo Gazette was under consideration
for a move – scrap that! It's fine right here with Blogger.

As for the membership site? I must have had an acid
flashback – what the hell was I thinking?!

Instead
There will be a paid version of the blog called: Solo Gazette Entrepreneur.
Ok, that's a weird name and needs work. But members will have
access to business guides, Mp3 interviews, downloads, teleconferences
and time saving worksheets to get going and growing a lifestyle solo business.

Let's get to it -
Some of you are still looking for the Holy Grail to
starting a million dollar business. Unfortunately, you
are also the Golden Fleece on someone's balance sheet
because they know they can claim anything and you'll
buy it.

Stop that nonsense! Whatever anyone tells you, the
bottom line is the old rules of business still apply.

It's no big secret, hush-hush, expert advice to
operating a successful business. In fact, ask any business
owner and they will tell you:
Do these 4 things right and success is within your reach.

What are they?
Focus on your own business, sell what your customers want to buy,
price for profits and watch your cash flow like a hawk!

It may not be hot, pretty or trendy but it works.

After all the businesses that I've started (that looked good on
paper and which I quickly closed), there were things
I wish I'd known and paid attention to.

1. Know your personal strengths and what you won't do.
Everybody has strengths and finding what they are is your
first goal. Knowing what you won't do (find that archived post
on non-negotiable things in your life) can save you a great deal
of time and frustration.

You can have all the skills in the universe behind you,
but if you don't want to manage people or get into
direct sales or get your hands dirty, admit it.

I was well trained for accounting. But what got me in trouble
was not knowing what I didn't want to do and those were
some of the first things that met me head-on in my
business.

As the new kid on the block, making contacts and knocking
on doors was part of the business building steps. I hated
them!

Being an introvert, the small talk and the 'tap dancing' made
me physically ill. So I started a newsletter, mailed it to
every new business I found in the papers and kept on mailing
it.

Will it work today? Try it.
It did get me a few phone calls with questions about my service.

Even then, I didn't have the guts to ask for an appointment to sell
the accounting service, how lame was that?

It wasn't about being lame, it was the fear of being
told No! and fear of rejection.

Being afraid of rejection may be normal but it definitely is
high on most people's list of Don't Want To.

Other business owners had told me how they were getting clients: Yep, knocking
on doors, cold calling and networking with other people.

Had I listened, starting an accounting service would not have been my first business.

Know what you don't want to do before you get that website,
join that affiliate program, start that catering business or
decide consulting looks like fun.

Just by talking to a few business owners and other solo entrepreneurs,
you may find there are things that you just don't want to do.

Resources:
Boomer Business Launcher
Do My Stuff, Outsource Locally
The Small Business Blog
Business Alone

That's it for today and I leave you with this

"Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare."- Japanese proverb