Vacation Planning For A Small Biz Owner
This week something unusual is happening – I am going on vacation. Not a vacation where I do some work, as I’ve done in the past, but a real unplug-and-take-time-for-me vacation! Needless to say I’m quite excited, and ready to get away for a few days. However, as a small business owner with no employees, I have several things I have to work out before I leave. Otherwise, I will find myself making a few phone calls and checking email off and on just to make sure I haven’t missed anything. And that defeats the point of a break.
So here’s a list of what I’ve done to prepare. Anything I have missed? I’ll do a follow-up post when I’m back, but I’d love to have other suggestions before I go.
- I’ve taken care of things around my home – put a hold on my mail, found someone to feed my cat, eating out of my refrigerator and pantry to use up what I have. While this doesn’t specifically apply to preparing my business, it is good to know that these things are taken care of.
- I’ve also made sure all bills due, both personal and business, are paid before I leave. All client invoices will be sent out. Money received will either be in my Paypal account or held with my mail. Fortunately, my business bank account is in good shape, so I’m not desperate to get the money before I return.
- I notified my clients a couple of weeks ago of when I would be unavailable, and suggested they get any work to me before I left, or have it ready for me when I get back. Even though I work virtually, and have previously worked when I was out of town, this is meant to be a real break from my business. By letting them know ahead of time, they can plan their needs, and not wonder why I’m not returning calls and emails.
- Additionally, I’ve reminded clients I maintain social media accounts for that they will need to check in every day or so to make sure there aren’t comments they need to reply to. As my business grows and clients accounts require more maintenance, I will likely hire someone to take care of this when I am away, but for now I believe this will work.
- I’m setting up an autoresponder for my email and changing the message on my phone voice mail. This will let people know I’m not ignoring their messages, and when to expect to hear back from me.
- I always set up my tweets ahead of time, and I’m doing the same for my vacation time. I am wondering though, if anyone retweets me I won’t know it for several days, and would hate for them to think I’ve ignored them. I’m going to try it this time and see what happens… (and if anyone has had a similar experience, please share what worked for you.)
Each business is different and will have unique issues to consider when taking off on vacation. Anything you think I’ve missed doing business-wise? Anyone taken a vacation from their business? Please share your experiences both good and bad.
And I’ll see you when I get back!
It’s Tax Time – Are You Ready?
Yes, it’s tax time in the US. Not my favorite time of year, but a very necessary one. Ice and snow are forecast for today, so I think it will be a good day to get warm and start getting my information together to take to my accountant.
If you have your own business, you really should have an accountant. I met with mine when I first starting thinking about my business. He gave me a couple of tips to get started the right way, and told me when he needed to see me again. It was a good feeling to know that I had things in order to start with.
If you don’t have an accountant, how do you go about finding a good one? Well, I asked a friend and client who has a small business, and her referral was a great one. So I would suggest talking to other business owners, especially if their business is similar to yours, to get their feedback.
Need more helpful suggestions? Take a look at this blog post on the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. Mike Michalowicz collected tips from 62 business owners to help you in your search, and he included my tip at #23.
Have any other ideas on finding a good accountant? Leave a reply here or over at the TPE. And good luck getting all the paperwork together!
WordPress Tip – Missed Schedule
I spent part of the first weekend of the New Year working on a blog post. It was meant to go up on New Year’s Day, but between client work and celebrations, that deadline was missed.
When I completed the post, I scheduled it to publish on Monday. I love this feature in WordPress – I can type my posts when I have time, then schedule it to publish whenever I want it to, even if I am involved in something else, or away from the internet.
Monday evening, I checked and found the post had not published. When I looked at the lists of posts, I saw that it was listed as scheduled, and below, in red letters, it said “Missed Schedule”.
What??? I thought I had missed a step in setting up the schedule, so I set it up to publish on Tuesday and double-checked to make sure everything was set as it should be.
Tuesday evening I checked, and saw the same message again. Now I’m really confused. I know I set everything up correctly, so I don’t understand what the problem is.
So, I googled it. And one of the results I got was this WordPress forum post. Turns out I’m not the only one having the problem, but there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer as to what caused the problem or how to solve it. My plan is to first download the 2.9.1 version of WordPress; if that doesn’t fix the problem, I’m installing the plug-in mentioned in the forum post.
If you’ve had the same problem, you may find something in the forum post to help you. If you’ve found a way to solve this problem, please post a reply and share the information. I would really appreciate it.
Finally!
This blog is moving!
I started this blog in February 2009. I bought my domain name in March 2009. It is now September 2009 and I have finally bought hosting for the blog! So I’m transferring this over to WordPress.org and running it through my domain name.
I was in the middle of a blog post when I got this worked out, so things may be a bit quiet this week. Well, even quieter than normal. Once everything is up and running, I’ll post all the details.
My week is certainly off to an exciting start – hope yours is as well!
This Week's Articles of Interest
Happy Friday!! When you run your own business, the days often seem to blur together, but I think I’ve spent enough years working on a regular schedule that Friday always seems special. Of course, my 13 year old son is also quick to point out when it is Friday since he will have two days off from school and extra time to play video games!
If you do have some free time this weekend, here are some articles I saw this week that I found especially interesting. Maybe they will be helpful to you, or someone you know. I’ve emailed one link to a potential client to help him sort out some social media issues.
And this week’s articles are:
Five Social Media Marketing Mistakes That Companies Make from Denise Wakeman’s Biz Tips Blog. How many are you guilty of? What can you do to eliminate it/them?
Twenty Not-So-Obvious Blogs for Freelancers I love lists like these! Not only do they provide great information, but I like seeing how many things I already know about or am doing.
Sadly, this is one I really need to read often – Email the Great Time Waster. My inbox is totally out of control, and I spend far too much time checking it just in case something urgent came in. I think I need to read this post at the beginning of each day.
Great controversy over the president addressing kids in schools, but this blog post focuses on some good advice he gave regarding social media. Wonder if it will be followed?
Unfortunately, my time is limited and I’ve missed some great stuff out there. What articles and blog posts did you find interesting this week?
Get Clients Now! Update #2
As I mentioned in previous posts here and here, I worked through the Get Clients Now! program in June. While I believe this is an excellent program filled with great ideas for building your service business, I faced several challenges along the way.
The biggest challenge was building my networking and referral groups. I knew I wanted to push myself, to see how much I could accomplish in 28 days. But, finding meetings to attend was hard; finding meetings that fit my schedule (single parent with full-time job) was nearly impossible. Mid-way through the 28 days, I realized the goals I had set were not realistic.
I decided to change my methods, and instead, focus on referral building with people I already knew. I got in touch with those I’d talked to before to see if they could offer any names to contact. A couple of good suggestions that I followed up on, but so far no results.
By now I’m getting quite discouraged. I have one client, and am spending part of my time working on that – which is a very good thing! But I don’t feel like I am moving my business forward. In doing my daily checklist for Get Clients Now! I realize that I am completing the same areas over and over, and the networking and referral ones are constantly blank.
So, I had to regroup for the last week. I decided that the networking and referral area would be temporarily put aside, and I’d focus on my blog, commenting on other blogs and online forums, and making a list of everyone I could think of to contact that I had not already.
This week I have taken vacation from my day job. My son is at his dad’s, and my goal has been to work on my business. I had some client work to do and some web sites and programs to test out, but the primary goal was to network. I found lunch meetings to attend two days this week, and while I won’t be able to join these groups right now (issues with my schedule again) it was good practice for me to go, meet people, get my name out there, and collect their business cards in hope I can refer business to them and develop a relationship that way. I am also working through the list of people to contact to see if anything develops from that.
In a sense, I’m taking the program Get Clients Now! for just this area, and condensing it into one week. I’ll update again with how things work out. I’m also considering doing the Get Clients Now! again later this month, or in August when my son is back in school and my schedule is a bit more set. First I want to see how much I can accomplish in a week when all I have to focus on is my business.
More to come…..
If you’ve read the book and participated in the Get Clients Now! program, please leave a comment and let me know what you thoughts and results were. Did you face any challenges you hadn’t anticipated, and if so, how did you work through them?
GS Business Resources Is In The News
I had a pleasant surprised last week when Dawn Rivers Baker, editor of the MicroEnterprise Journal contacted me requesting an interview.
After staring at the email for several minutes, wondering if she had lost her mind, I decided why not. I’ve read her blog for several months and have always enjoyed Dawn’s insightful, thoughtful, and sometimes sassy posts. I’ve also been following her on Twitter, and we’ve had a few pleasant exchanges about health insurance and the weather. If she thought my situation was worth talking about, who was I to argue!
The interview was a delightful way to spend a half hour of my day. The resulting post makes me sound very good indeed. Thanks Dawn, for a great opportunity! I look forward to chatting with you again, to let you know how my business is growing.
You can read the blog post here.
She also mentioned me, my business, and the interview in her weekly podcast which can be found here.
Take a look and listen, and post comments here and on Dawn’s blog.
If you came here via The MicroEnterprise Journal or its blog, welcome! If you didn’t, you need to go check it out!
So…what does a VA do?
Virtual Assistant, or VA for short, is a term that many people aren’t familiar with. VAs do exactly what an office staff can do, but they do it from a remote location. By using the internet, email, fax and telephone, an assistant can be located anywhere. They can work for a company located down the road, across the country, or on the other side of the world. The advantage to a business owner is that the work can be done without having to hire an employee and pay benefits. You only pay for the time that is actually spent working on your projects.
If you are used to having staff in the office, it may be a bit disconcerting to have someone located elsewhere. However, you may find that a VA can provide the added touch that your business needs to make it run more efficiently. To get started, may I suggest that you find one or two tasks that you do not enjoy, and hire a VA to do them? See how it goes, then consider hiring them for other tasks. The tasks can be one-time things, or can be chores that come up regularly.
Think about it – what could you do to grow your business with the time you would free up by hiring a VA?
