Life as a Solopreneur

Today's episode talks about life as a solopreneur and gives some hints and tips for storm proofing your business when life takes an unexpected turn. 

Transcript

Wendy Jones: 0:02

Hi, and welcome to the writing and Marketing Show brought to you by author Wendy H. Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. It's jam packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast. So it's time to get on with the show. And welcome to Episode 86 of the writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur, Wendy h. Jones. Today, we're going to be talking about being a solopreneur. So life as a solopreneur. And there's a reason for that, as you'll find out in a moment. Before that, I would like to say it's a pleasure to bring you this show every week. And I do so willingly. However, it does take time out of my writing. And if you would like to support this time, you can do so by going to patreon.com, forward slash Wendy h Jones. And you can support me for as little as $3 a month. And I would be very grateful it's the price of a tea or coffee. Or if you want to do just a single show, you can go to my website, Wendy h John's dot com and click on buy me a coffee, then you can buy me a cup of coffee. And again, I would be very grateful. It would also tell me that you're enjoying what I'm doing, and you want me to continue to do it. And I do want to continue to do it. Which brings me to today's show, there's a very specific reason why I'm talking about being a solopreneur. Today, we do bounce a lot of words around on the show in terms of entrepreneur, author, entrepreneur, solopreneur. And the truth is that I am all of those things. And so are you if you're running your own author business. But the solopreneur version that I'm going to talk about today is extremely important. I will explain that today I was interviewing, I was going to interview a guest, Samantha Wilson, I have her set up her own publishing company. But I had to delete that. And it's through no fault of Samira, because I had to have an emergency appointment with the doctors. I've been ill know for five weeks. This is my second lot of antibiotics that I'm on. And I'm looking at having to go and see our consultant if it doesn't work this time. So it really did put my plans on hold, which is why I thought that would be a really good idea to talk about life as a solopreneur today. And there's there's lots of fun being a solopreneur is amazing, I would highly recommend it because I love it. And I can make the decisions about what I do, I can make decisions about whether I independently publish whether I go with a publisher, I can make decisions about how I run my company, about the marketing I do, I can make decisions about how I spend my time, my writing time, my marketing time, my time working with other people. And the term I suppose solopreneur is a bit not correct, but it is because no man is an island or no woman is an island, you always need other people. So while it's a blast, while it is absolutely great fun, you hiring consultants, so I hire in a cover designer, editors, I made a decision to work with publishers. And I did that because I could make the decisions about my business about my author business. And I love doing that. But one of the big problems is being a solopreneur. This, if you do get ill, you're the only person running your business, then the money stops coming in. And you need to carry on regardless. And for example, I do the show on my own. But if I'm not able to interview people, then I'm stuck really because I have to do something on my own, which I don't mind doing ordinarily. But when you're not feeling very well, it can be a problem. So I thought I'd talk about some of the decisions that you make as a solopreneur. And some of the things you can do to put systems in place so that if you are ill, then you have your you're covered under your business continues. Now one of the things you can do in terms of obviously you need income, and in order to get income you need to write or you need to edit or you need to run courses or whatever. So the way you can do things in terms of running your business continuing is you can put systems in place. So for example my writing I usually try and write as much as I can. And I try to always be ahead of the game with my writing, so that if I do get ill then I I'm ahead of what where I plan to be. So I don't need to be writing while I'm really quite poorly. And I tried to do that all the time, things have slipped a little lately. But that happens, life always gets in the way. But I'm still on track with everything I'm doing. And I'm still able to bring out books or things are all right there. But if you do get ill, then and you can't write and you're an author, then that is a big problem, really. And that's one of the things you can't hand out to anyone else unless you start paying ghost writers, which is not something that I'm willing to do. Now, I also do work for other people, I do formatting I do some editing I do. And I run online courses, I run an academy, as I've told you before, it's a monthly membership, and there are monthly coaching calls, and things like that, that get done. Now, because it's a monthly coaching call, if I do get ill, I can just move things around. And I have to say that students are usually very understanding. So I my first tip to you would be building some measure of flexibility, building some measure of being able to move things around if you have to. I also run courses, online courses, I run live courses are as live as they can be at the moment because they're being done on zoom. But they've come to an end at the moment. But I also run online courses that are completely online, I don't need to be available for them. So they just continue, they continue to bring in income. So my second tip to you is if you're doing live courses, and you're relying on that income, then why not look at turning them into online courses that people can access. And that again, that will be steady income. Now, that brings us to marketing because in order to get steady income, you need to be marketing things, you need to be marketing your books, you need to be marketing, you know your your courses, you need to be marketing, everything that you're doing really anything that you offer, you need to let people know that it's available. And so my third tip to you is have things set up in advance. Always make sure you have a system where all your social media work goes out in advance, have a system where you have set things up for Amazon advertising or Facebook advertising. So that if you do get ill, they continue, all you have to do is take a little bit of time to change the dates and extend them. And then things will carry on. So that's my third tip to you to make sure that you schedule things in advance. Which brings me to today's podcast, I usually shedule the podcasts in advance. And I set up a lot of different podcasts. So they run for several weeks. But unfortunately, at the moment, I've been old for about five weeks. And it's meant a couple of times, I've had to dash to the doctors in rather a hurry because they've wanted to see me as an emergency. And that has caused problems. So I've learnt a lesson really I've learned that what I need to do is I need to shedule maybe two or three months in advance, and spend time taking a whole day and just interviewing people one after the other. So that I've got a lot of, of this the podcast set up in advance. Now I don't mind doing solo shows. But it's a bit difficult to do it when you haven't got a topic prepared, and you're not ready to do it. And it also means that you're letting people down. If you've arranged for people to interview them, and it's for the next day, then you're letting people down as well. But you're also letting your podcast and your listeners down. So again, sheduled is extremely important. So over the last five weeks, I've learned a lot, I've learned a lot about being a solopreneur. And as I say a being a solopreneur can be an absolute blast. But it can always be a right kicker if you get ill or you can't step in. So you need to be looking at multiple streams of income. So that you know you're not reliant on any one stream of income. And also, it may be an idea to have people that can't step in to help you if something goes wrong. So it may be that I need to look at perhaps bringing on a virtual assistant or an assistant of some description so that they can help me with things. The other thing I can look at is perhaps someone who could step in and do the podcast for me. If need be, I could train someone up and they will be able to do the interview and step in in a time when I wasn't able to. Now before you panic as far as I know there's nothing very serious wrong with me. I'm not saying All this because I think something's going to happen, and I'll disappear for months. But it's just brought home to me today that things can be a bit tricky if you really truly are running everything on your own. So I'm going to look at putting systems in place that will help I could train someone up to do the odd podcast. And then that takes the pressure off of me doing it all on my own as well. And again, I'm not saying that that's going to happen, or that I'm handing the podcast over. I'm just saying that as a solopreneur, I need to think about my business and how my business can keep on running. For times when I may not be able to do it for any reason, you know, there could be a bereavement and you're busy doing something, or there could be the fact that you're ill, or you might have to go and have a minor roll up or you break your leg or you lose your voice. There are things that can happen. And when you're a solopreneur, then everything's really reliant on you, your business is not going to go ahead if you have to take a break for any reason. So my big takeaway from today's very short show, because I really am quite exhausted and not feeling too well, is that as a solopreneur, you really I would 100% ask you and advise you to take a long, hard look at your business and how it's being run. And looking at putting steps in place that your business can run. If for any reason, you have to step out of the step out of the equation for a week or a couple of weeks, whatever that reason may be or even just a couple of days, it can have an impact. So that's my takeaway for you today, to sit down at the end of this show. Unless you're listening to this while you're driving, of course, wait till you get to somewhere you can do it. Sit down and think about systems you can put in place so that your business will keep on running, and you will keep on earning money. Thank you for listening today. I apologise it is short. But I thought that this would be a topic which would help you and it certainly helped me. As I say, I'll be back next week, I'm going to be interviewing the lovely Samantha Wilson who has in the middle of a pandemic set up a publishing company am I and I'm an author, and I'm very much looking forward to talking to her and discussing how to set up a publishing company. So until then, enjoy your week, and I'll see you again next week. That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today. I'm Wendy h Jones. And you can find me at Wendy H jones.com. You can also find me on Patreon where you can support me for as little as $3 a month which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to patreon.com forward slash when the H Jones. I'm also went h Jones on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week and keep writing. Keep reading and keep learning