Happy Monday folks, hope you had a great weekend – now back to the grind and another solopreneur blog update.
As promised in my last update, wanted to share more about the networking event I hosted Thursday night.
Many of you know I’ve been running networking events for years and event #5 (it was on pause for a while due to Covid) was a great success.
The biggest “mess up” was the fact that I wore shorts and a short sleeve shirt to the event, despite it being cold and grey in Toronto in October, but hey, no one’s perfect right?
Anyway, it went without a hitch and met some very cool, interesting people as per usual. I won’t beat a dead horse on why events like these are so great, especially if you’re trying to start or grow a business as a solopreneur!
Usually I stick to one event per week, but on Friday night I was out for Round 2.
Not your typical networking event as I attended the France Canada Chamber of Commerce yearly gala. And since it was a gala, it (unfortunately?) meant a black suit and tie.
I’m not against dressing up – heck, I knew what to expect when preparing to become a lawyer – but especially since Covid, it feels like more of a “thing” to actually get dressed up and go out for a night.
That being said, it was a fun time. We – my immigration law firm – are members of the France Canada Chamber, which has been a great experience for us, and it was nice to see a lot of the other members in person, eat some good food and spend time with our firm employees outside of the office.
If you’re trying to grow a solopreneur business, or in sales/marketing for another company, I definitely recommend checking out some chambers. They can be great sources of leads, networking, etc.
A few other solopreneur marketing and sales strategies I’m focused on right now:
- cold outreach via email/phone
- nurturing old clients and contacts through content marketing and email lists
- trying to pump out content on social media to get more organic, inbound leads
I wish I had a bigger team to help with some/all of the above, but alas, we at Visto.ai are a small company (for now). So I find it’s mostly about the 80/20 rule – how can I do as many of those things, effectively, with limited time and money?
There’s no one answer, of course.
Over the years I think I’ve gotten a bit better, both because you get more practice in and also because you start learning what works and doesn’t. Two of my favorite tools/platforms have become LinkedIn and email, especially if you like writing and are in the b2b space (although LinkedIn can still be good b2c depending on your industry).
One last tip is that repurposing is huge if you’re strapped for resources.
Just wrote a LinkedIn post? Expand it out into a blog post, then send it to sales prospects, then include it in your monthly email.
Lastly, you ever have one of those days where you just feel behind the whole day?
Of course you have, you’re a human being.
I had one of those last Thursday, but survived it.
The day didn’t start off great because I didn’t have a good sleep. People talk so much about solopreneur business strategy and tactics, but I really think 50% of the game is just taking good care of yourself, getting a good sleep and showing up rested and motivated each morning.
But of course that doesn’t happen every day.
It was also one of those days where a bunch of seemingly random but important things came up at the same time.
Today it was some new clients to onboard/kickoff with, new technology that was finished by our Visto engineers and needed to be tested, a few corporate admin things I didn’t want to put off, ontop of the regular stuff I wanted to do anyway.
What I’ve learned over the years is that it’s not a matter of “if” days like that will happen, but a matter of when. It’s simple – once in a while, whether it be a few times a week, month or year, you’ll have a day when shit hits the fan.
And that’s okay.
The key is to try and stay organized, keep your cool, maybe put in an extra hour or two if needed, and stay the course.
I also heavily rely on my to-do list. Especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed, or have a day where there seems like there are too many things to do, take 5-10 minutes to map them all down, figure out the most urgent/important ones to do first, and start knocking them out.
That’s really it.
Of course, easier said than done… or at least a bit less stressful said than done!
Here’s to hoping for a slightly more peaceful week for all of us.
Have a great day, make sure to sign up to get my daily updates right to your inbox, and keep grinding.
