Archive for August, 2010

Today’s is just a quick blog post to say that for a few days this week I am running a little survey (it went live yesterday morning and I intend to run it until Friday morning, give or take a few hours).

Although I have experience doing what I do (the sitting down with people and helping them sort themselves out bit), it is still early days for me from a marketing point of view. This year I have been absorbing information like a sponge about social media, websites, product development, ebooks and e-courses, pricing etc. I’m at the stage now where I need to get a clearer idea how much people would actually be willing to pay for what I have to offer, to check that I’m neither undervaluing nor overpricing my services.

That’s where I need your help, if you are self-employed, freelance, an existing or even aspiring entrepreneur (wherever you live in the world). I have devised a short survey (it’s only 10 questions and takes about 5 minutes to complete). I would be most grateful indeed if you would go over and complete it. Do it because you will earn good karma by being effortlessly generous with your time. Do it because you’ll be helping a fellow entrepreneur. Do it because I’m nice and should you need it, I will endeavour to help you back in return. In short, do it.

This is the link to the survey here again in bold so you can’t possibly miss it.

And in addition to being a superstar and helping me on my business marketing way, if you could stretch your goodwill just a tad further and pass on this request and link to other entrepreneurs that you know… well, put succinctly, my gratitude would know no bounds. You would indeed be a most beautiful soul, and will be justified in feeling all glowy inside and slightly smug for being such a truly lovely dude. Thank you. Seriously, thank you so much.

You may already know that I have been very ill over the past couple of weeks. I had a nasty kidney and bladder infection, which made me feel very cold, sleep all the time, have no energy at all, have a high temperature a lot and generally feel very, very crap. It started at the end of July and fully resolved earlier this week.

That’s why I have been pretty much offline for such a long time, have not blogged, have only resumed tweeting and updating Facebook recently, and have done no work. At all. For two weeks. It’s a scary thought.

I’ve had a lot of time to think while I was lying in bed feeling rubbish. I had strange thoughts like, seeing my cat yawn makes me yawn, so why doesn’t *she* yawn when she sees me yawn?… But I also realised it was nice, for the first few days, to completely switch off and not check emails or any social media and have no input from the outside world at all. (A few days after that I started missing it though.) So, I shall endeavour to have regular breaks from the massive information intake which is my daily fare. Like maybe have a week-end off (completely off, switched off, including phone and all) once a month or something.

Also, doing NO work for two weeks… was actually quite nice. This week I have started back in my office and have had to go at it gradually. Two hours on Tuesday. Four on Wednesday. Growing slowly from there. Friday I actually did a whole day’s work, but I couldn’t step right back into full productivity like I expected myself to. Maybe my brain had gone soft – out of practice, certainly. Harking back to the “switching off” theme above – I should schedule and take holidays. My lovely graphic designer does it, two weeks off at a time. It’s a good thing, and I shall make the effort to do so too. Even though I *love* my work, I’ve really appreciated the break. Lesson learnt.

So it’s been quiet yet interesting times here. It’s a bit strange, being back, and blogging again though I don’t have much to tell you about. Here’s a link for you though – I had a chat on Skype, a while ago, with Sara Ortiz who lives in the States and runs a business called Sane and Satisfied (genius name! wish I’d thought of that!) doing something very similar to what I do, helping entrepreneurs be authentic and in alignment with who they are. Thanks to the magic of technology, we’ve exchanged lots of info, found a time in the day when we could talk to each other (it was morning for her and late afternoon for me), and checked out each other’s neighbourhoods using Google Streetview. It will never cease to amaze me how these days we can connect so effortlessly with people all over the world. We chatted about being solopreneurs, about time management, and about satisfaction in our business. Sara has written a blog post about our chat, go read it. Check out her website too, while you’re at it: www.saraortizworkshops.com. She’s a beautiful soul and an inspiring entrepreneur!

On this note, I shall leave you to your weekend. Normal activities are resuming as we speak, and my blogging will return to a more regular weekly-ish frequency. I am also working on the monthly newsletter that I will be launching in September (squeee!) – you can preregister for it here, by the way. I’m also having fun on a side project, more of a hobby really, which is a 2011 Moon Diary I’m publishing with Emma Jones. I’m sure I will be enthusing about it on here in the not too distant future. In the meantime, lots of love to you lovely people.

It’s nice to be back.