How to Be Taken Seriously as a Home Business Owner

    One of the problems many home business owners face is being taken seriously. They have the issue with family, friends, and strangers alike. But, there are ways to deal with the different people in your life to make them take you seriously. It all starts with you.

    * Take Yourself Seriously – Before anyone else can take you seriously as a home business owner, you will need to be the first one. Be serious about your business and take yourself seriously. Study everything, write a business plan, and take steps each day to make your plan come to fruition.

    * Get a Business License – A license legitimizes your business and is proof that you are a real entity to banks, partners, vendors and contractors. In some places they will not want to give you a license if you have certain types of careers like “writer,” so you may have to find a way around that. For example, if you’re a ghost writer or content writer, list yourself as a service provider.

    * Open a Business Bank Account – Once you have your business name, license, and are legally legitimate, open a business bank account. Keep your personal finances separate from your business finances. It will help you feel and look more legitimate.

    * Craft a Workable Plan – Using your business plan, craft a daily plan for work. Decide how you’ll get customers or clients, and when you’ll perform the work or create the products. Put it in your calendar.

    * Follow Your Plan Every Day – If you put off business tasks for everyone else, and keep putting your business last, no one will ever take you seriously as a business owner. Instead, set aside certain working hours that you only break for emergencies. Then stick to it. Sometimes family members will buck against the system, but the longer you put your foot down, the better.

    * Show Them the Money – It may sound trite, but family members and close friends will often respect your business more when you are making money. They might not even realize you’re making money if you don’t point it out. Mention to your partner how much you deposit as your pay check to your joint account. Mention to friends how your business paid for the vacation you just went on.

    * Watch Your Money – Managing cash flow is an important thing for home business owners, because sometimes the money isn’t a daily occurrence. One month you may get a big contract and earn 10,000 dollars. Next month you might not bring in any money because you’re earning the $10K. Don’t spend it all as it comes in. Pay yourself a salary, know your expenses, and pay those first.

    * Get a Business Coach – A coach or mentor can help you tremendously with anything you need to do with your business if you choose the right coach. Don’t go for the cheapest one; assume you’ll need to spend good money to get good coaching. Choose a coach who has worked with the same type of business owners you are.

    * Don’t Say You Stay Home – It’s especially hard for mothers to transition from being a stay-at-home mom to a work-at-home mom. People will see you as the same as always, sometimes most especially your husband and family. When someone asks what you do, don’t say “stay-at-home mom” or “work-at-home mom;” state what you do. “I’m a writer.” Or “I sell XYZ products to ABC audience.”

    Owning a home business isn’t really as new as people might want you to think. People used to own home businesses as small farmers, seamstresses, cooks and bed and breakfasts. The industrial revolution changed all that. But, the technology revolution is bringing more people home where they belong to start and run six-figure businesses that are very serious. Be serious about yours.

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    How Real-Time Marketing Boosts Your Business

    One of the most fascinating and useful features of online marketing and the technology that goes with it, is the ability to market to individuals “on the fly” with real-time marketing messages. Imaging being able to send messages to each individual customer that’s relevant to their needs and interests right then.

    The idea is exciting, and one that you can be sure will add money to your bank account if you learn how to do it. One way to engage in real-time marketing is to use social media to listen to what is important right now to you target audience. Are they watching a specific show? Are they involved in a specific sport or news item of the week or day? If so, you can then guide your marketing efforts toward their interests.

    * Listen – Set up alerts on Google Alerts, Twitter and other social media to find out when your brand, your competition’s brand, or items related to your brand are mentioned. You can devise marketing based on these mentions to offer the right products and services that your audience wants right now.

    * Understand Your Industry – No matter what you are involved in, there is an entire industry surrounding what it is that you do. You should be monitoring the news in your industry to find out what the trends are now and in the future. You can devise marketing materials based on these trends and get ahead of the buzz with the right marketing materials that appear fresh and timely.

    * Understand Your Audience – Just like with any type of marketing it’s imperative that you understand your audience. They are the key to what types of products and services you’ll offer, as well as how you’ll frame the marketing that you do to attract the buyers for your products and services.

    * Prepare – It seems strange that you can prepare for “real-time” marketing, but you can. Get the technology in place such as remarketing programs, events that you know are happening such as the super bowl, or major college playoffs, or other events that you know are important to your audience. Be prepared to monitor the buzz and react to it. If you have a calendar of events and holidays that your audience may be interested in, you can be ready.

    * Get the Technology – Figure out what technology you need in place to participate in real-time marketing. Remarketing technology, email marketing technology, pop-up ads, social media apps, and more all can work together to help you engage in real-time marketing on the fly. If you’re ready, with just a few clicks you can change an old pop-up or pop-under into something that mentions the happenings of the day.

    * Create the Material – Get ready the tools of the trade to take advantage of events. Use email campaigns, blogging, events, tweeting, eBooks, PR, white papers, banner ads, apps, Google AdWords, social media listening, search engine optimization and more to be ready for the events in which you can capitalize on the current happenings to your audience which will help you boost sales.

    * Renewed Customer Service – One often overlooked way to practice real-time marketing is within customer service. Whether it’s answering a question on Facebook, Twitter, or within your ticketing service, you have a huge opportunity to engage users in a profitable way when it comes to customer service and real-time marketing. You can empower customer service (or yourself if it’s just you) to offer specialized deals to individuals as the issue arises. You can also use these examples for content ideas to help answer questions in advance to newer customers.

    * Content Ideas – Using social media to catch what the buzz is about your business is a great example of real-time marketing at work. You see the questions and what the audience is talking about on message boards and social media updates, and then use them to add to your FAQ or to create a special offer that your audience cannot resist. All of these efforts add to your bottom line and make your company that much more in demand.

    When you look at these examples it’s likely you already do some real-time marketing without realizing it. But, if you do more real-time marketing you’ll increase lead acquisition, get higher conversions, and ultimately make more sales and earn more money because you are on the cutting edge of truly understanding your audience at a whole new level.

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    How Often Should You Review Your Marketing Strategy?

    Like most plans you make for your business, nothing is like the reality. Once you have started implementing your marketing strategy and see how close your assumptions match the reality, you can start tweaking the plan to keep it fresh and reality based. There are many ways to test whether or not you need to review your strategy.

    Ask Your Customers

    You’ll want to automatically survey new customers to find out how they found out about you so that you can evaluate whether or not they found you via current marketing plans or via some other way. If they give you a reason they found you that is contrary to how you thought they might find you, then it might be time to review your marketing strategy.

    At the End of the Marketing Cycle

    Some marketing strategies have a definite beginning and ending. For example, if you are running an email marketing campaign that runs for 30 days straight, then you need to review the strategy at various points throughout the plan and also at the end to ensure that you got the results that you thought you might.

    By the Numbers

    Many business owners make it a habit to review their marketing strategy on a quarterly basis to match up the financials with the effort. How did that PPC campaign you ran last quarter stack up compared to the email marketing push that you started at the same time? Can you quantify your efforts?

    To Ensure That Your Strategy Is Unified

    If your overall strategy is to service six-figure business owners and above, then every single element of your marketing plan should match that goal. It is easy, without review, to get lost and off track. A good time to check up on the unification of your strategy compared to the steps you are taking to implement the plan is at least quarterly.

    To Know Your Return on Investment

    How much is it costing you to acquire a customer and what is the lifetime revenue potential from each customer? Are your plans reflecting the financial truth? Is your marketing strategy directly influencing your ROI? If not, then you may need an entire overhaul of your marketing strategy.

    Your Educated Guess

    Sometimes, you just have to go with what you feel. If you feel as if your current strategy isn’t matching up to what you want for your business, then it’s time to review everything so that you can figure out where to make changes and where to implement new strategy.

    When You Develop a New Product or Service

    Each time that you develop a new product or service is a great time to revisit your marketing strategy so that you can incorporate plans for pushing out the new product and/or service. How you did things before might not work.

    Check the Numbers Weekly

    When checking in on the numbers on a regular basis such as weekly (or you could do it quarterly instead), at the same time you can understand how all your actions are affecting your marketing strategy and ultimately the bottom line.

    The entire point of marketing is to tell your target market that you exist so they can choose your products or services. If you want to be good at getting the message out to the right people, you’ll need to evaluate on a regular basis how it is that you spread the word about your products and services.

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    How Multitasking Kills Performance

    Getting things done is causing a lot of depression among people today. Productivity is the new buzzword that has everyone driving themselves mad trying to do more things at once than is humanly possible. Some people call it multitasking but the truth is, it’s a myth that multitasking is effective. If anything, multitasking is costing you big time. By some studies, multitasking is showing a decrease in productivity by 50% or more.

    Multitasking Make You Lose IQ Points

    When you try to do more than one thing at a time it actually makes you perform about as well as you would if you were drunk, using drugs, or lost some of your smarts. This is the worst thing that you can do if you want to be a top performer in anything. Whether it’s parenting, business, or something else, you get about as much from it as you put into it. So, if you focus 100 percent, you’ll get a 100 percent back.

    Multitasking Makes You Less Creative

    When you can let go of the noise around you, you can also become much more creative. It’s very hard to get into a flow if the phone is ringing, the kids are interrupting you, or the beeps and the dings of social media are interrupting your train of thought. You not only need time to truly focus on a project, but you also need time to focus elsewhere between projects to kind of cleanse your brain a bit before moving on to the next thing.

    Multitasking Is Dangerous

    Not only is multitasking dangerous for your health in that it can make you ill, but it’s also dangerous to your safety. If you are driving and talking on the phone (or as is popular with some YouTube stars, making videos while driving), you are putting yourself in grave danger. You would not get behind a wheel drunk, so don’t get behind it and do anything but drive. Likewise when it comes to doing anything, focus on the task at hand and you’ll be less stressed, which will translate into being healthier.

    Your Brain Doesn’t Work That Way

    No matter how you want it to work, no one’s brain can really focus on more than one thing at a time. Yes, of course you can talk and walk at the same time, but texting and talking is not something you should do. Writing a letter, spending time with your kids, focusing on data entry, making sales calls… all should be done one thing at a time. If you learn to make your to-do list with this in mind, you’ll get more done faster and your work quality will go through the roof.

    You Need 15 Minutes to Adjust to a New Task

    A Microsoft study showed that when you’re interrupted by something like an email message, a beep from a phone, or by someone physically interrupting you, it can take 15 minutes to get back on task – meaning to get back into flow where you’re doing the task at the highest level that you can do it. It’s important to keep this in mind as you plan your day if you want to perform at your highest capability.

    Don’t fall for the idea that multitasking is an ability that you should strive for. It’s not a good idea for anyone to multitask. It’s bad for your brain, it’s bad for your work, and it just isn’t really possible to start with.

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    How Internships Help You Build Your Skills

    Interns, while coming to you for experience and education, can also teach you a thing or two. Anytime you bring new blood into your organization you can learn something new. You just have to be open to learning from someone new to your business who might be a lot younger than you.

    How to Live and Breathe Social Media

    Young people seem to be tethered to their mobile devices and social media. They know better than anyone how people are using their smartphone along with the internet to get things done. They’re a lot more likely to be using technology, apps and more to get things done. If you pay attention, you can learn a lot from them about social media and what it can do for your audience.

    Better Collaboration

    Young people today are a lot savvier about communicating with people of all ages, sexes and cultures. They are not shocked by differences like we might be. We can learn from them by watching how they work things out and collaborate with others using technology in ways we may not have ever considered.

    More about Online Communication

    Communicating via email, text, social media, Skype and other types of online communication is second nature to younger people. They grew up with it and don’t know much different. It’s probably like you with TV; you don’t know anything different and neither do they. If you pay attention to how they communicate you can learn a lot.

    Being Authentic

    Most young people aren’t as terrified of people knowing who they really are. They are themselves around everyone, good, bad and ugly. They don’t worry about other people knowing things about them. But, while you can maybe learn to let go a bit, they can learn to protect themselves more with your help.

    Enthusiasm for New Challenges

    Young people are a lot more excited about the challenges ahead of them than you probably are. You can learn to look at situations from new, fresh eyes by borrowing their view for the time they are with you. They have excitement about each task they take on and it can remind you of how you felt when you first started, jump-starting your own renewed energy to boost your business.

    Less Fear of Change

    It’s more than likely that your new intern didn’t live in the same small town their entire lives. Most people switch jobs a lot more today. Due to feeling more of a connection with the entire world, young people adapt to change faster and easier. They can go from one task to another without too much confusion. Seeing this again can put a spark in you too.

    Renewed Idealism

    Face it; after years of being beat down you may not be as idealistic as you used to be. If you’ve written down someplace your big dreams and plans for the future, or you can remember what they were when you first started, you might laugh at your idealism. But, what if you had kept up the same amount of energy and idealism – where would you be now?

    Relationship Building and Networking

    Young people are being taught in high school how important it is to build relationships and maintain contact with those whom you meet at networking events. You’ve likely been so busy with your business that you may have forgotten how easy it is to keep in touch, especially with the new technology available.

    If you open your mind and your eyes, you can learn from your interns as much as they’ll learn from you. They can breathe new life into your business as well as you if you give them a chance.

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    How Businesses Benefit from Offering Internships

    Offering an internship is very beneficial to both a business and the people taking advantage of the internship offer. However, it does require a good deal of effort to have a successful intern program. The focus on any internship should be teaching a new generation of workers, not free labor.

    Here’s how to make the most of an internship program so that both businesses and interns gain maximum benefit.

    * Test Drive Future Contractors or Employees – If you are in the market for a new contractor or an employee, having an internship program is a great idea. You can hire two or three interns, with the idea that if one works out they will become permanent. Seeing more than one intern working can let you know if your expectations are too high or on target.

    * Get Short-Term Support – If you don’t need full-time support, but you have more work during summertime, then having interns during that time is a great way to give back to the community by training future workers, but without having to make promises of permanent work.

    * Find Low-Cost Labor – Due to lack of experience, interns often get paid less than someone you have to hire on a permanent basis. In some states it’s legal to use an intern free as long as you have approval from certain colleges so that the student can get credit. Plus, most states require you to be a non-profit before allowing you not to pay interns.

    * Get Fresh Ideas – Bringing in new blood often brings in new ideas. If you run your internship asking for fresh ideas from your interns, leaving the door open for them to bring their ideas into the mix instead of just focusing on tasks that you assign them, you’ll boost your business in ways you haven’t considered.

    * Help Students – It feels great to help students and young people who haven’t started their career yet. Giving them information to put on their resume, even if you cannot hire them later, will help them in more ways than you can imagine. Experience is hard to come by but required for most large companies.

    * Attract Top Talent – If you are a small company, or even a work-from-home company, you likely cannot afford the best talent. But, with an internship program you can get top talent because they need experience to get those top-paying jobs.

    * Acquire New Technology Skills – If you’re short on new technology skills, by starting an internship program you can recruit interns who have outstanding technological skills to do the things you cannot do. Even if it’s short term, you can get a lot of things off the ground.

    * Improve Training Programs – Whether you hire contractors or employees, an internship program will help you improve your training programs. Upon doing an exit interview with the interns you hired, you can ask the right questions so that you can find out how you can do better.

    Remember, internships aren’t free labor anymore. There have been several lawsuits against for-profit companies using interns as free labor who have been forced to pay the interns after the fact. Some companies under a very limited basis can get by with doing unpaid internships but only under very specific circumstances. So if you want to offer unpaid internships, make sure you consult a lawyer in your state who has experience in this area.

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    How Becoming an Author Can Increase Your Expert Status

    A great way to become an expert in your niche is to become an author. Writing a book requires that you know something about your topic, and are able to communicate it in a cohesive way that makes sense to your audience. It’s one of the most tried and true ways of building up expertise status. It was an effective way to do it even before the internet, and the ease of publishing eBooks on Kindle and your website.

    You Can Prove What You Know

    Writing a book is a great little selling tool that consist of an easy to give away (or sell) package of information that you know. It’s just all there; you put your knowledge in the book, and then you can prove that you have that knowledge because you were able to put that together for your audience.

    You Have Something to Show for Your Efforts

    Nothing is more satisfying than having that book with the cover showing your name bold on the front. It’s one reason people who are involved a great deal in education are encouraged and in some cases required to become published to prove what they know. Nothing works better than the process of writing a book to clarify what you know and believe.

    Builds Your Credibility

    You can shout from the rooftops that you’re an expert, and you may very well be. But, the book is proof that you have that knowledge. People respect it, and when they see that you’re published they will believe that you have credibility, even if you self-publish. This is because you are willing to put that book out there, and take the criticism that goes with putting your ideas out into the public for comment.

    You Can’t Hide behind a Curtain as an Author

    So many people want to hide behind their computers when working online or owning a digital business. But, as an author you need to come out of the closet and show who you really are. That’s the real key to becoming an expert: being who you are, owning what you know, and showing the world.

    A Book Will Increase Your Value

    If you provide services, want to speak in public, or have great products, a book will increase your value exponentially. When people see you as an expert – and a book will help you accomplish that – they are willing to pay more money for your products, services and information. As your value increases you’ll work less, and have more time to study more, write more and boost your expertise even more.

    You’ll Learn More Than You Know Now

    As you write a book, you will collect a lot of information from other experts and from your own studies, and that will help you learn even more. You might even change your mind about something as you write your book. That’s okay because that’s what experts do. As they learn more, you know more, and you increase your expertise even more.

    A Book Teaches You Communication

    When you write a book, you have to put your audience first in your mind as you disseminate the information to them. This will give you a lot of practice thinking in terms of how your audience perceives what you write. You always have to write with your audience in mind so that they get what you’re saying. It’s always about them and how they communicate best.

    A Book Gives You a Platform for All Your Other Offers

    If you want a great platform in which to offer your services, expertise and ideas to others, then a book is the best way to do it. The book gives you an actual thing – whether it’s digital or physical – to point your audience to when questions arise that are answered in the book.

    Writing a book takes a lot of thought and planning. And if you put your best foot forward with writing it, direct it to your audience, and write what they need to know, you will advance yourself to expert status with every word.

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    How Becoming an Author Builds Expertise

    Building expertise through authorship has been around long before the internet lowered the barriers to entry. It’s still around because it works. Not only does having a book to give to or sell to people make you look knowledgeable, but it will also make you knowledgeable.

    The sheer act of writing the book is a bit like a Master’s Degree education. After all, that’s what you do in advanced education. You read and consume other people’s information, then you write about it, and add your own studies and opinion into the mix.

    * Learn a Lot – While writing the book (even if you outsource the writing), you’ll learn so much about yourself and about your niche. You will indeed become a real expert just due to the process of learning that takes place when you want to publish a book with your name on it.

    * Increase Awareness – When you publish a book about your niche or topic, you will increase awareness about not only the topic but also about yourself. The book gives you a good opportunity to share more information about yourself, your education, and why you wrote the book you wrote.

    * Gain Trust – Putting “author” beside your name in all your online bios, and linking to your book whenever you can, will automatically make people trust you more. They figure you must know a lot of stuff if you put it together into a book.

    * Help People – People like reading books to learn things. Yes, people can read blog posts and watch YouTube videos, but they still enjoy reading books. This is especially true today with the ease of which they can obtain books to read on their mobile devices and Kindles.

    * Prove What You Know – A book is a great way to prove all the things that you know into one manuscript. Putting it together into book form, where a person can read it in the comfort of their home or while waiting on the doctor, is a great way to prove what you know.

    * Increase Your Value – Being an author automatically increases your value. Even with the ease with which anyone can become published today, most people simply don’t do it. You’ll still be one of the few, especially if you also know how to market your book and make the most of it to become the expert you want to become.

    * Become an Insider – When you are part of a niche, there are people who are perceived as insiders and people who are just not known. If you write a compelling book that teaches something or shares something important about that niche, you will become one of the insiders (with the right marketing, of course).

    * Gives You a Platform to Begin With – Believe it or not, some people have started with nothing, and the book was the launching platform to give them their start. If you want to come out in a big way with your products, services, or ideas, a book is the way to go. The book, along with proper marketing, can launch an entire new career.

    If you want a fast way to become an insider within your niche, push yourself to new heights, and become the expert you know you are, becoming an author will do that for you. But, you must get started and learn all you can about marketing once the book is finished.

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    When to Write a Press Release and How to Get It Published

    A press release is more than an announcement about what is happening in your business. It is a sales tool, and works especially well if there is a newsworthy story behind it. You can write your press release as if you’re an outside reporter, provide some good quotes and information from top movers and shakers either within your company, customers, or field. Then you need to figure out who to send it to in order to make it worthwhile.

    The set-up of a press release is standard throughout the industry. You must write it this way in order for any news organization to take it seriously.

    * Headline – There is a right way and a wrong way to write a headline for a press release. They need to be in bold font, with the first word capitalized, carry the right keywords, and grab the attention of your audience as well as the gatekeeper.

    * Body Copy – You have to put the name of the city and state, as well as the date, on the first line. Then include an attention-grabbing first sentence that leads the reader to want to read more about the story. You want to avoid using filler words and make the body copy as compact as possible. State only facts, and save the smoke and fluff for other marketing copy.

    * Who, What, When, Why, Where and How – As you write, try to answer the five w’s and the h too. This will help you keep your copy short and to the point. You want to put the most newsworthy information at the front and at the end of the press release.

    * Make It Press Ready – Remember that no one is going to edit your press release for you; it needs to be ready to print and be edited. Double check your spelling and fact check the information you include in the press release.

    * Give Them More – At the end you can include links or even a QR code that directs people to more information about your event or business. Providing that little bit of extra information can be the difference of getting your press release published or not.

    * Send It to the Right People – One huge key to getting your press release published is that you send it to the right people. So many press release companies are disingenuous when it comes to this part. They blanket out the press release without any regard to where it’s going. Don’t do that; send it to the right people. That may mean that you need to do some research first.

    You can draft a press release that gets results if you follow these rules. Write it in third person, include just the facts, provide contact information, and send it to the right people so that it will get the attention it deserves.

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    How and When to End Your Business Relationship

    When it comes to being a service provider, sometimes it becomes necessary to end a business relationship. It doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong with the person as a human being, but it may mean that you’ve both outgrown each other. Or some other reason may have arisen that causes you to want to end the relationship.

    Reasons to End a Client Relationship

    * You’re Suffering from Scope Creep – When you started with the client, you had well-defined responsibilities which you’ve allowed to get out of control. You’re now doing work far outside of your niche and you don’t enjoy it. You’re not being paid enough to outsource, and you’re starting to feel resentful.

    * They Make Unreasonable Demands – Remember that what is unreasonable to you is reasonable to them, so it’s best not to confront them on this behavior but rather try to set limits. If you try to set limits and they won’t let you, it may be time to end the relationship because you are a bad fit.

    * They Keep Trying to Make You Reduce Your Rates – Anyone who agrees on a rate, then keeps trying to talk you down, doesn’t respect your business. They may even think of you as an employee or a liability instead of a partner in their business, which may cause them to feel resentful of paying you at all. If the issue of pay comes up a lot, it may be a good idea to move on.

    * They Are Slow Payers – Any client who won’t pay on time on a consistent basis is a liability to your business and your cash flow. As a service provider, you need to get paid for the work you do on time. If you have an agreement to get paid in a certain way, you should get paid. Give your client a warning and set a three strikes and you’re out rule.

    * They Don’t Listen – When a client hires you as an expert in your niche but they will not listen to anything you have to contribute, yet they still want you to be responsible for ROI, you have a serious problem that has to be fixed. If you cannot fix it, let them go.

    * They Are Unresponsive – If you ask for information and they won’t ever give it to you or are often late with the information, and it affects how you perform your duties, it may be best to let the client go. Their unresponsiveness can ruin your schedule and affect not only the work you do for them but also the work you do for others.

    * They Are Disrespectful – You know when someone shows you contempt or disrespect. You are a business owner now and you don’t need to put up with any of that. When you feel as if someone is disrespecting you, ask them if they’re saying what you think they are saying so that they can clarify. If they are being disrespectful, it’s time to part ways.

    The Best Ways to End the Client Relationship

    * Look at Your Contract – Check the contract to see what the rules and methods of ending the relationship are and stick to that.

    * Keep It Business Related – Even though sometimes ending a client relationship feels personal, it’s best if you don’t get personal but keep it all business. Only address business things in your notice. Don’t get personal. If you must be vague rather than detailed to keep it professional, do that.

    * Give Notice – In most cases it’s best to give notice according to the contract. In most cases you can safely give a month’s notice, which is longer than a typical employee relationship because it may take them time to find a replacement. But, if the relationship is contentious you may try to end it sooner.

    * Refund Money – If you work on a retainer, be sure to refund any part of the money you’ve not yet earned. Even if your contract says you will not offer refunds, it’s better to do that as you’ll leave on a higher note.

    Ending a relationship is never easy, but once you do let go of clients who aren’t ideal, you’re going to free up space to attract your ideal clients. Plus, once it’s over you’re going to feel so much better about your business and yourself.

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