This is “Featured Soloist,” a feature that appears every Tuesday at The Solopreneur Life.

Jade Craven

The purpose of “Featured Soloist” is to give all of us a glimpse at how other solopreneurs operate their small businesses. This week we meet Jade Craven, who owns Social Media Solutions, based in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. If you would like to be the “Featured Soloist,” please send me an e-mail, Larry@TheSolopreneurLife.com.

Name of solopreneur:
Jade Craven

Name of business and city:
Social Media Solutions; Geelong, Victoria, Australia

Web site address:
www.JadeCraven.com

Type of business:
In theory, I offer social media set-up and branding to small businesses. In reality, I support online entrepreneurs get on the radar of awesome people. I do this via information products, my blog posts and by freelancing for a small group of online business owners.

When did you officially go into business:
I’ve been working in an unofficial capacity for some time. I would say the business became official in mid-March.

Why did you start your own business:
My best friend, Bill Journee, was moving to Townsville and I officially got into the NEIS program, a government program that provides training and financial support for my first year of business. I needed something that would guarantee me an income and my current ideas weren’t working.

Bill and I had been brainstorming individual business ideas for a while. I got the phone call on the way up to his house to have a brainstorm session and ended up pitching the idea of Social Media Solutions to him.

Basically, it was a way for both of us to freelance but take advantage of each other’s skills. It’s been a fantastic success.

What was the best thing you did when you were starting up your business:
Honestly? It was getting Bill involved. Even though we technically have separate businesses, we work together on a lot of projects. I believe I wouldn’t be where I am without his help.

As a small business owner, you will need support. Emotional support, branding and design help, and having someone to bounce ideas off. I was lucky enough to find this in my best friend and business partner.

What is a mistake that you made that you have learned from:
I’ve made so many mistakes—I’m very open about them on my blog. As an aside, being really honest seems to resonate with your audience.

I really regret putting off starting a list. I believe I would be a lot further ahead if I had done this sooner. I would understand more about the technical side, have more people signed up and have a lot more leverage. I think it was the right decision, as I wasn’t in the right mindset to be experimenting with mailing lists.

What is your biggest current challenge in the business and what are doing to try to solve it:
My current challenge is finding the identity of my business. It seems so trivial, but it is very important to me.

I’m not trying to solve it, I’m trying to let the identity evolve. I’ve made a lot of progress over the past few months and it has given me a lot more confidence. I’m going to be researching branding and corporate identity and find solutions that work for me.

What are your goals for 2010:
My goals are small. I want to:

• Earn enough income via my business to be able to move to a cottage in a lovely area of Melbourne
• Be able to go to Blog World Expo this year
• Add four products to my range of mini-guides
• Get 1,000 subscribers on my list

Where do you want to be with the business in five years:
I can’t answer that because my business is evolving so quickly. I know that I want to have a self-published a book under the business name. I want to be able to employ other friends. I wouldn’t mind public speaking and doing workshops.

Most of my business goals are lifestyle goals. My business is my life and that’s fine. My goal is that within five years, I’ll have found the perfect balance between the two.

What are your main software programs:
Online I use Aweber, E-Junkie, Google apps and WordPress. They keep everything running smoothly. Offline it’s mostly Word. I do everything in Word and then use the information elsewhere.

What lifestyle choices have you had to make to stay in business?
I’m in the very early stages and have been working crazy hours. I’m now in a position to change that.

Over the past 3 months I’ve had to give up a lot of my favourite activities. I stopped hiking and going to tweet-ups. I didn’t take photos. While I was able to put more time into my work, I feel like this was bad for my business. I was getting so tired and burnt out that I lost my productivity. Now that I’m incorporating more recreation into my life I’m enjoying my work and am achieving more. It’s weird but taking time away from my work has helped me make more money.

What are your strategies for staying competitive?
I’m one of the first to do what I do. The funny thing is, I struggle to define what I do. I learned long ago to stop seeing people as competition and start seeing them as friends. This has been hard as I get jealous very easily.

An example is when Kelly Diels contacted me saying she was creating a product on guest posting. I sent her a review copy of my mini-guide and listed all the ideas I had that I didn’t have the energy to run with. I felt so much better doing it that way.

Do you need a second household income to support your lifestyle? (Is the business primary, or supplemental to the household?)
I have been on income support for the past five years as I was a student, and then while I was recovering from anxiety. I am now in a government program called NEIS which provides training and financial support for my first year of business.

This means that I live completely off my NEIS payments. Any business income supplements this but I usually reinvest it straight into the business.

If you could start your career all over again, with what you know now, what might you have done differently? Why?
I would stop obsessing trying to define myself by the level of education I’ve obtained. I was shattered when I dropped out of university. I’d been working towards that and had plans to do post-graduate work. If I had given up on that idea earlier, I feel like I would have accomplished a lot more.

What’s your advice for aspiring solopreneurs:
Be prepared to fail. I’ve made several very public screw-ups. It was hard to work through them. Now, people have so much more respect for me because they know that I’m willing to do whatever it takes to succeed. They know that I’m willing to put the opportunity to learn ahead of financial goals.

It’s tough. It means that the big guns place you on their peer level because you are putting yourself out there.

Are you glad you became a solopreneur? Why or why not?:
Definitely. When I got diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder, I assumed I’d have no quality of life. I thought my goal would be to find a job where I just had to survive.

Self-employment has given me freedom and a greater sense of worth. I’m so happy now. I’m in a position to help people. I rock at what I do. It brings me such joy to get paid for doing what I love.

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• Featured Soloist Tommy Walker: “Don’t Sell Out On Your Vision”
• Featured Soloist David Billings: “It’s All My Roller-Coaster Ride”
• Featured Soloist Laura Petrolino: Proving Every Day That Pigs Can Fly
• Featured Soloist Jill Salzman: “I Refuse to Make Fear-Based Choices”
• Featured Soloist Heather Claus: “I’m a Rebel and a Capitalist”