DISQUS

"Une fois les pâtes carbonara avalées, (...), et une bonne pile de bois de cheminée brûlée"

Tout un programme :)

One of the things I learned in my "multi cultural experiences" (from France to the States, from the States to Germany, from Germany to Morocco... different countries, but I'd say as diverse as yours) is the different ways of saying things.

Or let's say it is something I'm still learning...

A commitment is not worded the same way in Germany or in Morocco, and the strength of a "yes" is not the same. As everyone knows what a "Ja" means, that's fine. But a "naam" is totally different. As Moroccan are not as structured as Germans, actually a "naam" might means "hell, never, but I can't say without being impolite", or "maybe" or sometimes, the same thing as a "ja".

I agree with you our expectations are not only cultural, they also depends of what we ask from ourselves. Someone very demanding with herself will be also with other people, and someone who sticks to her words will expect others to do so. They usually do, the question is just "to which words" ...

I'm not sure you should reduce your expectations, per se. Maybe you should word them more strongly, and when you get a commitment from someone, just repeat him what you said here... or direct him to this post.

In such cases, the stress-killer is the magical "fall back situation".
My husband, who is totally Moroccan and therefore quite fatalist (the famous Inch Allah) gets totally crazy at all my "worst case planning".
And he points that what I call "worst case" is precisely what I won't plan, coz when I found a solution for a problem, it won't be a worst case (pas très sure de mon anglais sur ce coup là, pas vraiment l'impression d'être claire...)
Nevertheless this "ok, what can I do if this happens ?" helps me a lot to reduce stress.

Even if the answer is : OK, if this happens, everything is screwed up, and I just have to commit suicide... at least I know it !

Many things can be replaced, done differently, have less quality. Not all, and not all at the same time, but it helps to decide in advance on what we can compromise.

I worked on several big projects on Germany, and we were implementing software in different countries. I noticed the Germans had a "over quality" approach, when the French were just "managing it". At the end, when you saw the French implementation and the German one, both working, the question was "Is the cost of the high German quality justified ? Did the French better because they saved 20% of the cost for 5% of the quality ? "

Actually, not an easy question, because it all depends of the cost of a failure that would have been prevented by the higher quality.

And we go back to risk aversion...

I have a lot of admiration for all you do, and how you do it. You develop yourself and your business, and you started, as I understood, from a position of a teacher, which is not exactly the best place to get experience for self-entrepreneurship. You already made a first event all alone, from scratch, very quickly, and it was a success. So the second one will be the same.

As it seems not to be so far away from your home, could you not make a kind of share time ? 3 days a week in a place, 4 days in the other ?
A lot of people do that around here...

And many 302 are also considered with suspicion by Google, as it was a technic mainly used in "black hat" redirections

Why would you prefer a 302 ? It is not taken in account by Google, when using a 301 it will index your new page ...

Bon anniversaire :)

Each time I had to speak in conferences, I had my topic defined upfront by the organizer.
They offered me a slot, and a topic, and sometimes also gave hint about how to cover the topic, what kind of audience.

I did not feel micro-managed, I felt that I was helped. I could not know myself what the others would say, so the organizer had to help me avoid overlap. The organizer was setting the tone of the conference, knew about the attendance, and the expectations he set himself for the conference. So that was perfectly normal.

The only thing I don't understand is why you are using Google groups for that instead of making a real standard newsletter ?

Ca me rapelle une "blague"' comment donner un médoc à un chat.
Bon courage, ça doit être exaspérant... et douloureux !

J'ai arrêté d'utiliser CoComent depuis longtemps, car à chaque fois que je passais sur le site de ma banque avec l'extension activée, mon browser plantait. A force de la désactiver... elle est restée comme cela.
C'est effectivement dommage, c'était une très bonne idée.

Good point, and I think one of the main difficulties of going solo.

Selling oneself is always difficult. Selling is always difficult, but in the area we work, I can't see easily delagating it to an agent. The deal we sign with a customer is quite specific, there are very precise requirements, there are the way we do things, our expertise. Discussing the price, in my experience, is still a part of building the deal and agreeing on the deliverables.

An "agent' would be useful for selling standard products, as your blog trainning session. But when you go to a specific prestation, tailored for the customer, then "if" agent, he should be part of the whole discussion, from the beginning. As do technical companies in sales force, where you usually have the "tech guy" and the "money guy".

I remember a time when they had the "sales team", signing the agreement, and then you started to work with someone else who was doing the job, and the evolution went to a discussion including the person who would do the job after.

But maybe, if you do't find an agent, you could get yourself a sales trainning ?

The comment from Gia raises another issue. The problem is not so much negotiating for her, it's knowing the right prices.
A friend told be once, about haggling in Morocco "the rigt price is the one that makes both parts happy". The best way to get an idea about your price level is the number of customers you sign : none, and you're either really too high or too low (and then they don't trust you), a lot, more than you can handle, you could raise your prices a little bit, not enough but some, you should check with friends if the problem is in your prices or something else (and you could also ask a feed back from the person who refused to sign with you, clearly statting "I'm just doing that to improve, and not to try to get you in the deal another way").

Pour un site international, je m'accrocherai au .com, pour ne pas avoir un aspect "pays" (ce qui a aussi un impact dans le référencement).
Après, quant à choisir, il vaut mieux goingsolo.com que going-solo , les - sont moins intuitifs que les noms attachés.

Puisque tu veux gérer plusieurs événements, tu peux par exemple faire un stephaniebooth.com avec des sous-domaines comme goingsolo.stephaniebooth.com (sauf qu'il faudrait chercher quelque chose de plus simple pour le nom de domaine),