This is part of a series called "One Entrepreneur's Journey," where I'm talking with solo entrepreneurs about their successes (and failures) along the path of entrepreneurship.

In this interview, I caught up with Dawn Martinello of Monday Morning VA.  Even in the nine months that her company has been open for business, Dawn has already had amazing success, working with the likes of Danielle LaPorte of WhiteHotTruth and nearly booking herself solid.

She's managed to build her business almost exclusively through the use of Twitter and referrals, and now she's sharing her tips and advice for using social media, staying on track, and building strategic alliances to succeed in business.

Be sure to listen to the rest of my interview with Dawn, as we discuss time management and delegation for the solo entrepreneur.

Tell us about your business and how you got your start.

I actually opened the company in February of this year, after wandering around the job field, not too sure what I wanted to do after I had my son.  I had taken a couple of at-home jobs where I worked as a virtual assistant for different companies, and I really liked the work and the availability it gave me for my family.

Also, here in Canada, we have a couple of different programs that allow us to open new businesses and have a network and the ability to pull from those things to get information and financial assistance, so it was a really good time for me to really think about what I wanted to do and where I wanted to take my life and business.

I sat with my husband a couple of nights, and we talked about some of the things that I was really good at and that I was really passionate about, and some of the things I really enjoyed doing was organizing and form-filling and all those kinds of things that didn't really make a lot of sense one-on-one, so I started to pull them together and realize the kinds of services I could offer.

Basically, Monday Morning VA is a virtual assistance firm.  We collaborate with small and home-based businesses and focus on people who are looking to put their time into the growth and success of their businesses.  One of the biggest things people have problems with when they start their businesses is that they have so many hats to wear that they don't know where to start and don't have enough time in the day to do all of the behind-the-scenes kinds of things.  That's where we come in.

I always tell our clients that our services involve anything that needs to be done within your business that doesn't end with you getting an invoice from your client to be paid.  That gives them a lot of time to put back into their businesses and working on what they're best at.

How has your company developed so far?

When I first started the business, it was just me, so I was limited to what services I could actually provide myself - administrative type things, social media, things of that nature.

As our company started to grow, people were asking for very specific types of services, like web design and bookkeeping.  That's when I realized there was only so far I could go on my own, so we started pulling in experts from other fields.  We brought in bookkeepers and accountants.  We've got a couple of web designers who can do Wordpress and Joomla design.  We have a couple of general VAs as well, because the last thing we want to do is overbook ourselves.  We want to make sure we have enough availability for our clients' schedules as well.

Our services now are very wide in range, and we're always expanding on them.  Clients are always coming up with new things that they want to do in their businesses and coming to us to see if it's something we can do.  Often, if it's something we don't know how to do, we take the time to learn how to do it for them, so we can start to provide that service.

You're probably seeing this, especially at this time in your business, is that you end up maybe a little bit different and maybe considerably different than what you started out doing.

Absolutely.  In the nine months that we've been in business, we've already started to change our business plan.  It's very fluid, and you do have to go with the ebb and flow.  I had no intention, at least in the first year, of bringing anybody into my business.  I needed to do it on my own to figure out the best ways of doing things and where I wanted to go so that I could narrow down the services to offer.

The problem with that is that clients were starting to ask for things that I couldn't provide, and I had to think about what I wanted to do.  Did I want to turn away these clients or refer them to somebody else and lose income to my business, or did I want to start changing what my business was going to be?

Changing from your original thought is sometimes very difficult to do, but it's very necessary to be able to see where things are going and talk to your clients to find out what they need, not what you want to provide for them.

It's kind of a line you have to walk between accommodating and having the sticktoitiveness to be consistent while you gain traction.

Absolutely.  One of the things I want to avoid in my business is becoming a staffing agency, where I literally have hundreds of people working for me.  I don't think that's the direction I want to go with my business, so there will be a time when I reach a cutoff point where there's no longer room in my business to bring other people in or move into those things.

One of the ways I anticipate being able to cut that off before it happens is to start building strategic alliances with other companies, so instead of bringing in people to work with me, being able to move clients between the two businesses depending on the types of services we're each offering.

But, you're right.  There is a very fine line between giving in to everything your clients want and staying true to your business and who your clients really are.

What checks and balances do you think help with that?

Right now, the biggest thing that we're using is the marketing plan that we developed in the very early stages, because it does talk a lot to who are target market is.  Our target market is really going to define what our business is.

Do you see certain areas within your business where you seem to be having early success?

Our early success has always been involving the social media.  The big three of social media, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, are the ones that people are always asking us for, but also putting together marketing plans that involve social media and teaching them how to use it effectively.

Often, when people are coming to us, they've got their Twitter accounts all set up, and they're not understanding why they're not having the amount of followers or feedback they were hoping to get, and it's all about teaching people how to do it properly for themselves.  Of course, we'd love to handle all of the services for them, but social media is all about relationships, so it has to be their voice handling those things.

Let's talk about that a minute, how you're using Twitter to grow your own business.

Twitter has been probably about 90% of our business.  We haven't spent any advertising money.  Everything has either been Twitter or referrals.

We do a couple of things.  I start with just putting the information out there that I think is going to be beneficial to my target audience, so when I'm talking about solo businesses, I'm giving them information on how to create systems, inspirational quotes that will motivate them, tips and ideas on how to do their newsletters, and things like that.

I also have keyword searches that I do in Twitter, and I monitor those.  There are actually people who are literally going on there and saying, "I need a VA.  Who's out there?"  Then there are some people who are just struggling with their businesses and talking about it on Twitter, and I make a connection that way, offering them a copy of our workbook.

Between those two things, we've built our business to the point where we're almost full.

Do you see certain areas within your business where you're struggling a bit?

Busting into certain niche areas is probably where we're having the most difficult time.

Is there anything you wish you would have known before you started your company?

The biggest thing I had a problem with in the beginning was that I really thought I had a great bookkeeping/record-keeping system in place, and I also figured I could just do it myself.  Now, I'm finding that I have these piles of paper, and I've recently hired a bookkeeper.

Set up your systems for everything you do will do in your business before you open your doors.  That's not something we had set up when we started, but it's something that I wish we did.

What's the most important lesson that you think you've learned so far?

There's actually a couple.  The first one is knowing exactly who my clients are.  I started with too big of a segment of clients, and I'm really starting to learn who my ideal client is.

The other one is just knowing when to ask for help.  As a woman especially, I think it's very hard to reach out to other people.