One Entrepreneur's Journey: Jaime Almond

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 spoke with Jaime Almond, an Internet marketing strategist who helps businesses develop an online presence that builds credibility and trust with their target audiences and convert more prospects to customers.

Tell me a little about your business and how you got your start as an entrepreneur.

I help businesses create online marketing strategies, and I do that with coaching and workshops.  Right now, I'm finding that a lot of businesses are really interested in Twitter, and I finding that people don't really know how to use it, so basically I work with a business based on what their goals are and finding a way to communicate with their market through the Internet.

For a few years, it's been something that I wanted to do, and I was contracting in high-tech, both in Canada and in Australia, and then I was fortunate enough to be accepted into a program that the Canadian government runs, which supports entrepreneurs in their first year to get started financially and to write a business plan and that type of thing.

Let's talk about strengths and weaknesses.  What are things that you struggle with?

Time management is probably my weakness.  It's easy to have a tendency to work on what's fun rather than what's urgent or what's important, and I think sometimes I find myself working on long-term projects rather than short-term, cash-generating activities.  There has to be a balance, of course, but finding the discipline within myself to actually work on what is important, what needs to be done, rather than what's fun.  I'm just trying to be really conscious of how I spend my time and what the best activities for my time are.

It's that shift from the mentality of being an employee, where someone sets the time you work, and they tell you how much you get paid.  As an entrepreneur, you have more flexibility so that can be a double-edge sword.

What do you think you're getting right so far as an entrepreneur?

I'm very systematic.  My background is IT.  I'm a strategist.  I'm pretty good at setting up systems.  I do create systems that work, and I find that if I'm struggling with something, then I identify that that's actually somewhere where I need to get help.

What do you wish you would have known before starting your business?

I wish I had known that I didn't have to know everything.  Because my industry is IT, especially with the Internet, it's just changing all the time.  There's just so much information out there, and coming into it, I felt like I needed to know everything.  I wasted a lot of time and money trying to learn everything, and in the end, I realized that it's really not necessary, because each circumstance and each business requires its own strategy.  It's different for every situation, so even if I go and learn, it's not necessarily going to be applied.  It's better to do it as I need it rather than trying to do everything up front.  That came with not feeling confident in what I was offering and who I was going to offer it to, and as my confidence grew, I realized that it's not really the knowledge, knowing everything.

And, I think there's something really important to say about understanding what you're offering and being really clear on it and the benefits that you offer to people, because when that's really clear, it becomes much easier to sell.

Another important lesson is learning to talk about money with people.  It can be really scary at first.  When someone understands what you offer and why you charge what you charge, then money doesn't have to be an object.

What is your most important lesson or best advice for new entrepreneurs?

For me, it's believing in myself and trusting, trusting that by doing what I'm good at and what I'm passionate about, it works out, rather than focusing on not making money or getting the client.  Really believing in ourselves and having an understanding of our worth, I think that that's really important.

And, I actually think it's really important to, if not have the whole weekend off, at least have one full day off a week where you can completely regroup.  You can't be strategic when you never get out of it, and I find that I actually can't physically work seven days a week.  It doesn't work for me.  The more I work, the less strategic I get, and it goes back to making mistakes and being stressed.  For myself, it's actually imperative that I have time for my self-care every day and take time off on the weekend.