At my Microcredit peer group meeting last night, one of the people at the table remarked that business as a solo professional can be lonely at times.

Not “alone,” mind you. If you’re in business for yourself, you may see customers, clients, prospects, vendors, and other folks in the course of your day. Hardly what you’d call “alone time.”

But who can you really talk to about your business – which for many small business owners is also a significant chunk of their lives? And if you don’t have anyone, isn’t that a lonely feeling?

Peer groups like Microcredit definitely help, because they put 5-10 people in a room together, for two hours once a month, to talk about specific business tutorial topics and the individual issues businesses face around those topics.

While that’s good, I got to thinking about this on the drive home last night, though, and what sprang to mind was the idea of the company retreat.

You ever go on one of those? You’re off-site for a day or a week, relieved of your regular duties, and free to focus on a specific business-boosting agenda.

It’s a space for brainstorming, for defining business strategies and objectives, and course correcting – seeing how you’re already doing, and figuring out what you need to do next.

Departments and groups in large organizations go on retreats, and in small companies, sometimes the whole company goes.

As solo professionals and microbusiness, we don’t have that. What we DO have are bootcamps – multi-day workshops, either in person or via teleconferences. And I’m excited as all get out because we’re going to one we’ve wanted to go to for a long time.

Alexandria Brown, the former “Ezine Queen” who recently re-branded her business and expanded her focus, is holding her last-ever Online Success Blueprint Workshop this November in Los Angeles. We got the home-study version a couple of years ago, and it was a big help when we started to change our business around in 2006.

Now, as we gear up to make another big change in our business, we’re thrilled that we’re gonna be live and in person for the event. 250 small business owners will be there – so far, it’s 90% booked, from what we’ve heard, which means there are only about 25 spaces left.

Lani and I can’t stress enough how powerful it is to remove yourself from your business for a few days, and learn not just from a master marketer, but from fellow business owners who know what you go through on a day-to-day basis, and know how to support your ascent.

That’s why we’re telling you about this event on the blog, and including the link for you to learn more. That link itself leads to access to a series of free recordings where she shares the formula she used to turn her services-based business into a more lucrative model - those recordings alone are more than worth a click through. (The link is also an affiliate link, which means if you click through and eventually sign up for the bootcamp, it doesn’t cost you any more, and we get a little commission.)

We’d love to see a huge New Hampshire contingent there, too, so if you’re in the Granite State and sign up through us, we’d like to say thank you with:

• A free “Revenue and Visibility Kick Start” session with us any time in 2009 ($500 value – just give us a minimum two-week notice for scheduling)
• Access to three “Mastermind Smackdown” sessions, where all takers can join us in our office and fire away with your brainstorming, business-building, and marketing-related questions (10am-3pm on Monday, November 24th; Wednesday, December 3rd; and Monday, December 15th - and lunch is on us)

And if you have any questions for us after you read the information about the Bootcamp, just drop us a line!

Posted in Dances With Gurus |

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