Solopreneur Business: Starting, Running, and Growing Your Company of One

Step 1: Envision Your Solopreneur Business

Do you know what kind of solopreneur you want to be? If not, that's OK. Perhaps you know that you want to be a [Whatever] and know exactly the kind of work you do. Great! You can skip this. Or maybe not; it's a fun exercise.

Perhaps you know what field you want to work in, but not which aspect specifically. The following exercise can help. Or maybe you know you want to be a solopreneur, but are not sure what business to be in. In that case, this is a great exercise for you.

This is a step-by-step process to help you generate one-person business ideas that will really work for you. 

Ikigai

What the heck is ikigai??? How do you even say it?  Click 👂 to find out.

No, we're not describing an unbathed man. It's a Japanese word that the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living". Sounds good, right?

So how do you achieve ikigai? It's the intersection of four dimensions:

1. What you're good at
2. What you love
3. What the world needs
4. What you can be paid for

You want to find a business that is at the intersection of all these dimensions - something that you're good at, you love, that the world needs, AND that people will pay you for. This makes a lot of sense and you should do your best to generate a number of ideas that match these.

Skills & Passions

Start by making a list of skills and then make a list of the topics you're passionate about. Then, combine them in every way possible and use this list for inspiration. Some of the combinations are wacky but some can inspire good ideas. Go through the combinations and see what interesting business ideas they inspire and put these ideas on a list.

Here's an example of Skills and Passions for a fictional aspiring solopreneur named Charlotte:

Some interesting combinations are:

• Writing - Throwing Pottery --> Content about making pottery on a wheel
• Writing - Green Energy --> Website featuring reviews of green products
• E-commerce -Dogs--> Sell a product for dogs online

What the World Needs (and What it Will Pay For)

Once you've generated a list of business ideas that you think you would be good at and passionate about, you can then score each idea for how much the world needs it and how willing it will be to pay you for this work. This is obviously important but you'd be shocked how many people don't pay attention to what the world needs and will pay money for. It doesn't matter how good or passionate you are about your business, if no one is buying it gets very unpleasant very quickly.

But Wait... There's More - Your GOALS!

There are two other very important components once you've identified business ideas using this framework. The first is asking how well it aligns with your goals. If one of your goals is to spend more time with your family, an idea that involves a lot of travel should be a non-starter for you. There are probably some great business ideas that you would be passionate about and successful doing but that you would be sorry you started because it didn't get you where you want to go. This is really important so don't skip this step.

Be careful that your resulting business idea will align with your GOALS. If not, you may be successful at a business you don't want to run.

Is This a Solopreneur Business?

Lastly, ask yourself, "Can this truly be a one-person business?" That's not to say that you won't bring on outside contractors. But some businesses require actual employees. Remember, there are legal limits to what you can require of a contractor and specific ways the relationship must be structured. If you run afoul of these, the IRS can deem them employees and you can get stuck with a big tax bill along with penalties and interest. I've seen this happen and it's ugly. So if your business is going to need actual employees to run, that's not a showstopper, but you're not talking about being a solopreneur anymore.

Check out this resource for more info on contractors vs employees.

Moving Forward

Once you've come up with one or more ideas for a business that checks all the boxes, you are ready to start planning. Having more than one idea is good because ideas can die in the planning stage as you flesh them out. If you have a few, start with your favorite and see where it goes.

Content for Envisioning Your Solopreneur Business

Podcast: Envisioning Your One-Person Business

As part of this brainstorming session, you'll be able to properly:

• Define your skills
• Figure out your passions
• Generate business ideas
• Decide if your idea can actually become a business

Podcast: Create Amazing Ideas For Your One-Person Business

Episode Highlights:

• How to create a business by finding gaps in your industry
• How to come up with amazing ideas for your company
• Why it's important to know your strengths and what you bring to the table
• Why you don't have to expand beyond a one-person team
• Why there's so much value in saying "yes"
• Why you can't get too attached to one client
• Why you should think of work as a series of bursts
• Why it's important to only focus on one thing

Podcast: Is Starting a One-Person Business Really The Right Move for You?

Things to Consider Before Starting a One-Person Business:

• Are you self-motivated?
• Can you deal with the isolation of working alone?
• Are you good with prioritization and time management?
• Can you handle criticism?

Blog: How To Be Your Biggest Cheerleader

As kids, we think we can do anything, whether it’s growing up to be a veterinarian or believing that we could fly. Whatever your belief was, the best part is that you truly believed it was possible. As we grow up, we seem to lose that unwavering confidence in ourselves. We experience failures, criticisms, and even negative self-talk when things don’t go our way. But what if we were able to get those childhood beliefs back? What if, as adults, we became our own biggest cheerleaders, despite any negativity and roadblocks that come our way?

Blog: If Failure Scares You, You Need To Read This

Shake it off. Isn’t that just the worst thing to hear as you’re dealing with failure?

What’s even more infuriating is that some people do actually seem to have the ability to shake things off when circumstances don’t work out the way they planned. While some people just have the trait within them, others need to work at it. How do you go about developing resilience if it isn’t a natural part of your personality?

Luckily, just because you aren’t born with that part of your personality, it doesn’t mean you can’t develop those traits over time. Here are a few steps to take to make sure failure doesn’t hold you back from getting you what you want.

Blog: What Would You Do If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail?

What a freeing question that is and one we don’t ask ourselves enough. But seriously, what would you do? Once you have that in mind, what is it that’s holding you back?

Chasing our dreams is scary. It’s actually terrifying. People often use this fear as a deterrent rather than a motivator. The idea of not pursuing something sounds greater than failing at it.

But what if you don’t fail? What if you actually succeed? How great would that be?

In the Doing/Learning Phase, there are a lot of things that are very specific to your business. But there are things that almost all businesses have in common. While we can't tell you exactly what you should be doing in your particular business. But we can help you with those basics that are common to most businesses. And this can often be half the battle.

Note that the Doing/Learning Phase has only one Step, which is Execute and Learn. However, you can define your own Steps based on your business and use this as your own personalized version of the Solopreneur Success Cycle.

Step 4: Execute / Learn

You've built out a plan and set up your business. Now it's time to execute! There is a lot to do and lots of it begs to be done now! But to keep sane, you're going to want to prioritize getting things rolling.

Executing Your Marketing Plan

In most cases, marketing is a good place to start. There's not much to do if you don't have customers so executing on your marketing plan makes sense. That said, if you happen to know some of your prospects personally and can reach out on the phone, sales may bring business in the door quicker. But don't neglect the marketing for long or your pipeline will likely dry up.

You developed your marketing plan in the last Phase so I'll just assume that you executing against that plan. But let's cover a few things about executing on your marketing plan.

Be Consistent in Your Content Creation

One key to marketing is to execute on a consistent basis. This means that your blog comes out on the same day at the same time. This could be daily, twice a week, weekly, monthly, etc. but set expectations for your audience and stick to them. The same goes for a podcast.

Focus on Quality Content

The days of "get something/anything out there" are over. Quality is key if your want people to consume your content. If something comes up and you don't have time to produce a piece of quality content for that week, find an old piece and rework it slightly. Don't post garbage as it will hurt you.

Stay Up-To-Date

If you post any date-sensitive information on your site, keep it up-to-date. It's sad to see a website talking about an upcoming event that happened 2 months ago. Seeing a blog section who's latest post is from 2 years ago just tell people "nobody's home." If you are serious, do not let this happen. If you need down time from content creation, use the concept of Seasons. You can have Season 1 of you podcast, take some time away and then start Season 2. This is less common in blogs but beats just fading away.

Always Add Value on Social Media

Your social media posts should always add value to your target audience. Being cute or snarky can be fun, but it won't usually get you followers relevant to your business. 

Review Pay-Per-Click Marketing Regularly

With Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing, it's important to review what working and what isn't. Dump the ads that don't work and riff of the ones that do to find even more effective ads.

Measure Your Progress

You need some way to determine how effective your marketing is. Obviously, if your getting more customers, something is working but knowing what is and isn't producing results can make you a lot more efficient. Google Analytics is free and can provide lots of insight. There are also lots of tools that you can buy to help with this. Here are soem priced appropriately for most solopreneurs:

Persistence

Remember that growing your business using these techniques takes time. As long as things are moving in the right direction, you should stick with it. It's only if you are not seeing any traction that you should reinvent at this point. Usually, the next Phase of the Solopreneur Success Cycle will be a time consider new approaches.

Build a Referral Engine

For some businesses, referrals can be an amazing source of business. If you customers and potential customer communicate with each other on a regular basis, then building a referral engine can be a fantastic source of new business. listen to Sarah Montani talk about her business that has literally no marketing other than referrals.

Executing Your Sales Plan

Unless you have a no-touch sale, you will find yourself acting as your salesperson to close deals. Selling does not have to be miserable.

Focus

The most important thing to remember is that you need to talk about them, not you. Rules 1, 2 and 3 are to talk about their problems and how you can solve them. As the old saying goes, people hate to be sold to but they love to buy. By talking about their problems, making them feel uncomfortable and then providing a solution, you get to help them buy.

You need to check yourself on a regular basis. People tend to drift away from what they should be doing. Review and refresh your sales approach regularly.

Selling Process

When selling, it's important to meet the prospect where they are.

• Try to match their energy level, that is, don't be excited if they're mellow, etc.
• Discuss your offer at a high level and go deeper into details as they desire

Dealing with Competition

You will probably be vying with competitors for any given deal. There are some dos and don'ts that will serve you well.

Do:

• Focus on the problem that you will solve
• Be willing to send them to a competitor if the competitor is better suited for their needs. This builds trust makes you look strong and confident. If your competitors are honorable, they will return the favor. If they don't, try referring different competitors.

Don't:

• "Trash talk" the competition
• Try to compete on price unless that's your core strategy. It weakens their perception of the value you add and kills your margins if you get the deal.

Test Closing

Use test closes. As they describe their problem ask questions like "If I could make that problem never happen again, would you be willing to hire me?" The idea is to get them saying "Yes." This also lets you see whether the problem they have is something you can solve and whether you are conveying your value clearly.

In the end, when you ask for the deal, they have said yes so many times it's hard to say no.

Dealing with Objections

Everyone hates objections. But you should welcome objections. Do NOT argue or fight with the prospect. Always respect their feelings. Never say "but" as it negates their feelings.
One cool tactic is that if there is an obvious objection, bring it up first. Then address it.

Use objections to help them tell you how to close the deal. The buyer is telling you how they want to buy. When you get an objection, ask questions. "Why do you say that?" or " Why is that important to you?"

Closing the Deal

Ask for the deal and get them to "sign" on the spot, if possible. Sometimes that's impossible but get some kind of a commitment from them  If you cannot close then, ALWAYS schedule the next meeting before you leave.

Review Your CRM

During the setup phase, you made you best guess as to how your CRM should work for you. As you actually use it, take notes on things that need to be changed. Things that are really problematic or relatively easy to fix you should do ASAP. The bigger lifts should  wait until the Improve Phase of the Solopreneur Success Cycle.

Operating Basics

While every business is unique, they all have a few things in common. Let's cover those.

Accounting/Bookkeeping

The first is bookkeeping and accounting. EVERY business needs this and not just for tax returns. You need to understand how your business is doing health-wise. Good financial statements are the key.

Working Capital

One of the great ironies of the universe is that a lot of businesses get destroyed by being too successful. This happens because as they grow rapidly, they run out of working capital.

Working capital is the money available to you to run your business. It's a lot like blood is to a body. Imagine a creature with 5 pint of blood suddenly grows to 3 times it's size. If it still only had 5 pints of blood, it's going to die for lack of oxygen and nutrients reaching its cells. There's just nor enough blood to do the job any more.

Working capital does for a business what blood does or a body. It pays the bills that need paying and hires the contractors that need to be hired. If the business grows to fast without working capital increasing commensurately, people don’t get paid and stop providing goods and services and the business dies. Watch out for this.

Solutions Include:

• Revolving Lines of Credit: This is when a bank agrees to let you borrow money as you need it. So on a lean month you may draw cash against the line and pay interest on it. Later you may have cash to pay it down.
• Standard Loans: These are loans where you receive a certain amount of money from the lender and pay it back over time. You can get these from a bank, working capital lenders, or perhaps the Small business Administration. Be careful for some scammy lenders. Google is your friend here. Do your due diligence.
• Equity Investment: If an investor believes in your business, they may buy a portion of your business in return for a share of the profits. This is unusual for one-person businesses.

It's important to note that lenders will almost always require a personal guarantee on the loan. This means that even though you've set up your business as a corporation or LLC, you will still be personally liable for the loan.

The bank will do their best to be sure that they are made whole regardless, but they will not analyze your business to the point where you can rely of them for validation of your use of funds. They'll just be sure you have enough equity in your home. So be careful.

Accounts Receivable

Speaking of working capital, one of the best ways to maintain adequate working capital is to get paid on time by your customers. To do this you need to be proactive. This means not waiting until a payment is late before reaching out.

Something as simple as a polite reminder phone call or email a week BEFORE it is due and work miracles. Then obviously, following up again after the due date. Try to be diligent but pleasant in this process so as not to alienate customers.

If you can manage to get paid on retainer (that is, in advance), you can pretty much avoid a working capital issue, assuming that your business is actually profitable, You can't always get away with this, but if you can, it's awesome.

Outsourced Services

In Get Started Phase of the Solopreneur Success Cycle, you decided which jobs were going to be done by outsourced service providers. Now you need to develop a process for working with them. We can lump service providers into two broad categories, Occasional and Regular.

• Occasional Service Providers: If the service provider is only used occasionally on an ad hoc basis, then you can work with them as needed. Let's say you've hired a company to update your website. Just do what makes sense for that current project.
• Regular Service Providers: If the service provider is a regular part of the operation of the business, you need to create a framework or routine for how to work together for the long haul.  Let's say its bookkeeping and accounting services. You should decide on a regular date for sending over info as well as a standing meeting to discuss and review. Treating a core function of your business as though it were ad hoc is asking for that function to break down.

Managing Your Time

Obviously, the specifics of this will be determined by the nature of your business. But there some best practices that you may want to adhere to.

Focus

One of the keys yo being productive and organized is be able to focus on the work at hand. in recent years, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars developing technologies who's sole purpose is to prevent this from happening. It's up to you to take charge and make sure you have an environment that lets you focus. Here are some things you should probably do.

Turn off distractions!

Professor Cal Newport calls our plugged-in, beeping and buzzing work style the "hyperactive hive mind", which is even worse for people who work remotely. Email, text messages, Slack messages, and dozens of other technologies are constantly interrupting us. Plus people expect instant responses.

I'm guilty of letting myself be disrupted by this too. And it's crazy.  Here's what I've done:

1. Tell people you will only be checking messages and emails at certain times of the day. Explain that you are doing this so you can focus on doing the best work possible. Most people will respect it and understand.
2. Set apps  to Do Not Disturb
3. Get rid of browser notifications that you don't need. Here's how to do it in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
4. Quiet down your phone. Get rid of unnecessary notifications. Here's how to do it on iPhone and Android. 
5. Set times to check email and tell people that what you do. They'll get used to not getting immediate responses.

Organization

Get a system to manage tasks. If you have one that works great. If not, check out David Allen's Getting Things Done method. In my opinion, this is the best task management process ever conceived. We based the LifeStarr App on it and then designed it for solopreneurs.

Follow Through

Always follow through on your commitments. This is the only way to be perceived as trustworthy. If you can't meet a commitment for some reason, get ahead of it. Let the client know BEFORE it's late and give them a good, HONEST reason why. This massively mitigates the amount of trust lost between you and the client.

Learn

It's important to track how things are going relative to the way you hoped your company would work versus the way it is actually working. This may be som small operational glitch or a complete miss on one of your Goals you defined in Phase 1 of the Solopreneur Success Cycle. Take some time regularly to review where things are not going as hoped and note them in a list. In the next phase you will use this to focus your efforts on improving your business.

It should look something like this:

Issue, Cause, Ideas to Solve

Content for Executing

Podcast: Here's How to Execute Your One-Person Business

You're past the setup and planning phase and now it's time to actually do the work and release your business to the world. Woohoo! Congratulations!

During this execution phase, there are some things that will be specific to your business, but there are other things that are general to many types of one-person businesses, which is what we cover in this episode.

In this episode, we walk through what you should be thinking about during the execution phase in relation to:

• Marketing
• Sales
• Accounting
• Outsourcing
• Managing time
• Managing fulfillment
• Outsourcing

Podcast: What Solopreneurs Need to Know About Sales to Be Successful

If you're looking to find somebody who truly understands sales to the core, look no further than Greg Rutan. Greg began his career in sales coaching before moving on to roles as Director of Sales and Marketing at NICA and Director of Strategic Partnerships at EF College Study Tours.

Greg is now a member of the Board of Directors for the Yale Alumni Association and for the past decade, has been VP of Sales and Marketing at Trade Area Systems.

In this episode, Greg does not talk traditional sales like ABC (always be closing) tactics. Instead, he teaches you how to understand people and how to get them to come to the conclusion that your solution is the one that will solve their problems.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What one-person businesses need to think about with selling and the sales process
• What one-person businesses should first focus on when beginning the sales process with a prospect
• How to deal with people as individuals, with their various personalities and beliefs
• Whether people buy more based off emotions or logic
• What do to do when a prospect says "no"
• Why you "have to kiss a lot of frogs" in sales
• Why you should consider your customers your partners
• Why you should keep friendly relationships with your competition
• What some common mistakes are that one-person businesses make in sales
• What the single greatest tool is for repeat business and referrals
• What the one thing is people flying solo in business should take away from this episode

Podcast: The Key Area of Focus to Make Your Marketing Efforts a Success 

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, and author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. He is also the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network, which trains and licenses independent consultants and agencies to use the Duct Tape Methodology.

With The Ultimate Marketing Engine, John has taken the past decade of working with and collaborating with thousands of businesses and presents the latest evolution and innovation in the world of marketing.

What you'll learn in this episode

• Why successful customers are the key to successful marketing
• How the marketing hourglass differs from the marketing funnel
• What the customer success track is and why it's important to understand it
• Why you shouldn't promote your products and services and what you should do instead
• How to scale your business while staying a company of one
• Mistakes people make when scaling their businesses
• How to increase referrals

Podcast: How Virtual Assistants Can Help Take Your Business To New Heights

Jess is a speaker, author, and founder and proud Director of Calm at Don’t Panic Management. She literally wrote the book on how building a successful relationship with a virtual assistant can make all the difference in helping business owners get to the next level.

Her life is often a whirlwind of wrangling her toddler, speaking at conferences (virtual and beyond!), researching productivity hacks, and meticulously making matches between overworked entrepreneurs and focused virtual assistants. You can find her on Instagram at @dontpanicjess, listen to her podcast at panicproofradio.com, and buy her book at panicproofbook.com.

What you'll learn in this episode

• What types of services a virtual assistant can provide
• Common misconceptions about virtual assistants
• How to determine if you should bring on a virtual assistant
• What to look for in a virtual assistant
• Red flags to look out for when vetting a virtual assistant
• How solopreneurs can best prepare for hiring a virtual assistant to make it a smooth transition
• How to find a virtual assistant

Podcast: How to Organize Your Content Marketing Efforts For Maximum Efficiency

In this episode, we walk through content mapping, content and promotion calendars, helpful tools to stay organized, and all that jazz. As a solopreneur, your schedule can get pretty overwhelming, and even though this planning part of your content takes a little bit of time upfront, it saves you tons of time in the long run and provides a lot of additional benefits.

Planning, scheduling, and organizing your content marketing efforts:

• Gives you direction
• Helps prevent panic mode of what content to work on next
• Helps you monitor your efforts and channels and keeps track of the type of content your audience responds to and what they don’t
• Helps you figure out the sweet spot of your posting frequency and times
• Allows you to identify inefficiencies you can’t afford to have as a company of one

And it truly helps to keep you focused, productive, and avoid distractions

Podcast: How to Make Health A Priority When You’re A Busy Solopreneur

On this episode of The One-Person Business podcast, we have on registered dietitian, entrepreneur, fat loss expert, speaker, and pancake addict, Garrett Serd.  Garrett is the founder and owner of the online women’s fat loss company – Tandem Nutrition. Despite Garrett’s love for one-on-one nutrition coaching, he now travels the country speaking at events educating the common consumer and the busy professional on how to lose fat, gain muscle and improve their health in a simple, realistic and sustainable way.

What You'll Learn In This Episode

If you truly want to build a solopreneur business that will become and stay everything that you want, you need to allocate time on a regular basis to review your business and find ways to improve it. This is obvious if things are not going the way you want them to, but there are a number of reasons it is important to do this even if things seem great. They are:

• The world is changing and this could affect our business
• Your needs may be evolving
• There may be new opportunities to grow into

Improving doesn't necessarily mean making it more profitable. It may instead mean making it less stressful, more fulfilling, working fewer hours and so on. But even if you end up changing nothing, this is an exercise worth doing.

How often you do this depends on you and your business. But I recommend at least annually. If you industry is in transition, you may want to do it more frequently.

Step 5: Refine/Reimagine

At this point, you've built your business with your goals front and center and have executed it for a time. Unless you are extremely lucky, not everything has gone the way you have hoped and there id room for improvement to help you better align your business and your goals.

Hopefully you've been keeping notes on issues you've been facing. It's so  much easier than trying to remember everything that's gone wrong or been sub-optimal, but if you haven't you'll need to do that now. In this section you are going to refine and possible reimagine your one-person business. It's a time to reflect and think deeply about where you are versus where you want to be.

Write down all the ideas that come from going through this process. This is like a brainstorming session. All ideas are welcome because it's not until the next step of the Solopreneur Success Cycle, you'll decide what you actually want to do. If you need some people to bounce ideas off of, the LifeStarr Community is a great place to find people that can help.

This is a time to reflect. You should plan this time so that you can carve out a few hours a day for a week or so. Yes, this will likely impact your revenue but it is well worth it if you want to grow your business into something that fits your life. and your goals.

Your business is unique to you so I can't give specific advice about all aspects of it. But I can cover things that virtually all businesses have in common. But be sure to apply this thinking to the aspects of you business.

Review Goals & Success

Start by looking at your definition of Goals & Success from the first step of the Solopreneur Success Cycle. How are you doing compared to your goals and your definition of success? Is it working? Is it at least going in the right direction? If so, great! This section will help you to do even better. If not, then this section is a crucial next step in your one-person business journey. Either way, take careful notes on each section so you can have a solid list to work from when you decide what to change.

Some places to focus on here are:

Happiness

The most important question - are you happy that you are doing what you're doing? Is it just OK? Or is it a living nightmare? Of course, you're not going to be happy all the time in your business. But is it what you hoped to be doing?

If you aren't happy, this section is crucial to finding a way to improve your situation.

Health

Are you taking care of your health or is running your business causing you to neglect it? If you're too busy, use this process to find a way to make time. If you just hate exercise, try to find something that works for you. Walking is a fantastic form of exercise and frees you to think about your business while you do it.

Relationships

A lot of solopreneurs lack social interaction just because they're in a solo business.  How are you doing with your relationships? Do you have time to spend with the people you car about. If not, use this process to find the time. One of the biggest factors in long-term health is having social interaction. Find a way to do it.

Refining or Rethinking the Basics

When reviewing your business, I think it's best to start at the "forest" level and work your way down to the "trees".  If the big picture is off, there's no need to sweat the details of your current business as these will change as you adjust the overall strategy.

Has the World Changed?

Sometimes you've gotten it all right and then something changes that affects your business. It may be technology-based or a change in tax laws, a new fad or fashion, or a shift in cultural norms. It could be lots of things. But the point is, if it affects your business, you need to consider how you should adjust your business to address the changes.

Right Business

One of the biggest questions you can ask yourself is, am I in the right business?  In startup culture, they call it "pivoting". You start out doing A and then realize that you would be better off doing B. Some of the most successful businesses are the result of a pivot - Slack was originally a game company - and while I hate it personally, you cannot argue with its success. In fact, Twitter, PayPal, Groupon, Starbucks, Instagram, and Pinterest are all the result of pivots.

Messaging

If you are getting beat by competitors even when you're the best option, you probably have a messaging problem. You may want to review how you explain who you are and what you do.

Market Position

One key aspect of you market position strategy is pricing. Perhaps you aren't priced in line with market expectations and that's why your losing sales. But make sure that pricing is really the issue before you cut your prices.

With respect to your market position, did you define a it as we spoke about in the Planning episode of SSC? If so, you may want to refine it now. If not, now if a great time to do it as this is another reason that competitors may be beating you where they shouldn't. Refining it may help you to get the deals you want.

And as a reminder, market positioning is defining what you offer in a relatively narrow way so you can appeal to the people or companies you want as customers. For example, the idea is not to be  a "graphic designer" but instead a "Brand Builder for Startups". This will appeal much more to founders of startup companies than the generic graphic designer description.

But there are other reasons to refine or reimagine your market position.

• Are you happy with the kind of work you're getting? If not, perhaps narrowing you market position would help you get more of the work you like.
• Is there not enough work?  Then maybe you need to broaden your market position to include a larger addressable market.
• Or maybe you've discovered some aspect of what you do that you really just want to focus on. That's a fantastic reason to adjust your market position.

Business Model

What about your business model? Is it working the way you hoped? Are you making a real profit - that is - is cash flow positive after taxes? Talk to your accountant if you have one. Note that net income on paper is very different than cash flow if you are using accrual accounting. You can show a profit in your financial statements and yet be losing cash - or vice-versa. You should also look at a cash flow statement to truly see how you are doing from a cash perspective.

I co-founded a company that lost money every year on paper and yet produced a positive cash flow year after year. Things like depreciation, amortization, and revenue recognition approaches can cause this. Why would someone do this? By continually re-investing in the business, we were able to grow it with money that would have otherwise go to paying taxes. The business grew to become very valuable and when we sold it, the taxes were paid.

Marketing

Marketing is no longer a guessing game when it comes to how effective it is. There are a plethora of tools at your disposal that you can use to measure the majority of your marketing efforts, specifically when it comes to digital marketing.

For your website, Google Analytics and Google Search Console can give you tons of information on pages that are performing best, clicks, words that rank in search, etc. Social media platforms provide valuable analytics, as do email platforms as well.

Take a look at your numbers compared to industry averages as well as the original goals you set for yourself, and see how you compare. For the areas that aren't performing as well as you'd like, tweak them. However, don't change too many things at once because it will be difficult to know which of the things improved your metrics.

For things that are performing well, see how you can double down on these efforts to achieve even more of a good thing.

Plan to review your metrics quarterly. If you review more frequently, it's difficult to find patterns. If you wait longer, you may be missing opportunities to adjust more quickly.

Marketing is ever-evolving. You're never actually done with these efforts, so use the tools available to you to optimize for the best results.

Skills

How are you doing against the competition? Are they beating you just because they're better than you? If so, improve your skills ASAP or find some other niche where your skills are sufficient.

Are you losing opportunities to competitors because they are better at selling than you are? If so, level up those sales skills. I found Tony Robbins' Mastering Influence course to be amazing.

Scaling Up - Growing Revenue and/or Profit

One of the questions I hear constantly from many solopreneurs is "How can I increase revenue and profit without working even more hours." This is especially challenging for people who trade money for time, like freelancers, coaches, and consultants. 

In this section, I am assuming that you are working as many hours as you want to in the business. What I mean is that you are not lacking for work, just trying to find a way to increase revenue and profit and to work more efficiently and effectively.

Do you have to grow? The old adage is, "You're either growing or dying." But you became a solopreneur to meet YOUR goals, not some investor or shareholder. And if your current revenue and profits are achieving that, then growing may not be a good option for you. But do do be sure to keep pace with inflation.

So why should you grow revenue and profit? The obvious reason is to make more money and have a better lifestyle. But there's another possible reason. My dad used to say, "revenue growth forgives a lot of sins." What he meant was that if you are growing revenue, you can afford to make mistakes as you figure out your business. Of course, this does not include working capital, which can be the opposite as we discussed in the Do Phase. 

There’s lots of advice on how to scale your business but it tends to be very cookie-cutter. Every solopreneur business is unique, and to me it helps to break the challenges into their root components so that you can determine which strategies will help you.

Start this process by analyzing your current processes; determine what's working and what isn't and focus on the things that aren't working well or are taking a lot of time. 

Breaking Down Scaling Up

Scaling up a business involves one or more of the following:

1. Get more customers
2. Sell more to your existing customers

But scaling as a solopreneur is different from scaling as a regular business. If a regular business gets more customers or sells more products, they can hire more employees to deliver the products and services.

But it’s not so simple for solopreneurs, who have limited time and fewer options for expanding capacity. Therefore, there is a third step that needs to be factored in:

3. Deliver more efficiently to your customers

Improvements in any one of these categories can help you scale up. Improvements in all three can be amazing.

Getting More Customers

How you get customers can be looked at on a continuum from what I call Hunting to Zero Touch. This relates to the level of effort involved in getting a new customer. I’ve laid it out here in what I call the Customer Acquisition Effort Scale.

Customer Acquisition Effort Scale

Hunting

This is the most time-intensive way to sell because you are out looking for and closing new customers. It involves things like:

1. Finding new prospects
2. Engaging the prospect
3. Selling the prospect
4. Closing the first sale

Often times this results in a "feast-or-famine" situation because you get busy producing work for customers, and you don't have time for prospecting. When you finish the work, there's not enough new work in the pipeline because you stopped prospecting. Then you go back to looking for business instead of producing revenue and the pattern repeats.

Referrals

Here you've built some kind of system to deliver prospects to your doorstep. Traditionally this was thought of as word-of-mouth, but these days there are many other ways to drive opportunities to you with little effort. Affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, pay-per-click advertising, organic social media, or perhaps a lead-gen agency are all options today. But once the prospect comes to you, you need to close them. This reduces the feast-or-famine problem because you spend less time finding opportunities, though you still need to close them. This is a Medium Touch sale.

1. Finding new prospects Done for you via referral
2. Engaging the prospect They come to you
3. Selling the prospect
4. Closing the first sale

Zero-touch

In this case, customers come to you and buy from you without you interacting with them. Online retail is an example of this kind of selling. Opportunities for selling this way are usually limited to lower-cost items or items that are well understood and trusted by the customer. However, by building a top-notch reputation, you can increase the price point of online sales.

1. Finding new prospects Done for you via referral
2. Engaging the prospect They come to you
3. Selling the prospect They buy from you
4. Closing the first sale

Where You Should Be On the Customer Acquisition Effort Scale

Where you target for Customer Acquisition Effort depends on the nature of your business. Unless you are selling a low-cost product like and app, a low-cost online course, or have an online retail store, many solopreneurs start on the Hunting end of the spectrum, often using relationships to generate leads.

If you are selling something like one-one coaching or a high-priced software product, it is unlikely that you will be able to achieve anything close to a No-Touch sale. In one case you're selling yourself, in the other, you’re asking for a big check and so should expect some up-front effort to make it happen.

If you are selling, say, dog toys online, it's fairly easy to imagine being on the No-Touch end of the scale from the start. People come to your website, see the dog toy, and order it online. Your website and associated marketing activities can refer the customer to you with little effort per customer, though there may be work in creating content, posting to social media and so on. But individual sales do not cost you much time to close. In fact, it wouldn't be feasible financially if they did.

Even if you have a very High-Touch Sale, there are things you can do here to move to the right in the Customer Acquisition Continuum:

1. Finding new opportunities: Use affiliate marketing, content marketing, influencer marketing, social media, and so on to drive people to your site. This beats cold-calling from a time-investment perspective and is often more effective in the long run.
   
   
2. Engaging the prospect: Find a virtual assistant to vet opportunities so you don't spend time on deals that don't make sense. Or use an online questionnaire to determine the viability of the deal.
   
   
3. Selling the prospect: Put social proof on your website from satisfied customers. Produce some content or other material can help convey that you are the right fit for the job.
   
   
4. Closing the sale: This may still involve you, but you could contract with an experienced salesperson to handle the closing process. This will likely be expensive but can be worthwhile if the time you gain back is more valuable than what you pay them or you are terrible at sales and need someone else to do it.

Sell More to Your Existing Customers

A Simple Way to Increase Sales - Raise Prices

Raising prices can be a great strategy, especially if you have too much work. You may lose customers, but if done carefully, you can make more money regardless.

Re-selling

This means selling a new product to existing customers from scratch; it’s usually a lot of effort unless it's a low-cost product.

Re-signing

This means selling the same product again to the customer. This is less effort since they’ve bought once, but still involves some work on your part, and it requires that you sell a product that needs to be bought more than once.

Recurring

This means it happens by itself, and there is no effort by you. I’ve laid it out here in what I call the Repeat Sales Effort Scale.

Repeat Sales Effort Scale

Doing a good job for the customer can make re-selling easier. But if you can find ways to move right on this continuum, you will be able to scale your business much more effectively.

Some strategies for moving to the right in the Repeat Sales Continuum are:

1. Continue to engage your customers with valuable content after the sale so that re-engaging them is easier.
   
   
2. Create new products that are consumable in some form so customers will purchase them again
   
   
3. Develop subscription-based products that people pay for monthly or annually

Fulfillment Effort

Once you make a sale, you need to deliver something to the customer to actually earn the revenue. How revenue is earned is on a continuum from High Effort to No Effort. The Fulfillment Effort Scale is shown below.

Fulfillment Effort Scale

The easier it is to deliver your product, the easier it is to scale up. If you are a coach and all your available coaching time is booked, getting more customers is pointless since you won’t be able to fulfill the sale as you have no more time to coach.

If you can reduce the effort to fulfill by offloading some of the work and/or creating an easier-to-deliver product, you can scale your business. There are several different approaches you can use to move or expand your business to the right on the Fulfillment Effort Scale.

For example, you could:

1. Automate business processes
   
   
2. Outsource some of the jobs that need to be done to fulfill
   
   
3. “Deputize” outside contractors of partners to deliver their product and share revenues.
   
   
4. Create a group session where several people are paying you for the same hour of time
   
   
5. Create a paid online course that requires only a small amount of your time.
   
   
6. Produce a paid online video series or e-book that requires no effort to deliver.

Automate Processes

There are many automation tools available to solopreneurs, and some of the platforms are free! They can streamline processes, and some are surprisingly easy to use.

Here are some ideas, but the sky is the limit here:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

CRMs are a tool that helps you manage your relationship with your prospects and customers. It can help you track interactions, reach out through different phases of the customer lifecycle, keep notes, track follow-ups, and ultimately increase sales.

DIY systems tend to fall apart when you get busy, and it can get challenging to keep track of customer communication. These tools will make you more efficient and will keep you organized and sane. HubSpot has a free as well as a low-cost CRM that could work for you.

Use a CRM to keep track of your prospects and customers

Accounting and Financial Tools

It is CRUCIAL that you keep track of your business finances professionally. Imagine you get audited by the IRS and pull out a shoebox full of receipts. The process is going to get very painful. But there is no way to manage your business effectively without financial statements. 

For me, this was the first function that I offloaded to someone else. It took to much time and robbed too much joy from my life to continue doing it myself.

But some people like it and are good at it. For you, tools like Freshbooks and Quickbooks make a lot of sense for solopreneurs.

If you are going to do your own accounting, find a tool that works for you. Otherwise, find an accountant!

Task Management / Project Management Tools

These are tools you can use to keep track of tasks and projects you are working on. In general there are 2 types of tools, individual-focused like Todoist and team-focused like Asana or Trello. Neither

Personal Productivity Tools 

People can mix up these types of tools with project management software, but where the latter keeps you organized, personal productivity tools keep you focused. These tools help to minimize distractions and help you get in the zone. A quick Google search will unveil a plethora of tools in this area. Do some research and find what works best for you. I personally use the Pomodoro Technique and Coffitivity to get in the zone. Finding the right music is another way to focus and increase productivity. Joe Rando uses this Hemi-Sync Concentration technology (available on Apple Music and Spotify) to focus when he works.

Scheduling

Ever write countless emails between you and another person simply to nail down a meeting time? So annoying! I personally use Calendly to solve this problem. With this tool, people can pick an open time that’s available on my calendar to schedule a call. I simply send them a link to see that availability. Such a time-saver!

Outsource

Just because you’re a company of one, doesn’t mean you can’t delegate tasks to independent contractors or virtual assistants. Many solopreneurs do this. Sure, you may spend some money contracting with these people, but you need to look at it as an investment.

By passing off mundane, time-consuming, and tedious tasks to others, you can focus on other more important things that require your time and energy.

Come up with some possible jobs to outsource.

Fire Bad-Fit Clients

Nobody likes working with difficult clients, but many also don’t realize what a time-suck they can be and how they can be taking away from your bottom line. If they start to take away from other clients or get so bad that it’s hard to focus on your work, it’s time to let them go. 

Sometimes the problem isn’t that the client is being difficult. Instead, they are awesome people but their needs are a bad fit for your business. This can be more difficult to address but you need to do so.

However, don’t make the relationship with them all for nothing.

Turn client problems into systemic solutions. Identify what went wrong and see where you can change things and prevent the same issues moving forward.

What Should You Do?

Moving your business to the right on any of these three scales will help you to increase revenue and profit. But it is important to be sure that when you do, you will have the capacity to deliver. This includes your ability to produce and the availability of the necessary working capital. But if you keep these factors in mind, this could start a new phase of growth for your business.

Refining/Reimagining Your Finances

Bookkeeping and Accounting

How are your bookkeeping and accounting going? Did you hire someone or are you doing it yourself?

If you are doing it yourself, how's it working out? Is it time to hire a pro? Think about whether you can understand your business from the financial statements you are generating. Note that a balanced checkbook is not sufficient.

Accounts Receivable

How are your accounts receivable looking? Are you getting paid in a timely manner? If not, you may want to think about ways to get paid faster.

The thing you want to examine is are you invoicing in a timely manner. Invoicing should be a regular part of your routine and they should go out ASAP. You many want to think about ways to improve and speed up this process.

Once you are invoicing  on time, there are other things you can consider:

• If possible, ask for a Payment Deposit or a retainer
• Switch to Digital Invoices
• Accept Multiple Forms of Payments like credit cards and ACH
• Incentivize Early Payments with a small discount
• Discount Monthly Subscriptions
• Send Clear Reminders starting before the invoice is late

Business Operations

Evaluate Business Risks

There a a number of areas where your business may be at risk. You should examine these and plan to make changes where appropriate.

Dependance on Too Few Customers

Now that you've been running for a while, there's a good bet that you've developed some risks that you need to consider. Some of these may be specific to your business but some are universal. One of the big ones early in the game is becoming to dependent on a too few customers.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What would happen if I lost this customer?
• Would my business survive?
• How would I react?

As a young man, I worked for a company that made costume jewelry components. They had gotten a huge contract with Avon and basically ignored their smaller customers completely to serve Avon. Then Avon dumped them. Then I didn't have a job - no one did. Ouch. But any size company can be done in if they are too dependent on just a few customers. Best to work hard to grow your customer-base.

If you are too dependent on a small number of customers, plan to grow your customer list as part of the Improve Phase of the Solopreneur Success Cycle.

Supplier Issues

Another risk is supplier issues. Are you beholden to a single supplier for your business to function. What would happen if they couldn't or wouldn't supply  what you needed, or if they raised there prices unreasonably? Would you have an alternative? If not, you may want to pay some attention here.

If you are dependent on a single source for critical aspects of your business, plan to find alternatives.

Working Capital Shortfalls

Working capital can be a big risk, particularly if you are growing quickly. The good new is that you are growing. The bad news is that, as we've discussed, this can kill you. Unless you have a background in accounting or finance, it may be hard for you to develop a model to predict if or when this will be an issue. Engaging an accountant or consultant to help assess working capital challenges is a good idea.

Particularly if you are growing quickly, get an accountant or other consultant to help you analyze your finances and working capital needs.

If you find you will need cash, get to a bank early - before you need it. This looks better to the bank and it gives you the time to jump through their hoops. Getting loans is always harder than you think. The Small Business Administration is good place to go for info on business loans.

Apply for loans well before you need them. It looks better to the bank and it takes longer than you expect to get a loan.

Write Down the Ideas

Going through this process should have generated a lot of ideas. Make sure you have a list of them written down. Don't judge them yet; that's for the next step.

Content for Refining/Reimagining Your Solopreneur Business

Step 6: Decide

So now it's time to decide if you are going to make any changes to your business and if so, what you will change.  In the last step we talked about refining and/or reimagining your business. In this step you are going to decide what you actually want to change about your business.

Because solopreneur businesses can be so varied, most of the Solopreneur Success Cycle is presented in general terms. But I think it's helpful to present this step in the context of a real-world example. 

Imagine a business that buys and sells used vinyl records online started by a young woman who is a parent to a young child. Let's call her "Callie" and her company is called Vinyl Ventures.  Vinyl Ventures sells used phonograph records on consignment. She takes possession of the product but only pays the owner when they sell.

In the previous step of the Solopreneur Success Cycle, Callie created a list of ideas to refine and reimagine her one-person business. Now it's time for her to evaluate those ideas and decide which ones to actually do. Not all of her ideas are good ones and it's also possible that they won't all play nice together. Plus, there is only so much you can do at one time while still running the business.

Callie's list of ideas are:

1. Add turntables and tube amps to her product offering
2. Start selling new release vinyl in addition to the used product she's currently selling on consignment
3. Create a section of her website where people can review products
4. Move her website to a more robust platform where she can automate more processes and collect more data about her customers
5. One-on-one equipment consultations for customers

Review Against Goals & Success

The first thing to do is to go through your list of ideas of how to change your business. Which of your changes do you think will best help align your business with your goals? I like to score them from 1 to 5. 

1 = Very harmful effect on  goal
2 = Harmful effect on goal
3 = No impact on goal
4 = Positive effect on goal
5 = Very positive effect on goal

Look hard at the 1 and 2s. Is the cost to the goal overcome by the ideas positive effect on other goals?

Example: For Callie's vinyl record business her goals are:

1. To have the flexibility with her time to be a primary caregiver for her daughter
2. Make enough money to be worth her time
3. To do something she really enjoys
4. Help people who love vinyl find what they need

For Callie, adding turntables and tube amps as well a new vinyl records has no long term effect on her goal of having time for her daughter because she can drop ship them from the supplier - it's effectively affiliate marketing. So this gets a 3, no impact. They have a positive impact on her goals of making enough money to be worth her time, doing something she really enjoys and helping people who love vinyl get what they need, so they get 5s. There'll be some work to set it up but it won’t cost her time later, she'll make more money and she really loves the old technology.

It's the same for the new release vinyl.

Adding the review section is a bit more nuanced. It could cost her some time to check the reviews to comment and for spam and inappropriate posts. So that gets a 2 for the "Time with her daughter goal." But it gets a 4, a 3, and a 4 for the remaining goals respectively. Plus there probably isn't a great way to sell hardware without reviews. And it will engage her customers more. So she's keeping this in spite of the 2 score?

Moving to a more robust platform for her website and marketing will cost some money. But it will save her time by allowing her to automate processes that are currently manual. She can use this found time to manage the review section and answer question about equipment.

The last idea, doing one-on-one consultations for equipment has such a negative effect on time with her daughter that she gives it a 1 and cans the idea. That's smart. Anytime you see a 1, you have to think hard whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

So Callie has ruled out one of her ideas and will explore 4 of them further.

Talk to Experts and Customers

At every step of this process, considering whether you should call on your experts and/or the network of people you trust. As you consider these ideas, feedback from customers, mentors and other solopreneurs, accountants and tax planning professionals, lawyers, and others who may see things you do not, can be very valuable. Also, if you know anyone who is doing what you are thinking about doing and won’t be directly hurt by your competition, reach out them, even if you don’t know them. Most people like to help. Check out the LifeStarr Community for feedback.

As you discuss your ideas with them, they will likely give you other ideas that may or may not be good. The process of getting ideas about your business is tricky. You want to be open-minded but you also need to be sure that:

• They truly understand your business and your goals well enough to evaluate your ideas as well as suggest practical and helpful ideas.
• The idea resonates with you so that you can be motivated to actually execute it. There are plenty of ideas that are good for someone but not for you.
• Any new ideas you like are vetted using the same process we used for your ideas above.

The bottom line is that you need to thread the needle between being locked in to the status quo and jumping at new ideas without making sure they fit your goals and your business.

Evaluate the Implications of Each New Idea

It's important to examine the implications of each change you are considering. These ideas for change may impact some of the aspects of your business. You never know for sure what the result of a change might be, but it's good to try to see the more obvious ones to make sure they are acceptable to you.

For Callie, the big picture is that she will need to expand her content to talk about equipment as well as vinyl. Also, she must make a commitment to a minimum quarterly sales level to the equipment distributor. This has some implications to her business that we will explore. This whole process can be very specific to your business and to the changes you're considering. But we can try to give some general guidance as to how to go about it and some examples using Callie.

Strategic Impacts

First, let's look at how your ideas will impact your strategy. There are a number of dimensions to this that you should consider. This table gives you a format to work through the impacts of your changes on your business. Each row one of the changes you are making to your business. The items in the column headings are explained in detail below.

Customer Perception

It's important to think about how your current customers will view your changes. If you're thinking that switching from phone support to email support will make you more efficient, you're probably right. But your customers may not feel the same way. Hopefully you spoke to them about these ideas already.

For Callie, there shouldn't be any negative feeling for what she is doing. The changes add options for the customers and as long as she maintains the quality of the current business, they shouldn't mind the additional offerings.

Competition

Is your competition going to be different. If so, you need to think about what this means to your business. Are you really going to be able to compete with theses new competitors?

If you think so, how specifically will you do it?

For Callie, she will now be competing with other companies that sell hardware related to vinyl as well as companies that sell vinyl records. She has a lot of customers currently that should be interested in her new products. She will be competing with the likes of Amazon. But she will definitely need to look at how her pricing compares to the competition.

Market Positioning

You've positioned your business in a specific way in the eyes of your target market. Does this need to change now? For example, if you've positioned yourself as a concierge/bespoke type business and are now planning to provide standard products, then you've got some work to do here.

Callie has positioned Vinyl Ventures as the place for vinyl lovers to get records. She now needs to expand this to records and equipment. This isn't a huge stretch and a large potion of her customer-base is likely into equipment as well.

Messaging

If your market positioning has changed, you will likely need to revamp your messaging. Even if it hasn't, this still may be a good idea.

Callie's messaging has been centered around being the place for lovers of hard-to-find vinyl records. This doesn't need to change drastically for Callie. But she needs to refine it to reflect the addition of equipment as well as new vinyl products.

Evaluate

Use tables like the ones below to analyze the impacts of your changes. It's OK to have blank cells. You can download an Excel version here.

Marketing & Sales

Will the changes you are making result in a need to modify your marketing? You will need to consider this and act accordingly. If your market position and messaging are changing, there a good chance your marketing will need a general makeover.

Websites

Changes to your market positioning and your messaging will result in the need to update your website to reflect these changes. Be sure to make sure you are taking the customer's perspective and being clear about how you help them.

Content Marketing

Does you content strategy need to change based on the changes you are making to your business? Do you need to modify your topics or add additional media types (video, podcasts, etc.)?

Social Media

Are there any impacts to your social media strategy? Are you targeting different people or conveying a different message?

Search Engine Optimization

Will your changes require you to target new keywords?

Advertising

Will there be changes to your ad content or placement?

Sales "Touch" Level

Will there be any changes to your sales approach, especially how much interaction you will have with clients?

Evaluate

Use tables like the ones below to analyze the impacts of your changes. It's OK to have blank cells. You can download an Excel version here.

Legal

Legal Structure

This is unlikely unless one of your changes is to prepare to sell your business. Then you should consider a Delaware C-corp. This is the preferred structure for most acquiring companies. You can typically do this most simply as a migratory merger. You should use an attorney for this.

Permits

It's important to determine if you will need additional permits for any of your changes? 

If you will, determine the following:

• How much will they cost?
• How long will they take to get?
• Is there any risk that you won't get them?

Evaluate

Use tables like the ones below to analyze the impacts of your changes. It's OK to have blank cells. You can download an Excel version here.

Financial

Banking

Will your banking needs be impacted?  For example, if you start taking credit cards, you'll need a merchant account with a bank or other company.

Will you need a revolving line of credit?

Insurance

Will you insurance needs change? Will you have increased liability due to the changes in your business? Will you have additional property or inventory that needs to be insured? You don't want to mess this up. The story of businesses upping their exposure without increasing their insurance and then suffering a loss is all too common.

Bookkeeping/Accounting

Will your changes impact your bookkeeping and accounting needs? If you are using a cash basis, might it be advantageous to switch to accrual accounting? An accounting professional can help with this.

Accounts Receivable / Account Payable

How will your accounts receivable and accounts payable be impacted by your changes? If you will be paying for inventory or some other expense before you receive payment, you will have in increased need for working capital. You will need to determine where these additional  funds will come from.

Tax Planning

Are there any potential impact on your taxes or any opportunities for tax savings? Increases in profit may require additional estimated tax payments. There may also be ways to expense things that you cannot expense currently.

You should talk to your tax advisor.

Working Capital/Loans

How will your working capital be affected?  If you will need more, it's crucial you figure where where it will come from. A revolving line of credit can be a good solution if you can get a bank to give you one. The Small Business Administration has good info on ways to get working capital.

Evaluate

Use tables like the ones below to analyze the impacts of your changes. It's OK to have blank cells. You can download an Excel version here.

Business Model

Is your business model changing? Are you producing differently, delivering differently, collecting money differently? Aspects to consider are:

• Production/Sourcing Model
  • Creator/Manufacturer
  • Drop-Ship
  • Brokerage
  • User Community
  • Crowd-Sourcing
  • Product-to-Service
• Market Model
  • Retailer
  • D2C (Direct to Consumer)
  • Distribution
  • Franchise 
• Pricing/Payment Model
  • Purchase
  • Subscription
  • Pay-as-You-Go
  • Auction
  • Reverse Auction
  • Leasing
  • Razor Blades 
  • Reverse Razor Blades 
  • Fractionalization
• Enticement model (optional)
  • Freemium
  • Bundling
  • Pay-in-Advance
  • One-for-One 

For more information, see the Business Model Builder Tool and this podcast

Evaluate

Use tables like the ones below to analyze the impacts of your changes. It's OK to have blank cells. You can download an Excel version here.

Business Operations

Are there any other changes that you are proposing that will impact how you operate?

Time Management    

Will you need to make any changes to how you are managing your time? You may need to adjust your routine to accommodate your new business.

Outsourcing Jobs

Will you be outsourcing any of the jobs you do?  This is a great idea if you are upping your own workload.  Check out Outsourcing Isn't Cheating - Why Solopreneurs Should Consider It

New Skills

Will you need to acquire any new skills to execute these changes?

Evaluate

Use tables like the ones below to analyze the impacts of your changes. It's OK to have blank cells. You can download an Excel version here.

Pair Down the List of Changes If Needed

Now that you've laid this all out, look for any showstoppers. Showstoppers are:

• Things that you can't do
• Things you don't want to do
• Things that are are otherwise impractical.

Also, are you doing to much at once? If so, choose a short list of changes that have the most potential and table the rest for the next time you work through the Improve Phase of the Solopreneur Success Cycle.

Commit

Once you've eliminated the changes that don't make sense right now, it's time to commit to your decisions.

Definitely write these down and track your progress. You've decided on these so now just make it happen.

Remember that this is a process. It requires focus. So sit down with your computer or pen and paper and go through this process carefully, think it through, and make your business even better.

Content for Deciding on Changes to Your Business

Step 7: Adjust

Now it's time to actually implement the changes you've decided to make. This part is very specific so I wan't be going into too much detail here. But there are some best practices and strategies that can help make you more successful.

Develop an Implementation Plan

Assuming you have more than one change, you will want to think carefully about the approach you take to making the changes. You're still running a business and you need to pace yourself while you do this so that you can still deliver your product and make these changes carefully. Certainly, making one or two changes-at-a-time is more prudent than trying to do everything at once. Assuming your business is doing OK, then this is definitely the best strategy. However, if you're really struggling or losing a lot of money, it may make sense to instead hit this process hard in order to turn the corner quickly.

Review Your Changes

Take a look at the changes you plan to make. 

 First, look for changes that are best grouped together.

Next, oftentimes, one change needs to come before another. Is there natural order to their implementation?

As an example of this kind of thinking, let's review Callie's list of ideas for her Vinyl Ventures business from the last section:

1. Add turntables and tube amps to her product offering
2. Start selling new release vinyl in addition to the used product she's currently selling on consignment
3. Create a section of her website where people can review products
4. Move her website to a more robust platform where she can automate more processes and collect more data about her customers

Grouping Changes

For Callie, Change #1 and Change #3 go together. Callie wants to have her review site up when she starts selling equipment. Therefore, these two changes should be done in parallel so that when she starts selling equipment, the review site is up and running. Doing these one after the other will waste time.

Setting an Order for Implementation

With respect to deciding the order of implementation, one trick is to identify changes that will save you time. Since making these changes is going to cost you time, implementing time-saving changes early in the process can make implementing the rest of the changes easier by giving you more time to implement them.

Another thing to think about is new sources of revenue. Doing these sooner is a good idea because you start earning more money sooner.

An Example of Grouping and Ordering Change Implementation

Let's use Callie's changes as an example. Change #4, moving her website to a more robust platform, is going to save here a lot of time, so she should do this first.

New vinyl records will provide a quick source of new revenue. so she should do this next.

The sale of turntables and tube amps goes hand-in-hand with creating the review section of the website, so she would group these together and work on them in parallel.

So Callie's to-do list would look like:

Executing Your Changes

The old saying "a journey of 1,00 miles begins with a single step" is apt here. Some of these changes you are making may be a significant undertaking so this is the point where you may feel overwhelmed. Most of these changes are projects in the sense that there is more than one step involved in accomplishing them. Projects are made up of multiple steps that may themselves be projects (or sub-projects as I like to call them). 

The best thing to do is to take the change that you are working on and break it into small, logical steps. Then, if the step itself is a project, break it into smaller steps. The goal is to do this until you have a list specific actions *that is, single steps) that you or someone else needs to take to move the change forward.

Let's use Callie's sale of new vinyl records as an example.

1. First she needs to create an agreement with the distributor.
2. Then she needs to define the workflow for how she will communicate sales to the distributor and how the distributor will inform her of new releases.
3. Then she needs to populate the products on her website. She will need to revisit this regularly as new products are released.

None of these three items is a To Do list item. They are sub-projects.Break each of them into pieces as well.

For Callie, lets look at her first step "Create and agreement with the distributor. To do this, she will need to:

1. Request a copy of their standard reseller agreement.
2. Review the standard agreement with an attorney
3. Send Comments to distributor
4. Negotiate final draft
5. Sign the reseller agreement

Some of these might even be broken onto even smaller steps. For example, reviewing the agreement with an attorney might involve actually finding an attorney and then reviewing the document.

So Callie's Project for selling vinyl records might look like:

Shameless plug, the LifeStarr App is great for this kind of project planning and implementation. 

Back to Doing

As you wrap up, pick a date to start his process again. Depending on your business and your nature, it may be 6 months or a year in the future. But circling back to Improve Phase on a regular basis keeps your business healthy and serving your needs, not the other way around. That's why it's called the Solopreneur Success CYCLE. Because it's a continuous process of improvement and adaptation.

Now it's time to go back to the Do Phase of the Solopreneur Success Cycle. Remember to take notes on what's working and what's not. 

I hope you find great success!

Content for Adjusting Your Solopreneur Business