Solopreneurship is a careful balance between thinking and doing. You need to take the time to think about different solopreneur ideas and research/analyze them before implementation. But if you spend too much time and don’t take enough action, you’ll never achieve your goals.
Thinking and planning solopreneur business ideas can take many shapes and forms, including:
– thinking of a brand new business to start
– working on or improving a current business you’re building
– adding new products or services to your solopreneur business
And probably much more, but right now I fall under the 3rd category. The reason is simply that the core service for my law firm is doing well, fairly automated and partially outsourced.
How can I continue to fill the funnel/bring in more clients?
There are a few ways – doing more cold outreach or running paid ads, to name a few – but I’m also toying with the idea of going up or down the value chain. What I mean by this is providing another service to my target market that would then lead them to also need my primary service, or providing a followup service they’ll need after using my primary service.
Taking time to think of new solopreneur business ideas is important, otherwise you might spend all your time within your business and stunt your growth.
With that in mind, here are three tips to help you think of solopreneur business ideas – or any ideas in general – that have worked me:
1) Talk to previous/current/potential customers
These are the people whose opinions you want, not your friend Bob who has never purchased your product or service before. Be careful what you ask them, simply asking “would you by this?” isn’t enough (I go into more detail on how to approach this and what to ask in my video below).
2) Take more time to think
We all know more than we think we know, but we often don’t take enough time to sift through our brain to put pieces together. Go for a walk, sit outside, meditate, journal – whatever you gotta do to relax and think more. You’d be amazed at what your mind can piece together if you just give it some time to think.
Note: notifications should be avoided during this time.
3) Read/listen/watch about others who have done things you’re aiming to do
I’ve been on a biography binge lately (Musk and Branson are the last two I’ve read – both amazing) and reading stories of these successful solopreneurs or entrepreneurs has been eye-opening, motivating and helpful. Even though I don’t plan on entering the space or airline industries, there is so much to learn from their business journeys and the struggles they’ve faced along the way.
In my opinion, the above is the easy part. Thinking, researching and talking about new solopreneur ideas is great, but when it comes time to take massive action, that’s where things can be tough and keeping your motivation up for long periods of time isn’t easy.
I remember back to my high school days playing tackle football. While motivation differed from one person to the next, the reason the team was there and the reason most of us kept showing up day-after-day for practice, was because we wanted to win.
We wanted to win the city championship, which was a clear goal. It keeps you coming back to practice, honing your skills on the side and trying your hardest in every game, rain or shine.
But what about in business, when there’s no “championship” to win? When there isn’t even a scoreboard to show how you did each “game”?
Simple – you make one up.
The scoreboard part is easy – monthly revenue, # of deals closed, money raised, etc. A great way to keep your motivation high and track your progress at the same time is to pick a metric and use it as your scoreboard. In other words, measure a few key metrics from month to month.
Nothing too new about that, but if you’re not doing it and especially if your motivation isn’t where it used to be, I challenge you to start. Not only that, you can use it in other areas of your life like in the gym (weight lost, weight lifted, reps completed, etc.) or for saving money (dollars saved per month, number of home-cooked meals, etc.).
The other thing that will happen is that your natural human competitiveness will kick in and you’ll want to beat your previous “scores”, which is just added motivation as well.
Give it a try, and make sure to join the email list so you can let me know how it turns out for you!
