Invincible Solopreneurs - Make a living doing more of what you love

When should you talk openly about the business you’re building, and when should you keep quiet about it?

Several entrepreneurs promote the benefits of talking about your business while “building in public.” This differs greatly from the traditional “stealth startup” model that most of us have seen and experienced. When I ran my solo design agency during the Dot Com Boom, many of the early-stage startups I helped were in stealth mode. They didn’t share any information publicly, and they certainly didn’t broadcast their experiences during the journey. For one thing, social media didn’t exist yet. But, blogs sure did.

So, what does it mean to build in public?

Building in Public (BIP) consists of building a company or product and transparently sharing the behind scenes of how you do it. Founders generally share their wins, struggles, learnings, anecdotes, and business metrics. (source)

If you’re active on Twitter, I’m sure you’ve seen quite a few startup founders, creators, and even investors talking about it.

* Arvid Kahl: “This is why I build in public…”

* Tibo: “Here’s how to test an idea in under 2 weeks…”

* Andrew Gazdecki: “How to generate leads for your startup on a budget...”

Benefits of building in public

Here are some key benefits of building in public:

* You can get early feedback on your product or service that will shape its future and hopefully increase your odds of success.

* You can start building a community that believes in what you’re doing and supports you.

* Transparency builds more loyalty and trust with your customers and community.

* You can create friendships with other builders who are on a similar journey.

* People can share helpful advice if they know what you’re trying to accomplish.

* You will build a reputation as an expert, develop a stronger network, and gain a following on social media.

* The more visible your business is, the more likely you’ll attract the attention of relevant investors (i.e., if you want that).

* The more visible your business is, the easier it is to attract potential talent (i.e., if you want to hire employees or contractors).

When it’s not a great idea

This is a pretty good summary of why one entrepreneur stopped building in public. He switched from being “radically transparent” to something he calls “thoughtfully transparent”.

While I agree with the premise of sharing your journey, there are times when it’s a bad idea to build in public. For example:

* When stealth competitors can use your data against you (e.g., pricing strategies, where you find great talent, your business plans and forecasts).

* When there is a significant first-mover advantage and you don’t want competitors to see what you’re planning before launch.

* When you’re still not sure what product or service you want to focus on for your business, so things may radically change (e.g., you end up offering an entirely different service from what you originally planned, and it’s no longer relevant for the people who followed your journey).

* When you’re spending so much time managing your online presence and community that you’re not spending enough time building your business, product, and services.

* When sharing data transparently hurts your business (e.g., you share churn data, and it scares away new customers).

* When your side hustle jeopardizes your 9-5 job.

I want to talk more about that last point. My “Employee to Solopreneur” strategy assumes you can safely test the waters with your new business concept before giving up a steady paycheck. Funny thing, you can think more clearly when you aren’t worried about paying rent or buying groceries.

Building in public is all well and good when you’re an entrepreneur fully committed to your new business. You’re not risking a day job. If you do decide to quit your job and go “all in” on your new business, you can choose if building in public is right for you.

However, it’s quite another thing if you still have a 9-5 job and you’re experimenting to see what business idea will work. You don’t necessarily want your employer aware of your side hustle.

If you're trying to validate your business model and land enough customers before you go all in, you don’t need the extra stress of losing your job. Quite simply, if you’re still employed, building in public is a very risky strategy. You could very well lose your job if your boss finds out.

Now, some employers are more understanding than others. Some countries, regions, and states encourage the entrepreneurial spirit more than others and support it legally. For example, here in California in the tech industry, most people assume everyone is working on some sort of side hustle or startup idea.

NOTE: If you’re currently employed by someone else, review your employment agreement and local employment laws and business practices before working on your business idea. For example, most employers have non-compete agreements — even if they’re not fully enforceable everywhere (e.g., California). However, you’ll be interested in what the FTC recently announced.

Why and how to keep your business secret

* How would you feel about an angry customer showing up at your home?

* Do you want your friends and family to question your business idea?

* Are you really ready to let everyone know about the business you’re creating?

* Are you ok with everyone knowing about your business if it fails?

* Do you want to wait until your business is successful before you start talking about it?

I do share quite a bit about the businesses I’m running. I’m pretty sure all of my friends and online connections know about Invincible Career, Invincible Solopreneurs, Invincible Life, and Brilliant Forge. Yes, I know. I publish and post a lot!

I also practiced building in public for my tech startup, Voicekick. We shared our journey, and we also shared our failures. That was painful.

However, I’ve also tested dozens of other business ideas over the past 13 years. Most of those happened in secret. I didn’t see the point in talking about them until I thought there was a there there. Most of them didn’t get traction, so I quietly shut them down and moved on to new ideas.

An insulating layer of anonymity isn’t a bad idea in the early days of testing your business. Also, some distance between your personal life and your business entity is always a good idea.

Here are some things to consider and steps you can take to protect yourself and keep things a little quieter while you test ideas:

* Anonymous domain registration (e.g., Google Domains offers free WHOIS privacy).

* A business website that’s all about the business brand (i.e., you don’t have to mention your name).

* A business email address (e.g., create a new Gmail account for your business).

* A separate phone number from your personal number (you could even get a virtual number).

* Business social media accounts (e.g., sign up using your business email).

* A business suite for a physical mailing address (e.g., UPS offers business mailboxes).

* An LLC or corporation protects you and your personal assets a little more from lawsuits.

* You may want to take additional steps to hide your ownership of the company.

* A separate bank account for your business.

* Always use your own equipment (e.g., laptop, phone).

* Always use your own internet service (i.e., not your employer’s network).

* Always work during your personal time (i.e., not during hours your employer expects you to be working for them).

Another benefit of keeping your business secret is it frees your creativity to consider wilder ideas. You might be worried about your friends and family being aware of what your new venture is. You might fear damage to your personal reputation if a crazy business idea fails.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve spun up and quickly tested dozens of ideas for new businesses. No one knows about those dozens of failures. Well, I do, of course. But, I could lick my wounds and sunset the idea without people constantly asking me, “What happened to that new business you started?”

In the end, you know yourself and you know what business ideas you’re considering. You’ll have to decide if you’re ready to build in public — with its pros and cons — or if you should keep your business a secret for now (or maybe forever).

“And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.”— Jonathan Ive

Feel free to share this article with a solopreneurial friend!

Hi, I’m Larry Cornett, a coach who can work with you 1-on-1 to design, launch, and optimize your business. You might also be interested in my “Employee to Solopreneur” workshop (coming soon). I currently live in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with my wife and our Great Dane while running my businesses 100% remotely.

If you’re a solopreneur like me, it’s easy to put your head down and work for long hours without a break. But, it’s not the healthiest to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen all day. So, I’ve been sharing my workouts every day to help keep myself accountable. You’re welcome to comment and talk about what you’re doing to stay active!

"My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead he got a safe job as an accountant. All of that fell apart when my dad lost his job and the family fell on hard times. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love." — Jim Carrey

Even the tech industry is not immune to the layoff contagion this time around. 344 tech companies have already laid off 103,767 employees in 2023. In 2022, there were 1,535 layoffs at tech companies with 241,176 people impacted.

I have several friends, clients, and acquaintances who have lost their jobs in the past 14 months. Some of them felt safe because they worked in a hot industry that seemed to be growing. Sure, there was some growth, but there was also a lot of over-hiring. Some of them also felt safe because they worked in large corporations that had dodged the economic troubles so many smaller companies and startups faced in 2020.

However, the truth is no one’s job is ever “safe.” Heck, “having a job” is never safe. Your source of income is never safe when you work for a company that can eliminate your job in an instant when it needs to make the numbers work.

I hope we’ve all learned a lesson from this. No industry is a safe haven. Big companies are no longer better than smaller companies when it comes to employment security.

Leaving your fate in the hands of an employer is always risky. I know that many of us do it. Look at me, I did it for decades. It’s how most of us are raised and educated. Your goal is to get a great job and climb the ladder to higher success.

But what if job security is no longer guaranteed?

What if you hate your job so much that you can’t stand going to work every Monday morning?

What if you do everything you were supposed to do, work hard for an employer that makes you miserable, and you still lose your job and need to scramble to find a way to pay your bills?

What a kick in the teeth!

I don’t know about you, but I always hated wasting my precious time working on meaningless projects. I hated working for someone who was a lousy boss and a terrible leader. I hated watching the company make bad decision after bad decision, knowing we’d all have to suck it up and deal with their incompetence later.

That’s what you do as an employee. Unless you’re a C-level executive making the decisions, you don’t have much of a choice. If you don’t like it, you have to leave and find a new job with a new employer. You have to hope you find one that is more competent!

Or, if you’re anything like me, you finally reach a breaking point. You decide that enough is enough, and it’s time to bet on the one person you can always count on no matter what:

YOU

Things you can’t control

When you work for someone else, so many things are out of your control. I remember my employees being frustrated that their performance targets and bonuses were tied to factors beyond their control. They knew that a lot of things could go wrong — despite their hard work and best efforts — and their income would take a hit.

These factors can also take a company down, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I have a few clients who went to work for a hot company and received stock options that made their total compensation pretty darn sweet. But, the company made some bad strategic decisions and now their total comp is less than they were making at a previous job. It sucks, but there’s not a darn thing you can do about it.

Corporate culture

It takes several years to change corporate culture. So, if you’re working in a toxic environment and hoping it will get better, good luck. As an individual, you are not in control of fixing a corporate culture. Even if you can start moving it in a better direction, it’s going to take time. A long time.

Executive actions

You cannot control what your executives say or do. I think we can all remember times when a CEO said or did something that made their company’s stock take a tumble. In some cases, it never recovered. Through no fault of your own, you will financially suffer if your executives say or do something stupid.

Corporate strategy

Unless you’re a C-level executive or board member, I’m guessing you don’t have much control over the corporate strategy of your employer. When the strategy is sound, times are good. But, when the strategy is flawed, there’s not much you can do about it as an employee.

Corporate plans

Similarly, the execs and board create a lot of plans that the lower-level employees have to live with. When I was a junior employee, I assumed that senior executives must be so wise and experienced that they knew what they were doing. But, the higher I climbed the corporate ladder, the more I saw “how the sausage was made.” The more you know, the more worried you get about the plans they are making, but there’s not much you can do to change those plans.

Corporate investment

I remember when my team knew we needed to make an investment in infrastructure and talent. Even though our business unit brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, we weren’t allowed to invest it in the way we knew we must to remain competitive and generate even more revenue. The C-level execs vetoed our plan and slowly killed our organization over the next few years.

Corporate spending

As an employee, you have very little control over corporate spending (unless you’re the CFO). If the company is burning cash too quickly, there isn’t much you can do about it. Guess what happens when companies are in financial trouble and need to reduce expenses quickly? That’s right. Layoffs.

Your manager

Now, I do coach my career clients to do everything they can to choose their manager when seeking a new job. A great manager will do wonders for your career. A terrible manager can tank it. But most folks don’t get to select their manager. Companies have too many re-orgs for you to stay in control of that. There were times when I was working for an amazing boss. Unfortunately, it didn’t last forever. The company would have a re-org or my boss would decide to leave for a better opportunity. I certainly didn’t get to choose my new boss. That was out of my control (and didn’t end well).

Your management chain

Likewise, you aren’t in control of the leaders in your management chain. You might have a good direct manager, but the leaders above them aren’t so good. The higher they are, the more power they have and the more miserable they can make your life.

Your coworkers

If you interview candidates, you may have some say in a few people who join your organization. But, for the most part, you do not get to choose your coworkers. Sometimes they’re great, but sometimes a few are pretty toxic or downright incompetent.

Team competence

We’ve all worked on teams before. I’m sure you have memories of those experiences. You’re probably working with a team right now. The competence of your fellow teammates can be 100% excellent (rare), average to pretty good (more common), or quite bad (it happens). Work sucks when your colleagues aren’t very good at what they do.

Team effort

Similarly, some people work harder than others. That’s reality, and there’s not much you can do about it if you’re an employee (not the manager). Folks might be competent, but they don’t like working as hard as you do. Now, your overall performance — and odds of success — are dragged down by your lowest-performing members.

Execution velocity

One thing that many corporate employees complain about is slow execution. If you’ve ever worked for a startup or smaller company, the change in execution velocity at a large corporation probably drives you crazy. Why do things take so long? Well, there’s nothing like having “too many cooks in the kitchen” to drag a project to its knees.

Decision making

I founded my own tech startup several years ago and worked with cofounders and employees. My head of Design literally sat right next to me in our tiny office. He’d create a new design for one of our app screens and say, “Hey, Larry. Can you take a look at this and let me know what you think?” I’d roll over, review the design, and say, “Looks great! Push it to the engineers.” One day, he said, “You know, this is the fastest decision-making I’ve ever had in my working life. I love it!” But, when you work for someone else in a larger company, good luck with that. Decisions have to flow through so many layers that they take forever.

Market conditions

Of course, no one can control market conditions. But, you should be able to control how you respond to changes in those conditions. And, you should be able to quickly adjust your strategies and plans when necessary. Well, that’s not in your control when you work for a larger employer. You’ll see what’s happening in the market, you’ll know what changes should be made, and you’ll be incredibly frustrated to see the decision to make those changes take forever (or never happen).

Competitors

Likewise, no one can control the actions of their competitors. But, you should be in control of how you deal with what you’re competitors are doing. Unfortunately, when you work for an employer, that’s not your call. You’ll have to wait and see what the leadership decides to do (if anything). We all know several companies that failed to respond to competition quickly enough, which led to their demise (e.g., Blockbuster).

The economy

Finally, no one can control the economy (or can they 😂)? But, again, you should have control over how you respond to economic changes. Smaller companies (and solopreneurs) were able to pivot quickly and survive during the quarantines a couple of years ago. Larger companies struggled to adapt, and there wasn’t much their employees could do to take control of the situation. Heck, that’s even happening now with the current economic uncertainty, hence the layoffs.

Things you can control

I bet you can see why I love running a solopreneur business so much now. My corporate experiences left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. As a solopreneur, you have complete ownership of your decisions and actions. No one can slow you down. No one can stop you from doing what you know needs to be done.

Your strategy

It’s a huge responsibility, but you are in full control of your business strategy as a solopreneur.

Your plans

You are in control of the plans you create to execute your most excellent strategy.

Your preparation

You decide how much preparation (e.g., research, designing, building) is required before you launch your service or start selling your products.

Your time and effort

You control how much time, energy, and effort you put into your business (e.g., I love working hard on my own business). The harder you work, the better your business will do.

Your velocity

You can move as quickly as you want when executing your vision for your business.

Your decision making

You are the top decision-maker, which can be a little scary sometimes but is also incredibly empowering.

Your custom team

You’re not stuck with coworkers you didn’t hire. You can choose who you want to hire (e.g., contractors, consultants, vendors) or partner with to make your business successful.

Your response to competitors

You are in control of how and how quickly you respond to moves by your competitors.

Your response to market conditions

You can respond quickly to changes in market conditions and do what’s necessary to survive and thrive.

Your response to economic changes

Similarly, you can respond quickly to economic changes to adapt and keep your business running (e.g., reducing your own salary, expenses, etc.).

Your investments

It’s so amazing to get to invest in what you know your business needs most (e.g., software, training, marketing, advertising, product development, equipment) without some higher-up telling you, “No.”

Your spending

Finally, you control your budget and can dial spending up (e.g., when times are good) or down (e.g., you lose some clients) as needed. It’s your call.

Whew! That’s a whole lot of things that are in your control when you run your own business. But, that’s what it means to “bet on yourself.” You are willing to take on the responsibility because you want to be in control of your future and not subject to the whims of an employer (who may or may not be competent).

I know it’s not easy to leave a steady paycheck. The good news is, you don’t need to leap straight from employment to unemployment and hope that your business ideas will work out.

You can ease into testing the waters. You can also build a business that leverages your years of experience. Once you see that it’s all working well, you’ll feel more confident about quitting that job that’s making you unhappy.

I quit my $500k career

My total compensation was over $500K/year when I left the corporate world in 2010. For some people, that seems like a crazy amount of income. I can tell you that my younger self never imagined earning that much.

For other folks, that’s a pitiful amount of money. I know that many of my tech friends are earning millions in total comp these days. I also know that many of them are very unhappy with their jobs.

I was pretty unhappy, too. So, I walked away from that executive salary and the Bay Area lifestyle. What’s the point of making great money and having a fancy home if you’re miserable and rarely get to enjoy any of it, anyway?

I took a nice long vacation with my family. I did some consulting to get income flowing back into my bank account. I entertained the idea of going back to a 9-5 job. But, the longer I stayed away, the less I wanted to return to the corporate world.

I was tired of trying to change toxic corporate cultures, forcing myself to endure toxic bosses, and working on projects that were pretty meaningless in the big picture of life.

Finally, I decided to bet on myself. I would create the kind of company I wanted. I would build a business around work that made me feel good about what I do.

How I stayed away

I haven’t had a boss for almost 13 years now. I never did go back to a 9-5 job. I may not be the next big multimillionaire, but I’m so much happier and healthier than I was before.

I created Invincible Solopreneurs to help others take a similar journey. There are plenty of entrepreneurial consultants who will promise you riches. They tell you that you’ll be making six figures in two months. They dangle wealth in front of you and hint that becoming a billionaire is not out of reach. Yeah, sure.

If you want to get rich, find one of those consultants. I will never promise you that you’ll become rich by following my system. Instead, I want you to have enough. I want you to be able to comfortably support yourself and your loved ones, but not hate your life every day. I want you to be happy, healthy, and successful enough.

"I want to be the most successful person no one knows." — My rather successful anonymous friend

Some people call that a “lifestyle business.” I prefer to think of it as keeping everything in balance and knowing what matters most in life: happiness, health, and love. You do need enough money to feel secure. But, the pursuit of excess wealth will always risk your happiness, health, and love. Just take a look at the lives of the few billionaires on this planet (e.g., Musk, Bezos).

Obviously, I go into more detail about this in my coaching and workshops. But at a high level, here is how I’ve managed to run my own business and stay free for 13 years.

* I love working hard on something I believe in.

* My work gives me purpose and keeps me going.

* I radically reduced my expenses.

* I’m not shy about marketing myself and my businesses.

* I explore new ideas constantly.

* I pivot when I need to make a change.

* I slowly expand and diversify.

* I keep adding new revenue streams.

* I focus on scalable activities and income (this is essential).

I feel grateful for this life I’ve built. I’m glad that I finally learned that “having enough” and being happy with that is the secret to breaking free and owning your future.

Are you ready to take control of your destiny?

Reach for the moon, but…

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” ― Norman Vincent Peale

I love dreaming big, and I think you should, too. But don’t miss a chance to live an excellent life because you refuse to settle for anything less than your vision of financial perfection.

I encourage you to be pragmatic enough to build a business that pays your bills, even if you dream of creating an empire. Bet on yourself, but don’t gamble away your freedom and future with crazy investments and ventures.

We’ve all heard stories about people who lost their life savings with risky business ventures, real estate investments, crypto schemes, etc. They wanted the big prize so badly that they were willing to risk it all. So they did, and they lost it all.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with building a lifestyle business. My business is exactly that. I earn enough to support my family and feel secure. I’m not crazy rich, but I don’t care.

Do you know why? Because I have what I always wanted. I now have things that I did not have when I made way more money. My solopreneur business gives me:

* Autonomy and freedom

* Ownership of my time

* More time with my family

* Time to exercise

* Less stress, anxiety, and frustration

* More happiness, purpose, and fulfillment

Now, don’t get me wrong. I still have big dreams. I spend 30-60 minutes every morning exploring new business ideas, models, and plans to continue growing my entrepreneurial kingdom.

It’s in my nature. I can’t help it!

However, I am so grateful for what I already have. I wake up every morning and feel happy that I get to work for myself instead of facing a boss every day.

Bet on yourself

Hey, if you’re reasonably smart, talented, ambitious, self-motivated, and a good decision-maker, you should be working for yourself. You’ll do well!

You’ll be able to build a business that generates a profit and responds quickly to changes to remain successful. If you’re reading this newsletter, I know you’re going to be frustrated working for anyone else.

You can tolerate it for a few years. Most of us do. But, you’re going to become increasingly irritated by the incompetence around you and long to break free one day.

If you’re going to bet on someone, bet on yourself.

Share this with a friend who needs some encouragement to bet on themselves!

Hi, I’m Larry Cornett, a coach who can work with you 1-on-1 to design, launch, and optimize your business. You might also be interested in my “Employee to Solopreneur” workshop (coming soon). I currently live in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with my wife and our Great Dane while running my businesses 100% remotely.

One thing I love about working for myself is that I can make time for exercise every day (it has probably saved my life). If you don’t know me, I’ve become a bit of a fitness fanatic over the past 14 years and share many of my workouts on Instagram for accountability.

One of my author friends recently announced:

“Well, it finally happened. I’m making more money from my books than I do in my day job. I guess it’s time to quit and go all in on my writing!”

Ok, I’ll admit that I felt a brief twinge of jealousy before congratulating them. Writing fiction for a living was — and probably still is — my vision of an ideal job and lifestyle. I wanted the independence, freedom, and flexibility of deciding how I spent my days, when I scheduled working sessions, and where I spent that time writing (I always pictured a cabin in the woods). I had always admired my favorite childhood authors and dreamed of being like them one day.

However, my life went down a different path.

* I thought I had to study engineering in college to have a “respectable career” later.

* But I didn’t enjoy it.

* Then, I changed majors and graduated with a degree in Psychology.

* But I couldn’t find a good job.

* Went to graduate school, focused on human-computer interaction, and got my Ph.D.

* So, I began a successful career in the Silicon Valley tech industry.

* Woke up about 20 years later and realized I was unhappy, unhealthy, and unfulfilled.

* So, I left my tech career behind and started my own business as a coach and consultant.

Making a living doing more of what you love and less of what you hate is possible. I have friends who are doing it, and I have been doing it for over 12 years now.

I’m finally enjoying what I do for a living, working with great people, owning my schedule, deciding where I work, living where I want to live, taking care of my health, and just generally happy with my life!

Now, I’m finally coming full circle and returning to writing, too. I’m even working on some fiction. Who knows? Writing might be my “3rd Act career” (after I actually retire).

Of course, I’m not saying that everything is blissful and easy. Work is still work! I work hard, and I wouldn’t say that running my business is easy. But the big difference is: I don’t hate it! There are many days that I truly love what I do. And I’m seriously addicted to the freedom it gives me.

I’m not part of the camp that believes you must follow your passion to be happy with your work. But I’m also not part of the crowd that gives up and says, “Hey, work sucks. That’s reality. Just find a job to pay the bills and enjoy your life on the weekends.”

No thank you!

Life is too short to only enjoy your weekends, live with dread every Sunday evening, and feel depressed when you start work on Monday morning. Why should you spend every Monday through Friday doing something you don’t enjoy?

It may not be easy to find a way to make a living doing more of what you love and less of what you hate. But it is possible, and it is worth it!

My author friend is now doing it.

As I said, I’m doing it.

And you can make it happen, too.

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Imagine a different future

What if you no longer had a boss telling you what to do?

What if you could start doing more of what you love to make a living?

Can you imagine a life where you no longer have to do things you dislike to get paid?

When we need money from someone else, we get stuck in a bad dynamic. We can’t say “No” when we’re afraid of losing our jobs. That’s especially true during tough economic times like right now.

For many years, I was chasing titles and income. But, the more money I made, the more our lifestyle expenses grew. Gotta love that Silicon Valley "keeping up with the Joneses" life.

So, I felt trapped. I was stuck.

I had to keep my job, keep making money, and put up with a life that was making me miserable so we could pay our mortgage, cover our expenses, and take care of my family. My health wasn’t the greatest, my stress and anxiety were at an all-time high, and things weren’t getting better, so I knew something had to give.

We finally said enough of that and drastically downsized. We sold our house in the Bay Area, moved somewhere we love, and live more simply. I could support my family on my solopreneur business income because we pushed our burn rate line (i.e., our monthly expenses) below my income line.

I was free. I never had to return to a 9-5 job again.

So, now I get to spend my days writing (which I love), podcasting (which I love), and working with great clients (whom I love spending time with).

And I spend several hours every day with my family, working out, going for walks and runs, skiing, etc.

I haven't had to do anything I hate for work in over 12 years. It’s a pretty amazing feeling!

Now, I want you to imagine your ideal future.

* What could your life be like if you loved the work you do?

* Where would you live if you no longer had an employer?

* How would you spend your days if you were in complete control of your time?

* What would you do with the time you recovered from eliminating a daily commute?

* With whom would you spend your time if you no longer had to spend your days with a boss and coworkers?

Create a vision board if it helps you see it more clearly. Creating a vision for your ideal future isn’t a waste of time or some fantasy exercise. When you set your intention, you set things in motion. You will see new opportunities that you would have missed before.

Once you have a clear vision for what you want your working and personal life to be, go deeper:

* Create goals.

* Make a plan.

* Set a timeline for making it happen.

* Build an annual and monthly roadmap for the work you need to do.

Change your daily and weekly habits to chip away at the roadmap to make your vision become a reality.

Write your love/hate lists

If you already know exactly what it is you’d rather be doing, great! You have an idea for your business. Now, you just need a strategy and a plan to execute it.

However, if you’re not sure what it means to “do more of what you love and less of what you hate,” it’s time to create lists of activities to make it clear. I often have my career clients do this exercise when they want to find a much better job or change careers entirely. But the ultimate career change is building your own business and having the opportunity to define your own job!

As you go about your day for the next few weeks, pay attention to your work and life activities, and start capturing the following lists:

* What do you notice that you are good at doing? You already have the talent, skills, knowledge, and experience required to excel at these tasks.

* What do you not seem to do very well? Note: this could be because you haven’t really learned how to do them, you need more experience, or perhaps you don’t actually enjoy the tasks or care about the work.

* What do you seem to enjoy doing? Note: you may find yourself repeating some items from lists 1 and 2 here, and that’s ok. There’s a difference between how well you do something and how much you like doing it.

* What do you hate doing and never want to do again? Pay special attention to this list. These are tasks and activities you want to eliminate from your working life.

* What do you wish you could start doing (or do more of)? This is aspirational. What have you always dreamed of spending more time doing in your working life?

By the end of the next few weeks (e.g., 2-4 weeks), you should have some pretty long lists of tasks and activities that you love and hate. If any of the items are high-level or vague, try to break them down into more specific details.

For example, I’ve had clients tell me, “They love design.” But what does that mean? What do they mean by “design”?

I asked them to break down the high-level topic of design into more detailed subtasks and activities, so we could be clear about what they loved about the process. As we did this, we discovered that they loved some parts of design (e.g., brainstorming, collaborative whiteboard sessions, and prototyping) but really disliked other design activities (e.g., creating mockups for all use cases, writing detailed design specifications, generating endless revisions).

Your lists can now be used to define your “ideal job.” As a solopreneur, you get to build the business of your dreams and your role within that business. This is your opportunity to write your own job description and fill it with the responsibilities you enjoy, the activities you love, and the work you’re great at doing!

Describe your ideal job

Let’s have some fun with this. I usually ask aspiring entrepreneurs to:

* Describe their ideal customers.

* Capture the problems those customers are having.

* Create a solution for those problems.

* Define their ideal business.

* Create a profitable business model and plan.

* Etc.

But I want to approach this exercise from a different angle.

If you could write a perfect job description that lets you do the work you’re great at doing and love doing but none of the work you hate, what would that look like? How would you start your morning? How would you spend your days? What is your ideal work schedule for the week?

Once you have this job description, let’s talk about how this person would get paid (this person is you, by the way 😉).

* Who needs the work this person can perform?

* Who would pay for it?

* How much would they pay for it?

* How could they up-level the value delivered and get paid even more?

I saw a recent conversation about two solopreneurs who had similar businesses but approached their product and service offerings very differently.

* One only provided 1-on-1 consulting services and was making about $70K/year. There was a hard limit on how many clients they could take on, with only 24 hours a day and seven days in a week.

* The other solopreneur did some 1-on-1 consulting too, but also sold self-serve access to digital downloads and systems that let customers leverage that solopreneur’s knowledge to solve their own problems. Since this was scalable, the second entrepreneur was making about $350K/year.

The point of sharing this story is I want you to be creative with your ideal job description. Don’t artificially limit yourself to the way your work was performed in the past for an employer. This is your chance to set yourself free and work how you want, when you want, where you want, and with whom you want.

You get to call the shots!

Test, scale, and set yourself free

You’ll notice that my author friend didn’t quit their day job until it was obvious they could make a living from their books. They wrote a little in the morning before work, wrote some more in the evenings, and carved out a few hours for dedicated writing time on the weekends.

It took about four years of writing on the side, building up their list of books for sale, testing and improving their marketing, and watching their income slowly but surely increase.

* Four years of hard work.

* Four years of patience.

* Four years of loving the work of writing, though.

It was worth it for them because they love publishing books! They could see the light at the end of the tunnel: the day they could quit a job they hated and make a living doing what they wanted to be doing instead.

Making a living as a writer isn’t a slam dunk for 99% of authors. That business is a different beast than the path most of us solopreneurs take. If you follow my model of turning your ideal job description into a business plan, your path to profitability should be much shorter.

As I’ve shared before, my first solopreneur business replaced my 9-5 job income almost immediately. I launched my little design agency in about a day after my layoff, started working for my first client right away, and invoiced them about two weeks later. So, I had enough money in the bank to support my family in that first month of business vs. my writing friend, who had to wait almost four years.

You can design and test your business model while you’re still employed (of course, check your employment agreement and local laws). That’s the safest approach. You’re essentially using your current paycheck to fund your solopreneurial exploration. You are your own investor!

Finding real customers will help you validate if what you offer provides enough value for them to purchase it. Once you have happy customers, repeat business, and you know it’s working, it’s time to start scaling your business to increase that income stream.

When you’re making enough that you know you could make a living if you were running your business full-time, you’re ready to cut ties with your old job and set yourself free!

I can’t even begin to describe how much better work will feel when you control what you do (or don’t do), the clients you accept, and how you spend your days. Life is just better when you enjoy how you make a living!

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I am planning a live workshop to dive into the details of designing and launching a solopreneur business. It will be an interactive session, so you can get your questions answered. Let me know if you’re interested!

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor. If you’re interested in starting your own business or side hustle someday (or accelerating an existing one), check out his “Employee to Solopreneur” workshop and community (launching soon).

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice to help others take complete control of their work and life. He’s also on Mastodon.

Can you give me a little feedback?

I’ve been planning an upcoming 2-hour workshop for all of you who are interested in solopreneurship. The focus will be on transitioning from a 9-5 job to launching your solopreneur business quickly, easily, and inexpensively.

My goal is to show you how you can define, design, and test a business concept in just a few weeks. I want you to generate revenue as soon as possible. A steady stream of income from your business will give you the confidence you need to leave your job someday and say goodbye to your boss forever.

I want to focus on the core essentials you need to create a simple and effective business based on what you already know and can do well. I will not overload the 2-hour session because I don’t want to overwhelm anyone.

I’m always here, and my solopreneur community will always be available later for people who want to keep engaging, learning more, and getting feedback as they build and grow their businesses. So, starting with the basics is okay since we can expand on specific details and more advanced topics later.

My questions for you are below. You can also leave a comment with more details about what you’d like to see in a workshop like this.

Subscribe to receive updates in your inbox!

Workshop format

I’ve attended “Talking Head” workshops before (i.e., pure lecture format with an instructor). They were ok, and I did learn new things. But, I’ve always preferred more active workshops when we made time for discussions and Q&A.

So, I want you to engage, talk with me and others, and ask questions. That’s why I’m planning this as a workshop instead of a webinar or live lecture.

How do you feel about that? What’s your preferred format?

Ok, now let’s review the proposed agenda. I would love to get your feedback on this, too.

Rough agenda

In the podcast audio for this newsletter, I go into more detail about each of these agenda items. So, scroll up and hit play if you’re interested in hearing more about them.

* Transforming your current expertise into a business model and plan.

* Breakout session: What is your business concept?

* Building the simplest website possible.

* Qualifying interested leads with discovery calls.

* Writing proposals for potential clients.

* Breakout session: Service models and pricing strategies.

* Setting up your purchase and payment flows.

* Writing consulting agreements and contracts.

* Working with your customers to deliver value.

* Asking for testimonials and referrals.

There will be some time at the end for Q&A with me, too.

* What’s missing from the agenda?

* What would you like me to include?

* Is there anything you’d like me to remove?

* What changes would you want to see with the agenda?

Let me know in the comments. I really do want to make this workshop useful and valuable, so please share your thoughts.

More thoughts

I’m considering offering a few options for the workshop:

* Workshop only.

* Workshop + an hour of 1-on-1 business coaching with me.

* Workshop + monthly membership in my Solopreneur community.

* Workshop + lifetime membership in my Solopreneur community.

What are your thoughts on these options? Which ones do you find most interesting?

Note: the community membership would also give you access to workshop replays, discounts on future workshops on other topics, and free sessions with various domain experts (e.g., podcasting, newsletters, sales, marketing, etc.).

Thank you for taking the time to respond! I appreciate it. 🙂

Your input and feedback will help me create a better workshop that meets your needs. I’m looking forward to it!

By the way, do you have a friend who might be interested in this workshop, too? Please feel free to share this article with them. Thanks!

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor. If you’re interested in starting your own business or side hustle someday (or accelerating an existing one), check out his “Employee to Solopreneur” workshop and community (launching soon).

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice to help others take complete control of their work and life. He’s also on Mastodon (it’s better than Twitter 😉).

Losing your job can feel like the end of the world. That’s especially true in a tight job market like the one we are experiencing right now. Several thousand people in tech have been laid off in the last few months, and more layoffs are coming.

I’ve been through it before, and I can tell you it’s a frightening feeling. It’s downright terrifying if you’ve been living at the edge of your income without a significant financial cushion to tide you over until you land your next job. Unfortunately, it is taking people much longer to find one now.

Here’s some data from a recent Harris poll:

* 71% of those looking say the job search is more complicated than expected (it often is).

* 63% say they’ve searched for a new job for over 6 months.

* 48% report applying to over 50 positions (I know someone who applied for 100 positions before finding a job). 

* 72% of job seekers say that companies are acting like they don’t want to hire anyone (e.g., slow response times, canceling interviews, ghosting people).

Now, you could keep interviewing and hoping your next job is right around the corner, week after week and month after month. Or you could take advantage of this push “out of the nest” and turn lemons into lemonade (I’m mixing my metaphors a bit). Quickly launch a solopreneur business, start talking with potential clients, and get some income flowing in right now while you’re interviewing for a full-time position.

“When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

― Alexander Graham Bell

* You might discover that your new business can support you, so finding a new job is suddenly not a burning necessity.

* You may also realize you’re tired of leaving your career and life stability in the hands of an employer who can abruptly eliminate your job when the company needs to cut expenses.

* You may enjoy being independent so much that you actually don’t want to return to a 9-5 job.

* Finally, you might be surprised by how much you grow when you leave the comfort zone of a job that narrowly defines what you can and cannot do.

This has happened to me a couple of times during my career. I started my first solopreneur business in Silicon Valley right after my first layoff. I built it in less than a day, and it doubled my annual income from what I had been earning from an earlier employer. I talked about that in this article.

I started my second solopreneur business when I left my last corporate job over 12 years ago. Originally, I had only intended to do some consulting while I was looking for my next leadership role. But, as the months went by, I decided to stop interviewing for full-time jobs. As the years went by, I realized I was never going back to the 9-5 world. The freedom is addictive, and I simply can’t give it up to be put back into an employee box.

If you’ve lost your job, I’m not saying you must give up searching for a new one. It is nice to have an employment option in your back pocket, just in case your new business isn’t quite meeting your financial needs.

However, if you’re reading this and subscribed to Invincible Solopreneurs, escaping the 9-5 is what you want, anyway. Right? In an ideal world, you would rather not be working for someone else. But you’ve probably been reluctant to make the big leap and go all in on your business.

Well, now’s your chance. If you’ve already lost your job, this is your opportunity to see if you can make a go of it on your own. If you can give it a few months, be patient with fully replacing your previous income as an employee. It takes a little time.

* With my first business, I was lucky enough to land a full-time client immediately and replace my income completely.

* With my second business, I landed a retained client within a week or so. It didn't fully replace my income, but it was enough to support my family.

* With my current business, it took about 6 months to generate a decent revenue flow. I didn’t feel comfortable with my sales pipeline for about a year, so I had to be more patient.

If you can’t seem to make it work this time, there’s no shame in returning to an employer. I have several friends who flow back and forth between jobs and running their own businesses. Work is more elastic than we think, or at least how I used to think.

Ok. Let’s talk about what it takes to spin up a business and start making some money from it. The good news is that this process is way faster and much easier for a solopreneur vs. an entrepreneur who needs to secure funding, hire employees, find office space, etc.

I previously wrote about starting a business in 30 days, but that assumes you have a job and can build your business in parallel while you feel secure with your employment income. But, if you’re out of work, you need revenue ASAP.

The focus is different. The timeline is tighter. You don’t have much time to explore and experiment. You need to get your solopreneurial business up and running as quickly as possible and land clients to get some income flowing. Here are 10 steps to making that happen.

1. Define a simple business model

Time is of the essence, so you can’t spend months defining your new business, exploring various products and services, and testing ideas. If you already have a product or service unrelated to your old job, great! But, if you don’t, I highly recommend you use your old job description to define your new business model and the services you provide.

Your pricing model can be based on factors such as:

* Your desired annual salary.

* What you think your billable hours will be (don’t forget to account for vacations, holidays, etc.).

* What competitors typically charge.

* What a fully-loaded employee would cost a potential client to do what you do (e.g., base salary, bonuses, stock options, insurance, other benefits, equipment, software, office space, etc.).

* A high end of your range that you think you deserve based on value delivered.

* A low end of what you need to survive (i.e., it’s not even worth your time if you can’t get paid this rate).

* Your estimated total expenses to run the business.

* Your profit margin (e.g., 20%) that you will use to reinvest in growing your business.

* How you want to sell your goods or services (e.g., hourly, project-based, monthly retainer, packages, etc.).

Don’t worry about creating the perfect business model and pricing right now. You can course-correct and improve things later. As you serve more happy customers, gain experience, improve your offering, and feel more confident, you can raise your prices appropriately.

2. Update LinkedIn with your new business

I often recommend to my career coaching clients they add a consulting business to their LinkedIn Experience section (with no end date). Doing this eliminates any employment gaps, plus it can be a nice source of side hustle income.

Since you’re actually launching your new business, update your LinkedIn to list it and include a few bullet points about the services you provide (or goods sold). Time is of the essence, so don’t worry about coming up with some fancy name, applying for a trademark, etc. Just use your name (e.g., Miller’s Software Consulting) or whatever you want right now. You can come up with a more polished business name later.

LinkedIn also provides a guide to getting started as a service provider. You can create your Service page, add info about your services, and get listed as a provider. I receive new client project requests almost every day from LinkedIn.

3. Put your business out there

Don’t be shy and don’t wait too long. The sooner you launch and get your first client, the sooner you’ll generate revenue. You’ll also learn and improve your business marketing and offers as you get customer feedback.

Believe it or not, I announced one of my new businesses on the day I resigned from my last corporate job. I wasn’t 100% sure what I was going to do with it, but I leaped off the cliff and built my wings on the way down. The story linked below includes the actual blog post I published that day.

You don’t have to have everything figured out ahead of time. And you can change your mind later as you learn more and evolve your business. Nothing is set in stone or permanent. Go and flow!

4. Connect and ask for testimonials

Testimonials are essential for a small business owner. People need to feel like they can trust you and you’ll deliver what you promise.

As a solopreneur, your personal and professional reputation transfers to your business reputation. Using your professional reputation helps you overcome the “cold start” problem every business faces.

Before you leave — or lose — your job, connect with your coworkers on LinkedIn and social media. It’s a lot easier to do this while you’re still connected through work.

If you enjoyed working with some of your colleagues (and managers) and you had a great relationship, ask for a testimonial. They’re called “Recommendations” on LinkedIn, and I suggest you ask for one there. It provides more credibility than text on your website.

5. Engage your network

I’m always talking about using the power of your network to find a new job. Well, your network is also a powerful resource for your business. When you light up your connections, you’ll turn up more opportunities.

A significant number of my clients are people I used to work with in my past corporate jobs. It’s been really cool to keep the connection going and still be helping people with their careers.

I also receive a lot of referrals from past clients, colleagues, friends, and acquaintances in my network. I just recently spoke with someone about her upcoming job interviews and offer negotiations. A mutual friend referred her to me.

Referrals are the lifeblood of any business, but especially for a solopreneurial business running on a lean marketing budget. So, don’t be shy about talking with the folks in your network. Be clear about what you’re doing, what you offer, the clients that benefit the most from your business, etc.

You can keep it fairly casual. Here’s an example:

“Hi Toni! I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m no longer with Cooper and Associates. I recently launched my own accounting practice, and primarily work with small business owners to provide bookkeeping services. If you know of anyone who might benefit from my 12 years of accounting experience, I would appreciate it if you could send them my way. Thank you — and we still need to have that lunch soon (on me)!”

6. Find your circle of advisors

Your employed friends are going to say you’re crazy to leave the security of having a job (which is funny if you’ve just been laid off or fired). Some will actively discourage you and try to scare you back into the arms of an employer.

In the best case, your employed friends simply won’t understand what you’re doing because they aren’t experiencing it. They can’t give you advice, commiserate, or fully support your endeavor since they aren’t walking the same walk.

One of the most valuable segments of my network is my circle of self-employed friends. They were the ones who helped me when I launched my first business. They’re the people I could turn to when I had questions, faced issues, doubted myself, and was struggling.

So, create your trusted circle of solopreneurial advisors. If you can’t make one, join one. That’s the point of this newsletter and my Invincible Solopreneurs community.

* Meet regularly.

* Share your issues.

* Ask for feedback.

* Get advice.

* Receive and provide support and encouragement.

* Return your value to the group, too.

You don’t have to do this alone!

7. Create an online presence

I shared a lot of details about domains and website hosting in the past article. When you have the time, you should definitely invest in a decent website to promote your business (note: decent doesn’t mean expensive).

However, when you’re in a hurry to get your business up and running, keep it simple and move fast. For example:

* Set up a free one-page website on Carrd.

* Publish a free website using Wordpress.com.

* Use Substack to create a free website and get a free newsletter and podcasting hosting with it!

Basically, you just need a site to describe your business, its goods and services, and a way to sell, take payments, schedule time with you, etc. Speaking of payments…

8. Set up payments

Getting paid is the whole point of launching your business and making enough money to support yourself. When I first started a business, I had to mess around with invoicing and waiting weeks (or months) to get paid for the consulting work I provided.

Now, I prefer to sell my services up front, which ensures you get paid and are not left hanging later (e.g., some of my old startup clients went bankrupt before they paid my final invoices). People can retain me for monthly coaching engagements, purchase coaching calls, and subscribe to premium experiences and communities.

Some easy ways to get paid online:

* Venmo - 1.9% + $0.10

* Stripe - 2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge

* Paypal - 2.99% to receive money for goods and services

* Gumroad - 2.9% to 9%

+30¢ on each transaction

* Bank transfers - Fees vary

9. Set up your social media

Over the years, I’ve changed my mind about social media. I used to set up new social media accounts for every new business I launched. But, you know what? People don’t enjoy following most businesses on social media.

As a solopreneur, you are the business. Now, I simply talk about what I do and offer my thoughts on social media from my personal accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. I link to my newsletters, free coaching calls, and services.

I post a mix of personal and professional stuff, which may turn some people away. So be it. I’m a solopreneur, so the lines between my personal and professional lives are a bit blurred. But it gets way more engagement than my business social media accounts ever did.

10. Market consistently

Most small business owners suck at marketing. When I first started running a business, I didn’t like to do it. It felt strange. I guess it was because I had always relied on a sales and marketing team when I was an employee.

However, as a solopreneur, it’s all you! I would say I spend most of my time doing some sort of marketing and lead development. Some of it is active (e.g., engaging with people online), and some of it is “passive” through content marketing that I published years ago.

People need to know that you exist! They need to know what your business offers and how you can help them. People can’t hire you if they don’t know who you are, what you do, and why it matters to them.

* How can you improve their lives?

* How will you solve their pain?

You must keep your sales pipeline full. Too many small business owners market and sell in bursts of activity. They land clients, start working on projects with them, and ignore their marketing and sales until they need a new client. But it takes a while to spin things up again, which causes a gap in your revenue stream.

Find ways to scale and automate so you can handle more clients. If you truly have overflow and can’t serve everyone, consider partnering with another solopreneur, hiring contractors, or sending referrals. We all send business to each other, which is one of the additional benefits of maintaining a circle of trusted business peers.

Bonus: Have some fun!

Losing a job is never enjoyable. But look for the silver lining in this push to finally do your own thing and never work for a boss again.

This is your chance to build a business around your life instead of living your life around your job. Losing a job and launching your new business is your opportunity to:

* Do more of the work you love (and less of what you hate).

* Work with the people you enjoy spending time with.

* Set your own working hours.

* Own your calendar and how you spend your days.

* Work as much — or as little — as you want.

* Get paid what you’re worth.

* Work where you want.

* Work how you want.

I know this article is just the tip of the iceberg of what it takes to launch and run a business. But that’s why I created the newsletter and community.

I’m a solopreneur too, and have been running my most recent business for over 6 years now! We’re on this journey together. Don’t be shy about reaching out to talk with me.

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor. If you’re interested in starting your own business or side hustle someday (or accelerating an existing one), check out his “Employee to Solopreneur” course (launching later this year).

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice to help others take complete control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

You wouldn’t think that a late frost could kill your business. But, if you’re a small farmer, that’s precisely what can happen. I grew up in the Midwest, so I know how much the weather can make or break a harvest, and farmers often walk a thin line of profitability. 

After 30 years of living in cities, my wife and I finally made our way back to a rural lifestyle. We now live in an area that is known for its fruit orchards. Unfortunately, we had a late cold snap in the Spring, and snow eliminated most of the apple crop. 

Some orchards closed their doors for the season, which is when most make all of their income for the year. I don’t know what will happen to them. But others diversified and are doing what’s necessary to survive. 

* One is selling spooky Halloween walks through their forests and orchards. 

* Another transformed its facilities into a small events center, and they just hosted a wedding last weekend. 

* Another farm has hard ciders, wine tasting, and family activities to fall back on since they can’t sell fresh fruit. 

Now, dear reader, I know it is highly unlikely that you are planning to start a farm for your solopreneurial business. But there is still a lesson here for all of us. 

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, and find relevant ways to expand and diversify your business income. 

You should definitely diversify your business portfolio and income sources. But you need to do this the right way, so you don't become fragmented. A bewildering business expansion muddles your brand, confuses customers, and distracts you from your primary focus. 

If the work you do for your business requires your active involvement, bias for alignment amongst your lines of business as you diversify and expand. This will reduce the cognitive load of switching gears. 

For example, I've worked hard to align my coaching practice around common themes that can apply to work, business, and life (e.g., freedom, flexibility, confidence, empowerment). I've also diversified my different practices under the same business umbrella, with scalable and non-scalable business offerings. 

* 1-on-1 coaching

* Group coaching 

* A community

* Courses, workshops, digital downloads 

My other businesses and income sources can be more distant from my core business since they don't require a lot of my active involvement every day or week. For example:

* Rental income 

* Investments

* Residual income from courses 

* Passive income from articles 

Ok, let’s dive into the details of how, when, and why you should diversify your business. But before you can expand, you must build a foundation and reinforce your brand. 

* Establish a foundation 

* Build and expand your brand 

* Diversify for growth 

* Diversify for survival 

* Maximize flexibility and freedom 

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1. Establish a foundation 

Don't fragment your attention and your business focus before you establish a solid foundation. Occasionally, I’ll talk with someone about their business plans, and they describe a full portfolio of goods and services they want to sell to customers. They have plans for expansion before they’ve sold a single product to a customer or provided services to their first client.

Now, it’s ok to have a grand vision for your business and picture what success looks like 10 years from now. That can be inspiring! But you need to create a clear short-term strategy and roadmap to “ship” your first product or provide your first service.

There’s also nothing wrong with imagining a full suite of products and services that your mature business will eventually provide. I do this all the time. I can’t help myself!

However, before you actually begin diversifying your business, establish a solid foundation first. Build your loyal customer base. Consistently sell your first product or service to create a profitable and recurring flow of revenue.

Make sure you have happy customers and a proven, repeatable business model that works well. Once everything is up and running and humming, reach that point of comfort when you feel you have things well under control. Then, start thinking about how you can leverage your strengths, brand, and competitive advantage to explore adjacencies.

Diversification and expansion always come with risks. The closer you can stay to your core foundation and competitive advantages, the greater your chance of success is.

“Before diversifying, managers must think not about what their company does but about what it does better than its competitors.”— Harvard Business Review

For example, I’ve watched a local multigenerational family orchard use this strategy. They spent decades running a farm, selling fruit, and offering various goods based on their harvests (e.g., juices, pies).

* Then they expanded into hard cider.

* Slowly but surely, they remodeled their buildings and increased their income from tourist activities.

* A few years ago, they added a vineyard.

* Last year, they built a nice tasting room with a view of the orchards and vineyards to provide a beautiful tasting and drinking experience for their wines and ciders.

* Now, I can see how they are going to expand this venue to support more events. 

This process has been going on for several decades. They didn’t immediately leap into providing dozens of products, expanding the farm, and going into debt. They leveraged their well-loved family brand and success to build on their solid foundation.

I did this with my coaching, too. I took it slow to test the model, establish my foundation and reputation, and then slowly started adding more services.

* First, I only provided 1-on-1 career coaching, which was my foundation.

* Then, I started offering job search and interview support.

* Then, I built a community and started inviting people into it.

* Then, I created a group coaching program.

* Then, I offered leadership coaching to individuals and corporations.

* Then, I created several DIY courses. 

* Now, I’m expanding into more coaching and communities for solopreneurship and life coaching.

This didn’t happen overnight. I’ve been building and expanding my business slowly for the past six years.

2. Build and expand your brand 

Diversifying too early is a risk before you've built a brand and become known for something. It’s good to place small bets, test ideas, and explore multiple revenue streams. But, you want to envision these explorations as smaller branches feeding off your core business and brand.

Once you've built a core brand, you can carefully and strategically expand. But you still don't want to fragment your brand. Expand in ways that enhance and strengthen your core brand. 

Businesses that got it right: 

* A tax preparer that expanded his brand into more general accounting services for small businesses. 

* Apple created an ecosystem of well-designed hardware devices, software, and a unified app platform.

* A fitness trainer who expanded her business to provide nutrition plans. 

* LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com to create LinkedIn Learning for ongoing professional development.

* A musician who expanded beyond selling his music to provide guitar lessons. 

* A photographer who sold her photos and provided event photography but expanded her business to teach other photographers how to start their own wedding photography businesses. 

Businesses that damaged their brands with confusing fragmentation: 

* Amazon baffled customers (and the industry) with a poorly-designed smartphone that didn’t solve a problem or meet anyone’s needs in a useful way. 

* Similarly, Facebook confused their user base with a bizarre smartphone offering. 

* Google damaged its brand with the massively costly mistake that was Google+ (trying to compete with Facebook). 

Make sure your brand makes sense at the core and your new lines of business seem rational. Talk with your current customers to see what they think of your plans. Ask your circle of advisors for input, too.

3. Diversify for growth 

When is it time to diversify your business for greater growth? Well, it depends. 

* Do you actually want to grow your business? Maybe you're happy with how things are right now. 

* Do you need more income from your business? Is there no way to increase your revenue without offering new products or services?

* Is your business growth limited by your available time every day? Sorry, but you do need to sleep, eat, and have a personal life too. 

* Is your growth limited by how quickly you can create what you sell? Have you hit a ceiling in your production efficiency? 

* Could you scale if you automated more tasks? You could probably automate more than you think. 

* Could you scale if you brought on a partner, hired employees, or outsourced some things? Do you want to do that? 

It is possible to grow a business with one product line or one service offering. But, you may eventually hit a ceiling. 

Diversification allows you to grow your business and offer more products and services. But, as a solopreneur, you have to be careful that you don't spread yourself too thin. 

As a coach, I frequently run into this issue. If I want to grow my business and increase my income, the obvious answer is to take on more clients. But, I quickly hit max capacity. 

I find it becomes challenging to spread my attention beyond ten or so 1-on-1 clients. I can scale myself a bit with my group coaching. But even that has its limits. A group session with over 30 people drifts quickly from discussions to lecture mode. 

So, since I wanted to diversify my business to enable greater growth, I had to embrace asynchronous service models (e.g., office hours in my communities) and more scalable products (e.g., DIY courses, digital downloads, books). 

Over the years, I’ve watched other business owners successfully scale through similar models. Some examples include:

* An artist who sells paintings and handcrafted jewelry but expanded her business by offering one-to-many live watercolor courses, DIY online courses, and a guide to finding your style as an artist. 

* A musician who performs at venues, sells music online, and provides online guitar lessons. 

* A fitness coach who provides 1-on-1 training but also sells nutrition plans and online lifting programs. 

* An engineer who provides development services but also began providing interview coaching to help engineers land jobs at top tech companies.

As I always do, I recommend you take a lean approach to diversifying your business and adding new products or services. You want to make sure there is a “there there” before you invest a lot of time or money in a concept that might not pan out. 

There are a few ways to test your new business concept. 

* Talk with your inner circle of trusted business peers and advisors. 

* Ask your current clients and customers what they think of the idea. 

* Test the idea with some potential clients during sales calls. 

* Create a sign-up form for early access and beta testing a new product or service. 

* If you feel confident that you can deliver later, pre-sell the new offering at a discount. 

* You could even try a Kickstarter campaign. 

Long story short, validate your new concept before you commit too much money or time to it. Make sure it's on brand. Make sure it makes sense. Test the features and pricing. 

Even if your business is growing with one revenue stream, you are more vulnerable than a diversified business. A disruption of that primary income source can kill your income quickly.

4. Diversify for survival

Over the past few years, I've lost power and internet access at my home. Sometimes the outage lasts a few hours, but occasionally it goes on for days. We lost everything for over a week a few years ago. 

Did my business crumble? Did I have to close my doors and shut it all down? 

No. No, I did not. 

Living in a remote rural area near or in the forests and mountains has always been our dream. We knew that there's a price to pay for this lifestyle. You need to be independent and self-sufficient. You need to think ahead, have backup plans, and be ready for the worst-case scenarios (e.g., no power during the coldest winter weather). 

I intentionally designed my business for maximum freedom, flexibility, and resilience. I wanted a business that leveraged the internet, so I could work anywhere in the world (e.g., moving out of the city and into the mountains). I also wanted a business that I could run from my phone when I travel and go on vacations. 

I'm going to encourage you to follow a similar model for your business. 

If the pandemic taught us anything, it showed us that activities and businesses are fragile and vulnerable when they require physical locations and face-to-face interactions with colleagues and customers. 

Many brick-and-mortar businesses failed during the past 2-3 years. They had to shut their doors during the height of the quarantines. Many never recovered. The businesses that survived had an element of their products or services that could be delivered remotely without a storefront. 

I'm not saying that 100% of your business should be conducted solely over the phone (although it can be). But you should be able to fall back to remote interactions and survive when necessary. 

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy in-person meetings, workshops, and talks. But, I don't depend on them. 

I've also watched business fail during an economic downturn. Smart diversification can help your business survive. In good times, it helps you thrive.

The pandemic was a test of resilience. Some businesses couldn't survive without walk-in customers. Others quickly diversified to survive. 

* Spinning up an online retail shop. It now sells even more than their physical storefront. 

* Offering takeaway foods with curbside pickup. Our local brewery sold pizzas and growlers to go. 

* Providing a new home delivery service for customers who could no longer drop by. 

* Offering online fitness programs and a community. They went from $0 to millions in revenue in just a few months, while other gyms struggled and closed their doors. 

It’s impossible to predict the future. Who knows what the next business challenge will be? But, if you diversify your products and services, you are more likely to successfully weather any new storm.

5. Maximize flexibility and freedom

If you're anything like me, you don't want to build a business that becomes more of a grind than your 9-5 job. 

As you're expanding and diversifying, bias for giving yourself more flexibility and freedom. Focus on creating new lines of business that are scalable instead of being limited to your available time. 

I considered several options for my business that would have required leasing a physical space and providing services in the physical world. But I realized how much that would tie me down to a physical location and synchronous experiences happening real time. 

* I want the freedom to live anywhere in the world. 

* I want the flexibility to work when I want and take time off for vacations with my family when I want. 

* I want offerings that scale infinitely, since I’m already limited by my time and availability for coaching. 

So, if you can, expand your business in ways that increase and maximize your freedom and flexibility.

* Digital goods

* Books

* Courses

* Virtual events

* Working remotely (over Zoom and phone)

* Asynchronous services

Before you think of me as a “shut in” who never leaves his remote cabin, I should explain that I do love real-time experiences in the physical world. I love public speaking in front of a live audience. I enjoy hosting workshops. I love meeting my clients face to face. I'd probably love owning a small coffee shop and bookstore. 

However, I've learned that these types of products and services should be only one part of my portfolio. I'll never make my business fragile and vulnerable by relying on a single source of revenue, customers in the physical world, or a storefront in the physical world. 

Diversify or die

My business will always be diversified. I'll always have virtual services and digital goods. I'll always be able to work with clients and have customers anywhere in the world. 

So should you. 

Are there examples of successful businesses that have survived by only providing one product or service? Sure, there are a few that seem to have nailed down their value, secured a loyal customer base, and weathered every storm. 

But why risk it? Why hope that you’ll be one of the few magical businesses that can survive without a robust diversification strategy? 

It’s simply too dangerous to put all of your business eggs in one basket. For every business that pulled that off, there are hundreds more that failed when the bottom fell out of their baskets. 

Diversify, survive, and thrive! But do it the smart way.

Thank you for reading Invincible Solopreneurs. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor. If you’re interested in starting your own business or side hustle someday (or accelerating an existing one), check out his “Employee to Solopreneur” course (launching later this year).

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice to help others take complete control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

Why do I love so-called “lifestyle businesses”?

Why do I think they’re a brilliant choice for people who are ready to leave the 9-5 world but feel overwhelmed by the idea of building a large company with investors, employees, and a lot of complexity?

Well, let me take you on a walk with me down memory lane to illustrate how quickly you can start a simple business like this to replace the income from your job.

* I created my first lifestyle business in less than a day after a layoff. It doubled my annual income from what I had been earning from an earlier employer.

* I secretly created my second lifestyle business in about a week as a potential side hustle. I immediately landed a part-time client with a retained engagement of $10K/month.

* I built my third lifestyle business in about two weeks. I’ve been running this business ever since then, and I haven’t worked in a 9-5 job for over 12 years.

Nothing will give you more freedom and security than running a business you fully control.

But, let me be clear about something. A lifestyle business isn’t about getting rich (although it could happen).

A lifestyle business is about being free. If you value freedom more than wealth, this article is for you.

If you love money more than your health, well-being, happiness, and family, click away and read some other article about the hustle and clawing your way to the top of the corporate ladder.

Could I still be making more money as a senior exec at a tech company? Sure, I probably could. I know some of my friends do.

But then again, I’d probably have to be kissing up to some narcissistic sociopathic boss every day. I’d have to put up with all the corporate politics, games, and BS that drove me crazy and made me hate my working life. I’d be spending my precious time and life energy building someone else’s dream instead of my own.

No thanks.

When you break free from your 9-5 job and start your own business, the benefits are many.

* You no longer have a boss.

* You no longer have coworkers.

* You choose your clients.

* You pick your projects.

* You determine your compensation.

* You choose your title.

* You work when you want.

* You work where you want.

* You work how you want.

* You work with the people you want.

* You take vacations when you want.

* You make all the decisions.

Is it the right choice for everyone? Of course not!

Some people truly do enjoy working for someone else. They like going to an office and having coworkers. They don’t want the responsibility that comes with owning and running a business.

Other people dream of creating a larger company than a lifestyle business. They want to hire employees and build a team. They have set their sights on running the next billion-dollar company.

But, if you like the idea of being free to do your own thing and earning enough money to be happy and make a living, this may be the right path for you, too.

Yes, I’ll repeat it: I love running a lifestyle business! I’m not sure why they get such a bad rap.

Well, maybe they don’t get badmouthed so much elsewhere, but they sure do in Silicon Valley, where I lived for over 20 years. You don’t get respect there unless you’re a full-blown entrepreneur, raising millions in venture capital, and trying to build the next billion-dollar startup.

Hey, I went that route several years ago. I loved the experience, and I don’t really regret it (although I’m not happy about the outcome). I had little freedom, couldn’t quickly pivot to an entirely new product or business, and I had a team of employees counting on me. It was super stressful!

A lifestyle business is a different beast. You’re not trying to create the next billion-dollar company that will support thousands of employees and service millions of customers. You’re essentially replacing the income you’re used to making from your 9-5 job as an employee. Your goal is to make enough revenue to provide a comfortable lifestyle for you and your family.

You don’t have to deal with investors, a board, partners, or employees. It’s still hard work, of course. But you are in control, you have way more freedom, and it’s way less complex and stressful.

At a high level, building and launching your lifestyle business is a 3-step process:

* Build your lifestyle business.

* Market your lifestyle business.

* Sell your knowledge and services.

If you want to accomplish this in 30 days for less than $30, it’s hard to beat the speed and affordability of launching a services business. I call this the “Employee to Solopreneur” model. You essentially transform your job description into a business plan. It works very well for knowledge workers (e.g., designers, engineers, project managers, marketers, accountants, lawyers, architects, data analysts, coaches, researchers, and writers).

It’s more challenging to apply this model to other types of small businesses that sell goods or require retail space (e.g., restaurant owners, bakers, craftspeople, dentists, barbers). They require more planning, legal paperwork, and financial investment up front. But many of the steps and recommendations I will share are still valuable since most modern businesses require websites, digital communication, and online marketing.

A lifestyle business does require some planning as you begin defining and building it. But, the simplicity of the model means that you don’t need to spend as much time upfront before you can start quickly testing, learning, and evolving your business while you are already generating revenue from it.

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1. Build your lifestyle business

I recommend moving quickly while defining Phase 1 of your new lifestyle business. What you define and create at this point will not survive first contact with your first customers or clients, anyway.

You want to move fast, learn, and adapt quickly. Yes, you will feel like your business isn’t ready. You do need to offer something valuable, but it doesn’t need to be perfect.

“I've long believed that if you're not embarrassed by your first product release, you've released too late.”

— Reid Hoffman

If you’re defining and building your business in about two weeks (which is what I recommend before you move into marketing and selling), you don’t have time to reinvent the wheel. You must sell what you already know and do.

The fastest path from being an employee to becoming a solopreneur with your own lifestyle business is to sell one or more of these three things.

* Selling what you can do.

* Selling what you know.

* Selling who you are.

I defined and “launched” my first lifestyle business in less than a day. I immediately had a client and enough income to support my family.

I was selling what I could do. I had been a software designer working for employers like IBM, Apple, and a startup. So, I went direct and sold my design services to tech corporations and startups. I worked solo for some clients, and I partnered with other designers, engineers, etc. on larger projects.

I defined and “launched” my second lifestyle business in about a week. In a few days after I left my corporate job, I had a part-time retained client providing me a 6-figure annual income.

I was selling what I knew vs. what I could do as an individual contributor. The work I performed for clients was more strategic and often in the role of an acting head of product or design.

I defined and launched my third lifestyle business in about two weeks. This one took longer to ramp up, because I wasn’t dedicating myself to 1-3 corporate clients with big budgets.

In some sense, this business is a combination of selling what I know and who I am (or who I used to be). My clients want help to get ahead at work, solve problems, get promoted, or find new jobs. They want to learn how to climb the corporate ladder (like I did) to reach an executive level in a corporation.

In this business, I began working directly with individuals, so it required a new business model and strategy. It also required a whole new marketing plan that included building a new professional brand and “putting myself out there” in a way I’d never done before.

2. Market your lifestyle business

Speaking of putting yourself out there, if you want to make a living from your small business, people need to know that it exists. They have to know who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.

If you only build it, they will not come. Traffic to your website won’t occur magically. Very few people are going to stumble across your business and hire you or purchase your product.

My first two lifestyle businesses were powered 100% by networking and referrals. I still believe they are incredibly powerful ways to find customers for your business. A decent percentage of my business growth is because of my friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and clients sending people my way.

However, if you want to scale your business and keep your pipeline of leads full and flowing, you must learn marketing. You need to create useful content (e.g., articles, videos), put yourself out there (e.g., Twitter, LinkedIn), and consistently be present in people’s feeds.

Organic marketing is wonderful, but you may want to experiment with paid advertising as well. In the beginning, your system can be fairly simple. You’re selling one thing (e.g., consulting) and leveraging social media, some content, your network, and referrals to attract new clients.

However, as you grow and scale your business later, you will have multiple marketing and sales channels. You should also have multiple revenue streams.

3. Sell your knowledge and services

Selling is all about relationships, listening, and providing value.

I can’t say that I was some sales expert when I was running my previous lifestyle businesses. Sure, I had to negotiate and close deals with corporate clients, but it differed greatly from what I’m doing now.

Selling to individuals is a whole different game. Initially, I took some sales training and tried traditional sales methods.

However, I hated it. It felt inauthentic, and it didn’t seem to work well for me.

So, I changed things up completely. I stopped selling, and I started helping. I’m going to recommend that you try this approach, too.

* I give freely. For the past six years, I have written hundreds of articles that help people solve problems in their professional lives. I’ve had people read an article and then tell me they already knew they wanted to work with me before we even talked.

* I offer free coaching calls. I try to help people as much as I can with that call. I've literally had people tell me they received more value in 20 mins than they had received in months with another coach. I’m proud of that! And, again, it’s free.

* I don’t make a hard sell at all. In fact, I don’t even pitch to people during those free calls. But, do you know what happens when you give and help and deliver value freely? About 98% of the time at the end of the call, people ask me how they can keep working with me. They ask me vs. me pushing my services on them.

That’s the secret to selling. Listen to people, care about them, and do your best to help solve their problems. Let them see that you’re a good person who really wants to help, and they’ll want more from you.

You’ll stand apart from all the folks who “go for the kill” and only want to close the deal. People will want to work with you instead of them.

Send a follow-up message with your proposal that meets the client’s needs and describes how you’ll solve their problems. Transparently provide pricing options that give people a range from affordable to a number that is a more considered investment.

You will have to decide what each potential client needs and how you sell your services and provide value for them. For example:

* A fixed price and time engagement (i.e., a package).

* An ongoing retained engagement (e.g., $X per month).

* One-off consulting calls ($X per hour).

* Group services at a discounted rate.

* DIY solutions using your information products, courses, etc.

Get started for free

Free is a great price and a lot less than $30! You actually don’t need to spend any money to:

* Announce your business and services.

* Start attracting leads and clients.

* Create an online presence.

* Schedule the work.

* Accept payments.

I built my very first lifestyle business in less than a day with a $0 investment and a paying client ready to go. It was definitely a case of opportunity, timing, and a leap of faith happening all at once.

* $0.00 - Existing laptop that I already owned.

* $0.00 - Existing software that I already owned (no subscriptions back then).

* $0.00 - Free email account.

* $0.00 - Phone that I already owned and used.

I was an employee at a startup that was acquired by a much larger company. The honeymoon only lasted a few months before they laid off our entire team! So, the founders and original investors regrouped and relaunched the company as a new startup.

However, I decided I didn’t want to be an employee again in this new company. So, I told my manager that he could hire me as a consultant to receive exactly the same design services I had provided before when I was an employee.

We signed a contract, and I immediately got back to work. However, now I could offer my services to other tech companies and startups, too (which I soon did). All of my new business came through my network and word of mouth from past clients.

You can launch your new business for free. For example, you could:

* Set up a storefront on Gumroad (e.g., to sell digital products, courses, subscriptions).

* Announce your new business and services on LinkedIn and Twitter.

* Spend time helping solve people’s problems online (e.g., demonstrate your value in a subreddit).

* Let people know they can DM you to learn more.

* Create a PDF doc that summarizes your goods and services for potential clients.

* Respond to inquiries and schedule calls with potential clients to check fit.

* Accept payments via Venmo or through Gumroad.

Launch with minimal investment

When I launched my coaching business six years ago, I used what I already had in terms of equipment, software, and services. I invested a little money in a domain, website hosting, and scheduling service (e.g., Acuity Scheduling). But I didn’t spend very much until I knew the business was working and I was ready to take on more clients.

However, that small investment did allow me to create a more professional business presence online. For example:

* I wanted to host my website on my domain (e.g., invinciblecareer.com), not the free subdomain most services offer (e.g., larrycornett.carrd.co).

* $10/year for domain.

* $10/month for hosting.

* I wanted to make it easier for people to schedule appointments with me.

* $14/month for scheduling service.

* I wanted to integrate payments with my website and scheduling service.

* Stripe at 2.9% + 30¢ per successful charge.

But that was it! I ran lean for a long time before I started scaling things later.

I want to emphasize how important it is to make money before you spend a lot of money. Too many new business owners get excited about building out all the bells and whistles of a “real business” before they have customers and revenue flowing in. Heck, I know a few local business owners who spent tons of money remodeling their retail space and shut their business down before they even opened their doors!

To start a business, you do not need:

* A fancy logo (I designed my own logo).

* A complex website (I designed and created my own WordPress website).

* A trademark for your business name (I didn’t trademark anything until several years later).

* Patents for anything, yet.

* Custom contracts crafted by a lawyer (I used Rocket Lawyer).

* An expensive accountant (I used QuickBooks and TurboTax).

I know people who spent several thousand dollars setting up a business that never generated a single dollar. Why would you do that?

Start simple, land your first paying client, and make sure you have a desirable product/service and reasonable business model before you invest more time and money in growing the business. Spend smart money after you’re making money. Scale and formalize everything letter when you know you’re going to continue.

For example, I was operating one of my businesses for several years before I bothered incorporating it. One day, I said to myself, “My business is working, and I guess I’m never going back to a 9-5 job. I suppose it’s time to make it official!”

On the other hand, I launched a different business with some partners who wanted to be more formal and buttoned up before we launched. So, we spent money on incorporation, a website, and various other services. Guess what? After two years of running that business, it still hadn’t earned a single dime.

Focus on your customer pipeline, learning as much as you can, refining your business model and offerings, and making money. Revenue is the lifeblood of your lifestyle business, and a steady flow of income is what will keep you going and supporting you and your family.

Start now and scale later

When I launched my coaching practice, I started with a single one-on-client. We agreed on a coaching engagement, established a schedule, signed a contract, and got started right away.

That was it.

I didn’t add additional clients until I knew that my business plan was working. I didn’t want to invest more time and money until I was sure I wanted to continue the coaching business.

You don’t have to have it all figured out before you get started. When you keep it simple and focus on your first client, you have time to test, learn, refine, adapt, and evolve your business model before you bring on new clients. You learn more and get better as you go.

As you become more confident and have things dialed in a bit, you can start adding clients to fill your reasonable capacity. Be careful about trying to scale too quickly. It’s easy to get excited about your early success, eager to grow your income, and bite off more than you can chew.

Time is your most finite resource. As a solopreneur with a lifestyle business, you are it. So, plan accordingly. Calculate the number of 1-on-1 clients you can handle based on the time commitment. But this will have a ceiling when you hit your maximum capacity. For example, I find it mentally challenging to juggle over 10 clients at a time.

However, you can still scale your business in other ways, and you should. You want to create multiple revenue streams to increase your income potential, provide more financial stability and security, and give you more freedom and flexibility.

After all, what’s the point of building your own business if you’re so busy and stressed out that it’s just as bad — if not worse — than being an employee? This is your business! Intentionally design it to give you the lifestyle you want.

I’ve carefully expanded and scaled my business over the past six years, and I’m always testing and exploring new ideas. Some work. Some don’t. That’s ok when you have a business model that gives you some breathing room to try things out!

I think of this as a portfolio model. The different components of my business model require different amounts of my time and yield unique value. Each ROI is different, and some of these experiments are longer-term investments that will pay off much later.

Some examples from my business revenue portfolio:

* Retained 1-on-1 coaching with individuals

* Consulting with corporate clients

* Community memberships

* Live paid workshops

* Group coaching

* Affiliate revenue

* Subscriptions

* Call packages

* One-off calls

* Downloads

* Courses

* Etc.

Of course, you will learn more about your business, what your clients want, how to differentiate yourself from the competition, and the growth model that is right for you and the kind of business you're building. For example, you could choose to scale your business by hiring employees, using contractors, or bringing on a partner.

More income is always nice, but consider the associated costs of the additional complexity and potential loss of flexibility and freedom (e.g., losing some of your decision-making power and speed).

Some useful business services and tools

My go to services and tools that I use for my business include (some links are my affiliate links):

* Google Domains.

* Cloudflare for DNS and performance.

* Flywheel for WordPress hosting.

* Substack for my newsletters and podcasts.

* Ulysses for writing.

* ConvertKit for my email lists (although I’m switching to EmailOctopus).

* Acuity Scheduling to schedule client appointments.

* Zoom for video chats.

* Slack for my original career community.

* Mighty Networks for my community platform.

* Podia for my courses and digital downloads.

* Hypefury for social media scheduling.

* Zencastr for recording podcasts with guests.

* And various services to publish and share my content (e.g., Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Quora, Instagram, YouTube).

Here are a few more services and tools that can help you build and operate your lifestyle business. Let me know if you’ve discovered other tools that you think are amazing!

* Domain Registration - Price and features vary by service, so do your homework (e.g., check renewal fees). Cheaper isn’t always better! Here is an example using the same domain name as a test.

* Pair Domains - $8/year

* Namecheap - $9.58/year

* Domain.com - $9.99/year

* NameSilo - $10.95/year

* Google Domains - $12/year

* Free Websites - Check the features to see what will work best for your new business. Most require a subscription plan to support custom domains.

* WordPress.com

* Free website

* Open-source software

* Multiple themes, blog, and other pages (e.g., portfolio page)

* Carrd

* Free one-page site

* Simple and fully responsive

* Dozens of templates

* Webflow

* Basic site for free

* No-code website designer

* Feature-rich design tools

* Wix

* Free blogging site

* Visual builder

* Dozens of templates

* Weebly/Square

* Business-focused website

* Set up an online booking page

* Set up to take payments

* Gumroad

* Free storefront

* Sell digital products, courses, subscriptions, memberships, etc.

* The more you sell, the lower the fee is

* Cloudflare - Free website protection and performance

* Fast, Easy-to-use DNS

* Unmetered DDoS Protection

* CDN

* Universal SSL Certificate

* Canva (my affiliate link) - Free design tool

* Create elegant designs easily

* Access to thousands of templates, images, and other media

* Collaborate with others on your designs

* Hypefury (my affiliate link) - Free social media tool

* Grow your Twitter audience with scheduled tweets

* Create new content seamlessly

* Inspiration features to overcome writer’s block

* Scheduling Appointments

* Calendly - Basic plan is free

* Acuity Scheduling - Lowest plan is $14/month

* Accepting Payments

* Venmo - 1.9% + $0.10

* Stripe - 2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge

* Paypal - 2.99% to receive money for goods and services

* Gumroad - 2.9% to 9%

+30¢ on each transaction

* Bank transfers - Fees vary

* Substack - Free email list, newsletter, podcast, online archive of articles

* Free newsletter (with the option to upgrade and offer paid subscriptions)

* Free podcast hosting

* A website of sorts (landing page, about page, articles)

What’s next?

I know this article just scratches the surface of what’s required to build, launch, and operate a successful business. But, I hope it was enough to intrigue you to learn more and explore the possibilities of running a lifestyle business.

Do you know what else is less than $30/month and will be an incredible investment in your business success?

* My Invincible Solopreneurs courses and community, of course!

Learn more about how we can help you build, maintain, and scale a thriving solopreneurial business.

Thank you for reading Invincible Solopreneurs. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor. If you’re interested in starting your own business or side hustle someday (or accelerating an existing one), check out his “Employee to Solopreneur” course (launching later this year).

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice to help others take complete control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

Are you ready to take the leap into entrepreneurship?

* How are you feeling about your job right now?

* Are you still committed to starting your own business?

* Is now the time to make a move and do it?

It's challenging to think about all of this with a million thoughts buzzing around in your head. You may have a good gut feeling about your eagerness to start something new. Your passion and excitement for your business idea may tempt you to rush right into it.

I get it. I’ve been there!

I value qualitative judgments (e.g., how excited you are), but I'm also a fan of quantitative assessments to understand your state of planning and preparation. So, I created a series of statements to assess your solopreneurial readiness.

You can take my free quiz online to find out! Your score will be automatically calculated and emailed to you.

Or you can think about your reactions to the statements below and manually score your responses instead. Regardless of your final score, I think you’ll find that these statements will get you asking yourself the right questions about your future business.

Be brutally honest with your reactions and how you score yourself. It will help you get a sense of how prepared you are to make this move and jump into entrepreneurship. It also gives you a sense of how much planning you may still need to do.

Score each of the following statements on a scale of 1 to 5. A score of 1 means that you "strongly disagree" with the statement. A score of 5 means that you "strongly agree" with the statement.

* Strongly disagree

* Disagree

* Neutral

* Agree

* Strongly agree

Thanks for reading Invincible Solopreneurs! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Solopreneur Readiness Quiz

Think about the current state of your business planning while scoring the following statements on a scale of 1-5.

Note: I go into more detail about these questions in the podcast for this episode. So, scroll up and listen if you’re wondering what I mean by some of these questions.

* I have a clear vision and passion for the business I want to build. Score:

* I can visualize where my business will be in 10 years. Score:

* I know what I must do to make my business vision come true. Score:

* I know my mission and the positive change I want to make in people’s lives with what I will offer. Score:

* I know exactly what problem my business solutions will solve. Score:

* I can clearly and succinctly state the value proposition of my solution. Score:

* I have a ridiculously focused and detailed description of my ideal customer (i.e., my niche). Score:

* I’ve talked with several people who fit my ideal customer profile to understand their problems, needs, and wants. Score:

* I’m prepared to leave my 9-5 job and go out on my own. Score:

* I have saved money and created a financial cushion that can support me for 6-12 months. Score:

* I have a budget to tightly manage my expenses, benefits (e.g., health insurance), and “burn rate” until I’m sufficiently profitable. Score:

* I have a backup plan that I can quickly put into motion if my business fails. Score:

* I’m comfortable working alone and managing my schedule and productivity. Score:

* I have a place where I can work and focus every day. Score:

* I know exactly what the product or service is that I want to offer. Score:

* I have already prepared my products or services to offer to customers. Score:

* I know how to price my products or services. Score:

* I have created a solid business plan. Score:

* I have prepared a detailed business model that ensures profitable success. Score:

* I have identified all of my potential sources of revenue. Score:

* I have documented my potential business expenses and the cost of delivering my goods and services. Score:

* I have a marketing and sales plan ready to go. Score:

* I have created a plan to reach my ideal customer through various channels. Score:

* I have a great name for my business. Score:

* I have the brand identity ready for my business (e.g., brand attributes, tagline, great logo). Score:

* My business name and product name are available for trademark registration. Score:

* I have secured the domain for my business name. Score:

* I’ve created social media accounts for my business. Score:

* I have a website designed and built for my business. Score:

* I’ve identified potential business partners and suppliers. Score:

* I have determined the appropriate legal entity for my business (e.g., LLC, corporation, sole proprietorship, partnership, co-op). Score:

* I have my business systems, services, and tools up and running. Score:

* I’ve identified vendors, specialists, and consultants who can help me with my business (e.g., lawyer, accountant, admin, designers, engineers, support). Score:

* Potential customers can easily find me and communicate with me. Score:

* I understand the competitive landscape and have identified my potential competitors. Score:

* I know exactly how to successfully differentiate my business from competitors and close a sale. Score:

* I could sell my product or service to a potential customer this week. Score:

* I’ve already started selling my products or services. Score:

* I have a supportive community of friends, family members, and entrepreneurial peers. Score:

* I have business advisors I can turn to for help and advice. Score:

Your Total Score

Add your scores for the 40 statements and divide the total number by 2 (round up if necessary). Here's how to interpret your total score:

* 80-100

* Congrats! You have a pretty clear idea of what you want your business to be and the problems you will solve for customers, and you seem ready to go.

* Would you like to connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter? 😊

* 60-79

* You have some ideas for what you want to do with your business and how to run it, but you need to do more research and define things clearly before moving ahead.

* It might help to schedule a complimentary call with me to discuss your plans.

* 40-59

* Your business idea and plans are a little fuzzy in different areas, so use these statements as a framework for digging into the details and preparing more. 

* Learn more about my business coaching, solopreneur community, courses, and more!

* 20-39

* Most of the details are missing for what you will need to plan and launch your new business. No worries! Now you have some homework to do. 

* Let's talk so I can help you put together a strategy to define your solopreneurial plan.

I’m excited for you!

I’ve been an entrepreneur before. I founded and incorporated my company with partners, built and managed a team of employees, and outsourced various services. It was a great experience, and I learned a lot.

However, I have now returned to being a solopreneur, and that was intentional. There are many benefits that I missed when I was an employee and an employer.

Being a solopreneur gives you incredible freedom that is hard to find in any other business model or employment relationship. When you structure your business the right way, you can enjoy the benefits and avoid most — if not all — of the potential downsides.

I know this quiz may seem a little overwhelming. But I tried to touch on the essential questions you must ask yourself as you define a new business. The good news is you don’t have to have everything completely figured out before you begin. Start small, learn as you go, and expand and grow when you’re ready.

I’m here to help! You can email me with questions and I’ll do my best to answer them here in this newsletter. Also, you can learn more about my new solopreneur courses and peer community launching later this year.

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor. If you’re interested in starting your own business or side hustle someday (or accelerating an existing one), check out his “Employee to Solopreneur” course (launching later this year).

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice to help others take complete control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.

Making a living from learned skills is certainly possible. Billions of people do it every day. But that doesn't mean it's easy. 

Obviously, working as an employee is how most people leverage their skills to get paid. But, you can also package up your skills, knowledge, and experience and build a business from what you do as a professional. 

In some ways, this is the easiest business to create. You essentially transform your job description into a business plan. I used that approach for my first two entrepreneurial ventures. But, I never would have suspected that a layoff would give me the confidence to launch a business!

Thanks for reading Invincible Solopreneurs! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Business 1 - Copy paste your job

Like many people, I joined the corporate world after receiving my degree. I worked for IBM right after completing my Master's. Then, I joined Apple as I wrapped up my Ph.D. 

While I was at Apple, I had an opportunity to join a startup. I don't think I worked there even a full year before a much larger company acquired us. Unfortunately, the "honeymoon" ended within a few months. Our new parent company absorbed our technology and patents but laid off our entire organization. 

The founder and CEO relaunched the company as a new startup within a few weeks. Most of the employees rejoined that new company that was focused on a more advanced solution than what we'd created in the first startup. But I saw this as an opportunity to work with them as a consultant instead of becoming an employee again. 

I was lucky enough to be working with several consultants at the company that year, and we became close friends. They encouraged me and helped guide me as I ventured into the entrepreneurial world for the first time. I don’t think I would have had the courage to make that leap without their proof that it was possible.

So, I’d like to take a moment and thank the following folks for advising and supporting me during that process:

* Anke de Jong

* Peter Nicklin

* Kit Fitzpatrick

* Joe Buczek

* John Maloney

* John DeBriere

My business was a solopreneur design agency offering web and application design services to tech startups. I was able to transform my talent as a designer into a full-time independent business that supported my family. Doing this is more empowering than you can imagine. It was an eye-opening experience for me.

As a design consultant, I delivered the same value to my clients that I had been providing as an employee. My very first client was this new startup (i.e., my former employer), but I started working with additional clients later that year.

Obviously, running your own business is a bit more complex than being an employee, but it's an excellent example of turning a job description into a business plan. You're still doing what you did before in your job, but now you're providing those services as an independent consultant. I wrote a bit more about this in this previous article:

You may ask, "Why bother? How is this any different from being an employee?"

Well, it is different — and I would say better — in several ways:

* You're not tied to one employer. You can work with as many clients as you can handle. 

* You control your earning potential instead of a boss dictating your compensation. If you want a "raise" because you're good at what you do, you can increase your rates any time you want. 

* You can scale your business by offering higher-value services, hiring contractors or employees, and expanding your offerings. 

* You diversify your revenue streams, so you're not dependent on one source of income (e.g., a salary with one employer). 

* If you get bored with the work or a client becomes a pain, you can wrap things up and easily move on. When you have multiple clients, dropping one is no big deal. 

* If you're good at what you do and in demand, you can pursue new domains and projects that interest you. 

* Your schedule and work environment are flexible. As an independent consultant, you're supposed to be in control of how, when, and where you do your work. I was "working remotely" in 1998, long before the pandemic made remote work so popular. 

* You can take breaks from working whenever you want. I would enjoy weeks off between clients, take long vacations, etc., and never required the approval of some "boss." I knew one consultant who would regularly work hard for six months and then take a six-month break to travel the world every year. Good luck doing that as an employee! 

* Finally, you can purchase the equipment, software, and supplies you need without an employer's approval ("No, you don't really need that new MacBook. Here's a crappy standard issue Dell laptop. Enjoy!"). 

Business 2 - Take the best of your job

I launched my second business when I left the corporate world for the last time over 12 years ago. It kind of happened unintentionally. I assumed I would take a short break to enjoy the summer with my family and then start interviewing for my next role when I was ready to go back to work or get serious about launching my own startup (which I finally did in 2014).

I remember thinking to myself, “Maybe I should do some consulting as a side hustle.” So, I quickly designed, created, and launched a business website and let the world know through a blog post that got picked up by TechCrunch. I said:

“I am bootstrapping my own stealth startup. In parallel, today I’m launching a consulting practice to provide advisory services to other startups and more-established companies. After over eight years in the big corporate worlds of Yahoo and eBay, I’m excited about taking everything I’ve learned from my experiences at those two great companies and returning to the entrepreneurial world.”

Several people reached out to me about my consulting practice over the next few weeks, and I began working with a few clients. One thing led to another, and I finally realized that I would never go back to being an employee. I stopped interviewing.

The interesting thing about this second business is that I was able to take much of what I had enjoyed in my previous role as a Product and Design executive and offer that as services. For example:

* Product and Design strategy

* Organizational consulting

* Business strategy and exploring revenue models

* Guiding and coaching tech leaders

If you’re considering a transition to consulting from your 9-5 job, you can take the best of what you enjoy about your current role and leave the worst of it behind. When you build your business, you get to design your offering to optimize for things you’re great at doing and enjoy doing. Don’t bring the unpleasant job responsibilities forward into your new life!

My consulting company, Brilliant Forge LLC, is still running, but I rarely take on startup clients for it now. I've been focusing most of my attention on my latest business that I launched almost six years ago. 

Business 3 - Base it on your talents

Making a living from what comes naturally to you almost feels effortless. When it happens, you'll hear people say, "I'm still amazed that people pay me to do this!"

I can't say that building my current coaching practice was quite this effortless for me. But discovering it was an "Aha" moment. 

Several years ago, I was managing the final stages of my failing tech startup. It took a couple of years of experimentation to finally find a product that people seemed to love. Unfortunately, we were almost out of money. 

We'd raised a seed round, and careful management had allowed us to hire a small team and design, build, and test our software for a few years. But, we needed an infusion of cash to keep paying the team and take our new product to the next phases of growth. Unfortunately, our investors didn't want to put more money into our startup. 

So, as the CEO, I had the unpleasant task of working with our accountant and lawyer to shut down the business during the final year. It was one of the most depressing times in my life. 

As things were winding down, I was trying to decide what was next for me.

* Should I take a swing at launching another startup?

* Should I return to the corporate world and look for a job?

* Should I go back to consulting? 

As always, I was discussing options with my wife to get her thoughts. She said, "Do you know what you've always been doing for as long as I can remember? Giving people career advice. Helping people find jobs. Have you considered turning that into a business?"

Now, I wouldn't literally call "career coaching" itself a natural talent. But when I looked back on my adolescence, I remembered I was always a good listener, and people came to me for advice to help them solve problems in their lives. They knew I would listen without judgment, keep the conversation confidential, and help them think through solutions. 

So, perhaps my natural talents include empathy, compassion, problem-solving, and a willingness to be someone's champion. I love to help good people feel more confident, believe in themselves, and put their lives back on a good path. 

Coaching people through personal and professional development was always something I loved about my job as a manager and leader. I looked forward to 1-on-1 meetings with my team. I enjoyed helping people solve problems.

I feel like my current coaching practice, Invincible Career, has allowed me to turn some of my natural talents into a business more than any of my prior companies. It’s also allowed me to lean into my talent for writing, which I appreciate.

While it is more straightforward to create a business based on your skills, knowledge, and experience, it’s fulfilling in an entirely different way to build a business that leverages your natural talents.

Your business idea

Now it's your turn. What is it you have always naturally done or been good at doing?

You may still do it now. Or, perhaps you did it frequently during your childhood but gave it up when you pursued a career based on your education and training instead. 

How does your natural talent or behavior help solve other people's problems? Approaching it from the other side — what problems do people have that could be addressed by what you naturally do? 

Who are the people that need your help the most? In other words, who are your ideal clients?

Are they willing to pay you to help them solve their problems? The only way to really find out is to test your business concept. You don't have to go all-in or spend much money. Take a Lean approach and test your MVP with a few potential clients. 

I did precisely that with my coaching practice. I added a new services page to my existing website and put the word out that I was offering leadership and career coaching. Within a week or so, I landed my first client. I kept refining my coaching practice as the months and years went by, and the rest is history.

If someone is interested in your goods or services and willing to pay you for them, you're onto something! You have a potential business waiting to be explored.

Once you’re independently able to make a living from your talents, you’ll never want to go back to working for someone else. Are you ready to find out how that feels?

I wish you the best of luck! Feel free to reach out if you need advice or guidance.

Larry Cornett is a leadership coach and business advisor. If you’re interested in starting your own business or side hustle someday (or accelerating an existing one), check out his “Employee to Solopreneur” course (launching later this year).

Larry lives in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with his wife and children, and a gigantic Great Dane. He does his best to share advice to help others take complete control of their work and life. He’s also on Twitter @cornett.