[read time: 6min]

Solopreneurship is dead - not the concept, just the bad mindset that’s been tacked onto it over the last few years.

**This issue will be a little different than most since I want to get into mindset before diving into technique.

I want to explain why one of the most important contributors to your success in starting a business is your mindset.

And that you should avoid holding onto the solopreneur’d one.

It’s not mandatory, of course, since owning your own business comes with the freedom to do whatever you want with it (one of the many awesome perks).

Hear me out though.

You Don’t Have to Think Small

The message I get from all the solopreneur posts and marketing tactics I come across is that you can easily create a successful one-person business.

In the comfort of your bed, in your PJs, with less than 2hrs of work a day.

Whether or not that’s possible is irrelevant for now, but that imagery gives new business owners hope that succeeding can be easily done all alone.

That consequently creates pressure to achieve it. So the competitive nature in us forces us to stick it out no matter how bad the workload gets.

I’ve spoken to a lot of other business owners who say the same thing.

The comparisons creep in. “All the big names did it, I can do it too.”

Approaching business like that is far from practical in the long run.

You likely started your business alone and that’s totally fine. You’re ahead of 99% of the people still thinking or only dreaming of doing it.

But there will come a point where you hit a wall and you just can’t figure out why the next steps feel so ambiguous.

I know it because I hit that wall.

Enter the micro business.

I share the definition just so we’re clear on the literal meaning.

The buzzword solopreneur is bigger than ever, but I think it’s being largely misinterpreted.

To me it just means a business owned by one person, not operated by one person. There’s a massive difference there.

Almost all of the big name “solorepreneurs” aren’t operating alone.

They either have a significant other, family, friends, or contractors and virtual assistants involved.

That’s technically a micro business.

This detail is often left out when they market their businesses or sell you on courses.

As a result I see people silently burning out and left feeling confused.

“What am I doing wrong? Everyone else is somehow doing it alone.”

It’s just not true.

Instead, framing your solopreneurship as a micro business is a mindset shift.

It’s making sure you’re always operating from an open-minded view that leaves collaboration and expansion on the table at all times.

Whether with a co-founder or two, assistants to help you stay focused on high-leverage business tasks, and/or contractors to help you step out of the day-to-day.

You’ll come across these opportunities as you grow.

So don’t pressure yourself into feeling like there’s something you must be missing.

Like you’re doing something wrong, that maybe you just aren’t working hard enough.

Nothing is wrong.

You just weren’t given the whole equation.

You Don’t Have to Think Big Either

Having a micro business mindset also means you don’t need to run an entire enterprise to achieve the big 3 in entrepreneurship.

The big 3 are the freedoms we all want:

• Time freedom

• Financial freedom

• Location freedom

The natural progression of business is scaling. And you absolutely cannot scale a business without scaling systems and labor.

At the end of the day there needs to be processes for completing work, and someone needs to complete those processes to complete the work.

But you don’t need an entire executive team, a full roster of Sales Managers and SDRs, a suite of Marketing professionals, or a dozen operations and project managers either.

The tools and techniques now available online make it more accessible than ever to run a good online business with a tiny fraction of the manpower.

My business supports a steady 4-5 client roster with just myself and a small and nimble team of up to 7ish contractors depending on the scope of projects.

That leaves me the space to be locked in on high-leverage business activities and not stuck in the day-to-day grind.

Once you’ve built a team like that, removing yourself from your business becomes more straightforward.

Not many people talk about how easy it can be to find high quality part-time help. I’ll be expanding on that in a later issue.

The truth I’m getting at here is that you don’t need to found the next Amazon or Target to find success that gives you freedom either.

In Summary

The only real way to scale a business is with systems and labor.

If you close yourself off to those 2 things by holding on to the “solo” in solopreneur, the only asset you’ll have to scale is your time.

And you only have so much time in the day. The worst mistake you can make as an entrepreneur is building a business that just replaces your 9-5 (unless that’s your goal).

A micro business is the alternative that sits in the sweet spot between burning out by yourself, or burning out trying to manage a large company.

So don’t give in to the hype of running your very own one-man business if it costs you all your time and mental health.

Your business doesn't get extra credit because you run it alone.

Success is success no matter how you achieve it.

So why play the game on extra hard mode?

Thank you for reading this week’s issue, I appreciate your time.

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