In my previous posts, I began outlining steps you can take to escape the self-employment trap and build a business that can generate income from you. I suggested three: building the foundation of your company culture, hiring the right people and training them meticulously, defining and documenting your process, Here I offer further three more steps to help you become a true solopreneur.
- Fine-Tune Your Processes with Procedures
Once you have general processes in place and the right people to run them, you add automated procedures by leveraging technology to become more efficient.
Processes are the big-picture steps outlining how you want something to happen. Procedures utilize technology to support processes, eliminated human labor where possible, and therefore create scale in your business. Processes are about outlining how to do the right things in the right way. Procedures are about doing those things as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
Once you’ve developed your processes and procedures, put them into an Operations Manual, which you can use to train and manage people.
- Leverage Content & Technology
Content is a powerful tool for implementing education-based marketing, claiming authority in the marketplace for your business, and telling your business story. Here are a few ways to leverage content:
- Blog articles
- Videos
- Audio recordings
- Books
- E-books
- White papers
- Email newsletters
- Workbooks
- Blog articles
- Technology
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and online marketing automation software
- Email marketing software
- Ecommerce
- Educational and content-curation websites
- Online landing/sales pages for lead capture
- Automated email sequences
- Social media
Content and technology are critical for personality-based businesses. They make people feel like they know you even if they’ve never met you in person. Dr. Oz is an excellent example of this. No one thinks Dr. Oz is going to perform their regular physical exam, but they’ll trust the doctor he recommends because of how he’s utilized the media.
- Let Go
The hardest part of all of this is simply letting go and trusting your people, processes, and procedures.
Psychologically, this can be difficult because initially you’ll feel as if you’re not creating value. In truth, letting go and freeing yourself up allow you to create even more value. You have to learn the difference between maximizing control and maximizing value.
Value-maximizers understand that they have to take more vacations away from the office and allow their people to become empowered and grow. They have to trust others. Too many professionals, by focusing on maximizing control, become mediocre at a lot of things instead of becoming amazing at one or two things. This leads to exhaustion and, in many cases, even becoming resentful of their profession.
The caveat here is that it’s a huge mistake to hand off too much control too fast. Don’t get so eager to let go that you create chaos. Think of this like a relay race. You need a good transition process. You need to adapt and adjust to challenges that arise.
But whatever you do, never make the mistake of believing you can’t build a business. You can. And by doing so, you’ll create more value and have far more impact than you ever could working hard in a self-imposed job.
What to Do if Your Business Can’t Be Scaled
If there’s absolutely no way to scale your self-employed venture, you’ve built yourself a job. In this case, recognize that and move on as quickly as possible. My goal is to get you out of a job. Run it only as long as you need the income. Shift your income to independent revenue streams as quickly as possible. It may be a good option for you to sell your business. That way, walking away isn’t a complete loss.
Moving from a job to being self-employed is definitely a step in the right direction. It gives you more autonomy and options, and boosts your skills and confidence. Just make sure you don’t end up there.
In my next post, I explore the folly of conventional investment strategies.
I’d love to hear from you about your own move from owner to “solopreneur.” Are these steps I just outlined in this and the previous post doable for you? Thank you for sharing.
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