MBA905 Solopreneur vs. Entrepreneur

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For free access to that course, just go to100mba.net idea in today's lesson you will learn the difference between being a solopreneur and an entrepreneur. Now now, I've had experiences in both camps. I was a solopreneur for long, extensive periods of time. I've been an entrepreneur with an equal amount of time as well. And don't worry, we're going to get into the differences between the two, the advantages, the disadvantages of both. And my goal for you today is to see what is a better fit for you because there is a big difference between the two and depending on what kind of business you want to build, what kind of lifestyle you want to have, this is a very important decision. You want to make early, early on, it's going to shape every decision you make in your business. A lot of people make the mistake of just starting a business without actually having a conscious decision what kind of business or business person they want to be. This is a huge mistake because you might build a business or a life that you do not enjoy, that you do not like. So you went from a job you hate to a business that you really are not thrilled about. So today you're going to decide on which fortress you want to build and live in, what kind of business you want to run, what kind of business person you want to be. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. All right, Solopreneur or entrepreneur? Quickly, let's just define these two. In short, being a solopreneur means that you're running a business by yourself. You don't have a full time staff along with you. That doesn't mean you do not have freelancers that help you from time to time, or maybe even a virtual assistant. But basically, a solopreneur runs their business on their own, by themselves. And this is quite common. Common. It's actually quite possible with online businesses. In fact, Nicole and I ran the hundred dollar mba, the podcast and the program all by ourselves for the first two years or so. We ran the podcast all by ourself for over 300 episodes. So it's definitely doable. You can do this. Now, what about an entrepreneur? Well, an entrepreneur is pretty much the same thing, except you have staff. That means that you are building a business with a team of people the that are with you all the time that you depend on to build a business. And a good example of this is our software company, Webinar Ninja. I cannot have this business without the team of developers we have or designers or server administrators. There are other aspects that I can do myself, whether the sales pages or the marketing or I can get on the webinars and try to promote our product. But the product does not exist. The business does not exist if I don't have this full time staff with me. And an entrepreneur in its purest sense means somebody who's really an orchestrator, somebody who finds all the pieces of the puzzle, all the right players they need to build a great business, puts them together, becomes their leader and leads them to success. While a solopreneur does the same thing, except they do all the work themselves. Right? They're their own leader. They take matters in their own hands and actually implement all the work themselves. I want to make sure this is clear. One is not better than the other. It all depends on what kind of business you want to build. Let's get into being a solopreneur, the advantages of being a solopreneur. And then we'll get into the disadvantages or really the challenges of being a solopreneur. And then we'll do the same for being an entrepreneur. But that's not where we're going to stop. We're also going to be talking about which one is a better fit for the type of life you want to live. No matter what you choose. There's going to be challenges. Just know that right now. Just, just resign to that fact. There will be challenges, there will be bumps along the road. That's just business. So it's not like one choice is easier than the other. It all depends on who you are as a person and what kind of business you want to build. So let's get into the advantages of being a solopreneur. Number one, being a solopreneur means that you are in complete control of the whole thing, the whole process, the product, the success, the failure. Let me give you an example of being a solopreneur. Let's say you're an author. You write books online. You create ebooks for the Kindle. You're going to come up with the topics, you're going to come up with the titles, you're going to come up with the actual content, you're going to write the books. You may hire a freelancer to edit, you might hire a freelancer to create your cover, but they're not a full time hire. They're just somebody to do a one shot job. You're going to do the marketing, you're going to create, you know, the website for the book and you're going to try to promote it through your email list. You're going to try to hit maybe one of the top lists on Amazon. When you're selling your Kindle book, you might create other products that go along with the book, whether it's a course or something like that. But the point here is, is that you are rolling up your sleeves and doing it all. Now you might be thinking, omar, I thought you said advantages. Yes, that's an advantage. The advantage is that you get to control what gets done. As we'll talk about in entrepreneurship, there are things that are out of your control. Just like my software business. If something in the software takes five weeks to develop, because it's a very complicated part of the software, there's nothing I can do about that. I can't speed up that process. You know, I can't get my hands dirty because I don't know that code. While on the other hand, as a solopreneur, in the example I gave you, write the book. If you want to dedicate a weekend to crank out the short ebook, you could do it. I've had friends that wrote a book in 72 hours. But the point here is that you're in complete control of you actually producing what you need to produce to run your business. Another great advantage is very low overhead. You practically have no payroll. Yes, you might have a one off thing you have to pay for a freelancer, whether it's designing the ebook cover or you know, maybe an editor who, or maybe you need some graphic designer to design something for your website. The point here is, is that you're not paying people month in month out on a payroll. Generally your expenses are very low. So therefore your profits are high. Every cent you make, every dollar you make more of that is going into your pocket because your expenses again are minimal. Another advantage, if you're not big on leadership, if you're not somebody who feels comfortable leading a team of people, managing people, then being a solopreneur is one of those things that you really should be counting your lucky stars as an option. Because prior to the Internet you had to be a good leader to be a great entrepreneur because you just couldn't do it alone. But now you can and you don't have to manage anybody really. And even if you have to in a short term, if you're hiring a freelancer for a short term project, it's not going to last long. So it's not that bad. So if you're not somebody who likes leadership or management, being a solopreneur, fantastic. You just got to lead yourself. If you're not somebody who loves finance, budgeting, making sure that you're making enough money for your business to pay payroll. This is huge. I alluded to it before. You know, a lot less money is going out. So most of the money that you're making is going into your bank account and staying there. Whether they're ebook sales or audiobook sales or course sales, whatever you're doing as a solopreneur, you don't have to worry too much about finance. You can actually just do it off a spreadsheet. Probably really don't need an account unless it's tax time. It's pretty simple. Now obviously the more money you make, the more complicated things get. So if you're making, you know, six figures, seven fig or solopreneurs are making seven figures. Yes. You're going to be wanting to be extra careful. And maybe having an accountant where you pay them, you know, a few hundred dollars a month is well worth it. But generally finance is not a big headache if you're doing everything yourself. So those are some really solid advantages. And there's one thing I want to say before we move into the challenges or disadvantages. I highly recommend starting every business as a solopreneur. Keeping it lean. If you have a cupcake business, you bake the cupcakes, you sell them, you see if there's a viable market for your cupcakes. There's no reason to hire a staff and a kitchen and all that stuff if you don't know if people want your cupcakes or not. Right. So the point here is, is that you should start every business as a solopreneur as much as possible by doing things yourself. We talked about this before. You know the ins and outs of the business. So when you do hire somebody and transition to that entrepreneurial phase, you know how to train them, you know exactly what to hire for, you know what skills they need. And the handover is simple. Cause you did it. All right. What are some of the challenges of being a solopreneur? Well, one, it often takes longer than expected to be successful, to make a profit, because it's just you mostly, and you're doing all the work. You only have a certain amount of hours a day to put in. You're only one person. So it's gonna take a lot longer now, it might not take years, but it's gonna take longer for you to get some traction. But it's definitely possible. But you gotta have patience. This is why a lot of people solopreneur, they become a solopreneur outside of their day jobs as a side hustle. So keep that in mind. Number two, you're kind of limited to what you can do, right? So if you have a great idea that you want to implement as a business, there might be a chance that you can't do that business by yourself because you don't have all the skills necessary. Yes, you can learn it, yes, you can build it. But again, it could take more time and it may not be your strength. So you're kind of limited to a certain number of businesses you can run because you got to build it around your own skillset. And in fact, it becomes much more like a personal brand. So you could see it with the $100 MBA, you know, I was a teacher at the high school, university level for 13 years. I was a teacher trainer. So teaching was my bread and butter. I also started businesses on the side when I was a teacher. I became an entrepreneur. I built larger businesses. So I started the $100 MBA, which is teaching other people how to start businesses. I'm a good teacher. You know, it's what I've done all my adult life. I've built businesses. I want to walk people through it and make sure they avoid some of the mistakes I've made. And therefore, I built a business around that. But when it was time for me to want to build something else, like a solution to webinars, I knew from the bat I couldn't do this alone. I had to build a team, and therefore, I had to switch my business model for that business. Same thing. I had a clothing line in the past called Zenum Design, and I couldn't tailor the clothing myself. I needed expert tailors to do this. So some ideas don't cater to solopreneurship. Lastly, solopreneurship can be lonely, right? It can be because you're not building a team around you. You're not busy with building that team and, you know, building that camaraderie. And a lot of people quit. A lot of people give up on business because solopreneurship is so lonely. And they feel like, hey, I don't know if I could do this. It's not motivating. Luckily, there's lots of communities out there that you can join. You can go to meetups, you can go to conferences. People just like you can meet up with each other and become their own colleagues. So, yes, solopreneurship can be lonely, but it just encourages you to be more active online and in person in these meetup groups. Okay, let's get into entrepreneurship. Sky is the limit. The sky's the limit with entrepreneurship. If you're going to build a team around your idea, around your business, you could pretty much do anything. I mean, look at Elon Musk. The guy is putting rockets into space because of the amazing team he built around him. Can't do that as a solopreneur, right? Well, if we break it down to earth, let's look at a business like Basecamp. Basecamp is a software for project management. It's something that we use in our business. Absolutely love it. Love the founders and their methodology in building that software. Jason Fried and David Hahnemeier Hanson. They built a great software with a Small team. They're not a huge team. I believe they're under 50 employees, but they've had great success with even just 10 employees. But again, they couldn't do it themselves. They needed a team of designers, developers, marketers, and they built a great software and a great business that's here to last, that has longevity. And we talked about when you are a solopreneur, you have a lot more control because you do everything yourself. So therefore, the opposite is going to be true with entrepreneurship. There's less control. You're going to empower other people, not you, to do major things that affect the success of the business. And you're going to have to hope. No, not hope, but you're going to have to believe that they're going to follow through. And if they're not, it's going to be your responsibility to make sure they do or find somebody who does to ensure your success. That's really the major difference where you're going to have to hire great talent, great people to help fulfill your dream of building this business. So therefore, there is more risk. That's just the reality. That's just the truth. And I experienced this with building the $100 MBA, which is closer to a solopreneurship. You know, we have other people that work full time on the $100 MBA, but it's a very, very small team. Compared to Webinar Ninja, for example, that has 26 employees. The risk is super high with the software business, Webinar Ninja, and we've been through a lot of different teammates. Now we have a core team that's been with us for a long time. But some didn't work out because I'm constantly, you know, weighing out the risk and seeing if this person's actually going to pull off what I need them to pull off in order for us to succeed. And if they don't, you're going to have to cut them. And that leads me to the next advantage of being an entrepreneur. Now, you might say cutting people, that's an advantage. No, that's not the advantage. The advantage is getting to know really talented people. That is one of the best things about being an entrepreneur is you get to learn and get to know about people that are really great at what they do, things that you are not so great at, and therefore you admire them even more. So you're surrounded with great talent, and that's one of the funnest things. It's like playing a basketball game with a bunch of NBA stars. You're surrounded with People working at a high level. Now, you work at a high level, too, but in your area of expertise, whether that's marketing or sales or leadership. Now, we haven't mentioned this yet, but one of the advantages of being an entrepreneur is financially, you can make a whole lot more when you're not just depending on yourself. Again, you only have a certain amount of hours as you can scale as a solopreneur, but, boy, can you scale as an entrepreneur. I mean, I just read an article yesterday about how Jeff Bezos's net worth is now $100 billion with a B. Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon. And what an entrepreneur and what a business he's built. So if money's your game, if you're looking to accumulate wealth and you want to make eight or nine figures or beyond, then you got to choose the entrepreneurship route. Unless you're a solopreneur and are an incredible investor, it's going to be really hard for you to hit those marks. Okay, what are some of the challenges of entrepreneurship? We talked about them. A bit high risk. There's a lot of management and leadership that is needed. Most of my time spent on webinar ninja is leading and managing the team, making sure that everybody knows what they need to do, communicating with the team, making sure everybody's on task, making sure everybody is singing from the same song. She they understand what we're all about, what we're trying to communicate. There's a lot of change that happens in a bigger business, and you want to make sure those changes are communicated properly all the time. Training, developing your team, plus the other tasks I do, whether they're marketing or sales or content generation. So if you're not big on leadership and you're not big on management, this is going to be a nightmare for you. So make sure that you are or you're willing to learn. I like leading. I like managing. I like leading more than managing. But that's something I recognized really early on when I was in education or as a head of department. I really enjoyed that job because I got to lead a team of teachers. And I kind of made a mental note of that when I became an entrepreneur. Another challenge. Remember when I said as a solopreneur, most of the money you make goes in your pocket? Not as true. As an entrepreneur, you have a lot of mouths to feed, you have a lot of payroll to pay because you got a team of people, and these people need to get paid and need to get paid on time. And then you make sure that you know, all these expenses are taken care of. And it's not just salaries, it's also what other expenses it takes to have that business, whether it's your storefront or inventory or resources or whatever they are. So a lot of money goes out and that can be painful for some people. And you got to make sure you're making more than you spend. This is so important as an entrepreneur. Got to make sure you're never in that position where it's like, wow, we're spending a lot more than we're actually making. Don't make any hires, don't put any extra expenses on your business until you're making more. I say 40% more than your actual expenses. That kind of gives you a bit of a buffer. If you are a bit controlling and you like to have full control over things, this is not going to be pleasant for you because you have to let go of some control sometimes a lot of control as an entrepreneur of what's going on all the time, timeline, how long things take. Other people might take longer at a task. Even if you can do that task yourself and you've hired somebody to take that load off you, it may take them longer. That might frustrate you. You have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I remember as a full time solopreneur, you really have a lot less stress when it comes to that. You're in a lot more control. You might have other stress, whether it's financial or otherwise. But once that's kind of in order, you're making a pretty good profit, pretty much, you know, stable. You're okay, you're not stressing out. But it's easy to stress out as an entrepreneur because you're dealing with so many different personalities, different challenges, things out of your control, and you got to get comfortable with that. All right, so we talked about the advantages and the disadvantages or slash challenges of being a solopreneur versus an entrepreneur. What does that mean for you? You need to make a decision on how you want to live, what kind of business you want to build. If you followed my eight week experiment of working while traveling, you'll know that it's really hard to run a business with employees that need your advice, that need your leadership, that need your approvals. If you want to travel the world, if you are somebody who wants to get into business because you want to have more time to travel, being a solopreneur is fantastic for, because you can block book time for you to work and get things done and that's it. You don't have to depend or coordinate your time with anybody else. As an entrepreneur, different story. Long periods of travel is very difficult because you're constantly on the go. You're not really fully immersed in travel or you're not fully immersed in your work, because constantly, you know, answering messages on your phone or managing the team or approving things or, you know, making sure everybody's on task, all that stuff. So, yes, you can hire managers, yes, you can do that. But at the end of the day, you are the leader of the company that has to lead. So if you're somebody who likes flexibility in your life, you want to be able to travel, you want flexibility in your time, even if you don't want to travel, you want to stay where you are, you love where you live, and you're a homebody, but you want more time for yourself. You want flexibility to be off on a Tuesday. You have a lot more control over your schedule. As a solopreneur, you got to get work done, lots of work done, but you get to choose when to do it. So if that's the kind of lifestyle you want to have, have that flexibility and time, being a solopreneur is a great way to go. And don't worry, there's tons of opportunity, financial growth. Again, like I mentioned, there are people making seven figures as a solopreneur, and that's plenty of money for a lot of people. All right? Now, if you're really ambitious, if you're hungry for changing the world or even just changing a market or a product or a product line in some way, you want to solve a big problem in a big way, being an entrepreneur is a great thing. It's very rewarding when you can do that, when you build the team to make it happen. If you're somebody who loves to lead, that loves to train people, loves people to understand that you got their back, you can definitely do that. And being an entrepreneur really allows you to build big and to think big. Now, I'm not saying as a solopreneur, you can't think big. You can just going to take a little bit longer, or maybe a lot longer, if I'm going to be completely honest. Because again, you're just yourself. So think about what kind of life you want to live. Now, as an entrepreneur, less flexibility and time. Again, you're building something huge here, right? So just keep it in mind. Understand who you are, how you want to live, your responsibilities in life, what do you want to do with your time, and choose wisely. And my advice if you're not sure, start every business as a solopreneur. See how it feels. If you're content, if you feel things are going well and you're making the money that you need or want, then you found your path. But if you want something more, if you're hungry for more, transition to an entrepreneur. I've done it tons of times and I've experienced both. So you go ahead and do the same.

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It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico. All right, to wrap up today's lesson, how do you get started as a solopreneur? Well, first of all, I really think it's important for you to dedicate the time. A lot of people don't give it enough time to, to make sure their business succeeds. Give it a couple hours here, a couple hours there, and within a few months they say, you know what, I don't know if this is for me. And they let go. You gotta schedule in the time. Personally, I think that you have to give any business, small or big, at least 20 hours a week for six months. You gotta give it at least six months for 20 hours a week. If you don't have 20 hours a week, whether you have jam packed weekends or other responsibilities, then you're gonna have to give it 10 hours a week for a year. You gotta give it time. Now I'm a true believer that everybody's got the time. You just gotta prov prioritize what you want to spend your time on. And that might mean not watching as much TV or playing video games or letting go some of your hobbies that you love. Pursue something that you've always dreamed of. I think that's kind of a good trade off. But you got to give it time. Number two, you got to start building an audience. That means you got to Start building a website, build a website, build a blog, start writing about your ideas and start collecting some email addresses. You can use Sumo.com, we talked about them before. If you go to 100- MBA net, Sumo, you can get started for free. It's a great tool to collect emails. So you gotta build an audience so you can build for that audience whatever you're building. If you have nobody to talk to, you have nobody to sell to. Build a website, very simple, doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be like a designer website. Start blogging every week about the topic that you're all about, whether it's fitness or health or finance or cooking or whatever it is. Gotta get used to communicating your ideas to other people. And you gotta get people into your world, into your website. So you start inviting them for more great goodies, whether it's a free ebook or handout or course, where they provide their email address in exchange for that. That's how you get started. You actually do some work and you start writing and you start building an audience. If you have an audience, if you build a list of a hundred, two hundred, a thousand people and you build a great product for them, you're going to sell. You've built it for them, you asked them what they wanted, they are sold on you. They love your content. This is why people are not successful. They don't do this work, they don't build the business. They just want to play business. They just like the idea. They like the concept of making money off something that they love. But you have to actually roll up your sleeves and build the foundation. If you don't like to write, create a podcast, do videos, put them up on YouTube, put them up in your website. But I really emphasize building a website because that's where you're going to be able to collect email addresses and be able to build a great list of interested people that are interested in your content as well as your future products. And when you're ready to sell that first product, you have a list to email people that actually want what you have. This is why I don't think it's a good idea to put so much effort in the beginning in Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platform, because you really have a hard time collecting emails there. Yes, you can tell them there, hey, I have a new product. But they might not see it through the millions of things in their feedback. Can't ignore things on email. You can ignore your inbox. So that's the first steps there Go ahead and get started. You can do this. And if you've already started, keep going. You got this. Keep pushing forward, keep improving, keep tweaking, keep making it happen. Hey, I've had all my share of struggles. I still have lots of struggles, but I'm still standing right. I'm still doing this. And to me, that success, being an entrepreneur in itself is success, no matter how much money or how much fame or how much significance you you got in the process. All right, that's it for me today, guys. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. It was a little bit of a long one, but I wanted to get a lot of great content in for you guys. Don't forget, come January 1, Monday, the 1st of January 2018, the $100 NBA show goes daily, five days a week. We're going to have a blast. I can't wait for this. I'm super pumped. All your favorite types of episodes are back. Must reads, Guest teachers. We're going to have Q and A Wednesday and Free Ride Friday where you get to win a free ride to one of our programs by leaving us an itunes rating and review. So stay tuned for that. Make sure you hit subscribe right now so you get all the episodes as they roll in come January 1st on the Daily. Alright, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the reasons why I started this podcast is to have a practical way for you to start a business. And practical means doing so after you have listened to this episode and if you haven't started yet with your business, get started right now. Now you might be thinking, oh, I don't know, what's the name of my business? I don't know what I'm going to do. Just start. It doesn't matter. You can change it later. Those thoughts are going to hold you back. Just get started. If you're in doubt, just call your website, your name, janesmith.com, whatever, if that's available. Fantastic, but whatever. Put your name and start writing your thoughts. Blog about how this is hard. Blog about how you're not sure how to get started, or about an episode you just heard, or about a challenge you're having. Just get in the groove. Start working. You'll figure it out as you go and you'll get better. But the worst thing you could do is not do anything at all. Trust me, you'll feel so much better once you're started and you actually have something out there in the world that's real. All right, I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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