Craft Your Solopreneur Business Path

Welcome to another episode of Creative on Purpose Live. This is a special series of broadcasts where I am wrapping up the launch of my new book, Close the Gap, which is a guide to helping solopreneurs build fulfilling and prosperous businesses that fund and fit their ideal lifestyle on their terms. And last week we began the first of the, these last 3 episodes with this idea of clarifying your direction. Where am I going? Where am I starting from? And what am I starting with? And how do I set that vector so that I can set myself up to establish the path and collapse time to target? Today we're going to talk about crafting your path to achieving that lifestyle goal, that, that vision of the life that you want your business to Fund and Fit Around. And it looks like we don't have any members of the Solopreneur Success Circle joining us here, so this will probably be a fairly, um, quick broadcast. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to share the second part of the 3-step Close the Gap process. The first step is clarify your direction, second part is craft your path, and then next week we'll address the third part, which is collapsing time to target. And how do you do that? So when we're thinking about crafting our path, what we want to do is, you know, the ultimate goal is this ideal vision of the life that we want our business to fund and fit around. It's what we want to be doing with all the time that we save and the money that we make, doing the work that we feel called to do, making the difference only we can make. Or just building the solopreneur enterprise in a way that allows us to achieve that financial and time freedom that most of us are starting our business for in the first place. We can't craft a path that will help us achieve that lifestyle goal in 10 years or 5 years or 3 years. There's just too many variables. Time and randomness have this interesting way of presenting opportunities and obstacles that we can't possibly anticipate. And if we craft a 10-year plan or a 5-year plan or even a 3-year or 1-year plan, what we end up endangering ourselves in is crafting a rigid path that requires a lot of things to go right in the right order, you know, without too many complications. And when that doesn't happen, because it almost never happens, then we end up just gritting and grinding our way towards this destination that we established for ourselves. So what we want to do instead is we know where we're heading based on the information we gathered in the last, uh, presentation here. We know where we're starting and what we're starting with. And what we want to begin with as we're crafting our path is, what do I want a to achieve in the next 3 months that I can assert is going to move me the furthest and the fastest toward the destination of the lifestyle goal that I've set for myself. So, you know, 10-year goal, 5-year goal, 3-year goal, 1-year goal. This is all great, but it gets really, uh, we're able to set ourselves up to take intentional action and make meaningful progress when we Step it down to a quarterly goal, a monthly goal, a weekly goal, a daily goal, and then think about what am I going to do tomorrow? What do I need to accomplish tomorrow to help me move the needle and get closer to what I want to do? So when we are crafting that 90-day project that we're going to be working on to get closer to what we want in life, then what we're going to do, uh, one tool that I share in the book comes from Dan Nicholson's book Rigging the Game, which is to apply the 4 lenses. Is this goal, is this project that I want to achieve toward achieving my bigger vision for the life I want to be living? Does it, um, does it save me money? Does it make me money? Does it create a forcing function that, uh, Or makes me do something I have to do anyways? And, and will it save me time? And so if you apply the Four Lenses to the idea that you have for your 90-day goal objective that you're wanting to accomplish in pursuit of your longer vision, what you want to be able to do is check off at least 3 of those 4 boxes. Is it going to save me— is doing this thing going to save me time in the long run? Will it make me money in the long run? That one's always kind of a guess, but, you know, if we have validated a product or service or idea, you know, people are raising their hand for it already, or people are asking you for it already, there's probably a good chance that it's going to be a moneymaker for you. Does it save you money? Does it allow you to free up financial resources that you can reinvest into other priorities? And then finally, Does it create a forcing function? Does it make you do something that you already need to do? So just to give you a quick, um, example, when I had an existing business, I was making enough in that business to cover all of my financial responsibilities. I was achieving my annual revenue goal and with some consistency. I also was working 80 to 100 hours a week, and I really was having difficulty trying to figure out how I could optimize that system. A forcing function was introduced in my life when my older son and, uh, and my daughter-in-law announced they were pregnant. My wife and I wanted to volunteer to be full-time daycare to our grandson Jasper, but we couldn't possibly do that if we were working 8 to 10 hours a day because we had to be daycare for Jasper. 9 hours a day, 5 days a week. So the forcing function was I have to figure out how to hit my revenue number consistently while reducing the time spent in my business by 80%. So I automatically checked— also checked off the box of saving time and saving money, because the time that I, you know, that I took away from investing in things in my business that weren't really returning, giving me a return on investment. That's time that could be reinvested into other things that would make me money. And I ended up actually, uh, through the process of doing this over, uh, actually it took, took me 9 months, but what I was finally able to do is reduce the time spent in my business by 80%. So I was working instead of 10 hours a day, 2 hours a day, 5 days a week. My revenue over that period of time doubled, even though I was working a lot less, spending a lot less time in my business on marketing and, uh, sales activities. And, uh, so saved money, made money, saved a ton of time, and all because of the forcing function. So that's one way to use the 4 lenses to kind of think about what's this 90-day project gonna be. Once you establish what that project is, then you have to define the 2 or 3 things that need to go right. And that's not our instinct. We all, we all think we'll just keep doing what we're doing and we'll keep adding tools and tactics and strategies because we must just be missing one piece. That violates all of what we know about system reliability. Systems, effective and efficient systems, are are systems that have the fewest components that are continually being, uh, boosted in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency individually. The best approach to that is raising the floor on whichever component is the least efficient, least effective. What I have found for myself and for the people that I work with over and over and over again is there's usually only 2 or 3 things that need to go right in order to achieve your 90-day objective. In the terms of crafting a business where I could work 2 hours a day, earn more money, and spend less time doing things I didn't want to do, uh, what I needed was I needed to create an irresistible offer that I could put in front of an eager audience and develop marketing and sales systems that were, uh, very low impact on my time, energy, money, and attention, uh, and that put that irresistible, irresistible offer in front of that eager audience. So the 3 components of my system as I was trying to optimize my business for time, uh, and attention and effort efficiency while raising revenue. What's developing an irresistible offer, finding that eager audience, people that were already looking for the kind of thing that I was offering, and then figuring out the, the sales and marketing systems that put that offer in front of that audience. And once I got those things dialed in, it really became, uh, an exercise in just those, that last piece. How do I optimize the sales and marketing system? So that it gets that offer in front of more of the right people more often while educating people to become great prospects who can become good fit now leads that I can convert into perfect clients. But one, so once we've established the 90-day objective and we establish the 2 or 3 things that need to go right, the final piece is going to be, um, how do we set ourselves up to take intentional action? So part of this is the importance of, um, of being what I call focused, bold, and disciplined, uh, which brings to mind something that I've been introducing into my routine here recently. The folks at Magic Mind a while back invited me to try out their product in a 14-day challenge. Uh, the Magic Mind is, um, is a mindfulness and productivity enhancer. It's a little green shot, uh, that includes all sorts of, uh, you know, mushroom, uh, it's a blend of mushrooms along with some green matcha tea and, and some other things that give you vitamin D and vitamin C and all the things that you want. It's a little shot that is kind of a time release. It provides me with, uh, plenty. When I take the shot at 5 o'clock in the morning when I begin my day, I have 2 to 4 hours of very focused, distractionless flow state. It really helps me optimize my productivity and get done what I need to get done every single day. So, um, grateful for the folks at Magic Mind for introducing me to their product. If you're interested in trying it out, you can go to magicmind.com, and if enter the code COP20, you will get 48% off on your initial, uh, subscription. Or if you want to make a one-time purchase, they'll give you 20% off. I encourage you to try the product. I have found it to be immensely helpful in helping me optimize my productivity time early in the morning. Um, another, uh, thing to think about is you're trying to optimize for intentional action in achieving your 90-day objective by getting the 2 or 3 things that need to go right to go right enough to make meaningful progress and move the needle towards your 90-day objective and ultimately towards your, the lifestyle that you want your business to fund and fit around is an approach I learned from Randy Massingale called Frequency, Intensity, Purpose. Purpose. What am I trying to accomplish? The way that Randy frames purpose is that purpose is not this destination that is out there in the world that you need to discover and find a way to navigate to. And it's not this thing that Simon Sinek says, where it's this internal thing within you that you— that's fixed and finite, uh, by the time you're 20, and you have to find it and excavate it and then figure out how to execute it. For Randy, purpose is an emergent quality. It comes from doing the thing that you're doing with, for, and on purpose. If you take care of the relationships and the work right in front of you purposefully, more purpose will emerge and clarity of, of purpose will come and confidence that you can get there will come. That's the end goal. Purpose is the emergent thing. That comes through intensity, putting your unique stamp, applying your unique abilities, applying your unique perspective and earned experience and, uh, talents into doing the thing that you do in the way that only you can do it. And that will only arise through frequency, setting up a daily discipline, a practice of pursuing a project or an idea that you have an instinct or intuition, uh, or it is going to be interesting and fulfilling to you, or maybe it's something that you feel called to do. So, you know, we start with the end in mind, that what we're ultimately shooting for is purpose and purposefulness. But we begin with frequency. We find something, the smallest viable project with the smallest viable audience, and take the smallest viable step into possibility with those folks, starting the minimum viable offering, the minimum viable product or service, and interacting, engaging the field, and doing the work, paying attention, being present, listening to the feedback, creating these tight feedback loops that help us refine, iterate, and improve what we're doing and how we're doing it until the frequency phase leads us into the intensity phase where we are already somewhat adept and skilled at doing the thing. And now we are bringing our personality and our preferences, our unique talents and disposition, uh, and skills into how we do that, making the difference only we can make in the way that only we can make it. And through that pursuit, purpose will emerge, clarity of that purpose, confidence that we can achieve that purpose, and, uh, and, and be optimizing our path to purpose As we go. So that is really the, um, the entire process unpacked in the second part of Close the Gap: Build a Fulfilling and Prosperous Business on Your Terms That Funds and Fits Your Ideal Lifestyle. There's going to be a link down below where you can get a free process guide and flowchart that will, uh, the flowchart illustrates the entire process and the process guide just walks you through The, the 3 steps within the 3 pieces: clarify your direction, craft your path, collapse time to target. And if you want that document, there's no opt-in required. Just click on the link, click on the button, it will instantly download for you, and you can check that out if it resonates and you want to go further with the concepts and the principles and the practices that are in that book, there's actually a link in the process guide where you can download a free copy of the entire book. Obviously, the book is not anything I'm looking to, you know, I'm not planning on retiring on my book sales. What I want to do is introduce to you and share with you this process that will help you craft your path to achieving the lifestyle that you want. To fund your, uh, that you want funded by a business that fits around the life that you're already living. And if you resonate with those ideas and you want my help, there's obviously ways that we can increase our access and proximity to each other and help you catalyze your progress to building that business of your dreams. So again, this is the second of the final 3 episodes dedicated to the Close the Gap process. Last Thursday, we talked about clarifying your direction. Uh, you can find that in the, uh, the feed wherever you're watching this video. We just talked about crafting your path, defining a 90-day objective, the 2 or 3 things that need to go right, and how to, um, implement intentional action every day that gets you closer to the things that you really want in life and in business. Next week, next Thursday, we will talk about how to collapse time to target. How can we raise the floor on the less efficient and effective parts of our system to increase velocity so that we can get to where we want to go and achieve our objective in less time with less effort and with a lot less risk? And again, if the, the Magic Mind Mindfulness Shot is something that you're interested in exploring as a way to enhance your ability to focus and achieve a flow state doing the work that you do, then I encourage you to go to magicmind.com, enter the code COP20, and again, you'll get 48% off your subscription, or you can get a 20% one-time discount on any product that you want to check out. Uh, I have had a lot of success, um, getting a lot more clarity, focus, and discipline, uh, in the start of my day, achieving the things that I need to accomplish in my business within the first 2 hours of my day so that I freed up all of my time, attention, and energy to do the other things that I want to do with my life. So with that, um, again, resources down below that you can reach out to me anytime if, if there's things, questions that you have, or help that you need implementing any of the, these ideas. I hope to see you next time, next week, and I the gift of your time and attention. If you want to drop a comment or a question in the comments wherever you're watching this, I always love to hear from you. If you're listening as a podcast, please give us a 5-star rating, give us a review. It really helps more of the right people that need to collide with this content get in front of it and benefit, uh, and have their business and lives enhanced by colliding with this content. So thanks very much. We'll look forward to seeing you all Next week.