What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do Next

All right, we are live. So in case you're ever wondering what you should do while you're waiting for Substack Live to go live, play the ukulele. That's my advice. Hey, it's Scott Perry with the, the Solopreneur Success Stack and doing another live with a catch-up on some of the questions that have been coming into the Solopreneur Success Stack chat. And today we're gonna talk about Rash Minder's question. Hello, Annabelle, great to have you with us. And so if you are interested in submitting a question for me to go live and talk about, just become a subscriber, free subscriber, paid subscriber, I don't care, just subscribe. To the Solopreneur Success Stack and then join the subscriber chat. It's just something that you can do once you get a welcome email. If you're not already a subscriber, you'll get walked through the steps for how to join the chat, and you can simply submit a question whenever you feel like it, and whenever I get around to it, I'll go ahead and answer. So let's get to Rajminder's question. I bought a personal item from a brand. While it's a nice product, it certainly has some major flaws. After using it for a few months, I have a more versatile and improved design for that product. It's something that can be made easily. I am wondering if I should attempt to make an improved sample and present it to the original company, and if they like it, I can get a good price for the design input. Another alternative is that I can make my own product and sell it on my own and not worry about trusting a corporate entity to give me a fair deal. The product could also help me raise funds for my food venture. Besides the fact that it is actually a good product to introduce for my new venture that I am working on launching with two other teammates. So there is actually, um, a question within the question here that I think is really pertinent to anybody that has a solopreneur business that's trying to answer the question, when, how, and why should I decide or not decide to do a thing? Okay, and so in terms of the specifics of Rashminder's question, it would be a little irresponsible for me to address anything that might have legal issues around intellectual property, copyright, trademark, licensing, and all that sort of thing. I don't know enough about, have enough context to comment as to whether Rashminder should get permission before she starts to build out something that is is intended to be an improvement on an existing product. But let's just set that aside for a minute. What I would suggest is the first step when it comes to deciding whether or not you should do a thing. So maybe you're scrolling social media and this great program comes up, or this new tool or tactic or strategy for how to achieve lead generation or how to close sales calls, or, you know, something catches your attention. You have to decide, is this a thing that I should should I want to do this? And here's, here's what I would suggest. I'm going to give you kind of a meta way of looking at this, a zoomed-out perspective, and then I'm going to give you a very tactical tool that you can use for vetting whether or not you should do a thing just because you can do a thing. So the meta zoomed-out perspective is this: if you are clear on And I would assert it's— if you're a solopreneur that is trying to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be in terms of designing and engineering your business to fund and fit around your ideal lifestyle, you should probably first make sure you're super clear on the lifestyle that you're trying to get your business to fund and fit around. How much time do you want to be spending doing the work inside your business? How much revenue do you need in order to sustain your current livelihood or to take care of all of your financial responsibilities and your responsibilities to, to family or just to yourself? So having clarity about what the vision of the business, the vision for the business that you want to have in the future can be super helpful here because now you know what you're actually optimizing for. Optimizing for. Uh, going kind of coming closer to the present moment, I would suggest that it's probably super helpful to have made sure that you're clear on what we do in the Solopreneur Success Circle, which is making sure that in addition to knowing what we're optimizing for in terms of our ideal lifestyle, what's my 90-day goal? What's the the thing, the priority that if I achieved it in this quarter would propel me the furthest and the fastest toward that lifestyle, ideal lifestyle that I'm currently optimizing my business to reach. And if you have that 90-day goal, then you are probably working on 2 or 3 things that have to go right in order to accomplish that priority, which will again propel you further and faster towards your goal. So looking at Rashminder's specific question and also just some, uh, giving you a tool or a tactic that you could use for— is this a, you know, just because I can do this thing, is this a thing that I should do? I would share with you a, a template, a tool that I learned from Dan Nicholson's book Rigging the Game. It's something that I've also heard Nick Peterson talk about, and it's sort of built on the idea, uh, ideas that are in The Checklist Manifesto, which is a great book that's been around for a while that I'm currently rereading. And that is, before you make a decision to do a thing, make sure that that thing is going to help you achieve whatever it is that you're currently trying to accomplish. So the, the Four Lenses asks you to answer four questions And you must answer in the affirmative 3, at least 3 of these 4 questions if you are going to go ahead and, and do a thing. And the 4 questions are: will this thing make me money? Will this thing save me money? Will this thing save me time? And is this thing a forcing function. Now, here's how we think about the questions. Is it going to make me money? Is it going to create an asset or provide a resource or accomplish a goal that will lead to an increase in revenue? Will it improve my bottom line? That is a question worth asking. It's also worth asking if doing this thing will somehow save you time. Because if you can save— or I'm sorry, save you money— it— because money saved, money recaptured can be reinvested in things that will actually catalyze your business forward. The next question is, will it save me time? If it will save you time, that is in a way another asset that you can reinvest into the activities that will help you close the gap with your 90-day goal and help you close the gap toward the overall vision you have for your business. It's also when you, when you are saving time, you are also in effect saving money. That's time that can be reinvested in revenue-generating activities. And then finally, forcing function. This one's maybe not as familiar to folks, but it's, it's a really powerful concept. It's just another way of looking at leverage. Is doing this thing going to create a force multiplier? Is that a forcing function? That makes me do a thing that I should do because it provides greater leverage towards closing the gap towards the things that I want to achieve in my business or in my life. So will it make me money? Will it save me money? Will it save me time? Will it create a forcing function? And if you can answer 3 or 4 of those things in the affirmative, then it's worth a thing worth considering doing. And if it doesn't answer at least 3 or 4 of those 4 questions, then it's worth considering whether or not this is just a seductive way of distracting yourself. Or maybe you're repeating another sin of solopreneurship, which is just continuing to do what you've always done, which is just chase after shiny new objects that actually don't get you any closer to what you want. In fact, they get you further away because they decrease the efficiency of your system. So if I were to apply this to Rashminder's situation and what I know about it, again, the first consideration is, are there any legal issues around this? Is there, you know, are there trademark issues or patent issues or licensing issues that I should think about before I go ahead and try to replicate or improve upon somebody else's intellectual property? If we push that aside for a minute, What I would say is, based on what Rashminder shared here, she said that it is something that would help her raise funds for her business, which I happen to know a little bit about, but it's in the food preparation and delivery ecosystem, or in that world. So if the, if the, if creating a new product or improving this existing product, um, will help you further that venture, if it helps you raise money for that venture. Um, and the raising money is always a little bit of a guess, right? We don't know that the thing that we're going to build or put into the world, the product or the offer, is going to make money, but we can make an educated guess based on demand in the marketplace. Is this something that people are already asking for? Um, And, and if so, then you have some, some degree of, um, certainty or confidence that it will become a revenue generator. So the revenue generation is often a guess, but make your best honest guess about whether or not the thing you're about to do will raise you— raise money for you. Will it save you money? Will this— will doing this thing help you save money? Will it replace an app or or a software or a platform or a program that you're already doing and therefore save you money in the long run? Will it save you time? Will this thing that you're thinking about doing help you achieve some sort of element of your business goal achievement system more effectively, more efficiently, and therefore save you time that could be reinvested in other things? That would be another consideration. And then force and function. Is this a thing that you have to do anyway? And therefore, by doing— creating a project around this or putting yourself on the hook to do this now helps you accomplish something that needs to be accomplished anyways. That's the way I would think about it, Rashminder. And I'll give another example just in case it helps put more context on this system of decision-making and deciding whether or not you should do a thing, uh, in terms of my own experience and actually what I'm doing right now. So, uh, hey Judith, hey Philip, great to have you here. Um, so when I decided to go live today, it was based on a decision that I was making based on the fact that I have quite a bit of free time, a lot of slack in my schedule right now. I have a business that fully funds the lifestyle that I want to live, usually before the summer is over. So, I am not always in hardcore revenue generation mode because of the systems that I have proven over time that they will provide me with the livelihood that I need in order to take care of my financial responsibilities. So, the revenue generation part is not really important to me when it comes to doing things like this. What I do know is that when I go live, I do get a bump in my free subscribers, and any bump in my free subscribers increases the, the number of people that will attend the free subscriber workshops where I have systems that help move dedicated solopreneurs, solopreneurs that are committed to you know, getting real and doing what's necessary to actually achieve their business goals and can do that by joining the Solopreneur Success Circle, our paid community of subscribers. So I have some idea that I'm going live and helping other people solve an immediate problem that they're having will reveal bigger problems that it might be worthwhile joining the paid subscriber community to help them solve. So there's revenue generation. Um, It will, um, does it save me money? Well, again, by doing a 15-20 minute live video, I'll have an asset, uh, that I can repurpose so that the next time someone asks me a question like this, I can just create a YouTube video from this content and send the link to people instead of trying to, you know, get on a call or write them an email or record a new video for them. So it does potentially save me money by saving me time. So time and money are saved, revenue is possibly going to be generated. And forcing function— by answering questions as they come up in the subscriber chat, I am— it is a forcing function for getting me to go live, to share, deliver value, share expertise, help people solve problems, and create more content, create more visibility and exposure to me and the work that I do and the Solopreneur Success Stack publication. So I'm able to check off all 4 boxes when I decided to go live to present this material on the 4 lenses. So that is another way of thinking about it. And the 4 lenses is a really simple tool that you can literally apply every time something crosses your radar as, oh, that That looks interesting. There's the shiny object. Should I chase that shiny object? Should I sign up for that program? Should I dedicate the time to listening to this YouTube video or this live video and so forth? Right? And so, once again, the 4 lenses that you want to consider when you're deciding whether or not it is in your best interest to do a thing. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So, the 4 lenses are will, Will it make me money? Will it save me money? Will it save me time? Does it create a forcing function that makes me do something that I actually have to do anyways? Those are the 4 lenses. You can think of them as 2 quantitative— making money and saving money is just another way of making money, so that is, uh, creates, um, is a quantifiable measurement. And then Does it save me time? Does, does it create a forcing function that makes me do a thing I have to do? I think of that as kind of a qualifying, uh, as qualifiers. They help improve the quality of the things that I'm doing. I get that from Nick Peterson. He talks about the 4 lenses and those 2 categories: quantity— more money, save money— and then qualifiers— save time, forcing function. So I hope that framework is helpful. It's great to have Jan also join us here. We got— have a nice little showing for this live video. If you enjoy, uh, these Q&A sessions, if they— if you find them helpful, uh, whether it's getting your personal question answered in a, in a direct and relevant, um, manner, or just watching, as most of you are right now, watching over the shoulder as I respond to someone else's question, I always try to make sure I'm addressing the specific question but also providing tools, tactics, strategies, and principles that will apply broadly to anybody that is engaged in a solopreneur enterprise where they are trying to close the gap between where they are and where they want to be, spending less time and maximizing the time spent in their business, optimizing it to generate more revenue with less effort and less time. And if you're wanting to leave a question, be sure to subscribe to the Solopreneur Success Stack. Make sure that you join the subscriber chat. You can enter a question anytime, and I will continue to do these live videos whenever I get a question that's really interesting, I have a little bit of extra time, or when there's a collection of questions that I wanna bang out just to make room and create more slack for further questions. So great to have you all with us. I'll see those of you that are in the Solopreneur Success Circle of paid subscribers in our Monday On Purpose call in just 10 minutes, and I hope everyone has a fantabulous week and best of luck. And if I can ever be of usefulness or helpfulness to you, don't, don't hesitate to reach out. All right, have a great day, everyone.