Here's how I'd start a $100K/yr solopreneur business if I had to start over
grab a coffee... this'll take a minute
What’s good young and eager mind!
Since we’re still early in 2024, I thought, what better than to discuss what I’d do differently knowing what I know now when it comes to making a living as a solopreneur?
Matcha on the left & Spotify on the right, so let’s get cracking.
Throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks has got to be the dumbest business strategy
Yet, it's the basis for a ton of advice from the experts.
(e.g. Lean Startup)
The analogy I teach my students is that that’s like making a key in search of some door with a lock that it opens. The more stubborn you are, the more P(success) approaches 0. But even if you are super flexible, you can only succeed if the key kinda works. You need *some* signal. Why then is the Lean Startup methodology so popular? Cuz the popular methodologies before that were even more retarded if you can believe that. And secondly, cuz of the visible numerator (traditional media/social media) over the invisible denominator which leads to availability bias.
The problem is that it only works in theory.
And in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice...
What actually ends up happening is that you run out of time/money long before you get any useful feedback that lets you make an informed decision.
The default outcome on the internet is that 0 people will notice your thingy.
If you do manage to get some traffic to "test" you'll still struggle to determine why it's not working.
If no one buys it, maybe people didn't like it?
Or maybe you just didn't put it in front of enough people/the right people?
Maybe your positioning is off... or your pricing?
And Zeus help you if you get just enough traction to make some nice side income but not enough traction to really get the ball rolling.
That'll make it damn near impossible to kill your baby.
What about customer discovery, I hear you ask??
Lol... that's so much cleaner in theory.
I've worked with some of the biggest names in those methodologies and they still all have the exact same issues.
Obv not gonna throw anyone under the bus but take it from me. There are no magic solutions.
Figuring out what people want & making something they love is REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HARD!
So what's the solution?
Look, it's gonna be hard regardless of what you do.
But the three things you can do to make your life significantly easier are:
1. Try more things faster.
Testing a new product a month vs. testing one every 5 years
2. Have "a vision".
I don't mean vision-delusion. I mean letting your research inform your intuition and then just MAKE A FUCKING CALL!
Data-led my ass. You can't A/B test your way to success in the real world. Esp. on your $17.25 budget as a solopreneur.
But not even with tens of millions of dollars otherwise 0 VC-backed startups would fail.
Over-relying on data = designing by committee.
Data-informed, yes. Gather a bit of data, create a belief based on that and then execute it.
Why not just create a hypothesis for everything? Cuz there are too many moving parts. The core things (data-informed) should be intuition-based and the small things can be tested more rigorously.
3. Start with research!
I cannot stress enough how much of a business hack it is to start problem-first vs. solution-first.
Forget about what you wanna sell.
That's selfish.
Figure out what people wanna buy.
Who do you wanna serve?
Where do they hang out online?
Who are the thought leaders they're interacting with? What solutions are those guys providing & how are they talking about the problems?
What are they complaining about?
What products are they buying?
What pain points do those products solve?
How much do those products cost?
How much is solving the problem worth to your audience?
Then, using all that info, you genuinely become a part of that audience.
Use my super-secret, von Neumann-IQ technique:
"Demonstrate that you can help them... by actually helping them!"
The single best way to build up trust & authority is to prove you can solve a problem for someone by solving it for them.
They're at A and wanna get to Z.
There are a lot of mini-problems that you can break the big problem up into.
Solve those mini-problems and get them some results.
Then invite a few active members of that audience on a NO-SALE zoom call.
Your sole job is to try to get a disgustingly deep understanding of their problem.
That's so much harder than you think it is because it's not enough to understand the problem (which is already super hard cuz they don't know either), but you have to phrase it in their words = your copywriting for your sales page :)
When I teach that to my students, I call that process "The Doctor" cuz a doc has to do a ton of work in order to get to a diagnosis.
Similarly, people will know something sucks but they've never really given it a lot of thought.
You'll need to poke and prod to really get to the bottom of things.
Then you take all that raw information & turn it into a sales page where you'll pre-sell your idea.
Noah Kagan taught me to get 3 customers in 48 hours so that's what I use.
The main thing is a clear outcome with a short deadline.
Some dorks claim that pre-selling isn't validation.
Ugh... Nothing is gonna guarantee your business will work.
There are no guarantees in business.
Even a successful business with growth isn't a guarantee cuz consumer preferences & market circumstances can change. Such a tiresome pseudo-intellectual argument.
But it's so much harder to get $1 vs. selling something for free that it's a very strong signal that you're at least thinking somewhat in the right direction.
If you don't believe me, try to pre-sell something for a dollar and you'll get cured of that delusion quickly.
If you can make some money, you're probably directionally correct about:
- The audience you wanna serve
- Their problem
- Your positioning
- The price point
- Your solution
One last tip: keep your price low
Your main goal should be to get a shit ton of customers, not optimize profit.
It takes volume to detect patterns.
And your entire job is to figure out what sucks and how you can make it... not suck.
Despite most marketing scientists bashing loyalty, I think us solopreneurs should absolutely use it as A MENTAL MODEL!
Does that mean your customers will be super loyal??
Probably not.
You're not as commoditized as soda (even though in the information business people buy you as much as the info itself), but your business will still mostly be new customers vs. repeat buyers.
HOWEVER, that's not the point.
The point is that focusing on loyalty is the best way to figure out what sucks & how you can make a product your customers love.
Hope this helps.
Comment below / Reply to this email if you’ve got any questions.
RJY
Chop wood. Carry water.
These are valuable questions every entrepreneur or solopreneur MUST ask! Thanks!
- Figure out what people wanna buy.
- Who do you wanna serve?
- Where do they hang out online?
- Who are the thought leaders they're interacting with? What solutions are those guys providing & how are they talking about the problems?
- What are they complaining about?
- What products are they buying?
- What pain points do those products solve?
- How much do those products cost?
- How much is solving the problem worth to your audience?
The more I learned about the math related to A-B testing, the more I realized that almost nobody should be doing it.
Facebook and Google and all of those huge companies lie to the smaller ones.
YOUR sample sizes are just never going to be large enough.