Building Your Solo Business the Right Way - The CEO: Solopreneur Insights, Vol. 3
This is the introductory article for a series on how to structure the basics of your Solopreneur business the right way.
Every business can be simplified down to two functional categories:
The product or service
Everything else
There’s no business without a product or service. Solopreneurs never struggle to understand this. In fact, they often focus ONLY on this, falsely believing they’ll get rich if they just have a good product or service. Some can get by for a while.
But, we’re not here to just get by. We’re here to build business the right way. For the Solopreneur, that means you’re making great money doing important work while living exactly as you wish.
Let’s look at a typical business structure:
Leadership
Finance
Sales
Marketing
Production
Operations
Customer Service
Human Resources
Whether the company is comprised of a dozen people, thousands of people, OR JUST ONE PERSON, these are the primary categories that are needed to make a business profitable.
Over the next few articles, I’m going to break down exactly how I’ve operated each department in my own Solopreneur business. I’ll walk you through examples of how I’ve operated, and will include the total amount of time I spend in each role. My goal is to provide insight into how you can structure your Solo business so that it delivers on our business model’s promise:
Making a great living doing important work while living as you wish.
Let’s start at the top, with the leadership.
Leadership: The CEO
The leader’s primary roles:
Set the bold vision for the company’s future
Understand the trends of my market
Align the actions of each team to the direction of the company
Make high-level strategic decisions as they arise
Seek collaborative opportunities with others
Here’s a breakdown of how I have managed the CEO role for my own business.
Set the bold vision for the company’s future
At the end of each year, I review every aspect of my business. This means assessing all of the departments and analyzing their performance and potential. I blocked off two days to work on:
Next year’s specific goals for each department: Examples: KPI milestones, improving production processes, targeting a new corporate client, or improving my Customer Experience process.
The theme of the next year: Example: My theme in 2022 was “Build.” I aimed to build the foundation of my social media existence and my initial product offerings aimed at the Solopreneur market. I started from scratch, gained over 2,300 followers by the end of the year, built a course, and have developed a handful of yet-to-be-announced products. My 2023 theme is “Connect.” My aim is to connect with fellow Solopreneurs who will actively put the things I build to use.
Each quarter, I spend one day assessing my yearly targets and their progress. I adjust course as needed to make sure I’m hitting each goal. Again, this is broken down by department.
Understand the trends of my market
I’m constantly capturing data as I go: New technologies, customer feedback, process efficiencies, new opportunities, financial data, etc. I keep these in an Evernote document. Each week, I review them and categorize them:
Immediate action: This is anything that produces a significant benefit AND can be deployed quickly.
Add to Strategic Review (separate Evernote): These could be huge opportunities, but are not immediately actionable. They require further review. I capture them, then research them on my phone while most people are mindlessly scrolling social media.
Archive: I consider these distractions. Often, our productivity is based on what we DON’T do, rather than how many tactics we can deploy.
In my monthly reviews, I’ll re-assess the items I added to the Strategic Review document. At that point, I decide if they’re immediately actionable or not. If they are, I prioritize them in my production list. If not, I don’t consider them priorities they go to the Archives.
Align the actions of each department to the direction of the company
In my monthly review, I assess the targets I set out at the end of the previous year for each department and make sure they’re staying on course. When I discover any lack of performance, I assess the cause and what actionable items are required to get the department back on track to hit the goal.
As an example: If my sales numbers are lower than I want, I assess each client to see if we’re maxing out opportunities with them. If so, then I move on to any sales/marketing/networking efforts to assess why they’re not feeding the machine to my satisfaction. I then assess the steps needed at the root level to fix the issue.
Make high-level strategic decisions as they arise
There’s a fine line between seizing a golden opportunity and chasing endless shiny objects. Solopreneurs are especially vulnerable to this. We can’t just put an exploratory team on a new technology like Google. By establishing the strategic structure lined out in this article, you’ll be able to tell the difference between the two quickly. My litmus test is always this: Does this opportunity align with my current objectives?
Here’s an example that has happened to me many times: I’m busy with a healthy pipeline of work. A past client takes a new job. She wants to hire me, but needs the rest of the team to meet me. I trust her, but I don’t know her new team. I need to be able to determine quickly whether this is going to open opportunities or be a nightmare for me. I can assess my goals for the year, my criteria for a good client relationship, estimate the efficiency of the work compared to my current work, and decipher whether this accelerates my progress toward my goals or steers me away. Without all the other structure, I’m almost certainly not going to be able to make a quick, accurate decision.
Seek collaborative opportunities with others
At the large corporate level, CEOs are constantly talking with other companies and considering mergers and acquisitions. The more bold the vision, the more common this is. For Solopreneurs, we’re not merging or acquiring in the traditional sense. But, we most certainly should be searching constantly for ways to collaborate with other Solopreneurs to open up new opportunities.
In my business, I’ve held a few key people close to my operations. They know as much about my business as anyone but me. I schedule routine discussions with them, where we typically cover: Our latest objectives, new ideas we’re exploring, market opportunities, and others we’ve met who might help us. We find ways to collaborate together, seek new opportunities together, and expand our collective networks. Building on social media has expanded my opportunities for powerful collaboration. I’m already working on ways to partner with a few other rock stars who have shared goals.
Here’s my total time breakdown for the CEO role:
Yearly: 12 days
2 days for the end-of-year assessment and strategic development
1 day per quarter for review and re-alignment
1/2 day per month for monthly review
There is a small caveat with the CEO role. At this point in my career, it’s always kind of on the top of my mind. I’ve learned how to assess my own performance almost down to the hour and have learned to recognize even small deviations from my desired direction. I think this just takes time and to earn a “feel” for things.
In the next article, I’ll discuss the role of the Chief Financial Officer, whose job is to make sure I stay profitable and feed the machine the cash it needs to keep the business clicking.
– Torrey
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