Life of a solo entrepreneur, also known as a solopreneur, can be quite overwhelming at times. It’s not just about the money, given the fact that investment is one of the greatest commodities a solopreneur can ever have. This is about getting things started.
In order to elevate your casual gig, the most challenging obstacle is the transition and the opportunity cost that comes along with it. Quitting a stable job and sacrificing the monthly income in current market conditions is definitely a brave move, but a necessary one as well.
The hard part is over. Well, not quite. Solopreneurs are supposedly conservative when it comes to spending. It is meant to be that way because of minimal or no funding for their dream project. Since there’s a shortage of money involved, recruiting people flies out of the window. Thus, solopreneurs might have to wear multiple hats at the same time.
As an entrepreneur, your typical day is packed with hundreds of emails, going through the daily routine and schedule, meetings, and trying to manage a to-do list that seems to keep on growing. However, the real challenge is trying to tackle the daily progress and standardizing it as managing multiple tasks simultaneously often leads to burnout.
Have you ever thought about adding some productivity tips and time management hacks to your daily routine to ensure success? In this article, we will cover 7 success tips that every solopreneur must know to get things started.
Success Tip for Solopreneurs – Know Your Passion
First and foremost, do what you love in order to be a successful solopreneur. Managing a business solo demands a lot of sacrifices. Forget about work-life balance as it is going to be nonexistent, at least initially. Following market trends is always great. Albeit, how can you go the extra mile if you’re not pursuing something that drives you? So, the first success tip for solopreneurs is to pursue something they’re passionate about.
Success Tip for Solopreneurs – Be Confident
The second success tip for solopreneurs is being confident. It may sound generic and mainstream, but confidence is the cornerstone for success when you’re running the show solo. Confidence is one of the common characteristics found in every successful solopreneur.
Confidence is the only thing that will keep you going if things don’t turn out to be as planned. As a matter of fact, it is the prerequisite for getting things started. How can you expect someone else to invest in your dream when you’re not so sure about yourself?
People often complain about their friends, family, and spouse not supporting them in their hustle. Confidence begets confidence. When you have faith in the goal you’re pursuing, others will do too.
Success Tip for Solopreneurs – Don’t Be Afraid to Fall
Running a business is not always sunshine and rainbows, especially when you’re a solopreneur. There is a long list of problems and challenges that you would be facing down the road. The success or failure of a business depends on diverse factors. One can take care of internal discrepancies, whereas external factors such as market conditions are beyond your control. And sometimes it’s just luck that’s not on your side.
Don’t let failure discourage you. The urge to give up can be tempting. Frankly, it is really easy to just let go rather than be resilient in the face of hardships. Our success tip for solopreneurs at times like this is to power through the circumstances. Refine your tactics. Let failure be your guide. Bad times won’t last forever. Actions at times of adversity are determinants that separate a successful solopreneur from an unsuccessful one.
Success Tip for Solopreneurs – Prioritize Your Goals
With behavioral tips out of the way, let’s move to work-related tactics for successful solopreneurs. To begin with, you need to step up certain goals and targets you need to achieve. Once that is done, the goals need to be prioritized to focus on the important tasks at hand. To put it simply, know your OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).
WeekPlan’s Focus Planner is a great tool that can help you in this regard. Inspired by the bestseller ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ and ‘OKR Frameworks’ proposed by John Doerr, WeekPlan is a priority planner that helps you stay focused on your important goals and objectives.
WeekPlan allows its users to clarify vision, set goals, and set priorities. You can track your daily, weekly, and monthly progress by reviewing extensive reports automatically generated by the tool.
Not only this, the tool empowers its users to create the tasks, identify the HITs (High Importance Tasks), and align the work with respect to different roles performed by solopreneurs.
WeekPlan also enables solopreneurs to track their activity with a built-in time tracker. The tool follows the Pomodoro Principle and creates different slots representing the work hours. Each time slot consists of 25 minutes of focused work time followed by a 5-minute break to minimize the likelihood of burnout.
WeekPlan is more than just a to-do app, it’s a complete package with principle-based frameworks – designed for solopreneurs that seek success.
Success Tip for Solopreneurs – Execute Undesirable Tasks First
With that out of the way, let’s move to the 5th tip prescribed to solopreneurs seeking success. When you’re done making a to-do list, you might find numerous tasks that seem difficult and undesirable. A common mistake rookie solopreneurs make is leaving those tasks behind to focus on the ones that entice them the most.
As per our previous tip, successful solopreneurs always focus on the HITs, no matter how difficult the task may seem. Skipping the tasks based on their difficulty level won’t do you any good. This may be a hard pill to swallow, but you have to get the undesirable tasks out of the way first.
According to Tom Hopkins, the most difficult and challenging tasks should be handled first. Don’t run away from them because you find them undesirable. Do them early on, when you are at the peak of your energy.
Success Tip for Solopreneurs – Don’t Feel Shy to Ask for Help
Are things getting out of hand? Don’t be afraid to ask for help. We get it. The entire concept of being a solopreneur is working alone. Albeit, that doesn’t mean you can’t onboard someone temporarily. There are times when things start to pick up the pace and you’re not ready for it.
At times like these, there is no harm in asking for a helping hand. You need to realize that you cannot handle everything on your own. Hire an assistant or recruit a freelancer to work with you remotely.
You can use WeekPlan to delegate the extra tasks and remotely monitor the activity of your newly appointed resource. There is no harm in getting the excessive workload off your shoulders. Remember! You can’t do everything alone.
Success Tip for Solopreneurs – Evaluate, Improve and Repeat
Not everyone becomes successful on the first attempt. Don’t worry. Learn from your mistakes. Let your blunders refine your tactics. Evaluate where you went wrong and make changes that may help you perform better next time.
There is no such thing as a flawless plan, there is always a discrepancy – a loophole. If a plan doesn’t go the way it was supposed to, it means something was either missing or overlooked. Review every single detail to find out what went wrong and do it all over again. Repeat the process till you get it right.
Wrap Up
Building a business isn’t easy. Hustling to be a successful solopreneur is a completely different story from dreaming to be one. Your road to glory is paved with hardships and the only obstacle in your way is your attitude.
All you have to do is power through as success comes to those who truly seek it. In this article, we prescribed the top 7 success tips every solopreneur must know. Try them out and let us know in the comment section if they worked out for you.
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