Solo-Biz Tech

Watch/listen above, or read the same below 🙂

When you’re running your own solo business — a solo entrepreneur business, a service provider business — you will usually start out by learning a lot of marketing, business models, business strategy, and generally speaking, a lot of strategy.

We could summarize all of these topics as strategy.

And then comes the part where, in ugly corporate terms, you have to operationalize your strategy.

It’s like: okay, great. I have the strategy. But now I have to sit down and ask:

How do I make it real?

This is where the strategy — the things in your head — collide with reality.

And that is when a lot of trouble can happen. A lot of unexpected trouble.

That is when things start feeling like: I had this whole idea in my head, and reality just won’t align with it.

I’m not talking about the kind of problem where you realize, “Oh, I thought this was a good niche,” or “I thought this was a good model,” and then it turns out not to work.

I’m talking about the specific angle I work with people on: the technology part of things.

How do you create your website?

How do you let people pay you?

How do you record yourself on video?

How do you edit the video?

How do you publish the video?

How do you advertise your content?

That is a lot of tech stuff.

And you might already be good at the strategy. You might have your point of view, your marketing concept, your business model, and the work you actually love delivering to clients.

But then this hits.

And suddenly it can feel like you’re running two businesses.

One is the business you actually want to run: working with clients, delivering your service, sharing your ideas, building your body of work.

And the other is the business of making all of that work in today’s mostly digital world.

And it’s a lot.

You are not a small business. You are a solo business.

There are a few key things I love helping my clients with, and reminding them about.

One core thing is this: to make your business manageable, you have to simplify things a lot.

Most of the tools out there — course platforms, booking systems, website platforms, and yes, I’m talking about you, WordPress — look like they are great for small businesses.

And maybe they are.

But you are not a small business.

You are not even a micro business.

You are a solo business.

And that is a completely different realm.

Most of my clients are trying to run and operate tools that were designed to be run by a small team. One person doing eight hours a day just on marketing. Another person doing eight hours a day just on IT. Another person doing another part of the work.

That is not viable when you are one person.

Most of those tools were never really designed for solo businesses.

So you have to simplify.

Stop looking for the perfect platform

The other thing is that we keep trying to find the perfect tool that does everything perfectly.

And I can tell you, after more than 25 years of fiddling with these kinds of tools — the tools that micro businesses and solo businesses need — there is no perfect tool.

There is no perfect platform.

Stop looking for it.

Please. I ask you deeply.

You have to pick the drawbacks you are able to live with.

A lot of my clients fall into this trap. All of my clients fall into this trap. I have fallen into this trap.

You find a platform that works 80% for you. It does 80% of the job really well. And then there is one feature missing, so you think:

I’m going to find another platform.

Or:

This is not good enough. I need another solution. Another tool. Another computer. Another setup.

But the perfect version does not exist.

So instead of asking, “Which tool does everything?” the better question is:

Which tool does the important things well enough — and has missing pieces I can actually live with?

That is the real decision.

Your workflow has to survive your real life

The third thing I want to mention is your workflow with these digital tools.

Some of it comes down to the tools you picked and how they were designed. But a lot of it also comes down to your mental models of working — your actual workflow.

And sometimes that workflow is conscious. Sometimes it is not.

I always work with my clients on this: let’s stop for a second and think this through.

Because it helps a lot.

Usually, we design workflows on spacious days.

Finally, you have the time to design the workflow: where you will save client information, how you will invoice, how you will do the marketing stuff, how data will flow through your business.

Great.

But on those days, we are often very optimistic.

And workflows designed only for our good days are usually not maintainable.

They become a nightmare to run day to day.

Again, we are solo service providers. There is no other colleague in our department who can do the work while we are sick, while we take care of children or elderly people, when we have a bad day, when we are tired, or when we have live events.

The system has to be simple enough to survive real life.

And I know that can sound scary.

Because it can feel like: But all those bells and whistles I built — I need them. That is what makes my business unique.

I know it is a hard pill to take, but you have to simplify.

You have to find simpler tools. You have to find better-fit tools. Maybe some parts of your workflow need to be pen and paper. That level of simplification.

Because your workflows — whether conscious or not — have to survive the most tired, most annoyed, most tapped-out version of you.

And those days will come more often than we would love them to.

It is important to know that.

And it is important to design with that in mind, not with too much optimism on a sunny day when you are full of energy and have all the time in the world.

Strategy is important — but reality matters too

So that is it, basically.

We start our businesses by learning strategy, marketing, business systems, and business models. And that is important.

But we often don’t take into account what happens when that strategy hits reality.

A lot of our decisions on the strategy side create extra work in the physical architecture of the business: the tools, the systems, the workflows, the content setup, the booking path, the payment process, the publishing process.

And choosing simpler systems can feel painful, especially when we are starting out.

We are enthusiastic. We want the shiniest platform, the shiniest tools, the shiniest way of creating videos, YouTuber-grade content, beautiful workflows, clever automations, and everything connected to everything.

But if you are running your business alone, that usually will not work.

You have to take the human factor into account.

You have to build a business that a real person can actually run.