December 26, 2017

Supporting yourself

When you started working for yourself, was your “plan” simply to make enough money to support yourself?

I’d venture a guess that tens of thousands of successful businesses started with this exact lack of forethought.

And that’s great!

It was enough motivation for you to make a huge change. To reach escape velocity. You took a big leap of faith, and you damn well made it to the other side. Zero to one. Achievement unlocked!

I sincerely applaud your chutzpah 👏

“Make enough to support myself” is a great starting point. But it isn’t a plan. A goal of subsistence only gets you so far.

When you apply your limited resources more or less at random, you max out your earning potential in a relatively short time.

This “winging it” approach leads to painful realities like these:

• Dependence on whale clients
• Nauseating feast/famine cycles
• An alarmingly empty pipeline of leads
• Being forced to work with “clients from hell” way too often
• A complete lack of negotiating power in the sales process
• The nagging fear that you’ll have to admit defeat and go back to a desk job

If you are suffering from symptoms like these, don’t worry. They’re probably just growing pains. Signs that your business has reached adolescence.

You don’t need to throw in the towel - not yet, at least. What you need is a plan.

But where do you start?

The first step in creating a plan is to get clarity on why your clients value your assistance in the first place.

Here are some questions to get you thinking along these lines:

• Why does your business matter?
• If your business ceased to exist, who would be most screwed (and why)?
• What alternatives would your clients consider if they couldn’t hire you?
• How does your business differ from the alternatives that your clients might consider?

These are super tough questions to answer on your own, but hit reply and answer if you can.

I greatly appreciate your input and will provide guidance where possible 🙂

Yours,

—J

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