Let’s say you want to have income follow you. Let’s say you want it to follow you abroad.
A fiery, inexperienced solopreneur determined to move overseas would aim to start a business of some kind to work from anywhere. The focus would be to make money transfers easy from wherever they could be procured. All energy would go into finding business models that could pump revenue into the account of a remote worker.
However, this person seldom knows with any precision what to start.
An experienced solopreneur, on the other hand, would know exactly what to start, though possibly not exactly how to get it going at first. All energy would go into finding the business model that would best launch that idealized vision of what the business should produce.
You’d think these two types could really complement each other. One could inspire the other to adopt some wonderful though untried idea to exploit an untapped market opportunity. The other could keep the first motivated to pursue after that opportunity with zeal and determination.
The problem is that both in this scenario would lack a fundamental element to entrepreneurial success.
Business Planning By The Heart
Despite the strengths in each, both are hamstrung until they can deal with the obvious. This would be how to plan out the start, and then how to work through the startup plan.
Yes, this may be obvious, but it’s not intuitive. Self-interest (looking up business models, identifying potential revenue streams to enable living abroad) is intuitive. But it doesn’t build the foundation of entrepreneurial success.
You see, planning is not itself the most crucial aspect of starting a business. Planning is the outcome of the most crucial aspect of starting a business. But while you may be able to build a plan to start your business, the plan may be hogwash.
What then is the most crucial aspect of starting your business? What really makes the difference?
More often than not, what solopreneurs are missing as their most crucial aspect when starting down the path of a new venture is deep knowledge of their ultimate customer, without which all business plans are mush.
It bears repeating, because planning a business is not the same as knowing your customer. Yet without customers there will never be a business.
Most early discussions about starting a business focus on planning, but not mine.
I start discussions with my clients by asking, “How well do you know your model customer?”
I always begin with concentrating not on an idea about your customer or on the thrill of knowing what you’d like to do for such a customer but on your existing fellowship with such a person. It is for the sake of fellowship that you ought to start a business if you want it to succeed.
The Fellowship Of The Solopreneurs
If you ask yourself who your audience is and whether it has money to spend on what it wants to buy right now, and you think long and hard about how you’re going to bring your message to this audience to press their hottest button with it to bring them to a purchase decision, then you’re asking all the right technical marketing questions on executing a business plan. But you’re still empty on one account.
You’re not concentrating on how to relate with them, how to achieve fellowship.
To get the most crucial information about your clients, you need to have some degree of prior communion with them. They need to know you and your intent. And the intent is in your actions.
The one piece of information on which your entire plan’s success rests to secure customers and build a business is knowing why customers trust you. You don’t gain trust merely by trading ideas. You gain trust by giving of yourself to others sacrificially over time.
What does this mean?
Sacrificially means that you choose to give up something good, such as your immediate financial benefit, for something better, such as the immediate financial benefit of your customers.
With that sacrifice comes trust, and with trust comes the reward of fellowship, which amounts to a clear understanding of the most significant desire in your customer’s heart – the hottest hot button to press – that will lead to discovering the source of that unstoppable demand for your services and your business success that will get your startup venture going, and may even get you repeat business to keep growing.
Why?
Because you came to know your clients quite intimately and you delivered pertinent benefit before asking for something in return, and this built fellowship, trust, and loyalty.
This will keep your business not merely afloat. It will give it purpose, value, significance, identity, and viability. Yes, you need a plan. But first and foremost, you need to care. Because your neighbor is your business. And without a neighbor, you got no business anywhere.
What now do you believe is most fundamental to starting your business?