It’s not a big thing: A Podcast for Solo Business

We bring forward the idea that Solo Business life has the potential to be more practical and play a bigger part by suggesting it is time to retire that outdated pain pointed out in every service sales page that Solo Business life is lonely.

For a minute we have found those lazy conversations creeping into the room. Moving us to the type of conversations we already know, that have grown all their big grows and are now settled and set in where they are. While we enjoy leaning in and learning in these conversations, this is not the part Little Language Matters* to play. Here we share a real lesson learned and a little of where we are growing from here.

We bring forward the idea that Solo Business life has the potential to be more practical and play a bigger part by suggesting it is time to retire that outdated pain pointed out in every service sales page that Solo Business life is lonely.

Confession, we are very totally all human here and we too have been talking to ‘scaling’ and ‘growing’ being interchangeable, and to a small degree we have been right 😅

How we think in our Solo Business generally often always falls into one of two cognitive comfort thinking camps. Some of us enjoy working among the big bigness of the big picture and picking the direction and destination. Some enjoy the diving into the detail taking the big picture and making it really real.

Here we slip from selling to buying and by doing so move what we see from the back-of-business to look at our Solo Business from the lens of a buyer out front.

You are right in thinking they are the same and you are right when you wonder about the difference the lens of a label makes and what leaning into this lens can bring to your Solo Business.

Small Business and Solo Business are labels lobbed about with little thought in our business conversations. And, it is this little thought out thinking that we can now realise a real opportunity to lean on and leverage these labels to do some of the heavy lifting in our front and back-of-business thinking.

We grow an idea, just one, where maybe the mobility of growing in contained containers concentrated in a fixed footprint lends itself to work more for Solo Business. Enjoy.

This is where you having a strong sense of self in your role in your Solo business in your Strategic Direction (specifically, your Niche and Business Model-Network) come to play their part in your business ways and days.

Here we circle back to move forward with the focus of ‘all done by one’ and building the belief that ‘size matters’ to welcome the curiosity of the strength of working with a Solo Business. But, before we do, it is first up to us to be comfortable in our own business skin to say ‘we is me’ 😁

While there is no one way to get our foot in that door, to get our name out there, or to get the needs we need met through who we know and who knows us, we certainly can leverage the already embedded assumptions of these common business role labels to get us what we need with purpose on purpose easier.

We are putting forward the idea that maybe the middle can be less messy or muddy and be more magic with the clarity cleared up when working with a couple of key Business Role Lenses, specifically the Manager and Director.

The point is in the persistent practice of pulling out the aligned lens for you to direct, decide, or do what needs doing, or to catch yourself when you find you are leaning on one lens just because it feels more familiar and friendly 🤭

In big business layered layers of levels make sense. It makes sense to move the deciding, directing, and doing to be done on different floors (metaphorical and actual). In medium and small business these levels work too. In Solo Business…not so much. Here we continue to grow the idea into Solo Business ways and days where ‘all can be done by one’ by building in the Business Role Lenses.

...we are going a little further to make ‘all done by one’ more less ‘possible’ and more ’practical’ with a little language thang (aka Language Device) we call Solo Business Business Roles.

We bring forward the idea that Solo Business life has the potential to be more practical and play a bigger part by suggesting it is time to retire that outdated pain pointed out in every service sales page that Solo Business life is lonely.

The funny thing they do not tell you about meeting our needs…we are amazing at meeting them in the most not great ways in our days. That’s not the point pained to provoke here — we are not the type to say be better for your business.

Instead, we kindly offer an alternate route by first knowing and then growing (in your own timing!). That’s it.

…Instead, we put forward the idea of being curious about your current place and space. We pop lightly aloud the idea of looking at your language both in what you are saying to others, and especially in what you are sharing with yourself. Enjoy.

Knowing this knowing, even when you are in a known market, and especially when you are in a new or emerging market, is enough. Then, when you are ready, then you can walk the walk among what you know now, what you need to know now, and when you know enough (now).

Here we put forward the idea of not being driven (by what you can give) but of driving (designing what you give and get) and your decision of who gets what from you, where and when they can get it, and who is outside of this space and place.

First, we need to know these are the same things in Solo Business meeting different needs at different times in Solo Business. When we come to learn that they each have the same needs, similar structures, and ready readiness, then being motivated to build them from now becomes hella easier.

The funny thing is, it will be so big that it looks like it is everyone while being so specific it feels like someone specific — being in both places at once is the measure you have a view big enough to get to work.

It is funny, everything that begins ends, everything that starts stops, everything that is already was. Yet, when it comes to business, the conversation about consider closing is kinda taboo almost like if we say it out loud that we may make it happen. Yeah. Nah.

When it comes to strategy and strategic direction, one is moving and the other is the stable stability that keeps the Solo Business playing a part in something bigger.

Time is one of the most valued and valuable resources in a Solo Business. Something that is learnt often always the hard way and without knowing until it is known is that a work day does not equal a calendar day.

In this conversation we draw a line to differentiate and to connect the parts beliefs and values play in the front and back of Solo Business.

We bring forward the idea that Solo Business life has the potential to be more practical and play a bigger part by suggesting it is time to retire that outdated pain pointed out in every service sales page that Solo Business life is lonely.