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🖐 Hi, Solopreneur! 

Happy Wednesday from upstate NY.

Welcome to issue #37 of Solopreneur Doorway, your weekly insight and inspiration to turn your skills into solutions people buy.

This issue is a 4.0-minute read.

💳 Customers Sprint to Your Specialty Store and Buy Your Offer

⚡️ In this issue, you:

• Discover why a specialty store crushes a warehouse
  

• Uncover why solopreneurs create too many offers and lose money

• Launch your specialty store so customers sprint to buy your offer

Specialty Store with 1 Offer or Warehouse with Many Offers: Which Model Wins?

In your solo business, you can pick your model store.

Should you choose the specialty option or the warehouse?

The warehouse model looks amazing.

Walmart, Home Depot, and Amazon are awesome warehouses.

They offer thousands of products to millions of customers worldwide. They make a ton of money.

Here’s the problem.

😲 Researchers estimate that humans face roughly 35,000 remotely conscious decisions every day.

You walk into Walmart to buy toothpaste and get lost.

You visit Amazon to buy a computer monitor light and have to compare 9 models.

It’s exhausting!

When you build a warehouse, you run the risk of creating confusion.

And your customers hate confusion.

Instead, start with a specialty store that sells 1 sensational solution. You’ll get huge advantages:

• A positive reputation for solving one BIG problem that affects your audience
  

• A bond with your customers, who rely on your help
  

• Ideas from your customers on how to solve other problems they face

Each time you sell that one smart solution, your impact grows and your confidence improves.

Your digital wallet smiles.

So, if the specialty store model is ideal for 99% of solopreneurs in years 0–3, why do so many pick the warehouse option?

Here’s why…

Solopreneurs Launch the Warehouse Model with Too Many Offers

When you launched your solo business, it was hard to pick 1 offer to sell, right?

You may have worried that with only 1 solution, you’d miss out on opportunities and leave money on the table.

You see your favorite solopreneurs selling 3 digital courses, consulting sessions, and newsletter sponsorships.

You see them post big sales numbers, and you get a bad case of FOMO.

You believe you can make the same money if you match their number of offers, right?

😕 Nope.

For each amazing solopreneur that has several revenue streams, there are thousands who can’t sell 1 item.

Sure, hundreds of solopreneurs have mobs of followers, likes, and comments. And they can’t earn $1,000.

Consider how the great companies began:

• Coke with 1 drink

• Amazon with 1 product

• Apple with 1 computer

Your goal in years 0–3 is to develop one product that works and generates sales on autopilot.

Now follow me into the specialty store…

Create Your Specialty Store with 1 Incredible Offer

An idea:

• You’re a freelance writer who runs a dynamite business
  

• The skill you can do in your sleep is writing incredible articles that people pay you to create
  

• The 1 BIG problem you can fix is helping freelance writers write well (this is where you need strategy)
  

• Create posts, videos, or downloads that show how to turn average writing into great writing
  

• Develop and improve 1 solution that shows the transition and generates consistent sales
  

• Track which of your posts (videos or downloads) bring you the most traffic and conversions
  

• Load up on these posts, tweak your offer, and raise your pricing until sales occur every day (or at least every week).

🙏 Launching one incredible offer is not simple, and I empathize.

It’s tempting and easier to create three offers that are ‘ok’ rather than 1 offer that’s amazing.

When I launched my financial consulting business I started with 7 offers. The clients had no idea what I did well.

When I dialed it back to 1 offer that solved a big problem, clients understood it, embraced it, and told their friends.

I earned more and had time to generate new business.

In today’s ultra-competitive online world, I’m convinced this formula jumpstarts your success:

💥 1 offer + 1 specialty store = solopreneur leverage

📣 Business Article of the Week

News outlets, including the NY Times, reported that Tesla opted to let go the team that coordinated expansion of all charging stations.

Tesla will now focus on improving all existing stations. Big move!

🔑 Here’s the takeaway for your solo biz model:

• Collect all the data for your 1 BIG offer to make sure all signs point to GO
  

• The time it takes to create it, the time to service it, profit margin, growth factors, and customer feedback
  

• Customers and markets change: auto pilot is powerful until a new weather storm arrives and you have to take control of the plane
  

• Stay honest about ‘why you built your 1 BIG offer’ and be strong enough to admit when it needs a tweak or needs to disappear

Stay curious and keep opening doors.

-Erik

📉 Are You in Year 1 - 3 of Your Solopreneur Business and Not Seeing Results?

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