🖐 Hi, Solopreneur! 

Happy Wednesday, and welcome to issue #35 of Solopreneur Doorway, your weekly insight and inspiration to turn your skills into solutions people buy.

This issue is a 3.5-minute read.

Passion or Skill? Which One is Your ‘Must Have’ for Solopreneur Stardom?

🔥 That’s a motivating mantra for solopreneurs. And it’s a tad dangerous.

When you turn your energy toward your solo gig, you likely lean into what you love to do and take for granted what you know how to do well.

Whether you’re finding your footing in year 1 or developing a new product in year 4, it’s easy to let passion calm your nerves and guide your business decisions.

However, every few months, your lovefest with your solopreneur venture takes a breather (it’s natural), and you start to wonder if your passion can pay the bills.

Like you, I said ‘adieu’ to the employee hustle years ago to start my first solo business in financial consulting. I believed my passion could enrich others and make me smile every Monday morning.

⚡️ In this issue:

• I’ll break down the mistakes I most often see with solopreneurs on the passion vs. skill chessboard, along with the big errors I made.
  

• We’ll also cover a few solutions for fixing the imbalance if your passion-skill scale is tilting in the wrong direction.

If an Electrician Tells You How Much He Loves to Fix Faulty Wiring Will You Hire Him?

I routinely see a cautionary tale on LinkedIn, TT and YT. Superstar solopreneurs champion the solopreneur lifestyle 90% of the time and talk about what skills you need to have the remaining 10%.

These types of quotes show up every day across social media.

“Leave the corporate overlords and build your own solopreneur nirvana!”

“Quit that rat race and build a life with meaning on your terms!”

While I believe your passion can help you start a business and create a fun, exceptional client experience, remember this:

Customers are not purchasing your adrenaline. First and foremost, customers want you to fix their problems. They demand your expertise.

In the first year of operating my finance firm, I began each new client meeting championing my passion for dissecting company stock reports and applying macroeconomic trends to financial plans.

Did my energy to devour the Wall Street Journal before 6:15 am each morning convince clients I could manage their money and build their financial future?

😥 Not once.

Sure, they were happy I was following my industry’s news, yet it didn’t matter to them whether I read another Economist article.

📽 In the Hollywood of Solopreneur Stardom, it’s show, don’t tell.

Clients want proof you can take them from pain point A to paradise point B.

When my investment strategies increased a client’s account, they were happy. When the additional money led to more money options, they were ecstatic.

My energy got me the interview.

My skills won and kept the client’s business.

If you find you’re exhausted from giving a blow-out performance in each discovery meeting yet your PayPal account sits empty, it may be that your prospects are wondering if you have the key ingredient.

Skill.

Let’s talk about it.

When Your Client’s Web Copy Reads Like a Recipe for Mud Pies, Can You Turn It Into Baked Alaska?

New solopreneurs often struggle to identify the one skill they consider their best.

Consequently, they wear 34 business hats, so they don’t leave any client opportunities on the table. They try to help everyone with everything.

I understand that, initially, the solopreneur journey pushes you into new territory.

• You know SEO and then you try to write dynamic copy for the site
  

• You write stellar blog posts and then you try to help clients write LinkedIn posts
  

• You know how to record a podcast and then you start editing client videos for YouTube (that takes a long time, right?!)

One of the key principles in solopreneur strategy is using your top skill to solve a BIG problem. You can’t solve 29 problems, and clients don’t want you to try.

Instead, take a practical and profitable approach.

Discover your top skills by trying these quick exercises:

• Write down the projects or tasks that your colleagues and leadership team most appreciated when you were an employee.
  

• List the types of challenges your colleagues asked you to solve most often.
  

• List the business problems that are ‘easy’ for you to fix vs. the ones you want to tackle solely to develop new skills.

Once you see the pattern of skills that come easily to you, do everything you can to make them sharper.

Clients hire generalists for small problems. They hire specialists for BIG problems.

Use your #1 skill and be a specialist.

Can Your Passion and Skill Live Together Happily Ever After?

Learning new skills is addicting. Each time I wake up at 1:24 am and dive into a TikTok rabbit hole, I get nervous.

“Hmm. Raising sheep in New Zealand. I could do that.”

“Starting a U-Haul franchise and learning how to coordinate trucking logistics. That could be fun, too.”

🙃 Then I catch myself and say, “Whoa. Not a good idea. Focus on the primary task.”

The problem with leaning into your 28 passion projects is that the opportunity cost gets higher and higher.

Every day that you pursue a soft or hard skill that is outside the bull’s eye of where clients want to find you, it’s expensive. And as a solopreneur, you can’t afford to waste time.

Here are a few remedies to restore equilibrium on your passion-skill scale without losing your edge.

• Volunteer: carve out a few hours each month to learn new skills that make you smile and benefit your community. Healthcare, education, gardening, etc. Climb the learning curve outside of prime business hours.
  
  

• Collaborate with a virtual assistant and ask them to keep you posted on new trends. Great VAs will happily keep you in the loop re: necessary skills in social media, SEO, and graphic design. This chat about what your VA is learning builds rapport and gives you valuable time to target your #1 skill to solve client problems.

When I operated my financial consulting firm, I worked ½ days. The good news was that I could pick the specific 12 hours I wanted to work on my skill(s).

✨ Solopreneur stardom is not easy to find and even harder to maintain. I’m confident your passion will help you and your clients enjoy the show.

Remember: Let your skill(s) take center stage.

📣 Business Article of the Week

This week’s business article is a podcast episode (or two).

Since I write a weekly newsletter (and you might, as well), I’m curious about how others start one, build an audience, and turn it into a “must read.”

Alex Lieberman, the co-founder of Morning Brew, hosts a podcast called Founder’s Journal.

In April, Alex talks candidly about how he launched Morning Brew and then chose to sell his stake in the enterprise.

Alex’s insight on the newsletter model is valuable if you want to combine your passion with your skill to develop a dynamite business.

☕️ You’ll enjoy the April episodes of FJ.

Stay curious and keep opening doors.

-Erik

Whenever You’re Ready: 2 Ways I Can Help You

1. Your 1:1 Strategy Session: Let’s improve your business model and strategy. I’ll use my 14+ years of solopreneur and entrepreneur experience to listen, overhaul, and give you a new strategy that will remove the pain.
   

2. A Free 30-Minute Exchange: Share the most pressing challenges in your business. I’ll provide you with immediate and actionable steps to improve your business model and strategy. In exchange, I would like to ask you a few questions about your solopreneur adventure so that I can improve my online offers. No sales.