Most service businesses are run by one-person who is an expert in their subject. But one of the main problems that experts face is that they often struggle to explain how what they do helps people who aren’t experts in that subject.
This is especially awkward because these non-experts are the very people who need to understand the value you provide, opt in to your marketing funnels and pay you money to do the thing you’re an expert at.
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It’s known as “the curse of expertise”.
You’ve suffered this curse if you’ve ever stumbled over your words when asked while networking or explaining to a neighbour ‘so what is it exactly that you do?’ It doesn’t just curse personal communication. Low levels of enquiries from your website may also be a symptom.
This is the first fork in the road you’ll hit in your business that you never hit when you were working for somebody else. There’s a second fork later down the road, but let’s focus on this immediate one. Because choosing the wrong route here adds (or has already added?) unnecessary costs and delays to your business’ journey.
Your marketing funnels: the first fork in the road
You got here because you got to the point where you need to turn people who don’t already know you, and have no connection with you, into consistent sources of leads, and do so in such a way that they’d value your expertise enough to pay you money, at a decent profit margin to you, to do that for them.
This is what is known as your marketing funnel. More on this in a moment.
Get the direction wrong at this first fork and you’re on a road to frustration: where you struggle to explain the problems that you solve properly. It leads to a place where you struggle for progress and to get the leads and sales you should be getting because people don’t ‘get’ the value that you bring. These missed leads and sales are the first gaps between the goals you set and results you get.
Uncorrected, your business either folds and becomes another business failure statistic, or you end up running on fumes, ‘just getting by’ and eventually becoming comfortable with the discomfort.
Why some solopreneurs are regular visitors back at this fork
Some businesses even find themselves as regular repeat visitors back at this first fork, each time still never quite able to get going again in the right direction. Here are some symptoms of that:
- You’ve found yourself disappearing down conflicting and confusing YouTube ‘experts’ rabbit holes, with none really giving you certainty.
- You’ve changed your website message or created content or posts that give a slight shift on what you’re doing now, only for it to be met with the online equivalent of tumbleweed blowing down the road.
- You’ve created offers or products, packages or courses that to you seem like great ideas, but nobody really buys them.
- You’ve bought software or apps or courses offering quick fixes, but the ‘fixes’ aren’t there or they’re far from ‘quick’.
- You’ve asked for advice on social media and got back lots of unqualified two word answers from people you don’t actually really know or trust tagging other people or apps you don’t really know or trust either without any real knowledge of YOUR circumstances and problems (why do people do that?!).
- Or you’ve even hired a business coach, consultant or service that hasn’t turned out to be all it promised. Many have, sadly.
All of these are classic signs of returning back to the same fork in the road, like you’re constantly circling a large, busy roundabout until you run out of fuel, rather than finding the open road.
It leaves you with a business where you’re busy ‘doing stuff’ but struggling to get traction, nor the consistent leads and sales that pay you your worth as an expert.
In short, it’s a broken marketing funnel.
In the other direction: a marketing funnel with a steady flow of leads
The other direction at the fork leads to a journey where your target market understands clearly and simply what you do and how you help solve their problems.
It brings them and you clarity, and an audience that understands what you’re about and the value you bring. It’s a road that leads to a business where:
- Your offer is simple.
- It’s engaging.
- It gets you leads from visitors to your website and socials.
- You teach them how to know what to buy.
- They understand your offer and its value.
- It gets you predictable sales results.
- It positions you on a path to getting booked up, busy and profitable.
My community, Soloprenyear, gives you the training on how to find that other route more quickly than you’d discover it on your own. It helps you to position what you do in a way that attracts interest, and then keeps that interest until they’re ready to buy. You’ll be able to communicate better your expertise in a way that attracts non-expert, target buyers.
The outcome is that every month you get a consistent and predictable flow of leads and sales and you motor along… until you start getting fully booked up.
Sales momentum builds: the second fork in the road
Then, as you feel like you’re getting momentum, you inevitably come to a second fork in the road. That’s when your client activities are taking off but you’re struggling to find the time to do everything that you feel you should be doing when it’s just you on your own in your business.
You slow down as you approach the fork…
Outsourcing marketing or services to an agency or freelancers
One direction at the fork takes you down a route towards finding a marketing agency to do all your marketing and lead generation. On the same route, there are even partners to outsource the delivery of some of the services you sell. On the surface, both sort of seem like a good idea because as you’ve got busy, you’ve begun to slip when it comes to getting consistent lead flows and sales wins, haven’t you?
But if you outsource, is that agency going to be able to achieve the ambitious targets you need to hit to actually be able to fund their work? And will they represent you with the levels of attention and connection with your leads and audience that you bring?
Or, will it just leave you broke in a few months time with little to show for it? Just like you would be if you traded in that car that got you to this point for a soft-top convertible that quickly runs out of fuel, or has a leaky roof in poor weather.
You just aren’t sure if using external or agency help is right for you. It’s a BIG risk. So you don’t make a decision and then you just get busier and under more pressure.
Perhaps you’ve even driven down that marketing agency or outsourcing road before, only to reverse back up; a costly mistake in money and time that’s set you back.
Your first member of staff
So instead, you glance down the other road from the fork. Oh look, there’s your first on-payroll member of staff. They’re at the side of the road, bags in hand, looking a little lost but expectantly waiting for you to pick them up.
Both directions are ‘coming of age’ moments in your business’ journey. Potentially exciting, but both very new and a significant commitment, in either direction. Neither is perfect. Neither is predictable.
As you consider it, you reflect that your business actually felt happier on the open road. But now, at the fork in the road, you’re not sure.
You’ve still got enough in the tank to keep going a bit, and you’ve already dodged a few obstacles along the way.
But bloody hell, both those directions seem scary and you’re already busy enough managing what you have without the risk of either direction screwing up and damaging your progress. It’s scarier still when you feel you’re making the decision on your own, without the insights from those who are at, or have been at the same junction.
Just like at the first fork, when you get to this second fork in the road, the Soloprenyear Community is also your guide, with other members going through the same.
This time it’s about getting your business more prepared for its upgrade…
The alternative path: sales and marketing systems
Before you hire or outsource anything, Soloprenyear is a mixture of coaching, accountability and smarter, more consistent sales and marketing processes. Being in Soloprenyear helps you to systemise the way you attract, nurture and manage leads and sales in your business and then deliver the work in a way that gets you glowing reviews and referrals.
So, instead of brain-dumping the chaos that sits only in your head to an outsourced marketing team or bemusing an inexperienced hire with something that’s still not systemised, Soloprenyear helps you to put all of your key marketing, sales and delivery processes into one place.
A marketing system that keeps the fizz in your marketing, sales and client relationships
That one place is a marketing system that you’ll get full access to that I call ‘LEMONADE Plan’, which manages all eight marketing, sales and delivery processes in your business from the ‘L’ (Leads) to the final ‘E’ (Endorsements: how you get reviews, referrals or repeat sales - which will be the lifeblood of your business).
It keeps the “fizz” in those client relationships where you’ve perhaps been guilty of letting some of them “go flat” in the past.
You might even find that systemising better allows you to just get on and run the business profitably on your own for the foreseeable, and not even need the agency or hired help.
Before you choose which direction to take at that fork, and head off on a journey you haven’t been on before, or one that gets you held up in traffic or frustratingly lost, Soloprenyear is like having a SatNav that knows exactly where you need to go, and the steps to get there.
So if…
- you see either of these junctions up ahead in the road, or;
- you’re sitting weighing up which way to turn at either of them, or;
- have turned down the wrong road before and made a costly or time-consuming mistake that you don’t want to make again, then…
…please let me know.
My background
I’ve got a proven, strong and well-endorsed track record of helping solo-owned and solo-run businesses to succeed. I’ve been doing this very thing for 14 years, and have personally supported over 300 business owners to get the results their expertise deserves, by using more effective communications and marketing systems.
One sold to a FTSE-100 PLC, others have franchised or won industry awards, but the ones I’m most proud of are those that now afford their solo-owners time and money to do more of what they want to do. That might be more time with family, time away from the business, or time for the projects that they choose to work on, and not those client projects they used to have to take on just to make cash flow.
The market for sales and marketing experts
We live in an era where it seems that anyone who’s ever sent an email campaign for a client claims to be a marketing expert. My experience helps me to see how these self-titled ‘experts’ regularly have blind spots on important systems building blocks. It’s usually because of their inexperience, or they have never really run an actual business of their own before.
Inexperienced coaches and consultants often struggle to help you get results if you don’t follow the exact path that once worked for the high-energy guru who sold them their marketing training. You know the types: sold them ‘the confidence’ to believe their hype, but not the self-awareness to recognise it’s misplaced.
Don’t be embarrassed. I’ve taken on some bloody awful or barely existent client setups in my time. Some with a lot spent on them too. So if you’re worried or embarrassed that I’ll judge your previous poor choices, or ‘no choices’ if you're just starting this journey, don’t be. I won’t judge. I have more integrity than that. You’re where you are now in YOUR journey and I’m here to help you course-correct to get to the goals you set, and quicker.
With me, you’re investing in the experience and insights from 1000s of good, bad and ugly client marketing campaigns. On private or group calls I’ll occasionally be direct and candid with you. But that candour comes from a place of caring about YOUR outcomes. That has to be better than the alternative of not flagging the wrong turns that you’ll need to reverse out of (again?).
Soloprenyear community membership
Membership of Soloprenyear includes training, coaching, accountability, support calls and smarter, more consistent sales and marketing processes and the software to run them. That includes CRM, email marketing, funnels, landing pages, ebooks, automation, sales pipeline management, payment processing, social media posting, ad management and tracking…
It is just £167 per month when you pay yearly (£2000/year including VAT), or £200 if you pay monthly.
It’s considerably cheaper than a first hire would be, less risky than a bad marketing agency choice, and definitely a no-brainer when you think about how many additional sales you can make when systems do it for you, automatically and without days off. Imagine what you only achieve on your very best days when you do things manually, but where every day is a ‘best day’ when you get your marketing systems right. Imagine achieving that consistently and repeatedly without the stress. That’s what Soloprenyear will give you.
I work with just 5 new members every month, so if you want to register your interest for a waiting list discussion, or want to learn more generally, please book a short intro call, or get in contact using the chat icon on this website.
When will you start seeing results?
Soloprenyear is an ongoing membership with access to the tools you need, but in terms of ‘how long does it take?’ to start getting better results, you’ll start seeing a difference in how you feel about your business and the tools you’re using to get there within the first 30 days (& I’ll even give you a discount code for that).
After that first month, it’s all about how and where you want to continue to improve and what time you want to set aside each month to keep working on improving your outcomes and growing the value of your business’ systems.
What if you’re not quite ready or don’t want to trust Soloprenyear to help you to do that?
I’d love you to find results quicker via being part of Soloprenyear. But if you’re working through things on your own for now, or even with someone else, that’s all fine. Please just follow my emails or connect on LinkedIn to interact there. I also share lots of free content on this website and The Soloprenyear Show podcast is available on Apple, Spotfiy or wherever you get your podcasts.
Why would I recommend you do that if you might not even become a member? Well, if I can just help you to make any breakthrough or help you avoid a mistake along your journey with one little nugget that you discover in my content, then that’ll be a win-win. It benefits you and - if it does that - you might share or endorse what I’m doing here with somebody else to help them. It’s a virtuous circle.
I look forward to helping you, wherever you are on your solopreneur or solo-owner business journey.
Gareth
Soloprenyear Community Founder
