A lot of people get the itch to start their own business. Maybe it’s the frustration of working for someone else, maybe it’s the pull of a new idea, or maybe it’s just the hope that work could finally feel like something more than a paycheck. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably had a version of that moment where an idea pops into your head and refuses to leave. And it sounds exciting.
But here’s the part most people don’t talk about.
Not every idea (even good ones) should become YOUR business.
This isn’t about talent or ambition. It’s about alignment, between your idea, your goals, your time, your financial reality, and the kind of life you actually want to live. Most solopreneurs skip this part and jump straight into building. They register the domain, set up the tools, maybe even land their first customer. But a few months in, they realize they’re building something that looks like success from the outside but feels like burnout on the inside.
I don’t want that for you. That’s why I wrote this.
It’s a way to check your idea, honestly, simply, and without needing a business degree or a 100-slide pitch deck. It’ll walk you through the key questions every solopreneur should ask before making the leap:
Each section gives you a framework and a few real-world tools you can use to get answers quickly. No guesswork. No fluff.
If your idea passes the test, great. You’ve got something worth building.
If it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean you failed. It just means you’re asking the right questions now, instead of learning the hard way later.
Before you dive into spreadsheets, pricing models, or time management plans, hit pause. There’s a more important question you need to answer first:
What do I actually want this business to do for me?
That sounds simple, but it’s the foundation for everything else. If you skip this step, you might still end up with a business, but not one you enjoy running. You’ll be busy, you’ll look productive, you might even make money… but you’ll also be headed in the wrong direction.
This happens more often than you’d think. A lot of solopreneurs start with the goal of freedom, but they don’t define what that actually means. “I want to be my own boss” turns into twelve-hour days doing work they don’t love for clients they don’t like. “I want more flexibility” turns into never logging off. Without a clear personal definition of success, you risk building something that drains you instead of supports you.
So stop and ask yourself: Why do I really want to start a solo business?
Don’t settle for the first answer. Keep going. Ask “why?” again and again until you get to something that feels real, something that stirs up a little emotion or hits a nerve. That’s your compass.
When Camila started this process, she said she wanted to “set her own hours.” But that wasn’t the full story. After sitting with it for a while, she realized what she actually wanted was to be present, really present, for her daughter after school. Not just physically there, but mentally and emotionally available. She was tired of arriving home too late, too drained, and too distracted to listen to a single story about recess or art class. She didn’t want “flexibility.” She wanted presence. And once she knew that, the type of business she was willing to build, and not build, got much clearer.
Your Why works like that. It doesn’t just motivate you. It gives you a way to measure decisions. It helps you say yes to the right kind of business and no to the ones that look good on paper but don’t serve your deeper goals.
Once you’ve got it, write it down. Keep it where you’ll see it. You don’t need a fancy vision board, just a sticky note, a journal entry, anything that keeps it top of mind.
And from there, zoom out a little. What does success actually look like for you? Not the internet’s version of success, your version. What kind of day do you want to have? How many hours do you want to work? What kind of work gives you energy instead of draining it? Who do you want to help, and how?
If that feels hard to picture, try writing out a future “day in the life.” Start when you wake up. What time is it? What are you doing? How do you feel? Who are you working with, and on what? When do you stop for the day?
If your current idea can’t help you get there, or even close, it’s not the right one. That’s not failure. That’s clarity. And that clarity will save you from investing in a path that leads to burnout or regret.
Getting this part right doesn’t guarantee your business will work. But skipping it guarantees you’ll have no idea whether it’s working for you.
This is where every aspiring solopreneur needs to focus. Before you dive into spreadsheets, build a website, or daydream about quitting your job, you’ve got to answer one question: Does this idea solve a real problem that people are willing to spend money to fix? And just as important, would enough of them choose your solution over everything else out there?
This one step filters out the majority of bad business ideas. Not because the ideas are inherently awful, but because they haven’t been tested in the real world. It’s easy to get excited about something that sounds good in your head. It’s harder, but way more useful, to put it in front of actual prospects and see what happens.
So what does that look like in practice?
Start by talking to real prospects. Not your friends. Not your supportive spouse. Not your buddy who “thinks it’s a cool idea.” You need conversations with people who actually experience the problem you’re hoping to solve. Ideally, they’re in your target audience. Even better, they’re strangers. That’s where honest feedback lives.
When you sit down with them, ask a few open-ended questions:
These conversations are gold. They’re not about getting compliments. You’re listening for buying signals, comments like “I’d love that,” or “When can I try it?” or “Could you do this for my team?” When people start engaging with the idea like it already exists, you know you’re onto something.
You don’t need a huge sample size to move forward. Having ten real conversations is a strong starting point. If at least three of those result in genuine interest, interest that points toward action, not just polite encouragement, you’ve got early validation. That’s your green light to keep going.
Ignore this step, and you risk building something nobody wants. Nail this step, and everything else gets easier.
Let’s talk about the part that makes or breaks most solopreneur dreams: income. Because no matter how meaningful your work is, or how well it fits your lifestyle, if it can’t reliably support you financially within a reasonable timeframe, it’s not a business, it’s a passion project with bills attached.
Now, for some people, that’s fine. But if your goal is to make this your full-time work, the business eventually has to carry its weight. That’s why the income question comes after you’ve clarified your Why and validated real demand. Once you know the business fits your life and solves a problem people will pay to fix, the numbers become the final reality check before you make any big decisions.
The goal isn’t to get rich in three months. The goal is to know, with confidence, that this idea could realistically replace your income in six to twelve months, or at least get you close enough that the leap doesn’t feel like financial freefall.
The first step is figuring out what “enough” actually means for you. And here’s where a lot of solopreneurs go wrong: they lowball it. They tell themselves they can live lean, cut corners, or “figure it out later” just to make the numbers look better on paper. That’s a trap. Don’t build a business around a fantasy version of your needs.
Instead, sit down and write out your real monthly expenses, rent or mortgage, groceries, utilities, insurance, transportation. That’s your baseline. Then add in what you actually want to spend on things that make life worth living: dinners out, travel, hobbies, your kids’ activities. Finally, factor in savings, not just for retirement, but for downtime, taxes, or surprise expenses, and reinvestment in the business. You’ll need some room in the budget for tools, marketing, and growth.
Add it all up. That’s your monthly income target. Not a dream number. Not a guess. Just reality, fully accounted for.
Now that you have a clear target, the question becomes: Can this idea hit that number in a reasonable amount of time?
You don’t need a 40-page business plan to find out. What you need is a simple spreadsheet, a basic pro forma profit and loss statement, and a willingness to run the numbers honestly. We have a template you can download for free.
Start with your offer: What are you selling, and at what price? Multiply that by the number of clients, customers, or units you think you can realistically serve or sell each month. Grow it realistically over time and stop growing it when you hit your maximum capacity (remember how many hours you decided you wanted to work in step 1). That’s your revenue.
Now subtract your operating expenses, software subscriptions, contractors, materials, insurance, and anything that costs money to deliver your product or service. What’s left is your profit.
And here’s where it gets useful. Run that model three times.
Now look at the middle version, the realistic one. Can you hit your monthly income target by month six? Maybe month twelve? If the answer is yes, great, you’re working with a viable model. If not, don’t panic. You don’t need to toss the idea, but you do need to adjust it. Maybe you need to offer a different format. Maybe you can increase your work capacity by outsourcing some functions. That’s part of the process.
The point here isn’t perfection. It’s clarity. You’re not trying to predict the future, you’re trying to avoid building blind. And if you’re willing to test your idea against real numbers now, you’ll save yourself months or years of trying to force something that never had the margins to work in the first place.
A lot of people wait to start until everything feels lined up - the perfect idea, the perfect timing, the perfect offer. But perfection’s a moving target. And if you wait for it, you’ll be waiting a long time.
What you actually need is proof:
The steps outlined here aren’t about creating a flawless business plan or locking yourself into a single idea. They’re about testing, quickly, honestly, and with just enough structure to keep you from guessing your way into trouble. When you start with your Why, talk to real people, validate demand, and run the numbers based on how you want to work, you end up with something a lot stronger than a hunch.
You end up with traction.
And if the idea doesn’t work the first time through? That’s not failure. That’s useful data. Most successful solopreneurs didn’t nail it on their first try, they just moved faster through the part where things didn’t quite fit. They adjusted the model, shifted the offer, redefined the audience. They kept going, not with blind optimism, but with better inputs.
So don’t get stuck trying to build the perfect business on paper.
Build one that’s good enough to test in the real world.
Use what you learn to shape it.
Let the results guide you forward.
Because the real goal isn’t to prove your idea is perfect; it’s to prove that can work.