Is Your Solo Business Actually Feasible? Find Out!

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So, you’ve got a business idea you’re excited about. But here’s the big question: does it actually work on paper, or will it drain your bank account before it takes off?

In this episode of The Aspiring Solopreneur, Carly and Joe break down how to test the feasibility of your business idea, spot potential deal-breaking showstoppers, and price your services with confidence (without letting imposter syndrome drag you down). 

If you’re ready to stress-test your solo venture before you dive in headfirst, this one’s for you.

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Being a solopreneur is awesome but it’s not easy. It's hard to get noticed. Most business advice is for bigger companies, and you're all alone...until now. LifeStarr Intro gives you free education, community, and tools to build a thriving one-person business. 

So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, click here to check out LifeStarr Intro!  

EpisodeTranscript

Carly Ries: Think your business idea will work just because you're passionate about it? Well, you may need to think again. In this episode of the Aspiring Solopreneur, Joe and I dive into the crucial step of testing your idea's feasibility before you sink your time, money, and sanity into it. From spotting deal breaking showstoppers early to setting prices that reflect your value out falling into the low cost trap, we'll walk you through how to make sure your solo venture works on paper and in the real world. This is the episode to listen to if you want to avoid costly mistakes, get confident about your pricing, and ensure your business is actually set up for success.

You're listening to the Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just toying with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving. I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost, Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solopreneurship, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambitions so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you. But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot.

Because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. No matter where you are in your journey, we've got your back. Alright, listeners. We are back with another episode covering the solopreneur success cycle. In the past few episodes, we've been talking about the the planning phase of the solopreneur success cycle. in last week's episode, we covered your competition or not last week's, but in our last episode, we covered competition. We covered defining your customers and personas. And today we kinda wanna get into the nitty gritty. I think some of this can be kind of intimidating for some people, so I'm glad we're addressing it, addressing these topics. When we talk about feasibility, testing your ideas, and all that jazz, Joe, you are great at this. you're a seasoned entrepreneur. I wanna hear your take on some of these things.

Joe Rando: I mean, the whole idea of feasibility is obviously important. If you don't have a feasible business, you don't have a business. So, really, to start with, there's a lot of people that will say, well, if you're passionate, you'll make it work. And that may be true, but you also might run out of money first.

So it depends on your circumstance. If you're doing a side hustle, yeah, you can probably try anything and see how it goes, and that's great. But if you're either laid off and deciding to take this path instead of finding a job or decide to just, you know, cut the cord and get started, you wanna test the feasibility of your idea. So, first thing is you gotta make it work on paper. You need to do what they call a pro form a, profit and loss statement, you know, going in and looking at the expected revenues, what you think you're gonna spend. Are you eventually making money? It usually starts out losing because, hey, that's how businesses work, but there should be a clear, and believable path to getting to enough profit for you to wanna do this. So that's an important part of this process, for planning.

Because if you can't get it to work on paper, it's probably not gonna work in the real world. In fact, it can work on paper and not work in the real world. Rarely, does it go the other way? So, really, when you do these reviews, you also wanna look for something that I call showstoppers.

And showstoppers are things about getting the business set up that are outside of your total control. So if it's, you know, build a website, you can do that. You can build a website. You know, anybody can go on and do a nice website on one of the tools that are out there.

No problem. That's not a showstopper. But a showstopper is I need certain permits to start my business or run my business out of my house, or I need, to get a certification. I need to become a certified financial planner or something. And if you have to pass a test. So there are all these potential things that are outside of your control. Some of them could be expensive. So you need to make a list of all those things. We'll make a list of all the things you need to do to start the business and look for those showstoppers.

And from there, you start to say, okay. How can I mitigate the risks? How do I reorient these things so that I can have the the big showstoppers early in the process so that I know what to stop and either rethink or, go back to square one? So that's important.

In terms of pricing, you're gonna be setting your pricing. You wanna do that confidently. Solos tend to charge too little. That's, our impostor syndrome kicking in. And imposture syndrome's okay, but you don't wanna let it drive your pricing. I always think that you should sit down and look at those pain points. I mean, we haven't talked in detail about pain points here, but, you're solving pain points for people. Look at those pain points and figure out how to position your business around solving those particular pain points for your personas that we talked about in the last episode. And now if you can message that effectively, your prices go up. You can charge more money.

You know, if I say, I'm a life coach, I'm gonna make your life better. Well, okay. Great. But if I say, I'm a life coach that's gonna get you into that c suite job that you've been working toward, and I have a track record of 80% success. Now I'm getting the checkbook out at that point, right?

So it's really important to kind of think through those, getting into those pain points that you're solving, speaking to them, and then, thinking about what that's worth to the customer when you start thinking about your pricing. So you don't wanna compete on pricing typically unless you've got some magic formula because you might be able to compete against large companies and be cheaper than them because you don't have the overhead. You're working out of your spare bedroom, and they've got offices, blah blah blah. But if you're going to undercut other solopreneurs, you better have some recipe or you're just gonna lose money. There's a reason these prices are where they are.

And competing on price only works if you have some way of delivering the product or service at a lower price point or lower cost than your competing solopreneurs do. So keep that in mind. It's just not a good strategy. It's painful. You end up with customers that are, basically, we call them bottom feeders, but they can be the most difficult customers because they want something for nothing or for cheap.

And so, keeping those prices up can get you better customers. It gives you the ability to do a better job and have more customer satisfaction, and it lets you make a bigger profit. So there's just a lot of reasons not to try to be chintzy on the pricing. And I've been talking a lot. Sorry.

But I'd love your thoughts on this, Carly. what is your take?

Carly Ries: I mean, you've said everything so well. just pricing, people get so hung up on it. And I think it's also just okay to, kinda test it a little bit.

Joe Rando: I agree. Just look at the competition too. there's nothing wrong with matching the people that you feel are your most direct competitors, at least to start.

But don't undercut them because, like I said, then it's one of things you learn quickly in business is that if you start at a high price and lower it, okay. But if you start at a low price and try to raise it, it's tougher, especially with your existing customers. So, try to get in somewhere that's, reasonable.

Carly Ries: Yep. I think that's so well said and something that just a good reminder for solopreneurs, especially when that impostor syndrome creeps in because it inevitably will. Well, Joe, anything else you wanna cover for this step?

Joe Rando: No. Just we should do an episode on impostor syndrome sometime.

Carly Ries: I suppose. Well, listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, please share this episode with a friend, subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, and leave a five star review. And we will see you next time where we cover more on the solopreneur success cycle on The Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone.

In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.