This topic was requested by a reader who wrote:
“I’d love to read what you write about deciding to create a soulpreneur business or not. What to consider, what questions to ask yourself, how to know if you’re cut out for it.”
So here it goes…
What Is a Soul-preneur and How Is It Different from a Solopreneur?
It starts out as an idea-seed:
What if I could start a business? A business that really helped people, where I get paid to do what I love?
The more you think about it, the more the seed grows. You feel excitement as the vision of what could be beckons.
It’s not just a business idea…it’s a calling.
That’s the difference between being a solopreneur and a soul-preneur.
Then you start exploring what it would take to start a business.
You take a course (or two or dozens), sign up for newsletters, watch the videos, follow the blueprints.
You discover that having a business feels much different than having a calling. It feels hard. Confusing.
Everyone gives different advice, and the fear of being seen (and failing) can leave you paralyzed.
You wonder:
Am I even cut out for this business thing?
If you can relate, here are some questions you can ask yourself that might help.
6 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Soul-Preneur Business
At the start of any journey, even in familiar terrain, you can’t know what’s going to happen. Will you ever make it to the mountaintop?
I believe know that you can do anything you want – you just have to want it enough.
#1 – Do you want to be a soul-preneur?
Owning a business is different from doing the work you love and helping those you’re moved to help. They can go together, but they don’t necessarily.
Being a solo-entrepreneur brings its own set of challenges and opportunities. You’ll need to fill all the roles of a business: marketer, sales rep, customer support, bookkeeper, copywriter, content creator.
Anything that needs doing to keep that little business of yours growing will be your responsibility.
Do you actually want that?
Because like with everything else, there’s a learning curve, and in business, there’s so much to learn that it can be a steep one.
If you actually want it, you’ll make it happen. If you don’t, you probably won’t.
You’d be better off finding a job or partnering with others in a venture where you get paid to do what you love instead.
Let’s say your answer is yes. You actually want to be a soul-preneur.
#2 – Are you willing for it to take ten years to grow your soul-preneur business?
Business isn’t a short game.
You’ll need to bumble and fumble your way through two to three years just to figure out what you do and who you do it for. Then, you’ll have to discover how to communicate that as a clear message, and how to market it.
If you don’t have patience for the long game, business might not be for you.
#3 – Are you up for getting good at selling and marketing?
Guess what? If you want a profitable business, it’s going to require doing both of those things. A lot.
The good news: selling and marketing doesn’t have to feel bad.
Selling is simply inviting people to receive your help in exchange for money.
Marketing is simply communicating what you do, who it’s for and how to get it.
Both of these are things you already know how to do, if you’ve ever negotiated bedtime with a parent or invited a friend over for dinner.
So the thing you really need to be willing to do is get over your crappy thinking and ugly stories about marketing and selling. Then you can see how simple and natural it can be.
#4 – Are you willing to learn by doing, make mistakes and messing up – sometimes publicly?
One of the biggest things that holds back soul-preneurs is perfectionism. Impostor syndrome. The unwillingness to make a mistake.
You’ll need to get over that fast if you want to grow a business.
The best way to discover your message is to open your mouth and speak, put your pen to the page and write. See what comes out and watch your thinking evolve as you attempt to communicate your message. You’ll put out the message you labored over, only to discover that it confuses people. So you try again.
The best way to discover the marketing that’s so perfect for you it feels natural and effortless is to try out the options.
You’ll need to spend time with different platforms to see which you enjoy enough to survive the learning curve and get it working for you.
No one can teach you or tell you exactly what to do to grow your soul-preneur business. Or more accurately, what they say will only get you as far as the actions you take, and most of it still won’t be a perfect fit.
You’ll discover what you’re doing as you do it, and not before. If that doesn’t sit well with you, being a soul-preneur may not, either.
#5 – Can you let go of control enough to hire other people to help you?
Even though the phrase solo-preneur is used to describe a one-owner business, that doesn’t mean you can do it alone.
This is another trap for many soul-preneurs who are convinced they need to do everything themselves.
As your business grows, you’ll need to learn the skills of outsourcing, delegating and hiring.
Otherwise, you’ll spend so much time in the muckity-muck of your everyday business tasks that you neglect the big picture. It can lead to a feast and famine experience where you’re so busy doing the work that you stop selling until the money runs out. It’s an exhausting cycle.
It’s yet another learning curve you’ll need to engage as a soul-preneur. (See? I told you there was a lot to learn.)
#6 – Are you willing to do what you know – even when it goes against the rules of Business As Usual?
The minute Google and Facebook discover you’re interested in business, your feed will be full of advertisements promising to reveal how they’ve “cracked the code” on a 6 figure business. At every turn you’ll be told how it’s done.
Much of the advice you get will be contradictory. Some of it will be unethical.
If you listen to it, you’ll be chasing empty promises and wasting time.
The way out is to let your own wisdom guide you. It doesn’t guarantee every effort will be met with success, but it does guarantee that the business that emerges will feel like yours.
A Hopeful Message For Soul-Preneurs
I’ve been a small business owner for over twenty-years, and a soul-preneur for eight, most of which I’ve been coaching other soul-preneurs.
Even if your answer is NO to these questions, it’s not over.
You can change your mind anytime you want.
Not up for the learning curve of running a business today? You might be tomorrow.
Unwilling to get into action and make mistakes? That can change in a second.
If you want to be a soul-preneur, you can do it. You don’t even have to believe you to take the actions that make it inevitable.
Anything you want can be yours, if you want it enough.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to ease the learning curve in being a soul-preneur. I’m sharing a bunch of them in my new workshop in September:
The Money Map: Design a Profitable Path That’s Unapologetically You
In 60 minutes, you’ll connect to what truly lights you up, choose your next-level income from the inside out, and sketch a bold “Money Map” of offers that are wildly aligned, creatively thrilling, and magnetically profitable.
In this workshop, you will…
- Design your business around your ideal life: the people, places, rhythms, and creative expressions you want to wake up to every day.
- Claim the amount of money you desire to receive (not what you think you should settle for) and root it in love.
- Dream up soul-true offers that feel like acts of art, magic, and service in your personal “Money Map.”
This lets you choose a model for your business that’s designed for you and what you love. You can avoid the agony of misalignment and unfulfillment.
This workshop is free for IMPACT Creator members. So if that’s you – you’re all set!
Usually, only members have access to the monthly workshop. But this month, you can buy it separately. This experience is just too important (and too rare) for me not to make it accessible to everyone.
https://www.theawakenedbusiness.com/moneymap
Yours in love and play,
Steph
If you enjoyed this article, join my daily Wildspire emails list here for more playful and provocative musings on business, being gloriously human and changing the world.
