As mentioned in an earlier post, I am collaborating with Brad Swift and on his Business
on Purpose Teleseries. In fact, I’m to be one of those interviewed, with the subject being the Four Secrets. As I pondered what
your purpose has to do with being a successful Solo Entrepreneur, and what I might say about it, I noticed that although The Four Secrets is the cornerstone
of Solo-E.com — I’d never blogged about it! Egads!

The Birth of the Four Secrets

The Four Secrets began with a stickie note. After having been a Solo
Entrepreneur for a couple of years, I started noticing some commonalities in
the kinds of problems I and other soloists encountered: doing work we don’t
enjoy and/or working for clients we don’t really like, working too long and too
hard, and not making enough money (to support our desired lifestyle).

These problems seemed to plague all of us to some degree. It didn’t make sense to me — why would such a talented group of people, with the drive and determination to go into business for themselves, be unable to attain the lifestyle promise that made them go solo in the first place, even after several years of experience?

The Underlying Causes Emerge

The stickie notes multiplied as I struggled to figure out what separated us from the more visibly successful solo entrepreneurs. Over a period of months, I read a lot of websites of those successful solo entrepreneurs and had numerous conversations with colleagues, and a pattern emerged. Among all the typical
mistakes solo business owners make, there were four that seemed to have the
most impact — and took the longest to fix:

1. Not investing enough in ourselves as a person
2. Having an overly broad target market, and sometimes taking on work just for the money
3. Trading hours for pay, then cramming in extra time to do chores that we aren’t good at (and don’t like doing)
4. Working alone, stuck inside our own brains

Putting a Name to the Solutions

 Now that I knew the problems, it was just a matter of turning them into solutions that solo entrepreneurs could understand and apply. Hence, The Four Secrets — the four key
strategies that every solo entrepreneur should learn early and apply often:

1. Personal Development: know and grow yourself as a person – stop being who you think others want you to be, and discover who YOU want to be.
2. Niche: get really picky about who you work with and what you’ll do for them, and attract them just by being yourself!
3. Leverage: hire help to do those tasks you dislike or aren’t good at, even if you don’t think you can afford it.
4. Collaboration: find colleagues you can work with easily, and forge win-win-win agreements that go way beyond what you could do alone.

The Single Thread

When I look at the Four Secrets, I really see just one
underlying driver — the need to know yourself: what brings you joy, your
values, your strengths and weaknesses, and what you really want to attain. It’s
why Personal Development is the First Secret – because I believe it needs to
come first.

And I have a hunch that discovering your Life Purpose may be
the very first essential step.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Alliances/Collaboration, Delegation, Niche Marketing, Personal Development, Vision/Goals/Plans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.