Do what you love vs. Love what you do
A reminder for us solopreneurs:
You have to do stuff you don’t naturally love… until you have enough money to do only what you love.
Building a business as a solopreneur involves a huge variety of tasks and projects, most of which you wouldn’t naturally have thought — “This was what I was looking forward to doing, day to day, with an authentic business!”
The stronger your passion and vision for what should be your ideal work, the stronger you’ll feel the gap. The destination seems so far from where you are now.
The sane solution? You’ll have to practice loving what you “have to” do now, to make money, so you can — one day in future — make money doing only what you love.
The general steps to get there…
- Sell what your existing network wants you to sell. Practicing loving those actions, bringing love into it… because the alternative is to dislike what makes you money, and that doesn’t help to make money ;-)
- While you do step 1, also do this — gradually grow your true-fan-audience by posting authentic content on a consistent basis (by loving the process!), so that more and more, you will be able to do step 3…
- Sell whatever YOU want to sell, because you’ll have educated your audience over years so they now understand and have the same passion you do.
Start at an easy price
Selling what others want you to sell might mean to sell what you want, but at prices that are an easy Yes for them.
Truthfully, at the beginning, this price may have to be zero! Your friends/colleagues might be willing to try out your unique, deep services, if they don’t have to pay for it.
But it’s still good for you, because you get to practice your deep work. It’s what you need at the beginning — to practice so much that you get really good at it, so that your volunteer clients naturally love to spread the word about your work. And, they want to continue working with you in a paid way.
You need to keep improving the client experience, until you can sell at a price you want!
To learn more about this method, read The Tapering Strategy For Getting Clients.
The practice of stretching daily
Even after you make enough money to mostly do what you love — I’m just about there and I’m very grateful for it — you will find that there are still challenges. Still, there will be hard things to face, simply at a different level than before.
So let’s release the fantasy that things will one day be “easy”. Every stage has its own difficulties, if you yearn to keep growing.
Therefore, here’s a reminder that I don’t see out there often enough in my circles:
To grow, we must do something hard everyday.
Without “stretching” daily into what feels hard, you’ll lose your entrepreneurial muscles, or never build them at all.
So, don’t avoid the hard stuff.
Gently lean into it.
Practice bringing love (and even joy) into it!
And always prioritize a healthy balance of work, rest and play, so that you can sustain the necessary energy to tackle each day’s difficulties, and continue growing in meaningful ways.
Love what you do, so that one day, you’ll get to do what you love!
