Solopreneur Start-Up Guide.

The exact framework I used to start, scale and automate my business.

For best practice, make a copy of this document, go through the questions and exercises using
pen and paper and then type up into a separate document once you have your final version.

This guide will help give you the following:

1. How to create a life by design.

2. How to monetise your ideas, curiosities and passions.
3. How to create an offer to add value to others.
4. How to test your model.
5. How to get your first client.
6. How to scale your business.
7. How to automate your business.
8. How to position yourself as the expert.

Step 1: Your Life By Design.

Here you can have some fun to form your ideal lifestyle, it’s important to understand this so that
you have something to aim towards and spark some energy.

Use the following questions to give you prompts of things to think about:

Take time to answer the following questions:

1. What are your values? Ideally, you want to produce your biggest value, but it’s also
helpful to think of supporting values for other areas of your life.
2. Write down 3 things you want less of in life, e.g. less financial worry.
3. Write down 3 things you want more of in life e.g. time with your family.
4. Write down your ideal lifestyle: create a dream schedule of how your day and week
would look and list all the activities.
5. What is your freedom number? Work out your lifestyle cost to see exactly how much
income you need from your business, for most this initially means replacing their current
income. Beyond this, you can create a dream lifestyle number to aim towards.
Bonus questions to give you inspiration and things to think about. These aren’t essential so
don’t let them overwhelm you, but it might give you food for thought:

● How much time do you need?

How many hours per week are you looking to claim back and what for?

● What would you do if you could not fail?

Write down any lofty goals or challenges which resonate with you and that you know you would
attempt if you didn't think you could fail.

● What would you regret not doing in 10 years' time?

Fear of regret is a good motivator. Picture yourself in 10 years time, or even on your death bed
and list out anything which would cause you to regret in life.

● You’re giving a ted talk in 20 years, what do you talk about?

Write down your life story with you as the main character which you’d be proud to share with
others.

This section should allow you to paint a picture of what your ideal lifestyle would look like. Try to
be specific as possible and put some timelines on your goals. Forget any limiting beliefs and just
write down what resonates with you, it’s okay for the goalposts to change later. Just be sure to
get clear on your why.

Step 2: Your Model.

Your model is the vessel which will take you from zero to one. This is how you will create
income and build a business. I’m going off the assumption that most people reading this will be
launching an online business based around services and later on, some products. The theory
can still apply to other types of businesses too.

The aim is to launch a project which you can offer to others based on your curiosities, passions
and skills. This will give you the strongest launchpad for success. Don’t just be in it for the
money, as you won’t be able to compete with those who love what they do.
Finding your pillars for ideas:

Start by creating a brain dump list of all the curiosities, passions and skills you have. List
everything you enjoy studying and working on, the more specific the better. After that, go
through the following:

1. What skill can make you money? This is ideally something you have experience in such
as web design or fitness coaching. If you literally have nothing or you really don’t enjoy
anything you’ve previously done, then you’re going to have to take time to learn a new
skill first.
2. What topic do you love talking about? Start off by writing down as much as possible, but
ideally, you want to narrow it down to just one or two as your main pillar. Think about
what you love to study in your own time or would go to seminars on.
3. What topic would complement the first two? It doesn’t have to be directly related but
ideally has some link to fit in nicely, such as a fitness coach may also have experience or
passion within sustainable farming for better food sources.
4. Who would need your skills or service? Using answers from the above, start to think
about who you’ll be marketing to. For example, if you’re a fitness coach who loves
surfing, you may target your fitness services towards surfers with specific strength and
condition programs for them, while you could also build out fitness coaching products for
other fitness coaches.

You’re aiming to find something which you love doing and you’re highly skilled in. Ideally, you
should have a solid understanding of the following:

● 3-4 overarching pillars of content based on curiosities and passions

● Specific projects and ideas to help others.
● Example: social media marketer who loves travel: sell social media marketing to the
travel industry and sell products to those starting out as social media managers. Create
content to attract both and also talk about your third or fourth pillar to give you a unique
edge and link it to your main pillars and offer.

Again the following is not essential, so don’t get too overwhelmed, but it can help give you
inspiration when deciding on what you want to work on:

● What does the world need right now?

● What do you have previous experience in?
● What problems have you previously solved?
● What do you have a unique perspective on?
● What would have helped you 12 months ago?
● What can you sustain long-term through consistent input?
Step 3: Your Killer Offer.
You can have all the knowledge and skills in the world, but if you don’t know how to package it,
you won’t land clients.

You’ll need the following:

1. A great offer of how you’ll guarantee clients results. $100m Offers by Alex Hormozi is
required reading for this part to get an understanding of how to create your offer, without
it you’ll struggle to land clients.
2. An understanding of who your target market is: think about their pain points, frustrations,
desires and fears.
3. Landing page: not essential but it can help to have your offer in written format with a
CTA, don’t spend too much time here though.

The Offer.

A bad offer:

I’ll write you a great landing page to land more clients.

A good offer:

I’ll optimise your landing page to increase your conversions by 20% in less than 7 days or you’ll
get your money back.

Your offer should contain the following:

1. A clear promise: what’s the outcome? They don’t care about the process, just the
outcome. Sell the dream fitness plan to lose 20lbs in 60 days or killer landing pages to
increase conversion rates by 20%.
2. Give them certainty: you want to install certainty in your offer.
3. A clear time frame: the lower the better. No one wants the dream body in 12 months.
The lower your time delay, the better the offer.
4. Reduce friction and effort required: people want results easily. If you can guarantee a
dream physique in under 90 days with just a few hours a week in the gym, then people
will be interested.
5. Risk reversal: make it a no-brainer. Tell people if they don’t get the results you promised,
you’ll give them their money back, or ideally, you’ll just work for free until they get there.
Step 4: Testing Your Killer Offer.
Following on from this, I must stress that the only way to really test out your offer is to start
putting it out there, what your offer starts as, isn’t how it will end up. This is a constant game of
iteration but you can only iterate if you start now. Feedback and data from your target market
are priceless, so I suggest:

● Offer to work for free for at least 5 people.

● Collect as much feedback and testimonials as possible.
● Condense your offer down into one call so you can still give the advice to act on.

Once you have this, update your offer based on the results and then go again, but this time start
charging for your services. You can go back to the clients who worked with you for free and then
offer an extended program but for a fee this time.

Step 5: The Form Phase- landing your first

client.
Now you’re ready to put your offer out there and acquire your first client. Please do not overthink
this. There are people far less experienced than you with a tiny following who are making a lot
of money, so don’t overthink it. Imposter syndrome is common, so you have to remember the
value you can add to others, if your content and offer are the real deal, you’ll be fine, so don’t
worry.

Focus on loading up your pipeline and sending as many DMs as possible, assuming you don’t
have a huge following or don’t intend to run paid ads, outreach via cold email or DM will be the
method for most.

There are a million and one ways to structure a cold DM or email and it deserves a whole
course (for which there have been many made already) so my suggestion would be to test out a
few different scripts. Alternate between going straight for the sale and building up a rapport
before pitching your offer.

Either way, you want to find users or businesses in your target market and DM them.

A simple initial approach could be:

Hey Tim, I saw you commented on XYZ's post about increasing conversion rates on Tik Tok
ads. I can help you with this (no cost or pitch) just let me know what exactly you’re struggling
with and I’d be happy to run through it. Cheers.
The aim here would be to get them on a call, so assuming they reply, just respond saying it’s
easier to explain on a call, send them your booking link and chat with them over the phone.

Once on the phone, dig deeper into their situation to find out their pain points, needs and what
would help them the most. This data is priceless and you’re also spreading good karma by
genuinely helping people.

Remember you said no pitch, so don’t go straight in with your offer. However, in the end, you
can say something like: I promised no cost or sales pitch which is still true, but I do have a
specific program to help people like yourself further increase their Tik Tok ad conversion rates in
60 days, would you like to hear more?

Not everyone will say yes, but those who do will be a strong lead. If they say no, then you’ve still
helped someone, got some feedback and they may come back to you at a later date.

Start with an approach like this but feel free to change it.

Points to consider:
● Stay consistent daily.
● Follow up consistently but not too often.
● Comment and engage with others to keep your name out there.
● You need to send more DMs than you think, 500 is more realistic than 50.

Step 6: The Storm Phase- Scaling Your

Business.
By now you should have a few paying clients or at least strong signals from people that they like
your service and would pay for it.

Now it’s time to go all in. Start scaling up your marketing, take on more clients and sell. There
isn’t a huge difference in process between this phase and the form phase, besides the volume.
You may decide to make any final changes to your offer or process, but ultimately the aim is to
start taking on more clients.

The goal is to increase revenue through client acquisition, so your sole focus should be to
market and sell as much as possible. You can optimise later, but for now, just focus on getting
clients.
All you need to do:

1. Put your offer in front of more people. If you were previously sending 5 outreach DM’s
per day, then aim for 20.
2. Find the time from somewhere. The main lever you have at this stage is your effort, so
you may need to make some short-term sacrifices and put in some more hours.
3. Run a time-specific campaign: the storm phase isn’t sustainable long term and it also
helps to sell if potential clients see that there is a limited supply of your service. Run a
promotion over a 2-week period and promote your offer in your content and the DM’s.
Tell people there are a limited number of spaces and when they’re all filled, close the
doors and tell people they will have to wait for the next round to get the opportunity to
work with you.

Again, don’t overthink this stage. Even if you don’t sell as much as expected, it’s a great
experience and you’ll learn a lot. Go through the process of running a promotion for a set period
and focusing on taking on as many clients as possible in a certain period. You’ll naturally find
you go through this cycle each time you have new ideas and you’ll get better each time.

Step 7: The Norm Phase- Automating Your

Business.
Now you should have a decent amount of clients and revenue coming through the door, so it’s
time to focus on delivering excellent service and keeping them happy. The sale is half the battle,
you must also deliver on your promise to keep them coming back.

Effort and hours in will be required to get things going, but obviously, you’re limited by the hours
you have and so to start scaling past a certain point, you need systems and automation. This is
where the power of leverage comes into play.

Start to get in the habit and mindset of documenting everything you do to create a process. The
goal is to start claiming back some of your time by using tech, virtual assistants and processes
to systemise a lot of the repetitive processes in your business. It can take time to put these in
place, but the beauty of this is that it only has to be done once.
Actions:

1. Create a master system list: start a Notion or Google sheets database and start listing all
the systems and processes you’ll need. This could be anything from the client
onboarding process to the client billing process. You first need visibility on what you
need to build out.
2. Next is to start prioritising this list. You can’t build it all at once and some will be nice to
have but others will be critical. Think about what provides the most value and leverage
and start there.
3. Carve out time to build out the processes and systems. Start with 2-3 90-minute focused
blocks per week to work purely on your systems and automation and tackle them one at
a time.
4. Start building. Don’t reinvent the wheel, there's most likely some great software or
experienced VAs out there who can come in and help you. Do some research and speak
to other people to figure out the best way. Don’t make any fancy new software or
anything massively complicated. For most processes, you’ll just need a one-page
Google Doc and a 10-minute Loom recording. The key is to keep it simple.
5. Next is to test your automation. If you’ve hired a VA then work with them for the first part
to make sure they understand the process. If you have auto-onboarding processes,
make yourself a test client and go through it to make sure it works.

Not everyone enjoys this process, but remember it’s essential to be able to scale and claim your
time back. A business is made up of assets and should be able to run smoothly. Other people
need to be able to come in and easily pick up processes and learn what to do.

Some resources and tools and ideas:

● Zapier: great for automation between software.

● Calendly: call booking software.
● Notion: your 2nd brain.
● Zoom: for calls.
● Google calendar.
● Stripe: accepting payments.
● Virtual assistant: runs your diary, email management, invoicing, manages automation,
website build and maintenance and much more.
Once you can master this phase, you will start to really enjoy the benefits of autonomy in your
life. It’s a matter of doing more of what you love and less of what you don’t.
Step 8: Positioning Yourself As the Expert.
Regardless of what type of business you’re in, you need to show authority and carve out a
name for yourself. In the modern day, people buy from people and their unique skill sets and
experiences. Even law firms are on social media, so you need to be too.

I’m assuming anyone who’s reading this found this through Twitter, so I don’t need to explain the
benefits of Twitter as the main platform for building authority and posting content. Even if you
have a brick-and-mortar business, it’s a great place to start sharing value and building an online
reputation to capture an audience. There are other networks too such as LinkedIn or Tik Tok
which may be more optimal again depending on your business.

For the majority of people looking to go down the solopreneur route and start a service or digital
product business, Twitter is the place to be.

There can be and have been books written on starting a Twitter profile and producing high-value
content, so I’ll just give you a high-level summary to get started.

The aim is for your profile to capture people's attention, share value with the world and ideally
direct them to an email list or website where they can find out more about you.

The beauty of this is that you get to talk about your curiosities, passions and experiences and
eventually monetise that (when done correctly). Sharing your personal experience and
continuing to develop yourself is what will help you build authority and attract the people you
want to work with.

Start building the habit of writing about your pillars through Twitter and linking them to your
service or product. The basics of marketing are to give value 90% of the time with no ask, then
every so often run a promotion and sell.

To get started:

1. Craft a Twitter bio that describes what you do and what you talk about.
2. Start posting 2 tweets per day and 2 threads per week.
3. Start a newsletter which people can sign up to.

Twitter is your creative playground, start setting the habit of posting regularly and creating your
content library. Writing helps cement your learning while adding value to others. It’s a process
which you’ll get better with over time, focus on consistency and your skills will soon improve.
A great writing system to get started:
 1. Define who you’re writing to: list out their fears, dreams and problems. Be specific and
keep referring back to it.
2. Start a writing queue of ideas where you can capture all your thoughts to write about.
3. Look through other people's content for ideas. Don't copy word for word, but look into the
idea behind it. Writing is same the same thing in a thousand different ways.
4. Great posts give the reader: a hook to grab their attention, actionable steps, lessons,
resources and new ideas.
5. Don’t just spam post quotes, produce your learning and experiences into valuable
content for readers to enjoy and learn something new.
6. You can talk about anything and link it back to your pillars and services. For example, if
you’re a fitness coach, you can talk about how anxiety impacts the body and sports
performance. A web designer can talk about typography and how it affects user
experience.

Everything is content:
● Your life experiences.
● Something you recently studied.
● The podcast you listened to yesterday.

Some great resources for longer-form content frameworks:

https://thinkinsights.net/consulting/pastor-framework-proposals/

https://netmind.net/en/scamper-technique-reduce-reuse-recycle-or-reinvent/#:~:text=The%20SC
AMPER%20Technique%20is%20a,%2FMinimize%20and%20Rearrange%2FReverse.

You can always repurpose and reframe content so you’ll never run out of things to say. Set the
habit of 30 minutes each day to write and build from there.

Bad thread:

“My first fitness client paid me xyz and my latest client just paid me abc, here’s what I did
differently:”

This may get some people's attention but unlikely. It’s broad and not that interesting.

Instead, try this:

“This bulletproof strength training program increased my clients' squat by 15% in 60 days:”
You're grabbing people's attention, but more specifically the attention of your target market,
assuming you’re targetting people who want to increase their strength in the gym.
Now that you’ve learned the basics, I have
an offer for you:
If you’re looking to monetise your skills, experiences and passions to build a business and
become profitable and automate your independence, I’m starting a program to mentor a few
select people to become a successful solopreneur.

If this sounds like you:

● You have lots of ideas, passions and skills but are unsure how to monetise them.
● You don’t feel as if you can add value to others.
● You’re unsure how to start or run a business.
● You’re looking for autonomy in your life with more money and time to do what you want
when you want.
● You’re seeking more fulfilment.

I will help you:

● Get clarity on your ideas to launch an offer.
● Acquire your first client in 90 days.
● Build the systems to help you scale to 6 figures.
● Approach solopreneurship with the right mindset.

Go from zero to $10,000 a month working 4 hours a day on the things you love.

If we don’t meet your goals I’ll work for free until you do.

If you’re interested in creating your life by design, you can DM me on Twitter @tomscourfield1
or book a call here for a free chat.

Tom Scourfield.