Hi Reader,

There’s a pressure within the solo business community that we don’t talk about enough:

Apparently, running a successful solo business now requires us to become a writer, presenter, podcaster, speaker, YouTuber, salesperson, email marketer, community leader, SEO specialist and AI expert.

And that’s before we do any paid work! 🤦🏻‍♂️

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🌊 We're drowning in a tsunami of "shoulds"...

Spend enough time following business experts online and you’ll soon discover everything you should be doing:

• You should have an email-first business (soz!)
• You should become a prolific writer
• You should master LinkedIn
• You should attend in-person events
• You should publish a book to demonstrate expertise
• You should speak on stages
• You should launch a podcast
• You should get on YouTube
• You should optimise your website for Google and AI engines
• You should create a course
• You should build a community
• You should develop a recognisable personal brand
• You should be using AI to automate everything

And every person giving you this advice can probably show you someone for whom it worked.

That’s what makes the advice so difficult to dismiss.

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🤷🏻‍♂️ The thing is, most of it could work!

The uncomfortable truth is that we could all benefit from doing at least a few of these things:

• Publishing a book could increase our authority.
• Speaking at events could introduce us to potential customers.
• YouTube could help people discover us.
• LinkedIn could create valuable conversations.
• A podcast could deepen relationships with our audience.
• Email could help us turn that audience into customers.

In isolation, none of these is necessarily bad advice.

The problem begins when individually reasonable recommendations are combined into one completely unreasonable expectation.

We assemble our workload from the best advice of ten different experts, forgetting that none of those experts is doing everything the other nine recommend.

The YouTube expert tells us to publish videos.

The LinkedIn expert tells us to post every day.

The podcast expert tells us that long-form audio builds deeper relationships.

The networking expert tells us that online marketing is no substitute for meeting people in person.

And the email expert tells us that we should be emailing our list consistently.

I should know. I’m one of those email people.

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I acknowledge that I add to the load... 🙋🏻‍♂️

I believe most solopreneurs would benefit from building an email-first business. Email generates more than 90% of my sales, and I’ve seen what becomes possible when a business has a properly designed email marketing system.

Other experts will feel equally convinced about the approach they recommend, usually because they have seen it work too.

But we simply cannot do everything.

If I present email as one more responsibility to pile on top of everything else you are already doing, I am simply adding another weight to your shoulders.

An email-first business should simplify your marketing by giving your other activities a common destination.

It should not become another hungry content channel that needs to be constantly fed.

The same principle applies elsewhere. A good recommendation should help you build a more effective business. It should not automatically become another permanent obligation.

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Every new channel brings a whole new workload... 😓

“Start a YouTube channel” sounds like one task.

It isn’t.

It means researching subjects, planning videos, preparing equipment, recording, editing, creating thumbnails, writing descriptions, publishing, promoting and responding to comments.

A podcast comes with another production system.

So does publishing a newsletter, maintaining a presence on LinkedIn and running a community.

Every new recommendation arrives looking doable.

None seems particularly unreasonable on its own.

It's only when they are all placed on the same pair of shoulders that the load becomes impossible.

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Give yourself permission to be selective... ☑

The problem is not only the amount of work.

We're also pressured into adopting activities we neither enjoy nor feel particularly proficient in.

Trying to follow all this advice can feel like walking around in shoes that are too small and a coat that's too big, while dressed for entirely the wrong weather.

You can force yourself to keep walking, but everything feels uncomfortable.

Nothing quite fits, and everything feels more difficult than it should.

That's what happens when we build businesses around somebody else’s strengths, preferences and definition of success.

A confident speaker may tell you that speaking on stages transformed their business.

A natural writer may tell you that publishing every day is the answer.

An extrovert may insist that you need to attend more in-person events.

They may all be telling the truth.

But their truth is not automatically your strategy.

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Strategy is deciding what to ignore... 🤔

Most of us don’t need seven active marketing channels.

We need one clear offer, one primary way for the right people to discover us, one place where we develop the relationship and one reliable route to a sale.

For me, email is where the relationship develops. Your discovery channel might be YouTube, LinkedIn, a podcast, referrals or in-person events. The important thing is choosing deliberately, rather than adopting all of them by default.

Before adding another activity to your business, ask:

• Does this help me reach the people I most want to serve?
• Does it suit the way I naturally prefer to work?
• Does it support my most important objective right now?
• Can I realistically sustain it for the next year?
• What will I stop doing to make room for it?

That last question is the one that matters most.

If you can't identify what you'll stop, then you've not made a strategic decision.

You've simply added another weight to your shoulders.

What’s one business “should” you’re ready to stop feeling guilty about?

Hit reply and tell me. I’d genuinely like to know what you’re crossing off your list.

Cheers,
John