💡 Business Tip - Overflow Your Pipeline (Issue #78)

Scarcity will kill confidence in your solopreneur business

“I don’t want to go back to a job. But I do worry about financial stability.”

Many solopreneurs and entrepreneurs have uttered these words in some shape or form. They are worried about reliable revenue and fear they might have to return to employment for a steady paycheck.

Ironically, my career coaching business is currently busy with lots of folks who thought employment was a sure thing. But, many were laid off recently and found out the hard way that a 9-5 job isn’t the stable choice it used to be.

Here’s where many solopreneurs screw up… They get busy and their calendar is fully booked with a few steady clients, so they stop marketing and talking with new leads.

They don’t have any more capacity, right?

Wrong. So wrong.

With a lifestyle business, you can’t afford to get into a pattern of feast and famine. You must always be selling. Always!

Building a solid business model means that your sales and marketing pipeline must flow continuously. And you need a process for handling the inevitable overflow.

Yes, overflow is a great thing!

While running my tiny design agency during the Dot-Com Boom, I had way more incoming requests for my services than I could handle.

Did I turn people away?

Did I post on my website that I wasn’t accepting new clients?

Heck no!

I had created a network of entrepreneurial peers so I could send them business if I were too busy to take on a new client. I sometimes hired subcontractors so I could accept a new project and have someone else do much of the less strategic work. I partnered with other solopreneurs to take on larger projects than we could handle solo.

I also would use this constant deal flow to assess each new opportunity and raise my rates as appropriate. If a new potential client seemed great and would pay my higher rates, I could wrap things up with an existing client (i.e., instead of extending or renewing the engagement), which allowed me to start working with that high-value client.

This is also part of scaling your business to boost your revenue. But, more importantly, it gives you the confidence that you’ll always have enough business flowing that you’ll never have to return to a 9-5 job!

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I’m Larry Cornett, a Freedom Coach who works with you to optimize your career, business, and life. My mission is to help you become a more "Invincible You" so you can live your life on your terms instead of being controlled by someone else's rules. I live in Northern California near Lake Tahoe with my wife and our Great Dane.

Photo by Phil Goodwin on Unsplash