SP #037: The cycle you don't want to stop
Welcome to the 37th edition of Solo Pursuits, a helpful weekly newsletter for solopreneurs and founders!
Hi, hello! In case you’re new, this section right here is where I enjoy sharing a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff in my business to be transparent and have some fun. So I had hired both a copywriter and brand/web designer back in November ‘23 to do a total revamp and the new branding JUST got done.
Major yay! It’s basically everything (and a lot more) that I had tried to DIY on Canva about 3 years ago. It’s incredibly surreal to see this aspect of your vision finally come to life. So here’s to the next phase of this big project: the website!
Here’s some solopreneur-specific news you might’ve missed:
TikTok is testing the (for now, small) release of a wild new AI feature: original song generation from basic text prompts. The results right now aren’t that great in my opinion, but whoa this’ll unlock so many things once it gets smarter. (link)
You can now create cut-out stickers from publicly posted still images on Instagram. These stickers can be used in Reels and Stories. But hey, if you don’t want anyone to be able to create stickers from your posts, you can turn this off in Settings. (link)
Meta decided to make every social media manager and content creator’s dreams come true! Whether you just caught a typo, put the wrong link, or changed your mind, you can now cancel the upload of an Instagram Story mid-process before it gets posted. Finally! (link)
Now, onto this week’s tips, tricks, and resources!
Understand the ins and outs of your market.
Source: Ali Abdaal, British medical doctor turned 7-fig YouTuber and entrepreneur
In Ali’s words, creators tend to think like starving artists: Oh, I don’t care about my competition, I just want to make the best content!
That sounds lovely in theory, but makes no sense if you want to make an income from your efforts.
Ultimately, what others are doing in your space impacts you. Like if everyone else offers a free e-book, then that’s important information you should know to either create your own e-book or to intentionally do something else.
The fix is simple (not easy, but simple!):
Identify your main competitors
Analyze their strengths and weaknesses
Map their customer journey
Analyze their presence on the internet
Study what they sell (and more importantly, why it sells)
Make something people want.
Source: Y Combinator, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators (past startups include Coinbase, Reddit, Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, and Instacart)
The ethos of YC has been ‘make something people want’ since shortly after it was founded in 2005.
In their words, “For any company, in order to make something people want: you must launch something, talk to your customers to see if it serves their needs, and then take their feedback and iterate. These tasks should occupy almost all of your time/focus. For great companies, this cycle never ends.”
As solopreneurs, it’s easy to get inside our heads and create what we want.
But great, successful products and services don’t magically *poof* out of our fingertips (sadly). And when they don’t, and you hear crickets after launching, it all boils down to the question: did you make something people wanted or something you wanted? It’s a balance for sure!
Some food for thought 💭
Resource: Readwise
Quick Note: I am NOT an affiliate and I don’t have any connections to this tool.
What: One of the easiest ways to resurface alllll of those juicy highlights from content you’ve previously read and wanted to come back to later but forgot and never did (no worries, life can get busy!). Readwise syncs highlights from Kindle, Twitter, Pocket, Apple Books/iBooks, Instapaper, and more. It uses a scientific process called Spaced Repetition to show your best highlights at the right times, so you learn and remember only what you want to.
Price: Readwise Lite is $54 USD paid annually and the full Readwise is $96 USD paid annually
Reviews: 4.8 out of 5 from 1,130 Apple App Store reviews (as of January 22, 2024)
Meme Of The Week
