Solopreneurship 101: Turning Your Ideas into Reality | Adele Doan | TEDxThuongmai University
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVSrbU06om0 Video ID: MVSrbU06om0 ============================================================ [Music] When you were a senior and leadership and can you guess how successful my business were? This is this is my first idea. I was running a Japanese standing shop. It sounded really cool, you know, being a little shop owner packaging product beautifully and shipping to your customer. I ended up selling that business to someone else for 16 million Vietnam dum. It was a decent amount of money. However, there is nothing compared to my highpaying job that I left to start that business. So, it was a failed idea. This is my second business. I was a career coach have around 20 clients. But it was a painful experience because I realized that everything despite everything that I happened I couldn't happen to change if they didn't want to. So another build idea this is a third idea. I was running a online course about personal branding on LinkedIn and it sounds simple enough but it took me 6 months to complete the course yet I only made 50 sales so I consider that another fail idea. This is the fourth idea. I was involving running a B2B marketing agency and I made quite a lot of money from it but I also made the wrong forecast. It took me 3 months instead of 1 month to deliver a project and so it wasn't really good in terms of return on investment and another failures. This is the fifth idea. Uh I running a paid LinkedIn grow community called LinkedIn blue ocean and I have reached to 170 member. 170 people actually paid money to join my community. Is it successful? I'm not sure yet cuz I'm still working on it. But that's not the point of my speech today. Throughout this venture, I have talked to many successful entrepreneur and solopreneur and have come to a conclusion that everyone have their own unique path to success and is shaped by their resources, their family background, their upbringing, their interesting motivation and especially their individual talent. So there are countless way to achieve success but there are only few common mistake that we make uh that lead them to failures. So instead of talking about how to be succeed in this I'm going to talk about how you can avoid failures by doing the right things. And my message for you today is that don't try to be successful try to do it right. I'm going to explain that for my five key lesson that I learned from my five business ventures. But first, what is a soloreneur? Let's start with the basics. Solarreneur is someone who run the businesses build on their own. They create product and services. They handle sales marketing. They manage operation all by themsel. and what we call a oneman business and how you different from a freelancer. A freelancer is someone who work for clients and they actually be a part of the team. But a soul trainer on the other hand is someone who work for themselves with their own brand, their own system and their own vision. And how a different form of entrepreneur both run business. I don't understand a entrepreneur in my point of view is someone who want to scale business fast with a system and with a team. But a soler is someone who love to work lean, work solo and take full control of what they are doing. And when people first get you started, this is what it going to look like. You'll be everything anywhere all at once. You will find yourself cry over your shoulder and you will feel overwhelmed running carrying the whole way of business by yourself with a little support from others. And that's also my secret of losing weight and keep fit. So thank you. Um but after a few years uh this is your life going to look like. This is me six year in the game of solarreneurship and I found myself live many lives by doing things my own way. A moment I could be a influencer, a speaker speaking in the big stage like TED talk, but a moment later I'm just a lowkey free diver would love to be in the nature and hide myself from the world. So a soulreneurship the beauty of that is freedom. the freedom to involve to experiment and to design a life for yourself. So if you want to build something for yourself and live the life that you want, this is my five key lesson for your solopreneurship journey. This is lesson number one. Don't start a business just because you hate your job. In my first business as a Japanese sandwich shop, I started it because I just hate the job I'm doing and hate the boss I'm serving and and I I think that running a a shop is cool. It's fun. But really after that, I realized that it's more tiring than I could imagine. Nowaday I still remember myself being a little girl in Saigon riding a motorbike carrying the full boxes of products. I remember myself sitting on the floor cleaning all the product to prepare before shipping and even like cry a few times because of tiredness and and self-pity and I realized that I should start that business just because I want to escape from the current job and the assignment for the beginning doesn't last long. the creative and the aesthetic aspect of the job like photographing, content creation, it became a routine for me. So my lesson here is don't start a business just because you hate your job. Passion is tricky to understand but you will realize that since you do something that you are not passionate about and with that passion you cannot sustain the interest and the energy of doing business. So let's not starting a business because you hate your current job. Instead focus on something you're really passionate about and consider yourself doing that in the long run. This is my second lesson. In my second business, I was um being a career coach having around 10 client at a time and I promised a client that I helped them to find a job. Um there many people were lay off at the time and as a recruiter and a head hunter I thought I know exactly how to help them. I offer guidance on how to sharpen and provide improvement resume connect them with the recruiter as hunter and prepare for the interview. Few of them successfully land a job but many remain stuck for a lot of reason. It could be the changing in the job market. It could be the lack of job opportunity. It could be the mishmash between the employer and employee. And I realized that I'm trying to solve a big complex problem, the unemployment by one-sided own approach. So the lesson here is that when you're solving a big problem, it's like peeling the onion. You have to address each layer individually. And even with one problem, you have to test your hypothesis. So don't try to solve a big complex problem all at once. Try to focus on smaller manageable problem that you can uh tackle at one time and also try different solution until you find out that actually works for your client. This is the third lesson. Don't wait so long to shift your idea. In my third business, I was running um online course about personal brand and I want to make it professional, top notch. So, it took me 6 months to complete the course, but I only made 15 sales. It's not necessarily because of the quality of the course, but also but be because the content is outdated quickly. And during 6 months I haven't had chance to talk to my clients. I solely build that course based on my perspective and as a result the course high quality but is not align with my client need and challenge it at that time. So my lesson in this business is you have to find a way to validate your idea quickly. That's there's no point of creating a product or services that doesn't address your client problem, right? So find the quickest way to validate your idea to test your idea. Right now when I had a new idea, I just post that on my LinkedIn to see how the market reacts and I will decide whether I'm go further with that idea or not. Uh there's a term called MVP minimum varietal product. So if you have the idea just start with the MVP, release your MVP as quick as possible. Just put it out there, get feedback and then you can determine whether you go further with that idea or you let it go. This is my uh fourth lesson. be obsessed with the problem and the client. My uh poor business was running a marketing B2B marketing agency. It is a difficult decision for me to close that uh business cuz it financially successful but it's not fulfilling is not fulfilled for me. Um because I find that in the B2B marketing type industry is involved with a lot of constant communication, stakeholder management, um the need of constantly finding new clients and that's not the working dynamic that I love to and even I own the company. I feel like I am the employee of so many clients. And that's not the the life that I wish myself dive into. And and later on I realized that I'm not really happy and I'm not passionate with the problem I'm solving or either the client that I'm serving. When you're doing solo business, it's important for you to be obsessed with a problem because you got to work days and days on that problem. So if you don't find yourself being genuinely interested in the problem that you solving, you better find a better problem. This is my last the third lesson. Be authentic and real with your personal brand. I started LinkedIn blue ocean just less than a year ago and I drove the traffic to the community um by my personal branding. We easily reached to 100 members but it stuck there for a while. I don't know why to the point that our member came to me and say we feel that you are so far away so distant with our community the way that you appear on social media is someone who be on the big stage who network with all the CEOs and we even we kind we respect you but we have a doubt that maybe the way that we teach us the the guidance maybe It work for you but wouldn't work for us. Till that moment I shift my focus. I spend time with the community member and be close and connected to them. I stop appearing on the social media like like flashy founders. I start sharing about my failures, my mistake, my doubts and surprisingly it help me to connect with my community member more. And as a result, it draw more traffic and more members to my community. And as all of you know, you have to understand that you are the chief of revenue for your business, which mean that all revenue come from you and especially your personal branding. And in personal branding is the the most effective way to be authentic and to be real with who you are when you're doing social media. So that's the fifth lesson. To summarize, let's uh rob let's quickly recap my lesson that uh I have shared with you. Don't start a business just because you hate your job. Don't do that. Don't wait too long to shift your idea. Don't try to solve a big complex problem all at once. But be obsessed with your problem and the client that you are serving and be real and authentic with your personal brand. These five lesson will help you to will not help you to be success but will give you the guiding uh when you start your soulership and give you the direction for you to do things right in the beginning. So if you want to have a solar pan a solo business for yourself, I wish I encourage you guys today to follow this step and begin today. Build something that was sharing also live the life that you want. Thank you. [Music]