Sep 18, 2026 | Gig Economy
Set a monthly budget for free help, spend it on purpose, and have a ready answer for every request that comes in after it’s gone. Once you’re any good at what you do, the requests start. A friend of a friend wants to grab coffee and hear how you got...
Sep 18, 2026 | Gig Economy
Turn every decision you’ve made more than twice into a written rule, so it stops being a decision and becomes a lookup. Here is a partial list of things a solo operator decides, from scratch, over and over: whether to take the small job, whether to give the...
Sep 18, 2026 | Start A Business
Check your business numbers on a schedule, not on impulse, and only check the ones that would change what you do this week. Count how many times a day you look at a number about your business. Sales so far this month. Site visits. Follower count. Open rate on the last...
Sep 17, 2026 | Start A Business
Most turnaround stories skip the hardest part. They tell you what the company pivoted from and what it pivoted to, and they leave out the months in between when the old business was still paying the bills, the new one wasn’t paying anything, and the founder was...
Sep 17, 2026 | Start A Business
In the 1880s, David McConnell sold books door to door in upstate New York. It was hard work with a low hit rate, and he needed something to get past the front door. So he started offering a small vial of perfume, which he made himself, as a thank-you to any woman who...
Sep 17, 2026 | Start A Business
In 1902, five businessmen in Two Harbors, Minnesota, put their money into a mining operation. The plan was straightforward: dig up corundum, the hard mineral used in grinding wheels, and sell it to manufacturers. They called the company Minnesota Mining and...
Sep 16, 2026 | Gig Economy
Treat regular contact with other people who do what you do as operating infrastructure, not a social nicety, and schedule it the way you’d schedule anything else the business depends on. When you left the workplace, you left some things gladly: the meetings, the...
Sep 16, 2026 | Gig Economy
Build an external stop signal into your day, because the one thing a solo operator never gets is someone else deciding that work is over. Ask an employee when their workday ends and they’ll tell you a time. Ask a solo operator and you’ll get a pause....
Sep 16, 2026 | Gig Economy
Decide now, while you’re healthy, exactly what happens to your business on a day you can’t work, so that being sick never turns into a business decision. Every employed person gets sick days. Not because their employer is generous, but because someone...
Sep 15, 2026 | Gig Economy
Every quarter, write a short, specific message to clients you haven’t worked with in a year or more, with one reason to talk now. Somewhere in your records is a list of people who already did the hardest thing a customer can do: they trusted you with money once....
Sep 15, 2026 | Gig Economy
Decide now what a rush costs, put it on every quote and in every agreement, and let the fee do the talking when the emergency arrives. It’s Thursday afternoon. A client needs it by Monday. Your weekend was going to be a weekend. And now you’re in the worst...
Sep 15, 2026 | Gig Economy
Every quote goes out with two options, a solid version and a fuller one, so the client’s question changes from “should I?” to “which one?” A single price is a yes-or-no question, and you’ve handed the client the “no.”...
Sep 9, 2026 | Work From Home
The drive to work was never just a drive. It was the thirty minutes your brain used to change modes, and most people who work from home deleted it without replacing it. Ask anyone who went from an office to a home business what they miss, and the commute is never on...
Sep 9, 2026 | Work From Home
Solo operators don’t just get lonely. They make worse decisions, for the plain reason that nobody is in the room to say “wait, really?” There’s a version of the solo founder story where independence is the whole point. No boss, no meetings, no...
Sep 8, 2026 | Hiring And Labor
Put a short, plain list of what the project does not include at the top of every proposal, and point to it the first time a client asks for more. Scope creep almost never arrives as a demand. It arrives as a question. “While you’re in there, could you...
Sep 8, 2026 | Start A Business
Ask for the testimonial in the same message where the client says they’re happy, ask three specific questions instead of “would you write something,” and offer to draft it from their answers. Every small business has a folder of glowing emails from...
Sep 7, 2026 | Gig Economy
When you’re too busy to take on work, never decline it. Give a start date instead, and keep a list of everyone who’s waiting. A full calendar is the best problem a small business can have, and most owners handle it badly. A good lead calls, you’re...
Sep 7, 2026 | Inspiration
The imaginary business, the one with better clients and a cleaner model and a fresh start, is always more appealing than the real one. That’s exactly why it’s a trap. Every owner keeps a second business somewhere in the back of their mind. It has a better...
Sep 7, 2026 | Inspiration
The awkward middle, where you’re no longer a beginner and not yet good, is where most people quit. It’s also the only road to the other side. There’s a stretch in every new business, and every new skill inside a business, where you know enough to see...
Sep 7, 2026 | Inspiration
The credential, the sign, the right moment, the person who finally says “you’re ready.” None of it is on its way. The permission was always yours to grant. A surprising number of capable people are waiting. Not for money, not for a market, not for a...
Entrepreneur Magazine