Define Your Path In The Only Way Possible
Run Experiments
This newsletter (whether you are reading it in your email, on Substack, or on Medium), is an experiment.
I’ve written a few articles about running experiments as a solopreneur – or an indie-business owner (which in my mind is a much more fun ‘job title’, right?!). In my mind, experiments are an absolutely necessary part of starting, running, and importantly, building a business.
Most of us have come to running an indie-business through a process of experiments we didn’t even know we were running. We may have worked in corporate roles or in educational roles for a good part of our careers. Or we may not be coming from a traditional employment role at all, perhaps being a caregiver or managing your own kids/household.
Whatever the case, experiments have been a part of what you’ve done in those roles and they are important in an indie-business, too.
Why?
Here’s the short-list:
1. Your indie-business is likely one you’ve never run before (stating the obvious here), and you likely aren’t 100% familiar with all the ins and outs of not just the business, but also your niche (also obvious?). So, experiments help you become familiar with the ins and outs and more comfortable with how your business fits into the picture.
2. Things change fast around here…in case you hadn’t noticed! Not only do trends and customer needs consistently change, but new platforms and ways of running an indie-business are always on the horizon. Experiments help keep you up-to-date and determine, again, what will work for your business in this chapter of it.
3. Experiments can help open up revenue streams you may not have considered before. Keep an open mind when it comes to experiments, you may find something unexpectedly profitable. (Consider this Olympic swimmer from Sweden who didn’t plan to compete in this race but was talked into it at the last minute. I bet she’s glad she did!)
For all these reasons, it’s important to be flexible and aware of the options available to you for running experiments.
It can be tough to convince yourself that a new experiment or two would be good for your business or worth the time and effort. You’ve likely got a lot on your plate, both inside and outside of your business.
For sure.
But unlike being employed in one of the roles mentioned above, no one is going to dictate to you what experiments need to be run. In your role as indie-business CEO, no one will come to you and tell you to learn about a new platform or a new marketing strategy or even that a pivot in the business needs to be made in order to keep going and growing.
That’s all on you.
Which can be freeing, but also intimidating.
It’s a fear that’s valid, but also one that you can train yourself to consciously overcome or at least manage. Especially if you aren’t one who naturally takes these kinds of risks.
Starting a business is enough of a risk, right? Now, you’re saying I have to keep taking them? Yikes!
The cool thing is though, that there are lots of low risk experiments you can run. Some will be unexpected successes, and some will be unexpected failures. Both kinds will teach you a lot about what works in your business and what works for you personally. I would argue that those personal lessons are just as important as the ‘business’ ones. (I put ‘business’ in quotes because for us indie-businesses, it’s all personal.) Any updates, changes, edits, or pivots in the business need to make not just business sense, but also personal sense, since you’ll be leading the charge and very likely, doing the actual work.
Some will work, some won’t
While I’ve been in market research for a number of years, I’ve been running The Idea Compass for just less than a year, so I’m in a spot where I’m running frequent experiments and making sure I lean into the ones that seem to be working and leaning away from ones that aren’t. Some experiments I’ve run, I may return to. Some, I won’t.
For instance, when I started late last year, I immediately signed up for email marketing software. After about 3 months, I realized that, with my other responsibilities and the functionality available on Substack, it wasn’t a tool I needed to use just yet. The software wasn’t hard to use, but being capable does not necessarily mean you have current capacity, which is another reason to run experiments and drop the ones that aren’t working for you (at least not today).
As I move forward, I do keep a tally of my experiments as I might need to revisit them in the future. Since Substack delivers posts to email subscribers, right now, for me, the email software didn’t make sense.
I also started out using a product hosting company for my digital products and it requires a monthly subscription. Then, I found Gumroad and have decided to, at least for now, experiment by hosting my products there. Gumroad allows you to post products for free. There are other benefits, too, that Gumroad offers to sellers, so right now, it’s working for me.
As far as communicating, Substack and Medium are both are working for me and I can manage them along with my other responsibilities. I’ve been only a little active on X, but not sure I’ve got the capacity for it currently, it’s definitely a work-in-progress experiment.
I’ve got more experiments to run, and I will run them, but I’m not rushing into it. The thing I’ve found about experiments is that you have to let them cook for a bit. There are tweaks to make within the experiments, and I want to make those before deciding whether it’s time to move on.
So, if you’re out here in indie-business land trying to grow and feeling stuck, try a new experiment. Tweak the ones you’re currently running. Keep moving and editing and updating until you find the right mix!
Here’s to experiments!
Stay tuned,
Julie
If you are new here and want to read more, you can find more at The Idea Compass.
Looking to run some of your own experiments? Well-established freelancing and product platforms are a great place to run them. You can spend more time honing your offer and less time on the nuts and bolts of marketing. I’ve put together a short resource describing how some of the major platforms out there today work.
But before you do that experimenting, give yourself some clear direction! Check out my just-published book on Amazon: Wedge: Define Your Niche. Grow Your Business.
Absolutely! I feel like I'm constantly experimenting to try new services and products.