Yesterday, in a group call I’m in, a member shared about her struggle to grow her craft business where she makes the cutest, cheerful things with fabrics and patterns.

Like many craft business owners, she started her business organically, selling to people she knew, who then shared about her products, growing her sales this way, and in about a year, she retired and switched to her business full time.

But now, three years in, she wants to grow her business. And she’s struggling with that. She shared about cutting costs and upping prices. She talked about promotions she can run. Collaborations. Ads. All great ideas with great potential.

As we closed the call, I was thinking that switching from hobby to pro is a major mindset shift, and maybe that’s where her answers are.

So, today, I want to talk about turning pro. I’m thinking maybe someone here needs to hear this. 🙂 Not for you? Scroll down to the Unrelated section where I bring you a PSA about generators (coz that makes sense 🙄).

💪 Going Pro Is About Taking Action Despite Our Fears & Challenges 💪

It’s easy for solopreneurs to fall into the mindset of waiting for muse to strike and avoiding things that scare or challenge us. We may say to ourselves, my intuition is telling me not to do it, so I shouldn’t do it. But is it intuition or is it fear?

It reminded me of the book "The War Of Art" by Steven Pressfield. I pulled it out again to find this anecdote about Henry Fonda, the acclaimed actor.

Picture this: every time Henry Fonda steps on stage he battles his nerves to the point that he throws up, even at age 75. Yet he cleans up and marches forward, regardless of his fear. Pressfield beautifully illustrates the idea that professionals, unlike amateurs, don't wait to overcome fear in order to act; they know that fear isn’t going anywhere and work alongside it. The professional knows that once they get into action, fear will recede.

This got me thinking about how we approach our businesses. Do we treat them like hobbies, something we dabble in? Or do we approach every task, no matter how small, with the mindset of a professional?

👉 Do we just wake up and handle whatever comes up or wait for muse to strike, or do we have a plan to follow?

👉 If we need to act upon our plan and we don’t like what we need to do today, do we just reschedule for later or do we look at it like a boss, and if it's obvious that we need to do it, then we do it despite?

👉 If we find that we are months behind on our plan to launch an offer, do we simply move the deadline (and make excuses) or do we dig deep to nail the reasons we’re behind, adjust, get help, and double down to make things happen?

How would we handle things if this was a job and not our own business? 🤔

If any of the above strikes a nerve, you may need to make the mindset shift of going pro. Do it. Commit to it. Write it down somewhere visible, so you’ll remember.

Note: To be clear, if you told me that you puked every time you had a speaking gig, a live webinar, or anything in your business, I would have told you to seek specific help for that. In my book that’s not OK. I believe that your body needs to agree with your life and if you’re throwing up regularly then maybe it’s time you did something about it.

☑️☑️ Going Pro Is About Creating Accountability ☑️☑️

Lack of external accountability is pretty much intrinsic to solopreneurship which is why it’s one of the biggest challenges that solopreneurs face.

We find ways to make progress, but not do what counts. We learn more. We plan more. We prep more. Which may sound like going pro. And to an extent, it’s part of going pro, because we’re not just winging it, we’re being deliberate. BUT we need to make sure that we do what we say. We need to take action and hold ourselves accountable.

As a professional solopreneur, you have to create accountability for yourself. You can do it by sharing publicly about your goals, or by connecting with accountability partners, or by working with a coach. Working with clients and creating commitments for your business helps too, because it forces you to take action, but when you’re at leap points in your business or if you’re working on continuous growth in your business, it may not be enough, you will need to be more proactive about accountability.

👋 Going Pro Is About How We Show Up 👋

Showing up consistently is a big step to going pro and so is upping your branding and online presence.

Looking pro makes you more trustworthy for clients and peers – they know you’ll be around. Looking pro will help you attract clients who will sustain your business, because they’ll see your business as a professional act and not an amateur’s gig. While freebie seekers may not mind an amateur approach (they accept that you get what you pay for and since they want to pay $0, any value they get is the jackpot 💰💰💰), the clients who can sustain your service business in the long run want the pro that will save them time and deliver on their promise.

It's not about wearing a suit, or being fake, or a copycat. It's about connecting with who you are and considering how your clients and peers want you, the professional you, to show up, and then consistently showing up this way. Yes, do consider what your role models are doing, how they'd approach the challenges you're facing, and what makes them the pros that they are. But then, do things in a way that's right for you.

Plus, bonus: looking like a pro will also help you feel pro which can help manage your fears.

The email address you use for your business sends a message about going pro: If you’re at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, you might still be using a personal email address (like a Gmail one, at gmail.com) for business conversations. When you’re ready to go pro, switch to a professional email at your domain. Yes, you will need to buy the domain and pay for your hosted email, but you will look professional—as in, this is my business, and I am here to stay—and you’ll be able to use that pro email address to start an email list. So, it’s a win-win.

I wrote this checklist of essential admin steps to take when you’re starting an online business, see if it can help you.

💼 Going Pro Is A Mindset Shift That We Have To Choose To Take On 💼

It sometimes seems like going pro will limit our freedom or take away the fun. But really, it’s more about getting what we want and doing what we say we will, which feels good.

If you haven’t taken this step, maybe it's time. If you want some support or have any questions hit reply or schedule a discovery call.

Unrelated…

In today’s Unrelated Corner I have a PSA.

PSA: if you have a generator that you expect to use in case of a power outage and you haven’t run it in a while, please stop everything you’re doing and go run it now. 🪫🔋🪫

See… funny story. When you don’t routinely run your generator—say the one you bought a couple of years ago and is sitting in your backyard, supposedly ready to go—you run the risk that it will NOT be ready to go when you need it.

And then what might happen is power may go down and you may get word that it will take a long while to fix, so you may go outside in the cold and icy rain and try your generator, and you may get excited when it runs and makes that loud TRR TRR TRR that it makes and that smoky smell, but then when you plug something to it, it won’t produce any power (nada, zilch, none). Because you didn’t run it for over a year, and the totally-not-unexpected happened.

So yeah, run your generator routinely and definitely before an ice storm. Search up your model and follow the instructions. Then put a reminder on your calendar to do the routine maintenance.

End PSA 😊

More later. Till then, stay awesome!
Orit