Hi Solopreneur: Your Problem is Problems
It’s not easy being a solopreneur.
It’s not easy being a solopreneur. You wear all the hats, face all the challenges, and feel all the feels. You’re up. You’re down. Some days you’re energized and full of ideas, and other days you’re dragging, wondering why you ever thought this was a good idea.
You’ve tried all the playbooks. They all say the same thing in slightly different ways: work harder, grind longer, solve problems. But none of them seem to stick. Why? Because they weren’t written for you.
You need a playbook designed specifically for solopreneurs. One that fits the Age of the Individual. One that doesn’t drain your energy but amplifies it.
Before we get there, we need to name the enemy you didn’t even know you had.
Meet Your Arch Enemy: The Problem Mindset
“Your problem is problems.”
That sounds almost absurd. Of course you have problems. Every solopreneur does. You’re juggling clients, projects, tech glitches, cash flow, and marketing all at once.
You’ve patched the website at midnight. You’ve had deals fall through. You’ve been ghosted by a prospect right when you needed the win. You’ve stared at a blank calendar with no new clients booked. You’ve bought the shiny tool that promised leverage but only added clutter. You’ve picked up your phone to check one notification and found yourself 40 minutes later, lost in a scroll you never planned.
Those are problems, but here’s the truth: your real problem isn’t the problems themselves. It’s the Problem Mindset. The belief inherited from the wrong playbook, that problems are the only thing worth focusing on.
The Problem Mindset narrows your attention until all you can see are leaks to plug. It whispers: “Fix this one last thing, then you’ll be okay. Just solve this problem and you’ll finally arrive.”
But it never ends. The treadmill keeps running.
The Toll? Exhaustion, overwhelm, and autopilot. Your body keeps score. Your mind keeps spinning. Your opportunity radar goes dark.
If you keep the Problem Mindset you don’t just move slowly—you run out of oxygen.
The Source: The BIG Playbook
So where does this Problem Mindset come from?
It comes from the BIG Playbook: Business In General.
Business In General, or BIG, is the world into which we were all born and raised. Corporations, institutions, and academia, they all run on this default operating system. It’s unquestioned. It’s the dogma of job descriptions, org charts, and quarterly reviews.
For BIG, it works. Corporations need predictability. They reward efficiency. They’re designed to reduce variance and avoid risk. The BIG Playbook keeps the machine humming.
But you’re not a machine, you’re a solopreneur.
For you, the BIG Playbook is like kryptonite. It tempts you with stability and status, but quietly drains your energy, blinds you to openings, and pulls you out of alignment with the work only you can do.
The BIG Playbook commands you to:
Look for problems
Make something of yourself
Transform gradually
These sound noble. They sound like common sense. Inside BIG, they can work, but for solopreneurs, they backfire.
BIG Consequences
When you live by the BIG Playbook, three things happen:
Exhaustion: You grind harder but never feel like you’re making real progress. It’s like pedaling a bike on a treadmill, sweaty, but no scenery.
Overwhelm: You juggle everything, but momentum keeps slipping away. It’s like trying to keep ten flaming torches in the air while someone keeps handing you more.
Autopilot: You go through the motions, blind to the signals of opportunity all around you. It’s like running loops around the block and wondering why you never reach a new street.
This isn’t just FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s something worse, AMO (actually missing out).
FOMO is an empty feeling. The sense that others are winning while you’re stuck. AMO is real. AMO is the sunk cost of lost opportunity. It’s lost profits. It’s the client you didn’t notice. The pivot you didn’t make. The referral you didn’t follow up on. The trend you ignored until competitors were already running with it.
Autopilot accelerates AMO. Autopilot is when you row harder and harder, but in circles. You’re moving, but you’re not arriving anywhere new.
We all know this feeling in everyday life. You’ve driven home and realized you don’t remember the last five turns. You’ve picked up your phone for one notification and found yourself scrolling for 20 minutes with no idea why.
In business, autopilot is deadly. It numbs awareness, hardens old patterns, and blinds you to signals that could change your future.
The Age of the Individual
Decades ago, Peter Drucker saw this coming. He called it the Age of the Individual.
An age when individuals, not corporations would manage themselves. An age when success would depend not on climbing ladders but on leveraging identity, mindfulness, and volitional strengths.
That age is here.
Corporate loyalty is gone. Gatekeepers are gone. Safe jobs have vanished. Individuals everywhere are searching for autonomy and meaning. Founder is everywhere. On LinkedIn and the shift is unmistakable. Millions are freelancing, creating, and building on their own terms. Solopreneurs are not fringe anymore. They are the future that has already happened.
Solopreneurs are the future that has already happened.
If you’re reading this, you’re already part of that shift. Whether by choice or by force.
This is a perfect storm for opportunity, but it requires a new playbook.
The BIG Playbook wasn’t written for this age. It belongs to another time. If you try to run your solopreneur life on it, you’ll stall out, miss opportunities, and burn out outside the Winner’s Circle.
Your Pivot
Here’s the good news, you’re not stuck with the BIG Playbook.
There’s another playbook, designed for solopreneurs and built for the Age of the Individual
I call it the MVP Playbook.
It flips the script:
Look for opportunities, not problems.
Act from your volitional identity, not in search of it.
Transform rapidly, not gradually.
That’s how you move from exhaustion to momentum. From AMO to winning again and again.
We’ll unpack it soon. But first, let’s take a closer look at why the BIG Playbook traps solopreneurs and what happens when you finally bench it.
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