Solopreneurs: Use Daily Action for Momentum and Meaning

People often ask me, "What's the most important piece of advice you would give to entrepreneurs starting a business or growing an existing business?" My response is always the same: take action every single day.

Sometimes it's big action and sometimes it's little action. That's not what's important. It's that you're working on it in some capacity every day, and even on the bad days.

We all have bad days – the days you wake up and go, "I don't know what I can do today. I'm so burned out or bummed out." It's still important to choose something to work on.

One of my little tricks that I did when my business was new is that I created a Marketing 100 List. I came up with 100 ways that I could market, anything I could think of I wrote it on that list.

Some of the ideas were absolutely ridiculous. Some of them were to stand on the street corner and scream at people. Some of them were great ideas like go to an expo, go to a Chamber meeting this week, or send an email to all of my friends that I'm looking for speaking gigs. Whatever it is, I put it on that list.

That list has had several incarnations, of course, but it's worn. I've had this one for about a year. I pull it out once a week or once every couple of weeks and I constantly refer to it. There are things on there that I go, "Oh my gosh! I forgot I thought of that!"

I really encourage you to create a Marketing 100 list with 100 ideas. I'm not asking you how good they are, I'm not asking you to judge them, I'm just asking you to get them on paper so that when you have a day when you go, "I don't know what I can do today. I don't possibly know what I could do today," you can take that list and really run with it.

That's my little secret. It sounds like a really simple idea and technique, but I'm telling you that it has saved me more times than you can imagine and it never allows me to have the excuse of, "I don't know what I can do today," because I can always pull out my list and keep the momentum going in my business.