One consistent thread blatantly evident in successful solopreneurs is that most of them care about more than themselves or their company. They care about something larger than them and they care about their customers. It’s so counter-culture today that it’s noticed by everyone who deals with them and it serves doubly by becoming all the more desirable in the market.
The market isn’t a closed system. That is, there isn’t a finite amount of money that everyone is in competition for a slice of the pie. The pie grows as people are empowered to affect the market. I refer to the mechanism as “win-win-win” and it looks like this:
- Win: You get a sale/client.
- Win: The customer’s need/want is met or exceeded.
- Win: That satisfaction causes them to be in a better position (whatever that is to them).
That third win is a catalyst for growth and it has no limit.
What does that look like?
In my world of day-to-day business, I directly affect my clients’ online presence and the product and service I provide influences their success. I’m also on the receiving end of certain benefits from providers that I choose to partner with to then provide my clients with the best products in the industry.
Since I provide custom websites to people and companies (usually solopreneurs like myself), the sites need to be hosted somewhere. The host I’ve chosen immediately impacts the site’s speed, security, and the expectations visitors have on a site’s performance. Then the responsibility shifts to me to provide a great look and interface with their visitors (customers, fans, or the general public).
On those two levels, my clients are positively affected, so we’ve already hit a win-win-win for my hosting provider. We need to take it just one more step for my win-win-win: the client’s position must be improved. From there, it’s easy to reproduce this pattern for my clients’ win-win-win and see that doing so creates an economy in and of itself — a waterfall that keeps growing as more people are positively influenced.
It plays out like a predictable book that a child can expect a certain outcome but still be excited when the end is revealed. When that happens, everyone is happy and the world is better than before.