I spent about three years testing different business models.
Fractional CMO, consulting, productized services, a micro agency with contractors handling delivery, a community. Almost every solo model out there.
All of the things I could have kept pushing on and been successful.
I just wasn’t super happy with any of it.
I even worked with other coaches along the way to help me refine my offer. None of that changed it.
I fell into consulting almost four years ago after burning out as a CMO at a software company. I have four kids between the ages of 12 and 4, so freedom was one of the main goals. I wanted to spend more time with them.
Three years in, I had a business that kept the lights on and had better time freedom. But I still wasn’t satisfied with the work itself.
It wasn’t until I sat down and answered some questions for myself that anything actually changed.
The problem was the order I was working in
Most of us start with demand. What does the market want? What will people pay for? Where’s the opening? That’s the standard advice, and for a lot of businesses it’s the right one.
A venture-backed software founder has one goal: grow as big and as fast as possible, then exit. Chasing demand is the correct first move for them. They can evolve the whole business multiple times until they find the fit.
That’s probably not why you started your solo business. Most of us started to do work we actually love, with enough flexibility to live our lives. Chasing demand first is advice built for a different goal than the one you have.
A solo service business is different anyway. So much of it comes from your expertise and who you are. You’re the one selling and delivering the service.
When you jump straight to demand it’s easy to land in the excellent trap. You build something that works and makes money, but you feel unfulfilled every day by the work you’re doing.
Two questions come before demand
One: where’s your zone of genius?
The overlap of superior skill and passion. The work you lose track of time doing, that leaves you more energized than when you started.
That isn’t the same as what you’re good at. There’s a whole category of work you’re great at and don’t love. Clients ask for it because you’re visibly good at it. You say yes because it’s easy money and you can do it in your sleep. Two years later it’s most of your week.
Mine was website positioning and messaging for growing software teams. I’ve run a ton of those projects. Clients were always happy with the results and I have the testimonials to prove it. I could charge $15k to $25k a project and make good money doing it.
I don’t sell them anymore. Every one felt like a heavy project I didn’t want to be doing.
Being great at something is exactly what makes it hard to stop if you don’t love it.
Two: what’s the shape of the business you want?
In three years, what will you be doing on an ideal Wednesday? Who will you be working with? How much do you want to be making? How many hours a week do you want to be working? That’s your business lighthouse.
When I started this business I set a goal not to work more than 40 hours a week. I’ve mostly held to that, with some weeks over. It’s given me enough room to coach two soccer teams and a basketball team in the winter which I love.
My lighthouse now says 30 hours a week, with fewer than 10 of those on live calls. I’m not there yet but I’m working on it.
Knowing that about yourself rules out entire models before you ever look at the market.
Once I answered both and put them together, I had a lens to evaluate my offers, business model, and the work I was doing. That’s when it started to click for me.
Your ideal offer should include your zone of genius, shaped to fit the business you actually want to run, then tested against real client demand.
Demand still matters. It just goes third.
What actually changed for me
The biggest change was I stopped waking up in the middle of the night wondering if I should throw it all away and try a different business model or just go get a job at Costco. No more late-night chats with Claude working through whether I’d be better off running an agency instead, or a productized service, or something else entirely.
That was a low-grade existential crisis running in the background for three years. It cost me more than any of the models did.
I’m still early in building the version I want, but I know what it looks like now. I want to help hundreds (eventually thousands) of solos build businesses they love that make more money in less time. The same thing I’m trying to do.
Three layers eventually: the community, group programs (I haven’t built yet), and a few 1:1 advisory engagements. My weeks go to teaching, coaching, and learning, then architecting new tools and frameworks to help solos grow.
I’ve proven there’s demand for it. Now it’s about execution and consistency, which is a much better problem than the one I had before.
But what if nobody wants it?
That order makes people nervous. Start with what you love and you might build something nobody pays for. Fair enough.
Putting demand third doesn’t make it optional. It makes it a test instead of a starting point. You build the hypothesis out of your zone of genius and the business you want, then go find out whether real buyers have that problem, the budget, and the urgency to fix it now. If they don’t, you adjust the offer. You don’t get rid of the person doing the work.
Try it on your own business
I led a discussion on this topic last week with the 10x Solo community and shared a template. It’s a simplified version of what I run with clients one-on-one, and an evolved version of what I did for myself about eight months ago. Grab your own copy here.
It takes 15 to 20 minutes of honest reflection. There’s also an AI prompt at the bottom of the doc, so you can upload the whole thing to Claude and have it interview you through the questions one at a time.
If your business works but you still feel like something is missing, this might be exactly what you need. Hopefully you don’t have to spend three years trying to figure it out like I did.
Keep building,
Garrett
P.S. When you’re ready, here are two ways I can help you:
Join the 10x Solo community. A private community of full-time B2B solos, fractionals, and micro-agency owners. Weekly workshops, honest peer feedback, and referrals. Apply here.
Work with me 1:1. For maxed-out consultants, fractionals, and agency owners who want to make more money in less time by refining their business model, offers, and systems. I’m currently full, with one spot opening up in September. DM me to set up a time to chat.
Have questions or comments about today’s topic? Share them below.
Thanks for sharing this Garrett. I love the idea of building out the business model and confirming it works with the demand. That’s what I’ve been working on doing for the Revenue Operations with the Revenue Flywheel. I’m working through your framework now. Thanks for sharing that.
As someone that’s spent most of my career in corporate I’m working on building some freedom very much like you have. We haven’t made it to basketball yet, but coaching soccer was super fun.
Putting demand third instead of removing it entirely, treating it as a test rather than a starting point, is a distinction that answers the objection I'd have raised immediately. Building from what you love without ever checking if buyers exist sounded reckless until I saw where demand actually fits in the sequence.