Why Most Solopreneurs Struggle With Revenue (And How to Build Predictable Recurring Income)

Most self-employed professionals start their business because they are great at what they do.

But running a business requires more than expertise.

It requires structure.

In this episode of How to Win Big at Business, CPA and entrepreneur Joe DiChiara explains one of the biggest mistakes solopreneurs make: relying on large, unpredictable sales instead of building recurring revenue.

Joe shares a real example of a business owner struggling with cash flow despite having a valuable service. The problem wasn’t the offer—it was the financial structure of the business.

You’ll learn how to build a reliable revenue engine using communities, sales funnels, and low-barrier offers that convert leads into long-term clients.

If you’re tired of the feast-or-famine cycle in your business, this episode will show you a smarter path forward.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why great services fail without a revenue structure
• The dangerous “big client” trap many entrepreneurs fall into
• Why recurring revenue is the foundation of a real business
• How to create a community that generates leads every day
• The psychology behind low-cost entry offers
• How to turn leads into high-value clients over time

Key Concept From This Episode

A viable business needs two things:

1. Revenue
2. Positive cash flow

Without both, even great businesses struggle to survive.

Subscribe to the Podcast

If you’re a self-employed professional trying to build a real business, this podcast was created for you.

New episodes break down the systems, strategies, and structures needed to move from solopreneur to sustainable business owner.

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/@Bedrock360BusinessSolutions/featured

Thanks for listening!

If you want fewer headaches, fewer IRS surprises, and more smart systems running your business (so YOU don’t have to), let’s talk.

Book a strategy call: www.timewithjoe.com

Because running a business shouldn’t feel like wrestling an octopus… alone. 

Also check out:
www.Bedrock360BusinessSolutions.com (Complete Coverage)

www.Bedrock360TaxSolutions.com (Tax Gaurd 365) 

www.Bedrock360BusinessTraining.com (Courses)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello everyone, Joe DeCaris, CPA and lifelong entrepreneur, coming to you with episode number 14 of How to Win Big at Business. And if you haven't been here before, let me explain exactly what this podcast is all about. It's for the self-employed professional, people that start a business and and maybe have really no idea how to run a business. You have a product or service that people are willing to pay for. But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of structuring, operating, marketing, a small business. And let me be clear, it you can't get any smaller. There's one person, you, and you're in charge of everything. If that, if that's you, this podcast was designed, was created by me specifically for you. And and I can tell you based on my own personal experience, because at one point, and it wasn't too long ago, I was a self-employed professional operating by myself. For a long time, I did have one person working with me, my my my mom, believe it or not. She was with me for over 15 years. But pretty much everything other than the back-end bookkeeping, accounting, client interactions, everything else fell on me. Now, when you started the business, what you quickly find out is there's a thousand things to do, and and a hundred of them are a top priority. So what I am doing, providing you with in this podcast, is the step-by-step approach that every business needs in order to go from that self-employed solopreneur option to actually having a viable business, a business that can actually run without you, a business that allows you to actually go on vacation and still earn money, a business that doesn't require you to have your cell phone in your hand 24-7. So if this is you, you're in the right place. Now, in in the last episode, episode 13, I talked all about business structure. And structuring your business is extremely, extremely important. I'm not only talking about structuring your business for legal purposes, but more importantly for tax purposes. Taxes are undoubtedly gonna be probably the biggest expense item on your on your financials. So if you haven't listened to episode 13 yet, go back, listen to episode 13. And in this episode, what we're gonna talk about is having the financial structure, meaning the revenue. Number one is is revenue. If you don't have a viable service, a a in-demand product or service, and and when I say in demand, a a product or service that people are willing to pay for, you don't have a business, and that might be shocking to you, but I've seen too many businesses start with a great idea and never have any sales, or never have enough sales to actually become a viable business. The second thing a viable business needs is cash flow, positive cash flow. Because it's not just about sales, it's about having sales that exceed your expenses. So let's talk about the revenue part. And and I'm bringing this up right now, not that it wouldn't come up, but I am now working with with a client, a few clients that are having issues with revenue. And and it's not not that they don't have a viable service. In fact, one of them has has a service that's unbelievable, unbelievable value, he has unbelievable authority. So he he has the goods, he has the goods, but the problem that he's running into, and he's he's been in business for a couple of years now. The problem is fundamental. The fundamental problem is that he doesn't have enough recurring revenue coming in to meet his expenses. So what happens is he gets a big sale, his bank is is flush with money, he can pay his people, and then the the next big sale is is few and far between. So he keeps going into this this never-ending cycle. He gets a big sale, he's all happy, things are all hunky-dory, now things are going to be different, and then something inevitably happens because he doesn't have the financial structure, he has things pretty much backward. And and the sad truth is, and and this is part of be being an entrepreneur, because entrepreneurs are are usually very, very, very impatient. We want things now. We're we're like three-year-olds, we want it now, and and we want it when we want it, and business just doesn't work like that. So this is the the financial structure that that he needs, and and most other businesses need. You you see, it's great to get a big client. It's great, okay, because now you have cash, you have money that that is going into your bank account. The drawback to having a big client is they want attention. So now you have to divert resources to those big clients, and then what inevitably happens is those big clients leave for whatever reason, or they run into their own cash flow problem, and then those problems become your problem. So I'm not saying don't go for the big clients. What I'm saying is prepare yourself, be prepared. So the formula for him is this start small, find the low-hanging fruit, find the the pain points, and and now we go back to one of the other fundamental issues that that entrepreneurs forget. You have to clearly identify your avatars, which is another thing that that he forgot. You know, he he's and this is normal. This is normal, and I keep telling him what you're doing is normal. You've tried everything. Now, what you want is is eliminate the things that haven't worked and go back to the things that have worked. So here's one of the problems, and I just had this conversation with him last night. He he wants to do coaching, he loves coaching, he's more than qualified to do the type of coaching that he wants to do. He's been helping people write books. That that's another way for him to make money. He he wants to do his main service, which is another way to to to make money. So he's got all these different options to make money, but no focus. There's there's no system in place. So here's what I suggested to him: create a a community, a group of people that are interested in what you have to offer. Create a free community. It's easy to do that. It's easy to create, let's say, a Facebook community or a community on on Go High Level, okay, which is which is another platform that that is easily uh created if you're on that platform already. So there's multiple platforms that you can use to create a community. Facebook is easy. Facebook is very easy. The only problem with Facebook is you got to make sure that you you follow their rule, and that that's the the same with all the communities. But let's just for let let's just say for argument's sake, you have your your your platform. Great. Now you want to start attracting those kinds of people that you want to do business with. So if you're not familiar with what a sales funnel is, you want to, it's exactly what it what it sounds like. You want to lead people into the top of the funnel, free and or low-cost entry, make it easy to join, bombard them with valuable content. Every business that this is and I follow a book called The Science of Getting Rich. And it's it's all about giving more in value than you receive in money. What does that mean? It means let's say I write an article or a white paper that tells people how to save you know $500 a month on their whatever expense, and I charge them a dollar. So I'm getting a dollar and I'm giving them much more in value than what they're paying for. That's a win-win. So the formula is we create the community, we overload them with value, we offer them something that that asks them to open up their wallet, low cost, low entry free fee, and no-brainer. So let's take that example where I produce a white paper that's gonna help them save X amount of dollars. I know that one of my coaches, and this goes back years ago, gave me a or just blasted it out there, a you know, checklist for for freeing up cash flow. He's not an accountant, I'm the accountant, and you would think, hey, you know, I know this stuff. Well, yeah, I know a lot of stuff, but sometimes I got to be reminded. And I'll never forget one of the suggestions was looking at your cable bill and and seeing exactly what you're paying for. And it turned out I was paying, they called it the triple play. I was paying for my internet service, I was paying for uh TV, which I never use. So I was paying for my TV, and and there was something else. I forget, I think maybe a telephone number or something. So what I did was I canceled the the two services. I all I needed was the internet, and I saved about a hundred bucks a month. Okay. Information that eventually led me to hire him for a thousand dollars a month. That was part of his sales funnel. He kept giving me information that I that was valuable. I used it and he eventually I eventually hired him for a thousand dollars a month. That's a sales funnel. Now, you're not always gonna get people that are gonna pay you the big money, but the the objective is to fill your pipeline with lead. Leads, leads, leads. You always need leads, you never have enough leads, and that's what a community provides you with. So I have one community on Facebook. We have over 22,000 members every day. It's growing, every day are new leads. Those leads are potential students for my courses, or they're potential coaching clients for for one of my partners, and and that's just one of my sales funnels. So you you create the community, you give them value, you offer them something that that allows you to get paid, and don't worry about the price. What what you want is you want for them to give you their credit card info. Two valuable, valuable things that that you need to get. You need to get their email address because once you have their email address, they're a lead. They become a permanent lead until they opt out or unsubscribe. Okay. Once you have their email, every time you you have something to offer, you email them. Eventually, either they're gonna unsubscribe, opt out, or they're gonna purchase. And the thing is, you don't know when. You don't know when that's gonna happen. So that's why you need a constant stream of leads. You also need an inventory of valuable in valuable info. So it could be a white paper, it could be a book, it could be a course, courses are great, courses are great to to give away, to sell, uh, to make part of your sales funnel. Once you get them to commit to paying you, even if it's a dollar, and they're subconscious, what what they've already done is they've said, I trust this guy, Joe DeCara, enough to give him my credit card, even though it's only a dollar. You see, people are are more likely to pay you a dollar than they are to pay you a thousand dollars up front. So part of my my client's problem is on his website he has his services up on top. Up on top, he he has okay. You can you can pay, and this is what it says literally, you can pay six months for only $1,800. Okay, that's quite a bit of money for somebody that doesn't even know him, they don't know like and trust him yet. Below that, he has a membership, five dollars a month to join his community. And what I told him was you have that backwards. You you need to promote the community, get them to start paying you five dollars a month. That's great. Because 20 members is a hundred dollars a month coming in every month. You got a thousand members paying you five dollars, that's five thousand a month. That covers your your monthly nut. Then what you do is you don't sell them the eighteen hundred dollar package, you sell them a fifty dollar package, a hundred dollar package, and you bring them down the sales funnel. Now, if once you have enough leads coming in, enough people paying that five dollars a month, it it starts running on its own. Well, nothing runs on its own, but it's it's running. Yes, some people will opt out of the five dollar subscription, uh, you'll lose five and you'll gain 10. But over time, and and that's the key, over time it's gonna build up. And and what happens is the stress, the stress of trying to get that big client is removed. And when you remove stress and you operate from a pair from a point of strength, from a position of strength, the laws of attraction start to kick in. People start to find you, they sign up, and and one day you wake up and you and you say, Hey, I'm doing okay. I have a viable business now. Leads are coming in, we're promoting, we're doing stuff, we're having free workshops, I'm posting on social media, free valuable info. Once in a while, somebody signs up for one of my one dollar offer. Every month I'm getting another one or two subscribers for five dollars a month. It might not seem like a lot, but that's what every business owner needs. Now I'm in a very good business because accounting is constantly recurring. We put people in a monthly retainer, then once a year they need their business return done, they need their personal return done. So the accounting business is a very stable type of business, and that's my story. I'm sticking with it. If you like this episode, download it, give me a review. You can find me on Facebook. Don't look for me on LinkedIn. I've been banned on LinkedIn because they say I violated their terms of service. That's fine. I'm on Facebook, I'm on YouTube, and and I'd love to hear from you if you have any kind of issue with your taxes, your business, give your free consultation. Go to time with joe.com, pick student client so you don't have to pay the 75 bucks and over and out. God bless. And I will see you in the next episode. Thank you.