Are you itching to get into the online business and aren’t quite sure what your biz should be? Or maybe your brain is giving you 100’s of business ideas at home and your wondering which one to go after? Or you’ve already launched your online business ideas and they haven’t worked as well as you wanted and you’re wondering where it went all wrong…

Get ready!!!!

This is a different blog to my usual content: a fascinating interview with Jake Lang, the author of “Step One” and the founder of several successful businesses, including The Entrepreneur Ride Along. Jake helps aspiring entrepreneurs start and scale their first online business.

You’ll be glued to his entrepreneurial story, his learnings from failures and success, and his super high value, step-by-step system to decide your next business idea to start generating revenue as solopreneur.

It’s jammed packed with insights and hugely strategic advice to go from online business ideas at home to the ONE, to start generating revenue as a solopreneur.

Frankly, stop binching on Netflix just for a bit (yes, I do it too! Hahaha!), and read this interview. Even if some of the businesses that Jake has created have nothing to do with your niche, his whole journey and learnings are super applicable, whether you’re thinking of starting your online activities or have your biz already!

He opens up as many don’t! This is online business as raw as it gets, with the ups and downs, no make up applied, to learn from real experiences!

Here are the questions I asked Jake:

Keep on reading to hear all about it!

Full disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that, at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission from.

"Welcome to the blog, Jake! Sooooo good to have you with us!"

Thank you for having me on the blog, I’m excited to contribute and talk all about business ideas at home!

I’m Jake Lang, I have started seven online businesses since 2014. I built up my businesses on the side as I worked as a financial analyst in the insurance industry from 2014 to 2021. In April of 2021, I quit my day job to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. I now hold a portfolio of three online businesses that generate passive income and support me financially as a full-time entrepreneur.

I now live in Maine with my wife Brooke and our four dogs Charlie, Miley, Millie, and Penny where I continue to manage my businesses and coach entrepreneurs. It’s my mission to start a new online business every year and share everything behind the scenes at The Entrepreneur Ride Along so that new entrepreneurs can learn from my mistakes, understand the struggles of starting a new business, and find the path to entrepreneurial success.

For an overview of the businesses I have started, and my many failures, continue reading!

"Tell us about the story behind you and all your business ideas at home? "

To start, I will give you an introduction to each of my business ideas at home. Below is a breakdown of each of my businesses, in chronological order, with an overview of where they stand today:

1) Direct Mail Advertising Leads

This was my first ever attempt at a business.

In 2014, while I was a senior at the University of New Hampshire, I started the website buydirectmailadvertisingleads.com.

I attempted to sell residential and commercial mailing addresses to local small businesses for their direct mail marketing campaigns. I leveraged a database that I was given access to from my university to export thousands of addresses into an Excel file based on the demographic criteria filters that I had set. I would send this Excel file to small business owners for their targeted mailing campaigns.

I launched the business and started blogging, tweeting, and making cold calls. It was time to get rich and pay off my college debt. I had the idea, I launched the business, and I assumed the money would follow.

There was one small problem… I was not solving anyone’s problem.

No one wanted what I was selling. I called dozens of small businesses in the area: pizza parlors, CPAs, even the University of New Hampshire marketing department. I pitched hard to sell my service. I was laughed off the phone more than once; those who were nice enough not to laugh explained that my value proposition was way off the mark. Their business did not need my services, and it was unlikely that any other small business would need them either.

I learned the hard way.

Research your competition and talk to your target market first. Learn the struggles and pain points of your market before launching your business. I shut this business down a few months after I started, without making a single dollar.

2) Sway Wear Clothing

My second attempt at a business was Sway Wear Clothing.

I started this business in 2014 after graduating college on the side while I worked my first full-time job as a financial analyst in the insurance industry.

I was selling made-to-measure men’s button-up long-sleeve work shirts, designed specifically for tall skinny men with long arms. Buy the shirt through my website, and I will design it to your specific size. Perfect for young men who know nothing about hiring a tailor (like me). Just use my website; you won’t need a tailor.

I put up a website, ran a Google advertisement, and made one sale! (Out of 1,000 clicks on my advertisement…).

That’s when it hit me.

I had no clue what I was doing.

I had spent over $750 in advertising, had one sale, and had no clue how to deliver what I had just sold. I sold one shirt for $55. My manufacturer was going to charge me $50 for the shirt and $15 for shipping, which meant I was about to take a loss of $10 on my first sale. That is not a profitable business. Worst of all, my manufacturer was asking me about the baste, the break, the darning, and the rise. Half of those words were not in my vocabulary; I didn’t even know those words existed. I learned that they are common terms when discussing tailoring a shirt.

I was in over my head.

That was the second business I ever attempted. I shut it down after three months of struggle.

It was an excellent learning lesson. I made a critical mistake: I chose the wrong niche. I chose an incredibly complex business model selling an incredibly complex product in a niche I knew nothing about that had a very low profit margin. This was the wrong business for me.

3) AssociatePI

Third time’s a charm! I started AssociatePI in 2015.

I still manage this business today; it is still my best performing online business. AssociatePI is a business selling text-based online courses in the insurance industry to help employees pass the challenging CPCU exams.

This is a relatively small niche, with only 12,000 people per month searching the term “CPCU” on Google each month, and only a few thousand people per year completing this certification. Yet, in this small niche, this website generates around $5,000 per month in passive income.

AssociatePI is still in operation, you can view this website here.

4) Pomsky Owners Association

Pomsky Owners Association is a business that teaches people about owning, training, and caring for Pomsky breed dogs.

I started this business in 2017. It started as a hobby and practice website, because I don’t even own a Pomsky! I have owned dogs my entire life, but never a Pomsky.

I found an opportunity in this niche, I saw that no one was serving or helping this market, so I created a business to help with Pomsky training. I quickly became one of the top authorities in this space, I wrote a Pomsky training book (best seller on Amazon), and launched a membership to serve this market. This website generates around $2,000 per month in passive income from book sales, membership sales, and affiliate income. I sold this business in 2021 for $95,000.

Pomsky Owners Association is still in operation, under new ownership, you can view this website here.

5) NE Lounge

This was my biggest failure as an entrepreneur.

I started an Amazon FBA business selling “inflatable loungers” (photo here). I lost $16,000 on this business. I launched this business in September of 2017 and shut it down in April of 2018 after selling all of my 500 units of inventory, but still taking a loss on the business.

I will talk about this more later in this blog post.

6) The Entrepreneur Ride Along

My main business, and my fastest growing business, is The Entrepreneur Ride Along.

This is a resource I created to help entrepreneurs start, build, and scale a successful online business. I write books, offer coaching, host group coaching programs, and sell online courses.

The goal of this business is to provide step-by-step advice and case studies to help entrepreneurs launch and grow their first business. Entrepreneur’s “ride along” with me on my journey of entrepreneurship to learn from my mistakes, my successes, and find the path to entrepreneurial success.

You can view The Entrepreneur Ride Along here.

7) Agile Exam Academy

My newest business, Agile Exam Academy, sells study material to help project management students pass the PMI-ACP exam.

This one is still new and growing, but it’s starting to show some promise! You can view Agile Exam Academy here.

"How did you manage your day-to-day job with launching business ideas at home?"

Honestly, it was easier than I thought. Once I got into a routine, it was easy to make progress on my side businesses. The key is carving out time. Time to focus on your day job and time to focus on scaling your businesses. 9 am to 5 pm was reserved for my day job. But my mornings, lunch break, and commute home were all about my side businesses.

For me, I tried to put in at least two hours per day on my business. I did that for seven years as I scaled my businesses. I worked half an hour on my commute to work, an hour on my lunch break at a local cafe, and half an hour on my commute home from work.

If you work two hours per day on weekdays only, that is a total of ten hours per week invested in your business.

That steady progress every week will go a long way. In just two hours per weekday, I started seven different businesses, launched more than twenty online courses, wrote more than three hundred blog posts, recorded over one hundred podcast episodes, wrote a dog training book, coached hundreds of clients, and generated enough revenue to match the income from my day job, which I have now quit. That is what you can do with just two hours per day. That is all you need.

Find the time to work on your business and make progress every day.

"What has been your biggest failure with your online business ideas?"

By far my biggest failure was from a failed Amazon FBA business. I like to call it my $16,000 learning lesson (AKA a $16,000 loss).

That failure came in 2017 when I was launching the business that I called “NE Lounge”.

I was launching an Amazon FBA product. FBA stands for “fulfillment by Amazon”. It is the process of selling a physical product through Amazon’s warehouse. My inventory was stored in Amazon's fulfillment center and Amazon handled all of the logistics of packing, shipping, and customer support so I didn’t have to handle any inventory (more about this program from Amazon here).

The goal of this business was to create an Amazon FBA store selling inflatable products. My first product was an inflatable lounger that I called the ‘NE Lounger’. It’s essentially an inflatable couch. You hold the lounger and run to fill it up with air, then tie it closed and you have a big inflatable pouch to lounge on, great for camping or hanging at the beach.

I had lofty goals and big plans for this new business. I conducted weeks of market research. Analyzing the negative reviews of my competitors, I found that customers wanted a bigger more durable lounger. So, my plan was to come into the market and sell a premium inflatable lounger. One that was longer, wider, more durable, and stayed inflated longer. I priced myself on the high end of the competition, with a premium lounger, charging $50 per unit when the competition was charging less than $30. It cost me $20 to manufacture each unit, since I had a custom design, but if I charged a premium price at $50 per sale, I would profit $30 per inflatable lounger that I sold. If I could sell just 100 units per month (around 3 units per day) I would net $3,000 in monthly profit. Well, that was the goal at least…

In August of 2017, after spending almost three months testing samples and talking to manufacturers, I placed an order for 500 units of my custom-designed inflatable lounger. By September 2017, my first round of inventory reached the Amazon warehouses. Just a few days later, I officially launched NE Lounge.

The sales came in almost immediately. Slow, but steady.

With Amazon, you want to sell as many products as fast as possible, while getting as many 5-star reviews as possible. The more inventory you sell, at a faster rate, the better your Amazon Best Seller Ranking (ABSR) will be. A better ABSR means you will rank higher on Amazon. That was my goal, if I could have my product showing as one of the top results when someone searched “Inflatable Lounger” on Amazon, then I would be able to turn a profit. I used the program Jump Send by JungleScout to help push sales and get reviews. Through Jump Send I sold my products at a discount rate, in return, Jump Send encouraged the buyer to leave a review for the product. I sold these discounted units at $20 per sale, which means I was taking a loss on each sale, but it would help to improve my ABSR and help me rank for the term “inflatable lounger”.

This just didn’t happen… In the end, it came down to profit. I just could not turn a profit. No matter what I did. My marketing effort, trying to rank for my keywords on Amazon, was not working. No matter how many 5-star reviews I got, and no matter how many discounted items I sold, my Best Seller Ranking was not climbing fast enough to rank on the first page of Amazon.

I was in over my head. I chose an expensive product ($20 per unit), I was trying to sell at a premium price ($50 per unit) but no one was buying the units at the full price. The only buyers I was getting were the people buying through JumpSend at a 50% discount. After Amazon fees, I was taking a loss on those JumpSend sales and it wasn’t even helping my organic ranking!

In the end, I sold more inflatable loungers at a discounted rate through JumpSend then I sold organically at full price. I was essentially paying money for people to take these inflatable loungers from me.

After accounting for the initial investment, marketing fees, Amazon storage fees, Amazon sales fees, JungleScout fees, professional photography, and graphic design the end result after selling 500 units of NE Lounger inflatable loungers was a loss of $16,000.

I talk all about this failure in this podcast episode for anyone interested in hearing exactly why this business failed (and what I learned).

"After failing, what did you do to not give up on your solopreneur dream?"

It was hard. It was crushing to lose that much money, and fail that fast. If I had hit my goal of $3,000 in income per month from NE Lounge, I would have quit my job in 2017. This was supposed to be the business that put me over the edge and led me into full-time entrepreneurship.

Luckily, I had an amazing support group.

I am in a mastermind group; we have been meeting every Monday for the past four years. They helped me see that this was just a bump in the process. They helped me see that I was closer to my goal of full-time entrepreneurship, closer than I thought. They helped me see my proven track record of success from my other businesses.

I took this as a learning lesson and doubled down on my profitable businesses. I knew if I focused on the businesses that were generating profit, I could scale those and generate enough revenue to leave my job.

"You’re clearly a multi-talented solopreneur, what is more challenging about choosing from all your online business ideas?"

The hardest part is choosing which idea to pursue next.

I have an ongoing list of over 150 online business ideas that I’ve validated and could pursue next. The problem is, I don’t have enough time to start a new business every day!

That is why I created The Entrepreneur Ride Along. That is why I coach, write blogs, and record podcasts talking about new online business ideas. When I come up with a new business idea, I create content for The Entrepreneur Ride Along so that one of my subscribers can take the idea and run with it. One of my best performing blogs is about my 25 niche online business ideas, which I update every few months with new online business ideas.

I limit myself. I can only start one new business per year and I cannot manage more than four online businesses at one time. That is my way of making sure I don’t spread myself too thin. If I have too many businesses, and too many projects at the same time, I will get nothing done and all of my businesses will suffer. It makes me extra selective, knowing that I can only choose one idea to pursue next, even though I have an ongoing list with hundreds of validated ideas that grows every day.

That is why I give away all of my online business ideas, and write books about starting online businesses, because I simply do not have the time to start 150 new businesses!

"You quit your job earlier this year… that’s always a huge step. Congrats! How did you get to the big decision?"

Yes! I made the leap into full-time entrepreneurship on April 16th, 2021. I have been working towards this day since 2014, building my businesses on the side for nearly seven years. It was a long journey. In the end my wife, Brooke, told me to quit my job. She looked at me on April 2nd and without any prompting said “It’s time. Give your notice today”. I gave my two weeks’ notice an hour later and then recorded this podcast episode to tell the world about it.

Brooke gave me the gentle push, and support that I needed to make the leap. Without her, I’d still be facing that entrepreneurial fear, trying to make every little aspect of my business perfect before making the leap.

By the time I quit, we had been talking about it for years, trying to find the right time. We decided that 2021 would be the year, since at that point I had a proven track record with five years of generating substantial recurring revenue from my businesses, and in 2020 I actually made more from my online businesses than I did in my day job as a financial analyst.

"How are you anticipating and mitigating bumps on your new journey?"

That’s part of the entrepreneurial journey, I’m sure it’s going to be a rollercoaster of emotions with plenty of bumps along the way!

The best way I have prepared for the bumps along the way is with a supportive group of friends, family, and colleagues. First and foremost, Brooke is fully supportive of my career choice. As I mentioned earlier, she is the one that pushed me to quit my job! Having her by my side along with my mom, dad, brother, sister, and friends, I know that no matter what happens they will be standing by to support me.

Additionally, I am a member of a mastermind group. For those unfamiliar with the term, a mastermind group is a group of peers who meet to give each other advice and support. I have been a member of this mastermind group, meeting with the same five entrepreneurs on a weekly basis, supporting each other’s businesses, and providing feedback, for the past four years. This group of entrepreneurs in my mastermind group has become some of my closest friends that help to keep me on track in life and business. They act as a sounding board, checking in and providing guidance each step of the way.

Regarding financial bumps, I built up a safety net before leaving my day job. I saved up $30,000 over the course of a year in preparation for my departure from my day job. Additionally, I just recently sold one of my niche websites for $95,000. So, I have a total of $125,000 in reserve in my business in case anything goes wrong. That means, if something goes terribly wrong and all of my businesses have to shut down leaving me with $0 in monthly income, I can still pay myself a salary of $5,000 per month for two full years.

"Tell us about how writing your first book has felt? What did you not expect?"

It’s been a blast. I launched my book Step One: The Surprisingly Simple Process To Research, Validate, And Choose The Perfect Online Business Idea on September 1st, 2021. In the first month, because of my launch, Step One:

generated over 120 sales, 25 five-star reviews,
was the #1 new release in the E-commerce category for September,
was the #1 new release in the Home-Based Business Sales & Selling category for September, and
made it as high as the #2 best seller in the E-commerce category.

That was an AMAZING feeling! Seeing how successful the book was during the launch phase. I expected it to do well, I expected some positive feedback and a few sales to roll in, but I did not expect that type of impact in the first month.

I absolutely love writing. I have written books and courses in the past for my other niche businesses (one about dog training), but this is the first entrepreneurship book I have ever written and by far the one I care about most. I first started writing the book in March of 2021. It took about six months total to write and publish the book. To break that down, it was about 1-month of research and preparation before writing, 3-months of writing, 1 month of editing, and 1 month of launch setup.

The writing was the easy part, that was by far the most fun part of the process. As you can tell by the length of this blog post, I have no problem rambling on and on about entrepreneurship!

The hardest part was editing. I used the service Scribendi for my manuscript editing. They were amazing, for reference, it cost me about $1,200 for full editing of a 60,000-word book. The editing service was great, the hardest and most tedious part was reviewing the editor's work. Reading through every little change and suggestion that the editor made. Then making the decision to accept or reject the editors’ suggestions. Then going back and re-reading the paragraph to make sure it still flows after accepting or rejecting the edits. It is an exhausting process…I did not expect it to be that tedious and tiring. That was by far my least favorite part of publishing the book.

The rest was fun and easy!

"From many online business ideas at home to THE perfect one… how do you make the selection process simple? "

The process of finding and validating a business idea is much easier than you think. In Step One, I break it down into six simple steps:

Step 1: Find an idea with what I call the “brain dump” exercise.

Answer a few simple questions such as:

“what did you do this week?”,
“what do you do on a day-to-day basis?”,
“when someone asks you for help, what do they ask for help with?”,
“what do you do in your day job?”, and
“what are your hobbies?”.

There are over 60 of these brain dump questions in the book that help you generate over 150 online business ideas.

Step 2: Look at your list of 150 business ideas, and narrow it down to 10 ideas.

I do this using a few narrowing questions. Ask yourself:

“am I interested in this business idea?”,
“could I see myself writing a blog every day about this topic?”, and
“how complex is this idea?”.

Use simple questions like this to narrow your list down from 150 ideas to 10 ideas.

Step 3: Validate the market size of your business idea.

I do this with a tool called Long Tail Pro. For each idea of my ten ideas:

I want to see that there is a minimum of 10,000 people per month searching for the topic of my business, without a lot of competition in the space.
I also want to see that there are subtopics and content opportunities within this niche that I could write blogs or record podcasts talking about (I use Long Tail Pro for this competitive analysis).

I use this analysis to narrow my list down from 10 ideas to the 3 best ideas with the best market potential.

Step 4: Determine the pain point of your target market.

The purpose of a business is to provide a solution to the target market’s pain points.

If your target market faces a big enough pain point, one that people are willing to pay to solve, then you have a viable business. Do this by talking to actual people in your target market.

For each of the three remaining business ideas, conduct a survey asking people in the market of your business idea “what is the biggest challenge you are facing right now relating to X?” (with X being your business idea). The purpose of this survey question is to find your target market’s biggest challenge and pain point. Validate that there is a problem your target market is facing and solve that problem.

If you can do that with your products and services, you have a business.

Step 5: Choose a product to sell your target market.

But don’t assume you know what your target market wants to buy, let them tell you what products and services they need.

This comes from your research in Step Four. You already surveyed your target market. You know what their biggest pain point is.

Now ask yourself, what product or service can you sell that will solve this problem? Let that determine what revenue stream you will implement in your business. I prefer digital products such as courses, books, memberships, and affiliate relationships. I find that to be the easiest way to generate substantial revenue from an online business.

Step 6: Lastly, choose the one best idea for your business based on your research.

You conducted a lot of research in steps three, four, and five. Use that to determine which idea is best.

Compare the three online business ideas to one another. Ask yourself:

“in which market is there a clear need for your business that is not being solved by the competition or that could clearly be better solved by your business?”,
“which market is large enough to support multiple businesses so that they all make money selling products and services in the same niche?”,
“what product or service would you sell; what problem would you solve with your product or service?”,
“which business idea would be most profitable?”, and lastly,
“which idea stands out to you as the best online business idea?”

That is your business idea. That is the one idea you will take and pursue as your first business venture. You know the answer; now, make the choice. Choose that one online business idea and take the first step into entrepreneurship.

I write all about it in my six-part blog series, starting with Part One here, for those that want a quick overview of the process.

"What is your #1 tip to research profitable online business ideas?"

Talk to your target market. Learn their pain points and struggles. Your business should be designed to alleviate this pain point with your products and services. Don’t assume you know the struggles of your target market, talk to them and ask them what they are struggling with.

I talked about this in step four in the above process, but let me tell you a story of my first failed attempt at online business and why this is the #1 tip I give to all entrepreneurs that are attempting to validate an online business idea…

Remember the first business that I ever attempted, buydirectmailadvertisingleads.com, the one I talked about earlier in this blog? I was selling residential and commercial addresses to local small businesses for their direct mail marketing campaigns. I thought it was an amazing idea. The plan was to export thousands of mailing addresses into an Excel file that I would sell to small business owners for their targeted mailing campaigns.

I didn’t make a single sale. Months of effort, and $0 to show for it.

The reason for this failed first attempt at entrepreneurship boils down to one glaring flaw in my business plan. I never talked to anyone in my target market. I did not understand the pain points of a small business owner; I did not understand their struggles. I assumed that all small business owners struggled with marketing, and I assumed that all small business owners struggled to find leads for their direct mail marketing campaigns. I was wrong. I was not solving anyone’s problem with my business. Furthermore, I did not analyze the competition. I did not understand that small businesses already had access to free databases that could pull thousands of addresses for their marketing campaigns. I did not realize that there was already an oversaturated market of full-service marketing corporations meeting this need by compiling mailing lists, creating marketing flyers, and mailing the flyers directly to prospective customers. They were doing far more than I was offering for half the price.

I learned the hard way. Talk to your target market first. Learn the struggles and pain points of your market before launching your business. That is what you are doing in step number four described above. You talk to your target market to learn its pain points and better understand the value proposition of your business.

The same goes with content creation as I’m sure many of you readers know. You need to know your audience, understand your audience BEFORE you dive in and start blogging. The same goes for online business. Understand your audience, know their pain points, BEFORE you launch your business.

"When you have no list, no customers… how can you easily validate your online business ideas at home?"

One-on-one connection. There are customers out there waiting for you, go find them. Don’t wait for them to come to you. I do this on Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

I sold my first ten copies of Step One to strangers on Reddit. You can do the same. I booked my first coaching client before I even set up my website, once again, from someone I met and helped on Reddit. That is true validation of your business. Your business is officially validated when a stranger pulls out their wallet and pays you for your product or service. When someone pays you, it means you have successfully understood your target market’s pain point and solved their problem with your product or service. That is the definition of a validated business idea.

You can start selling now, even before you start building your product or business. It’s called “pre-selling”; it means you sell the product to your target market (at a discounted rate) before you finish creating it. This process works well for product validation, especially if you are writing a book or creating a course, because several months will pass before the final product is ready for sale. With a presale, your customer pays a reduced rate for the product that you are creating; in return, they get first access to the final product when it is finished. I do this for every product I sell. Before I invest the time and effort into writing a new book or creating a new course, I validate that people want what I am selling. I see far too many entrepreneurs spend months creating a new course, only to launch and find out that no one wants to buy what they are selling. The presale validates your idea; it ensures that you are building a product that people want and proves that your product idea is so good that someone is willing to pay for it even before you have finished creating it.

When I launch a presale, I call it my Founding Members Group. Anyone that enrolls in the presale is included in a small group of founding members who get direct access to me and have the opportunity to provide input or feedback to ensure that the final product meets their specific needs. When I pitch the presale, I create a sales page describing the product I envision. I make it clear that the product is not yet finished, but all founding members will get access to the product as it is being created and will receive access to the final product once it is finished. I price the presale at a reduced rate, usually a 50% discount, to encourage early adopters to take advantage of the significant savings. This is how I validate each of my businesses and every product I sell.

I presold Step One. That is how I validated the idea for the book. I went to Reddit, joined the entrepreneur community, and started helping entrepreneurs by answering their forum posts. I made 30 worthwhile connections. I pitched my book idea to these 30 entrepreneurs, described my vision for the book, and offered them a Founding Member spot for $10. I sold 10 copies of the book before I wrote the first word. I validated that people liked the idea, I validated that people wanted to learn from me, and I validated that my solution was so powerful that strangers were willing to pay me for the book before I started writing. That is a validated product.

That is what I recommend for all new entrepreneurs. You do not need to create your course, write your book, or finish your product before you start selling. Start selling now with a presale.

Selling is a lot easier than you think. At this stage in your business, you can spend 10 minutes per day on social media connecting with people in your target market. Build rapport and send each connection a direct message to pitch your products and services; you will automate this process later. Look back at the people you surveyed and connected with in step five from above. Those are people in your target market, people who are interested in what you are selling. Those connections could be your first customers. Now that you have an idea for a business, do not waver. It is a good idea; go get some sales and make it happen.

"I love The Entrepreneur Ride Along name! How do you choose your business idea names?"

I wish I could take credit for this creative business idea name! But it’s actually from a Reddit community that I participate in. I’m a big contributor on Reddit, answering questions and providing input to help entrepreneurs. That’s where I got my start sharing my story, so setting up my business a few years back I started “The Entrepreneur Ride Along” where I could feature my story and let others “ride along” with my journey, while also featuring members of the Reddit community.

That’s the story behind The Entrepreneur Ride Along business idea name!

"What is the one thing that made a difference for you to start generating revenue as a solopreneur?"

The most important step, when you are beginning your journey to generating revenue as a solopreneur, is getting started with the right idea. As I mentioned above, my first two businesses failed because my business was flawed from the beginning. I did not research my idea, I did not talk to my target market, and I did not validate my business before launching. So, the businesses failed, because I didn’t have a validated business idea.

Contrast that with the four successful online businesses that I am currently managing. I learned from my mistakes. I validated these ideas at the beginning.

I used the brain dump exercise to find an idea that interested me.
I analyzed the idea to ensure that there was a large enough market size to support a business.
I talked to my target market to determine their biggest pain point.
I pre-sold my products to make sure my market was interested in what I was selling.

From there, I could launch my business knowing it would be a success because I did all of the prep work and research upfront. I came into the market with a viable online business idea, selling a product that would meet the needs of my target market.

That is how you get started generating revenue as a solopreneur.

"Tell us where people can find you and get your book."

You can find Step One the book on Amazon here and you can reach out to me with any questions at jake@theentrepreneurridealong.com – I love meeting new entrepreneurs. I’m happy to help answer any questions you have!

What next?

There is only one possible action possible today after this…

A HUGE thank you for being here with me until the end.

It is an absolute privilege to know that you read and find value in my blog!

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Hi! I’m Isabel

For years and years I have created and produced content, in particular visual content. You can find me very often with my cameras and tripod out and about!

My passion: to help you with your online presence and drive business growth through my blog and visuals collections (marketing templates, styled photos & video).

Ah, I have also worked for 24+ in the corporate world, leading quite a mix: transformation, marketing, coaching, sales, productivity, programme management, investments and product management.

I love sharing all these skills with you in my blog.

I am also founder of Agavea Properties, our family holiday rental business. My husband and I lead it with the passion with one goal in mind: serving our customers to create a memorable holiday experience for them.

So there you have it, that’s me! Ah... I almost forgot, my happy place is by the sea.

Thanks for being here with me!

From Online Business Ideas At Home To The Perfect One To Start Generating Revenue As Solopreneur