6 products you can create as solopreneur
Creative inspiration to help build your brand and get it out there
Hiya 🌊,
One of the ways you raise your profile, particularly if you are a service-based business, is to create a product.
1: Upskill in your business by learning to design a product and market it
2: Broader reach It allows you new opportunities to get mentions for your brand on in-shopping pages, listicles, gift guides and social media mentions
3: New revenue stream If you have worked out your product margins efficiently, desire a product that meets demand and have time to market it - there is an opportunity to grow your income
4: Portable brand ambassadors In a time when many things are digital, having tangible things that people can touch and smell makes you stand out.
Today, me and one of my members
from www.b81designs.com have pulled together a Top 6 ideas for your own business.1. PROMPT CARDS
Lucy: In 2014, I set up a boutique PR agency, in 2019 the co-founder of my children joined to launch the branding arm.
Rather than just issue out a press release, we created the 52 PR tips prompt cards.
We gifted them to journalists and contacts on social media and sold them as a product. It opened us to a new audience and was a fantastic brand-building exercise.
Today they live on as the foundation for this Substack and the original paid offering of the challenge tasks.
Examples:
is a facilitator of the Fair Play deck
2. JOURNALS
Bhavini: The great thing about a journal is that you can make it target your audience.
It’s a brilliant way of showing off your business personality too. Think about how you’d like your audience to use the journal, and then work with a designer to bring it to life.
The cover (and quite often the spine) will be the first thing people see, so make sure the design and production of that is spot on. You could even tie the journal in with another product - for example, a book or some journalling prompt cards.
Examples:
Wonder Journey Joy - A simple guide to live with intention, clarity, and confidence created the Decorating by the Book: The Journal as a companion to her podcast. You’ll find lined pages for ideas, brainstorming and goals, blank pages for vision boarding and graph pages to sketch out a room. created a journal to go with her service-based programme that supports women called Your Life Less Ordinary3. WASHI TAPE / STICKERS
Bhavini: Washi tape and stickers are very versatile.
Who doesn’t love a sticker or some washi tape!?
They’re lightweight and affordable, and you can be as creative as you like. You can create limited editions and even collaborate with other businesses. Products like these can be sold or given away. Smaller products like these could mean that users would generate social content for you.
The tangible and shareable nature of stickers makes them a great asset.
(I can provide images on this too - the tape ties in with the journal mentioned above)
Examples:
uses sketchbook stickers, badges, and a zine that she loves to leave at art shops.
4. BOOKMARKS
Bhavini: Firstly, these are so practical!
You can do anything with these - there’s a lot of space. I gave away bookmarks as freebies when people brought a copy of my book. They had some nice bold colours on with quotes that I love.
The best bookmarks I’ve brought myself were for my kids.
I found a maths tutoring company on Instagram, and they had a set of bookmarks they were selling. My girls love reading, so I purchased two sets - because they had educational maths tips on them.
The girls hate maths, but as a parent, to me this was a great way of (subtly) helping them remember maths formulas!
Example:
To support pre-orders of Dr
“Burnout: How to manage your nervous system before it manages you”, she was inspired to create her own book marksShe adds: “I loved this idea. It feels like an easier way to tell my local friends and acquaintances that I’ve written a book rather than blurting it out, I say would you like a new book mark… feels a bit more playful! I’m also going to leave them places like the waiting room in my therapy space etc”
5. PERSONALISED CARDS OR PENCILS
Lucy: My favourite stationary brand for newsjacking are the cards suitable for any moment by Mean Mail, who I was able to collaborate with once for a tech brand releasing a report to create a card that read “Oh great. Another research report” with a QR code for the work inside.
(As an aside, she is a good friend, and you should buy some of her cards in a bundle for a rainy day because they are great).
The other member in my stationery dream squad would have to be Sarah from Pencil Me In and her personalised pencils.
They are fabulous for launches of books, products, member gifts, and goody bag bundles.
6. MERCH
Lucy: One of the perks of being an Adobe Express ambassador is the great merch. They collaborate with some great artists to create quality gifts for us, but I always like to give examples from small businesses as well to reassure you that we can borrow from the big guys and do it our way.
from the created some fab merch which used to be sold to members and gifted to authors.Today, she also uses them as uniforms at events/workshops for me + volunteers.
Example:
has created her own on brand HR jumper available from her websiteOver to you?
Are you a writer, author or other service-based solopreneur who has created a product?
📣 Permission to Hype Yourself and share a link and a one-liner in the comments ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
New to me and my work?
You can buy my books Hype Yourself or Brand Yourself.
You can book me for a one-to-one mentoring session.
You can book me to speak or host a workshop for your university, accelerator membership or in-house team.
I’m also an Adobe Express global ambassador and teach this beginners course for Domestika
New to my guest for today?
She offers Brand identity design -Marketing comms design - Advertising design, and Business stationery design -
The link to her book is here or catch her on LinkedIn Instagram Facebook
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Noted!
I have been thinking about this for a while but as a coaching business I always got stuck on what to create, although I do have a workbook that is crying out to be put into an actually book format! Those that have create journals I would be interested to know the process they used for printing eg do they hold stock (big upfront cost) or print on demand?