If you want 2026 to feel more intentional, spacious, and aligned with how you actually want to work, this episode is for you. Anna shares ten powerful solopreneur resolutions designed to help you build a calmer, more strategic business that fits the season you’re in – without the pressure, hustle, or hype.
Key moments:
[00:34] Why resolutions matter for solopreneurs – A gentler, more intentional approach to the new year
[02:10] Discomfort over resentment – Why saying no earlier avoids frustration later
[04:25] Discernment over defaulting – Not everything that worked before still works now
[06:40] Clarity over complexity – Why simplifying your offers and channels leads to traction
[09:15] Resonance over reach – Creating content that lands with the right people
[11:22] Connection over content – Prioritising relationships over metrics
[13:03] Depth over doing more – Going deeper on what already works
[15:42] Rhythm over reaction – Building supportive weekly structures
[18:10] Structure over scrambling – Documenting processes to reduce chaos
[20:15] Self-leadership over self-sacrifice – Treating your energy as an asset
[22:05] Compassion over criticism – Why shame doesn’t create better results
[24:50] Introducing the Solopreneur Operating System – A sneak peek at next week’s episode
[26:40] Join the waitlist – Support for redesigning how your business truly works
Resources mentioned:
Join the waitlist for the Solopreneur Operating System – intentionalexpert.com
Previous episode: Trends for 2025
The Solopreneur Operating System
A structural approach to redesigning your business so it works – financially, energetically, and seasonally. If you’re ready for a more intentional way of working, the next step begins here.
Solopreneur Resolutions
This one is for you if you are a solopreneur who wants 2026 to feel more intentional, more spacious, more strategic. If you’re tired of doing all the things and still not feeling on top of it, and if you know that the way you’ve been running your business isn’t wrong, but it’s not quite right for this season either. No goals, no hype. Just what matters now. Welcome to Reimagining Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert. One that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Anna Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach, and mum of two.
Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility, and the fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love. Let’s get started. So it is that time of year. We were looking at the trends of 2025 last week, and now I’m looking ahead, of course, to 2026. And while I don’t set New Year’s resolutions anymore, I have a different approach. I thought I’d have a look at some resolutions that we could choose to set as solopreneurs who want to build a lifestyle business, a values driven business, a business that works for us and our families and our health and all those wonderful things that we’re building around. Okay, so January and it’s coming up soon is full of pressure. And maybe you’re already feeling that pressure now in December.
And I hope I haven’t been adding to that with my various episodes and sprints and things, but there’s all this. Obviously, the the media comes out with the diet post, the Christmas bloating and everything, resolutions, gold 90 day sprints, and so on. If you’re here in my world, I’m guessing you don’t want more pressure, but you may want a bit more clarity. Okay, so we’re not doing hustle culture resolutions. We’re not listing 47 goals or writing the perfect content plan. I’m rather talking about direction, anchoring, and something to build from. So I’m sharing 10 intentional resolutions that I’ve seen matter most for solopreneurs who want to do business differently. And by the way, you don’t have to pick all of these.
You might already be living some of them, but even if one of them lands, you know, that might be the shift that you need for the next year. Okay, so 10 resolutions. The first one is choosing discomfort now over resentment later. And I’ve totally stolen that from Brene Brown. So I hold my hands up there, but it really resonates with me. Discomfort now over resentment later. And she shares a story or the anecdote, you know, of sort of volunteering for the pta. They say, oh, can you, you know, make something for the bake sale or whatever, for example? And it’s so easy to go, oh, yes, sure, of course I can.
When you’re already overwhelmed, struggling and you know, you, you, if you take a step back, you would recognise that either you’re going to drop that ball later and, you know, disappoint or you’re going to do it, but you’re going to feel really rubbish about it, really resentful, and you may drop other balls because obviously that means you’ll be staying up late baking the night before or buying something, depending on your approach, instead of doing the things being with your family, going to bed early and so on. So coming to your business, whether it’s raising your rates, saying no to a project that doesn’t align, redesigning an offer a little discomfort now is better than waking up three months from now dreading your calendar. Your clients do not want you half resenting the work. Okay? You’re doing them a disservice too. So if you want to build a calm, consistent business, there needs to be that calm consistency underneath. And you can’t have that unspoken frustration kind of bubbling underneath and then resentment brewing. So that’s my first one. Discomfort now over resentment later.
Say it with me. The second one is discernment over defaulting. So just because something worked before doesn’t mean it still works now. Just because someone else is doing it does not mean that you should. And default thinking creeps in really quietly. You know, the whole default career path, which we’ve all let go of to build our portfolio business, our solopreneur world, whatever we’re calling what we are building, it’s an alternative way of doing things we’re building differently. So we’ve already taken that step once, but it’s so easy to latch onto that same default thinking in our new world. Okay, so rather than going, oh, I guess I’ll just do this again, or, you know, just continuing your patterns and behaviours and habits that you’ve always been doing this year, let’s make it a rule.
If it’s not a clear yes. Yeah, this feels totally aligned. This is Absolutely the right thing to do. Then let’s press pause, take a step back and assess whether that is still the right approach. Approach? I’ve been publishing podcast episodes every week for however many years. I’ve been doing LinkedIn every day. Does that mean it’s the right thing to do going forwards? No, it does not. So discernment over defaulting.
Next one is clarity over complexity. Or even I probably should say simplicity over complexity, but then we’d miss the two C’s and that would be sad. So, look, the more you try to add, the harder it gets to sustain. And I had a client recently asked me, how do you do it? Or how do you have all these channels and all the content and so on, and. And full transparency. You know, of course, I’ve been doing this for many years, so I’ve layered things on. I have my certain processes and some things are easier than others. And obviously a big part of the point I just said just now, the defaulting is what keeps it going, right? You’re just kind of a machine that keeps going.
But adding more is not the answer. Okay? It’s just going to get harder to sustain. So instead of piling on, let’s simplify. Even if you’re not quite sure what’s working right, let’s trim the office suite, clarify the pricing, focus your message. It’s not forever, but at least for the next month, the next quarter, even the next year would be amazing. Just focus on that one kind of avatar, the one goal, the one channel, the one offer. And that makes your business so much easier to run and easier to buy from. Okay, the next one is resonance overreach.
And I talk about this a lot, but I am the big flag flyer of not having to go viral. You need to be remembered by the right people. So we’re not here to chase trends. We’re here to create traction, real traction, with the right people that matter, that need to hear your message, and we’ll reach out and work with you. So. So it’s really important to recognise that one message that lands is so much more powerful than like 20 reels or carousels or like chatgpt schlop on LinkedIn. That’s just gonna fizzle out. Okay? So my approach, certainly, and you can hold me accountable to this, is to slow things down a bit and rather create, you know, possibly slightly longer form content, some.
Some proper videos that I’ve put more thought into rather than just pumping out daily posts on LinkedIn. Let’s say the really important thing is not to get caught up in likes and comments on. It’s about resonance, overreach. So as long as people are coming to you as they do me, you know, I heard you on the podcast. This really resonated, that post about, you know, focusing on the wrong things that really felt like it was speaking to me, that those are the kind of messages you want to be hearing and if that’s happening, then you are getting traction, even if the numbers aren’t showing as such. More Cs for you. Connection over content. We talked about this last week in terms of the trends, but really a warm referral, a past client reaching back out, or you reaching back out to a past client.
Even a single DM conversation, hey, this could be useful for you. These things convert so much more than any viral post. And by the way, apart from converting, it’s also a nice thing to do. So even if someone doesn’t buy from you, if you thought of them, if you have something that could be useful for them, if you’re coming at that in a benevolent, generous way, then you know that there’s no harm done whether they buy from you or not. So let’s really prioritise actual relationships. And that really helps us not to chase the reach, not to go for the big numbers, not to try to write something that kind of everybody appreciates, but rather understanding the specific context and the needs of the person in front of us and then kind of diagnosing and proposing something that would be a great next step for them. So it’s not just content that performs, it’s really real human relationships. And I think that’s good news for all of us.
Next one is depth over doing more. And obviously it’s related to the simplicity and so on, but new isn’t always better, you know. So it may be that you tried something last year, a leadership cohort programme or a webinar, maybe, you know, a workshop or a talk or. Or a coaching programme, and you kind of buried it. But it might just need repositioning. If you ever go through your notebooks and I don’t do this as often as I should, you find gold in there. My goodness. And it’s really embarrassing if, like me, you see that you were thinking about some things like a decade ago and either you still haven’t actioned it or you haven’t kind of given it the space and you know, that it could have done with and could have flourished and you think, oh, my gosh, if I only had done that, I would have been like the ultimate guru in the space by now, instead of competing with people who are only a couple of years in.
So don’t make my mistakes, make your own ones. So if you have an offer from before that needs repositioning, if there’s a platform that kind of was getting traction, but for whatever reason, you kind of pulled back because you’re trying to do too many things, maybe, you know, look at. And again, I talked about the Pareto principle last week, the 20% that give you the 80%. Look at the things that are actually driving results. Look at where your past clients came from, your last, most recent clients, your best clients, and go deeper before you go wider. And I know that’s so hard and it’s easier said than done. And it’s really something we resist as generalists, as portfolio careerists, as renaissance men and women. But we really will get so much more impact if we go deeper rather than wider at this next moment.
Okay, And a few more practical things. A rhythm over reaction. More. More alliteration. Rhythm over reaction. So we cannot be strategic if we’re constantly in survival mode. Okay, so let’s try to build weekly rhythms. And this is something I’ve been doing with clients in the.
In the mentoring programme this week in accelerator. Build rhythms that support you rather than just reacting to what happens to be. In the email. I’ve got this, I’ve got to deliver this week. And so. And you’re running from fire to fire and you’re letting other people determine where you’re spending your. So obviously, in practical terms, this needs you, requires you to be clear on what are the right areas to focus on. It might mean blocking focus, time, you know, building delivery around your energy and finally setting up a proper content rhythm, a sales process and so on.
But having that anchor week, as I. As I call it, really having the clear actions you’re taking, blocking time for deep work strategy, really thinking about what that. And some entrepreneurs have called it kind of a perfectly repeatable week. I’ve called an ideal week in the past what. What that would look like. So you’re not just constantly, every morning going, oh, what should I do now? And next week? Oh, how should I spend my time this week? No, we want to have the stability and consistency from having that rhythm. And it’s a loose rhythm. It’s a loose structure.
It’s not a militant, rigid kind of school schedule that you have to follow. Okay, It’s a structure. It’s a rhythm. Speaking of structure, the next one is structure over scrambling. Now, again, a lot of us are you know, shiny object bunnies, squirrels. We have lots of ideas. We’re doers. That’s why we thrive in working for ourselves.
You know, we get things done, but that’s a bit dangerous too. And. But if we’re going to get it done, why not get it done properly? So if you’re going to reply to an email with information about your programme, then copy that into a document so you have that as a template for the next time. You know, if you’re going to, in my case, you know, let’s say upload podcast episodes every week or schedule emails, whatever it is, you know, let’s document that and establish a process. Either you will outsource that, you’ll delegate it to a human being, or you might delegate it to AI or software, or it might just be for your own sake to just simplify the steps so you can follow that. Okay, Obviously automation and AI is a big part of this, but really understanding what you’re trying to achieve, of course, is the first step. This is how you can stay consistent and follow that rhythm that we just talked about without it feeling really chaotic. If every single client project or sales cycle feels like you’re starting from scratch, then that’s so exhausting and it really is time to fix that now, at this stage of your business, self leadership over self sacrifice.
And we’ve come to the penultimate one here. So look, you’re. You’re the CEO and the entire team, and yet the first person we sacrifice is always ourselves. You may have become your own worst enemy, your own worst ever boss, which is the last thing we want. So really treat your energy like an asset, okay? We manage our time, we manage our energy and we manage our attention. And this is not just the nice to have. Yeah, yeah, we should be taking care of ourselves. No, this is the whole point.
This is the point of why we’re building, building the business for our own sake and for the sake of the business. We need to protect your time, set those boundaries, cancel the thing if you need to, you know, to make sure that this is sustainable and enjoyable as well as profitable for you. Okay? So self leadership over self sacrifice. And the final one, very much building on that. Compassion, please. Compassion. Self compassion over criticism. The shame spiral does not get you better results.
You know, there’s no award for most productive January. Nobody is going to stand up at your funeral and say, well, she got really viral posts on LinkedIn. Okay, so forget about it. Talk to yourself like you were a friend or a client. You know, as I would speak to You. I’m trying to speak to me. You know, this matters that you’re focusing on, so focus on that. You know, I have people saying, oh, I’m so sorry.
I’m focusing on this right now. Yes, you should be focusing on this. You should be taking care of your grandson, you should be taking care of yourself, your partner, going off on holiday and having an amazing time. And I say should, meaning, you know, these are the things that matter. So don’t apologise for it. That’s the whole point. Okay, you’re doing enough and we’ll keep going. We’re in it for the long haul.
You’re not doing anything wrong. Things just take longer and yeah, can feel heavier than they. They you want them to. We’re here for you. You should be here for yourself. Okay, so I won’t repeat them all, but I’m sure I’ll create some carousels and they’ll be in the show. Notes and so on. Listen again and maybe take some notes as to which one is really for you and feels like it really lands. And if it does, then it might be time to take a step back. And, you know, again, I talked about rebuilding, rebooting, upgrading the system that holds your business together. And that’s what we’ll be talking about next week for the final proper episode of 2025. So what does that structure look like? And this is what I’m calling your solopreneur Operator system, your solopreneur os, because it’s all very well to have these intentions and they’re very powerful, but they’re only going to stick and get you results when they’re backed by rhythm and clarity and processes and systems and the right support. If you want help designing that operating system again, I can hint at what’s coming, give you a sneak peek in. In January, there’ll be more to come. There’ll be a free workshop around the Solopreneur operating system and something else as well.
And so if you do want help with rebuilding the way your business actually works, or just really thinking about how you might build differently, then you can join us over at intentionalexpert.com intentionalexpert.com and you’ll get all the details when that’s ready in January. Okay, so I’ll see you back here next week for a sneak peek of your Solopreneur operating system. Bye for now.
If you’re starting to feel like something needs to shift next year in how you work, in how your business runs, or what it’s all really building towards, there’s something new coming soon that’s designed to help. It’s for experienced solopreneurs who want to grow with more clarity, more structure, and more calm without burning everything down. If that sounds like you, head to intentionalexpert.com and pop your name on the waitlist and you’ll be the first to know when more details are ready. That’s intentionalexpert.com.
