Today’s Wall Street Journal has a nice column by Elizabeth Bernstein on the use of “I’m busy” as a point of pride. (It’s behind the paywall at wsj.com/articles/youre-not-busy-youre-just-rude-1489354275. Seriously, consider a subscription; it’s a great newspaper. You may not always agree with the editorial page, but the reporting is high quality and neutral. These days, we need to support real journalists.)
According to Bernstein, studies have found that “busier people are perceived as having a high status. ‘We place a high value on hard work and rewarding effort, which is really rewarding activity and not necessarily achievement,’ says Woody Woodward […] Bernstein encourages us to stop using “busy” as a positive description but, instead, to focus on what specifically is eating up our time—and, just as importantly, to own our free time as rightfully ours.
I was chatting with a friend the other day who, among other things, is a professional wallpaper installer. A local hotel had contacted her and asked for a bid to redo all the wall coverings in their halls. She knew that her price would be higher than others in town; in fact, she knew that her client was getting competing bids. But as we talked, she thought through what her client was actually paying for.
One of the scariest things a solopreneur has to do is start the discussion of how much a project will cost. You might be having a great conversation with your client, in which you learn everything your client needs and you figure out how you can delight your client with your deliverable. Then comes the big moment where one of you has to start talking about cost….
I’m from Boulder, where there seem to be more professional rock climbers than people like me who like our feet planted firmly on terra firma. Whenever I drive up a canyon, I can see the tiny figures of people halfway up a sheer rock face, appearing to defy both gravity and common sense.
If you are a true Star Wars fan, you know who 
I used to advise new solopreneurs to invest in a professionally-designed logo – something that reflects well on their business and conveys a certain permanence. And while I have one that I use for invoices and proposals on letterhead, I haven’t used a logo on a business card for years.
I just saw a car with a large sign for a local housecleaning service, 
We solopreneurs are CEOs of our business, but that stands for Chief Everything Officer. We are responsible for everything from strategic planning to marketing to sales to accounting to – oh, yeah – whatever it is that we charge our clients for.