■Free live training · once a week

Find the solo business ideas worth building in 60 minutes.

You are good at what you do, but every idea you come up with feels too risky, too vague or too late. In 60 minutes, learn how to turn your skills into a solo business that makes bank.

Free · live · 60 minutes

Save your seat.

■Thu October 29, 2026 · 12:00 pm ET

Days

Hours

Minutes

Seconds

■Why you must get the idea right

The wrong idea can set you back months you'd never get back.

A wrong idea rarely feels wrong in the beginning. It drains months of evenings and a chunk of your savings before you see the problem, and by then you’d have built your offer and your marketing on top of it.

20%

of new US businesses close within their first year.

US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, 2024

49%

of new US businesses close within 5 years.

US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, 2024

35%

of failed startups said there was no market need for what they built.

CB Insights, 111 startup post-mortems, 2021

Run your own numbers.

Put in your own estimates and see what a wrong first idea could cost you.

What could your business earn a month once it runs?$How many months could a wrong first idea cost you?months

Income a 3 month delay costs you$12,000

What The Shortlist costs you$0

On your numbers, a wrong first idea costs $12,000. That is why The Shortlist starts with the idea.

These are your estimates, not a promise. We cannot guarantee you an income. The math leaves out the savings a later launch also burns.

Started on lunch breaks

Hi, my name is Stella Guan. I am a:

Profitable-from-Day-1 solo business owner.

At 18, I moved from China, on a full scholarship, to the US with 3 suitcases, on my own. By my mid 20s, I was making over 6 figures at a Fortune 500 company in New York City and owned a home. I was winning in life, or so it seemed.

Deep down, I wanted to build my own dream, not someone else’s. So I self-petitioned my EB-1A green card, planned my business on my lunch breaks, and within months quit to start a profitable-from-Day-1 education tech company as a first-time solo founder. Today, I run several solo expertise businesses while traveling the world.

This Uncommon Life is how I help you start yours: build your Plan A on your lunch breaks, so you never have to ask anyone’s permission to take a vacation again.

Follow Stella

Reviews

Hear what others say.

My session with Stella was exceptionally informative and truly inspiring. She offered plenty of go-to-market strategies and tactics.

Katya Az

1:1 mentoring

E-commerce

Highly recommend if you’re looking for a no-bullshit, warm, and all-in mentor for your startup.

Amritha Mani

1:1 mentoring

Coaching

Working with Stella Guan was eye-opening for our up-skilling platform.

Min H

1:1 mentoring

Education

■What you leave with

Leave with a solo business direction that actually makes money.

You do the work during the session, using your own history with our framework, and you leave with clarity you’ve never had before.

Your strengths

Find out what idea is actually worth building

Your strongest directions are already inside the work you have done. We help you find them, so you are not choosing from a list of businesses built for other people.

Your shortlist

Decide which ideas to stop thinking about

Most people arrive attached to a favorite. By the end you know whether it holds up, and if it does not, you know exactly why. That beats another year of wondering.

Your next step

Know what to do next

You leave with the direction most likely to work for you, and a short list of what still has to be true before you put money, your notice or a resignation letter behind it.

The Shortlist framework

Run every idea through 4 filters and see which one survives.

Every idea sounds good until you test it. Our framework puts each of your ideas through 4 filters, in order, and only the strongest make it to the end. The filters stay inside the session, where we run all 4 on your own ideas, live.

Free, live and 60 minutes

Live only

Where most favorite ideas fall out.

Revealed in the session

Live only

Where you find out if you can stand out.

Revealed in the session

Live only

Where you see if you can start this year.

Revealed in the session

Live only

Where you learn if it can pay you.

Revealed in the session

■The session

Learn how to choose a business idea in 60 minutes.

It runs in 8 parts: 40 minutes of method with a live exercise, then 20 minutes of sharing ideas and questions. There are no slides about mindset, and no half-hour origin story before anything useful starts.

In 60 minutes, you will learn

The 4 filters

The 4 filters that show whether an idea is commercially viable, before you build anything.

The cost

Why a wrong first direction can cost you years, and how to spot one early.

Your history

How to dig a business idea out of the work you already do.

Your favorite

Whether the idea you are most attached to holds up, or what to build instead.

Follow the minute-to-minute breakdown

00:00 - 06:00

Part 01

Learn what makes a great business idea

The key elements that separate a great business idea from a bad one.

06:00 - 10:00

Part 02

See the cost of getting the idea wrong

You have to steer the ship right to reach the right destination, and a wrong direction is expensive to undo.

10:00 - 20:00

Part 03

Put every idea through the 4 filters

The 4 filters that decide whether an idea has commercial viability.

20:00 - 28:00

Part 04

Learn our signature idea framework

A framework that digs an idea out of what you already do.

28:00 - 40:00

Part 05

Apply the framework to your own history

Exercise time. You dig into your own career, live, on paper or in a doc.

40:00 - 45:00

Part 06

Share your idea in the rapid fire showcase

Post your idea in the chat, in a sentence or two.

45:00 - 50:00

Part 07

Plan where to go from here

How to take action once your idea is set.

50:00 - 60:00

Part 08

Bring your questions to the rapid fire Q&A

Ask your burning questions in the chat. Stella answers every question, in the chat or by email the next day.

Live attendee bonus

Get your solo business ideas scored when you join live.

Join the session live and you get a fillable score sheet built on the 4 filters from the workshop. It goes only to people who attend live.

■Fit

Who this session is for.

It is free, so you lose nothing either way. But an hour is an hour, so here is who we built it for.

Come if one of these sounds like you

Skip this session if one of these is true

■What comes next

Go from an idea to a real profitable solo business.

Knowing what to build is the hard part, and after this hour you will have it. Building it takes a different kind of work, and most founders want help with that part. So near the end of the session we spend a few minutes on Plan A, the 8 week program this method comes from.

In this session

You decide what you are building.

You leave with the direction, the reasons it holds up, and the specific things that still have to be true. The hour is free, and what you take away is yours to use however you like.

In Plan A

You build it with hands-on guidance from a successful solo business owner.

You prove the demand with real buyers, shape the offer, set the price, and work out how customers find you. You can take it from here on your own. It is also how many founders spend 2 years and a lot of money reaching an answer that Plan A, our launch program, gets you to in 8 weeks.

■Questions

Answers to frequently-asked questions.

Is it actually free, or is it free until a card is required?

It is free. You do not enter a card when you register or during the session. We run the workshop because some of the founders who attend later apply to Plan A, our launch program, and that is the whole business model behind it.

What if I cannot make it at the start time?

Register anyway. We do not send recordings, but the training room stays open for 48 hours after the session, and we email you a link to save your seat at the next one. You will miss the live chat, which is where founders who already have ideas get the most out of it, so join at the start time if you can.

I have no idea what I would sell. Is this too early for me?

We built this session for you. The first half of the workshop works from a blank page, and the registration form asks whether you have ideas yet so we can follow up in a way that fits your situation.

I already have an idea. Will this just tell me to abandon it?

Sometimes, and finding that out is worth an hour. More often your idea survives in a narrower, more specific form than the one you brought in. Either way, you leave knowing where it stands.

Do I have to turn my camera on or speak?

No. There is no camera and no microphone: you watch in your browser and take part through the chat. Write your real situation there, and Stella answers it in the chat or in the summary email the next day.

How is this different from the free idea lists everywhere online?

A list of business ideas does not know anything about you. It cannot know what you have been paid to do, who you can reach, or what you would refuse to spend the next 5 years on. Everything in this session comes out of your own history, so you leave with 1 direction you believe in.

Will anyone see what I share?

Other attendees can see what you write in the chat, so keep anything confidential out of it. Your first name is enough. We never share or publish anything you write in the registration form.

How often does it run, and what happens if I miss this one?

It runs once a week in the same format. If this date does not work, register anyway and we will let you know about the next one. We update the material as the questions change, so a later session is just as good.

■Free live training · once a week