Plan Your Escape: Solopreneur Insights, Vol. 1
This one is for those of you who are currently employed.
Check this out: Your employer pays you to provide your Marketable skill to them so that they can turn around and sell it to their customers.
Of course, you get a fraction of what they charge the customer. Partly because they have overheads beyond the cost of your skill. Partly because they simply don’t make money without marking up their employees’ services.
Meanwhile, you wonder to yourself, “Do I have what it takes to start and run my own business?”
I remember asking myself this question years ago, while I was still working as a designer at an agency.
Here’s what didn’t occur to me back then, and what I want to occur to you now:
If your boss is selling your skill to their customer, this means the customer is indirectly buying your skill. In other words, you already have what it takes to sell your skill directly to the customer!
Now, it’s not that simple, of course. The company you work for likely has a marketing team, a customer-service department, administrators, account reps, project managers, operational teams, and at least some form of brand equity in their market.
OK, so that means running your own business requires more than just your skill, right?
You got it.
At a minimum, you’re going to need your own marketing, project management, operational systems, and customer-service processes, and a network of any other service providers required to deliver your skill to the client.
You’ve already crossed the major hurdle: proving you can provide the Marketable Skill to the client.
But, you can’t afford to be like countless others who started and failed fast because they overlooked what else is required to run a Solo business.
So, let’s form a plan for how to get started on building these now.
Marketing
Think of marketing like farming. You plant seeds and nurture them as they grow. Eventually, they bring you 100x what you put into them.
Your best bet for marketing is to begin sharing the solutions you provide right now. It’s called proof-of-work. This includes collecting your work into portfolio entries, case studies, and client stories.
The beauty of effective marketing? The qualified prospect immediately understands that you can solve the problem they have. They seek you. It’s glorious. But, it requires time and repetition. This is why it’s critical to start your marketing now.
Start sharing content specifically related to your skill, your industry, and your experience on social media. Stay on target. Stop filling your timelines with sports, TV, news, and any other irrelevant topics. Over time, people will see you as the go-to resource in your market.
Project Management
If you’re getting your work done for your boss each day, then you already have systems in place. Start thinking now about how you can leverage any elements of your current system if you were to deliver the service directly to the client. Tighten up all inefficiencies and map out your own process from start to finish. This will save you valuable time when you go out on your own.
Operational Systems
There’s a lot more to running a business than just providing your Marketable Skill to the client. At the very least, you’ll need to learn about project scoping, estimating, contracts, business structures, and billing.
Study how your current employer gets these done. I’ve known plenty of people who have leveraged their past employer’s documents and workflow structures to use in their own business. This is a great starting point, providing it’s not proprietary, of course.
Otherwise, start reaching out to others who are serving clients already. Genuinely connect with them. Ask what they do. Follow and learn from established Solopreneurs. You’ll learn a ton from their experience and have a head start when your day finally arrives.
Customer Service
Once again, it’s never too early to learn from your current employer’s models. Map out how they handle customer service from start to finish. Your primary goal is to begin building at least a rough process for how you engage customers from the first introduction to when they’re sending you money (and beyond, if you want them coming back). Fundamentally, you want to set their exact expectations, then exceed them.
If you understand your clients’ needs, your own processes, and have basic people skills at all, you’ll have what it takes to define a clear Customer Service Experience. From there, you can begin to improve it with each client interaction: Emails, calls, branded documents, file delivery, and so on.
I can’t emphasize this part enough. I’ve watched so many talented Solopreneurs crash and burn because they botched their client interactions out of the gate.
Network
The biggest misconception about Solopreneurship is that you’re going it alone in all ways at all times. You can go alone for a while, but eventually, you’re going to hit what I call The Solopreneur Ceiling. The only way out is to expand the network of people who help you serve your clients.
The difference for the Solopreneur is that these people are never on your payroll. This means you need to start building teams of people who can help you ultimately get the work done.
Seek people with the same skill set as you, marketers, remote project managers, and coaches who eventually will help you on your journey. The worst time to find out you need these folks is when you landed a whale, and you have no one you can trust to help you bring it in. Start networking now.
If you’re even remotely tempted to start your own business at some point, I can tell you this right now: Sooner or later, you’re going to need to scratch that itch.
Remember: You’ve already proven that you have the fundamental Marketable Skill - the foundation of everything else.
Start building the rest of the items above long before you’re ready to ditch your job for good, and you’ll hit the ground running. Pick just one item to start on this week, then build on your momentum.
You have what it takes, friend!
Build the next step on your path to Solopreneur freedom!
– Torrey
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Smart Solopreneurs hire experienced guides.
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