One for the Solopreneurs
Solopreneur
noun
a person who sets up and runs a business on their own
In the last few months, I’ve had a good few people tell me they’re thinking about leaving their jobs and exploring the possibility of going out on their own. “What’s it like?” they say. And I can see the excitement in their eyes, like they’re expecting I’m going to tell them it’s a utopia. Some are more realistic, thankfully! I had a brilliant exchange with one person recently who explained that going independent had been on the edge of her thinking for a while now and it’s increasingly looking more attractive, but she also understands it's not all “rainbows & butterflies” and “in fact it may be more stressful than in-house”. She’s not wrong, but the stresses are different and on the positive side, so is the payback.
Let me lay this out clearly at the start, I am so happy this is my world at the moment. It’s providing me with the flexibility I need to be more present with my family, prioritise my health and to help with the 11+ pressures, but that’s in this moment, right here and now. It doesn’t always work like that. It didn’t work when I had two overlapping projects, my regular coaching clients and a new executive team to plan a multi-date development journey for. The upside - my business was thriving, the down side - I was broken and had no time for anything else.
Being a solopreneur isn’t just a change to how you work, but also how you live. This can be brilliant if the two decide to corroborate their timing, seamlessly giving you all the work when there aren’t too many demands on your personal time and quietening down when it’s school holidays, but when they haven’t had that little chat or have decided to conspire against you, it’s really quite painful. I’ll pause here and say, people in salaried jobs experience this too - totally get it, I’ve been there, but there are two things that are different when you experience this as a solopreneur. One, when you’re booked on client work, you’re giving everything to the client - no expectation of flexibility because of the late notice school sports fixture or illness - you’re going to be letting someone down either way. Two, it’s just you. Nobody to brainstorm solutions with, no teammates to pick you up when it’s tough, nobody to cover meetings for you, no finance team to send and chase your invoices, no marketing team to promote your brand and services… I don’t need to go on, you get it!
I guess what I’m saying is, the feast and famine model is very real and you do have to embrace it: that’s to be prepared financially, look to diversify your product and services, but also consider how it might impact the way you live your life and where to draw your boundaries, especially if you’re considering the solopreneurship move to get more flexibility. My boundaries give me the upsides. Things like my non-negotiable Monday mornings - family breakfast, setting myself up for the week, spin class and admin out of the way; getting to ALL the pre-planned school events because they’re blocked out of my diary and I am in control of it; spending time working on things that genuinely interest and bring me joy and no time on things that don’t.
I have always been a passionate supporter and promoter of balance - what that means here is accepting that for every rainbow and butterfly there will be a dark cloud and a wasp (I’ve never met anyone who likes a wasp) - thinking about what those might be and how you might handle them surprisingly does a lot to ward them off, and if they still arrive, you’re prepared to take them on.
I regularly share bits of my solopreneurship journey on LinkedIn, but if you’d like a chat about what it’s like, please do get in touch. I’ve had (and still do have) some wonderfully generous advice from people who’ve been there and done it and I’d love to share it forward if it’ll help.
