Solopreneurship

If you’re a solopreneur, you probably broke away from your 9-5 job to build a business of your own, with the desire of freedom and lifestyle flexibility.

But what usually happens is far different than an instant life of unlimited income and time freedom. In reality, it is common to get bogged down with all the moving parts and missing pieces that are required to make a business successful.

All the moving parts that you were never aware of before taking the big leap, like

• Managing your time so you can fit everything in,

• Networking, and

• Figuring out how to sell (serve) that feels good.

These are some of the things you only learn once you are in business.

Among the most important lessons to learn when starting a solopreneurial adventure, you will need to know:

1. How to set up your time and schedule. How do you organize your days and weeks to fit in all the important business building activities and responsibilities?

2. How do you network in a way that feels effective and focused?

 3. How do you generate leads so that you can create the clients you need and want to serve?

 4. And what about selling?  Selling and sales can be a loaded topic. So many of us hate to feel like we are being “salesy” so much that we may avoid it all together, especially when coming into business from a service-based mindset. How do you sell in a way that feels authentic?

 5. And then later, after you get yourself established, you’ll want to figure out how to grow your business. You will want to scale it in a way that gives you even more freedom and income, beyond the time for money model, so you can serve more clients while also taking care of what’s most important in your personal life.

When you’re just starting out, you don’t know what you don’t know.

Being a solopreneur is a major adventure. And with all adventures you are going to face challenges.

 It reminds me of a dream that I recently had where I set out into the wilderness on a camping trip in the desert. There were wild animals, the potential dangers of other campers, and blizzard warnings on my path, but I knew in my heart that I was going to stay the course. 

I knew that I could trust myself on the path of the unknown. I also knew that I would never be the same after my journey. I would learn all the richness that my spirit wanted me to learn and turn it into a richly successful life.

This dream was just a reminder to me of what we all embark on when we take the brave step into the unknown world of entrepreneurship-especially solopreneurship. It’s a journey that our soul has called us to take.

The problems that might arise, unlike the wild animals and blizzards in my dream, can look like this:

• a disorganized schedule with not enough time in the day to get it all done,

• zero clients calling to sign up for your service,

• an empty or negative bank account,

• and of course, the internal obstacles you may face when it comes to selling and your relationship with money. 

All of these obstacles are part of the wilderness of the unknown when you embark on the journey of solopreneurship.

In my dream, I felt safe because I had one thing protecting me: my intuition, or my sense of inner knowing.

Some may call this the soul, inner wisdom, intuition, spirit, or God. Regardless of your beliefs, I believe we all have access to this universal guidance that we can learn to tap into on our journey.

In my dream, I realized I had developed it enough to trust it and keep me safe, and so none of the scary possibilities could ever really hurt me. And that is what I want to teach you with this podcast. How to trust your intuition as a solopreneur, and as a human living the adventure of life.

Three Ways to Embrace the Adventure of Solopreneurship

1. Develop your powerful intuition within so you can be guided and protected by the truth in all new business situations.

Learn to trust yourself. You have a strong gut sense, otherwise you wouldn’t have embarked on the path to entrepreneurship. The question then becomes, “How can you learn to hear it and trust it, especially in a world of noise and clutter?”

2. Create systems and structures to set you up for success: organizing your time, networking and generating the right leads, and creating a sales strategy that feels authentic.

Service-based businesses (and all businesses for that matter) come down to one thing: developing relationships.

Your clients want to build a relationship with you and trust you, so that they can do business with you. And when you have systems for all of this, you can focus your energy on what you do best.

3. And then, figuring out a way to expand your business to give you even more freedom and wealth, so you can live life on your terms. Because let’s be honest, you didn’t quit your soul sucking job just to become trapped on a sinking ship.

The first step is to get clear about what you really want as a solopreneur. Get a piece of paper or journal and write down what your best case scenario would look like to you. The clearer you are, the easier everything else will be. To me, solopreneurship is about:

• Having the freedom to structure my time in a way that works best for me, and for my flow, or my energy levels throughout the day and weeks. When I was an employee, I had to adapt to someone else’s box, and now I can create my own ideal schedule.

•  It means being able to serve my clients in ways that I couldn’t do with other professions.  Because when I was working for someone else, my energy was limited. And when my energy is limited, it didn’t make me feel like I was offering my best service. I couldn’t tell the full truth, I had to filter it. I had to follow their rules even if I knew a better way. I couldn’t do outside the box things like take a walk with a client or go to a retreat. But now as a solopreneur, I can use my unique skills to serve my clients in the ways I know are best for them. That is priceless and I am helping more people now than I could before, when I was working for someone else.

• It means being able to create unlimited income. As an employee, I had to stay in the money box that someone else created. I had a salary, hourly wage, or made commissions that were stable and secure, but limited. Now, as a tradeoff for that security (which was a little prison), I can tap into my creative flow and create unlimited abundance.  And this abundance includes money.

• But most importantly, I believe that we are all born with unique gifts inside of us, that are kind of like golden nuggets. We have these unique golden nuggets inside, and our job as humans is to discover them, mine them and turn them into value that serves our fellow humans. This creates value, wealth, and abundance in so many ways, making the world a richer place. It’s a ripple effect of value that can change the world. So, what’s your vision? Start with that vision, and you’ll be on your way to creating a business and life that you love.