Many people on the nine-to-five grind dream about taking their careers into their own hands but balk at the responsibilities of being a business owner. If you want to leave your job and work for yourself but don’t want to be in charge of employees, you should consider becoming a solopreneur.
Here’s what you need to know about becoming your own boss, the lone wolf’s way.
You should first think about how much it will cost to run your solopreneur business. Do some research on what you will need, and consider acquiring top-rated tools for solopreneurs to help manage your work.
Some tools you might need include a domain, website hosting, and an office. If you want to travel often, you may want to get a VPN to access websites out of the country.
You can also look at free tools to save money when you first start. Then, you can keep costs low to make a more significant profit sooner. If you ever need to add more paid tools, you can raise your prices. That way, you’ll still be able to earn enough money to live.
One of the essential steps to becoming a solopreneur is to select the right business idea. Some business models require hiring employees, such as running a restaurant.
However, you can run a service-based business without needing any help. For example, you may offer graphic design services or bookkeeping services that you complete yourself.
Be sure to research the market and consider what services you can offer that others need. Think about the earning potential and if you can make enough to pay your bills.
Of course, you also want to choose something you’re good at and enjoy. Then, you can decide what type of business you can manage on your own.
Once you’re ready to get started, you’ll need to dedicate time to your business. You’ll need to spend time working with clients and handling the administrative side.
If you currently have a full-time job, you might only have an hour a day to work on your new business. But that’s a good start to help you bring in enough clients.
When you have enough money to take your business full-time, you can spend more time on it. Then, you can help more clients and earn more money.
After you reach full-time status, you may not need to work forty hours a week. Times may also vary and leave you working more hours some weeks than others.
To help cover business expenses and your payment, you may want an emergency fund. You can build up your savings before you go full-time in your business.
That way, you’ll have a financial cushion if you don’t make as much money in one month. You may experience periods without any new clients, so savings are essential.
Having an emergency fund can also help you save for taxes. That way, you’ll be able to pay your taxes each quarter and not have to pay a hefty penalty at the end of the year.
If you want to organize your money, create a separate account for taxes. You should save about 25 to 30% of each payment to have enough for your tax bill.
When you’re ready to launch your business, you should start marketing yourself. You can do this by setting up a website and using search engine optimization (SEO)
Social media is another fantastic marketing tool. You can use it to engage with potential customers and answer questions about your services.
Digital marketing is excellent because you can use it for free in the case of social media marketing. That’s super convenient if you don’t have extra money to advertise.
Consider outlining your processes as you start doing client projects and working on administrative tasks. Developing standard operating procedures (SOPs) can help you.
You can figure out everything you need to do and when you need to do it. That way, you can keep up with all of your tasks each day or week.
If you find you don’t have time for everything, you can figure out what to automate. For example, you may use a calendar tool to book client calls without emailing back and forth.
Even if you can’t automate things yet, you still need SOPs. That way, you don’t have to question how to do a specific task or scramble for the process you outlined to the client the last time.
As a solopreneur, working all day and night can be easy. You may need to do that if you have a lot of client projects due soon.
However, you should set a realistic work schedule to follow on most days. That can help you set boundaries with clients and yourself.
You can align your schedule with the traditional office hours of nine to five. If you prefer to work earlier or later, make that your schedule. Do your best not to work outside of your office hours. Then, you’ll still have time to relax and do other things, but you can maintain a successful business.
After you’ve worked as a solopreneur for a while, you may start to reach an income cap. You only have so many hours in a day, so raising prices is the only way to make more money.
But you might have reached the top end of the price range for your service. At that point, you may want to add more income streams.
An easy option is to add a new service related to your current services. So if you currently offer graphic design services, you may add logo design or web design.
You can also look into passive or scalable income streams. These streams don’t require you to work, so you could create an online course or sell design templates that multiple people can buy without you working extra hours.
Becoming a solopreneur can be great, but you need to go about it the right way. Consider your expenses, choose a business idea, and some important services for your company that works for you. Then, you can look forward to working on your own.
