The Beauty of The Solopreneur Life

I’ve always done things that went against what I was “supposed” to do. Ever since I was five years old, if I could challenge the status quo, I would. Ask my parents if you want the laundry list of examples. 

Apparently, that hasn’t changed in adulthood. And Elizabeth joined me for the wild ride. When we met, we couldn’t be more different. She was a great student. I never met a test that I liked. She was happy to leave school and get a traditional job. I was excited to leave school and start freelancing again. I wound up taking a job and knew I had made a mistake within one month of employment. 

All of these years later, we are now both “unemployable.” Not only that- without meaning to- we’ve thumbed our noses at much of what society taught us that we needed to do. We were told to get a good job, let them provide a steady income, have them pay for benefits while sending our kids to school for their education. 

Instead, we run our own business and we homeschool our kids. 

For so many people, how we live our lives seems confusing. It leaves them uncomfortable to even ask questions. But with people who “get it”, the conversations are rich, vibrant and engaging. And even within that world, we are still kind of odd. Because we don’t have a business that most understand. 

Why?

Because we are solopreneurs. Actually, that doesn’t make sense because it’s the two of us. I’d call us duel-preneurers. But we’ll stick with the solopreneur term because it’s already known. What does that work life look like?

• We don’t have employees. 
• We have very little overhead. 
• We don’t have a big team around us. We have a small number of contractors that we work with when needed. 
• We have nearly complete control of our work schedule. 
• We create content, products and services for a small niche of people that are specific to our skills and interests. 
• We don’t answer to anyone above us. 
• We can make fast decisions. 
• We can make the rules, and we can break the rules. 
• We can be ourselves without having to maintain a branded image. 
• Actually, being ourselves becomes our branded image. 

And we have built this to where time freedom is the most valuable asset. With that as the focus, when a typical week starts, no more than six hours of that week is expected from me through client work. Because of that boundary, there is freedom to create. There is freedom to think. There is freedom to plan. If I want to have a three-hour phone call, I can. If I want to spend a day at the beach thinking of new ideas, I can. If I want to work a long, rigorous week to create a course or work on a book, I can. 

That’s where what we do is so confusing even for other entrepreneurs. 

In my coaching, research and conversations, I have observed that at least 80% of problems and issues with business owners come from either the people that work for them or the people that they have to answer to. By eliminating all of that from the beginning, we were able to create a structure that could constantly be tweaked and improved. 

It wasn’t always this way. Each week, month and year, it has improved incrementally. 

But this is the beauty of solopreneur life that most people don’t realize. We can move quickly without obstacles. We can decide to only work with those we align with and create products to teach those who don’t align yet. Economic downturns have little effect because running a lean business allows you to be prepared for any situation and not be thrown into a tizzy by having to let employees go. 

In any area of life or business, when you make a decision that eliminates 80% of the potential problems, drama and frustration, it allows you to focus on truly building out the life- and business- that you have always wanted. 

Being a solopreneur gets a bad rap in this business culture. We are told that we should all be building something huge, something bigger. We are told to build teams around us and to outsource nearly everything. But with that often comes what Seth Godin calls Management Debt. We spend our time managing our managers and not doing work that we truly want to be doing. And before we know it, we have built a business that takes our time, sucks our energy, becomes so essential to our lives- and the employees’ lives- that it feels like being in a spiral that we don’t know how to get out of. 

The solopreneur- if done well- eliminates all of that. Solopreneurs can get up every day and do the work they love, when they want, for who they want.

Sometimes, less is more. In the solopreneur life, less means more freedom. More time. More doing the work you truly love and easily eliminating the work you don’t love. 

Have an AMAZING week!

Vincent