5 Ways Corporate Life Prepared Me for Solopreneur Life
Borrow the tactics successful companies use.
I’m not a person who always dreamed of self-employment.
In fact, I spent 17 years in the corporate world, including five as an executive.
Do I wish I’d started a solopreneur life sooner? Sometimes. But in reality, I gained a lot of knowledge about running a business from my years in corporate.
I still had to figure out my deliverables, my messaging, and how I would acquire new clients. But borrowing concepts from the corporate world helped me to quickly adapt to a solopreneur life.
1. Review your financials
Money can be tough when you’re first starting as a solopreneur. You hope only to earn enough money to cover your living expenses. You’re thinking only about the cash coming in and going out, rather than the overall health of the business.
When I was part of an executive team, we looked at the company’s financials monthly and compared it with the budget. It was a way to assess how things were going and if we needed to make any adjustments.
In my experience, solopreneurs overlook their financials because they don’t know what they’re looking for. Your finances are likely simple and there are a few key things to watch for:
Income and Expenses:
How much money do you earn per month and how much do you spend on your business? What’s the difference between the two (your profit)? At a minimum, you need to keep track of income and expenses for tax purposes.
Budget:
Plan for how much you expect to earn per month and how much you expect to spend. Then compare to your actual income and actual expenses. Once you start earning a profit per month, you can budget for things like professional development or paying yourself for vacation time.
Trends:
I compare my profit between months, and also to the same month in the prior year. Comparing month-over-month shows me if my business is growing and comparing to the same month in the prior year takes seasonal fluctuations into account.
I have a separate checking account and credit card for my business, to make tracking my financials really easy. I am using Wave for accounting and it generates reports for me with the click of a button (previously I used Quickbooks Self-Employed).
2. Spend money to save time
Every employer I’ve worked for had an approach to expenses. Some wanted to keep expenses as low as possible. Others understood that certain expenses were an investment, like licensing an app or tool that would make employees more efficient.
I’ve talked with a lot of solopreneurs who try to keep their expenses as low as possible — even long after they’re profitable.
But here’s the problem: when it’s just you, your time is everything.
Let’s say an app costs $15/month, but it will save you at least an hour of time every week. How much is your time worth? What else could you be doing with that time?
Even when I was earning very little as a freelance writer, I spent money on tools. If it saved me time, it was worth the cost because then I could use that time for more client work.
You can factor your expenses into your budget, especially if there’s something you think could help, but don’t want to spend the money right now. Plan that once you hit a certain income level, you’ll invest in additional tools or apps for your business.
Anna Burgess Yang
3. Fill your pipeline with marketing
No matter how good you are at what you do, clients are unlikely to just “find” you. And it can take a long time to grow a business based solely on referrals.
I worked for two different employers that were (frankly) terrible at marketing. They never invested in it. No surprise, business was really rocky at times. The pipeline could be fine for months and then quickly dry up.
That type of unpredictability is even harder for a solopreneur. Business often have savings they can fall back on in the lean months. But when it’s just you, it can be incredibly stressful.
You have to market yourself. Constantly. Even when you don’t need it.
There are a lot of different approaches. I don’t like cold pitching, so I’m active on LinkedIn. I appear on podcasts and write guest essays that put me in front of my target audience. As a result, I’m constantly having conversations with potential clients. Most of my work is ad hoc, so I never worry that I’m taking on more work than I can handle.
4. Balance boundaries with business impact
One of the best parts about being a solopreneur: you get to set your own boundaries with clients.
No more “this client is really important so my boss told me to put up with a jerk.” Or “this client is demanding something we don’t normally do, but my boss said to do it anyway.”
You don’t have to work with jerks. You don’t have to do anything outside of your contract with your client.
But you do have to think about the business impact of your decisions.
I’ve worked with clients I didn’t like because I needed money. But as soon as I started earning more, I dropped them.
I’ve done work outside of the scope of an agreement because I saw a longer-term tradeoff in future business with a client.
But I also stick to certain boundaries, like taking vacation time and not doing any client work. I also typically won’t respond to clients outside of my normal working hours.
Decisions you make can have a downstream effect. So if you’ve set boundaries and are thinking about bending them, ask yourself: Will this have a positive impact on my business? Will this have a negative impact in the future? And decide from there.
5. Think about your strategic vision
Companies plan for their growth, usually for at least the upcoming year. When I was an executive, I participated in annual strategic planning. We’d do a retrospective of the prior year and think about what the company’s goals were for the upcoming year.
It wasn’t only about the budget and targeted income. It was about initiatives, such as launching a new product or hiring additional people. What was the company going to do in the upcoming year?
As a solopreneur, maybe a year is too far into the future, especially if you’re just starting out. But you should go through some type of goal-setting exercise.
Where do you see yourself in the next quarter, or six months from now? If you could change one thing about your business, what would it be? What feels like it isn’t working?
Year-end is a great time to reflect, but you can do strategic planning at any time — especially if you feel like you need to pivot. That’s the beauty of a solopreneur life: you don’t need to wait for a company’s blessing to change course.
And it’s also ok to acknowledge that things are going well and you simply want to maintain what you have. Solopreneur life doesn’t have to mean constant growth, especially if growth means that you’re working too many hours or feeling overwhelmed. Your strategic vision might include spending more time on your interests outside of your business.
But you need to have clarity, no matter what you’re doing. You should be working toward your vision of an ideal solopreneur life.
Check out my free guide: 17 Smart Tools Solopreneurs Need to Start, Grow, and Scale.