Thomas Griffin February 23, 2021 When most people think about solopreneurship, they’re struck by the idea that they can be their own boss, work when they feel like it, and follow their passions.
While this can be true, it’s only half the picture.
Solopreneurship is where a person starts and runs a business entirely on their own.
A solopreneur registers their own business, creates the website, writes all the content, does marketing, customer support, accounting, and everything else.
And this makes sense in a few cases:
- You lack the money or resources to hire other people to work for you
- You have a strong preference to work alone and not be responsible for others
- You’re starting out and experimenting, with the intention to invest more if your business does take off
It’s important to be aware of the challenges that come with solopreneurship. Even if you’re currently successful, it’s possible that you should quit working alone and hire more people, sell your business and get a normal job, or partner up with another business.
We’ll look at signs or situations that make it clear that you should consider quitting as a solopreneur and start working with a team. With the pointers in this post, you’ll know if you should keep working solo or grow in a different way.
Lack of accountability
When you run your business alone, the lack of accountability there is can be both a bonus and a negative factor.
On the one hand, you don’t face any external pressure to achieve your goals. On the other hand, you have to struggle to motivate yourself in the long run. You may find yourself procrastinating and hurting your business when you don’t have the social and work pressure to do your work.
So, ask yourself if you’ve been slacking lately and find it hard to do what you should right now. Working with other people can help you get back on track.
Limited creativity
When you work with other people, you benefit from getting ideas from different sources. What’s more, you’ll also get valuable feedback when you’re heading in the wrong direction.
Working as a solopreneur means relying on yourself for all your ideas. This can get exhausting fast. Not to mention, you may look over mistakes because only your eyes are on your content, marketing plan, or data analysis.
Note if you’ve been making more mistakes than usual. Do you feel like you’ve hit a wall in any area of your business? Finding the answer to this can help you decide if you need to work in a larger team.
Lack of focus
What do you focus on when every aspect of your business relies on you? Do you push aside the need to update your WordPress core for your website or do you ignore customer feature requests?
You may have invested in a new marketing course or tool to grow your business, but what good is it if you’re too occupied with fixing bugs in your product?
If your attention is scattered and you’re not seeing progress in any area, then it’s likely that working alone isn’t working for you
Inability to innovate
When you have a growing business, you’re also occupied with a never-ending list of jobs to just maintain the current level of success you’re experiencing.
If you’re busy just trying to handle customer support tickets and or fixing email deliverability issues, then you’re forced to put aside other important tasks. Tasks like listening to your customers and building new feature requests.
You’re forced to ignore important marketing trends or data collection and analysis techniques that can grow your business fast.
You’re also missing the expertise of other professionals who can inform you on ways to innovate and help you practically carry out new changes in your business.
At some point, your customers will know that you’re stagnating and there’s a strong chance that they’ll start looking for a new business to meet their needs.
Exhaustion and social isolation
Not many single-person businesses reach the ideal state where their business effortlessly brings in revenue and the business owner has enough leisure for personal obligations and pursuits.
In most cases, you’re rarely able to take extended time off since if you don’t work then your business doesn’t make money either.
And you can get so overwhelmed with the unending list of things to do that you become isolated from other people.
These are extreme scenarios but not uncommon ones either. If you’re starting to feel exhausted from managing everything yourself and don’t have time for friends and family, then you should consider changing your business model.
Consider reaching out to a business that doesn’t do exactly what you do, but which has products and services that complement yours.
If you’re able to partner with a larger company, then you can introduce more products to your existing customers. And if your product is the kind to experience highs and lows depending on the time of the year, there will be other products in your portfolio to maintain your income.
Back to you
The points covered in this post can help you see the reality of working solo.
Being a solopreneur can be liberating but it can also wear you down especially if your business grows.
At some point, you need to step back from managing day-to-day tasks if you want to market your business and innovate. In such cases, you can opt to hire more people and focus on the broader picture. You can sell your business or partner with another brand.
Use the five signs or signals in this post to help you make the right decision for you. Quitting your work as a solopreneur can lead to the next step in your personal and professional growth.
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