The 3 Pillars of Solopreneur Success

To be a successful solopreneur, simply being a technical expert is not enough. Your skills and abilities must be multidimensional, and you need to have a deep burning desire to build your own future. The independent consultants whom people want to work with and whom companies brag about employing bring forward an entire arsenal of tangible and intangible traits.

I want to illuminate those traits not to discourage you from chasing your solo ambitions, but to ensure you can perform an accurate audit of your current capacity to be a true solopreneur. By shining a spotlight on the elements that truly make the difference between success and failure, I will give you a roadmap to building the self-confidence you need to inspire confidence in your future clients.

The three pillars I will discuss are skills, experiences and a mindset that you can nurture. They are all fully within your grasp. Nothing that I, or other successful solopreneurs, employ to build a business came from birth. Each trait was built through intentional effort to strengthen it.

So, let’s break down each pillar and look at the ways I have, and you can, build up the necessary traits for solopreneur success. It all starts with answering three key questions.

1. Have you built your foundation?

Sure, you want to work solo, and I encourage you in that desire. But if you think simply because you have mastered a certain toolset or process that your success is guaranteed, you would be both wrong and following in the footsteps of those who have failed before you.

Do you need to be an expert in your domain? Absolutely. Is that all you need to succeed solo? Absolutely not!

You need a strong foundation from which you can develop a clear Ideal Client Profile (ICP) and a valuable Ideal Client Journey (ICJ). Outside of technical capability, that foundation must include varied industry experience and a robust network.

Before I started MVRK, an agency that specializes in Salesforce CRM Architecture, I had seven years of domain experience. But what gave me a solid foundation was the three years I spent selling Salesforce services at a large consulting firm. During that time, I consulted with hundreds of businesses in dozens of industries. I also built a large network of potential clients and partners.

Those three elements — working with hundreds of businesses, experience across varied industries and a large network — were what gave me an incredibly strong foundation from which to build my business. Make sure your foundation is also solid before you build on top of it.

2. Are all your supporting elements in place?

Even with a solid foundation, a structure will fall without a strong frame. The frame of your business will be tested the moment you have your first client.

The most challenging part of working solo is not the technical aspects; you are already comfortable in that element. It is the soft skills that matter most. These are things that you likely took for granted if your previous experience in consulting came from working as part of a team.

When you are the sole consultant, you are also expected to be the business analyst, the project manager and the client success representative all rolled into one. If you don’t like the sound of that, you need to look long and hard in the mirror and ask if this is a journey you can handle.

I was lucky that my prior mechanical engineering experience and domain expertise helped me develop these traits. If you are not as lucky, thankfully, there are many ways to strengthen these skills in today’s knowledge economy. You can find paid and free courses on each topic, well-established certifications or training programs and plenty of influencers sharing tips and tricks.

There is no reason you can’t develop these supporting elements with some time and effort.

3. Is this your true passion?

This is the most important question you need to ask yourself. Without a deep, burning desire to build your future as a solopreneur, the road will be much harder. You will stray from the path the moment you hit a pothole. To stick with our analogy of these traits making a complete structure, your passion is everything else that makes up the building. In essence, without your passion, the foundation and supporting walls are just a shell.

If you believe deeply that you have what it takes to find success solo and are confident that it’s what you want for your future, the hard work will feel rewarding. This is a mindset that can be nurtured.

For me, it came from two things. For starters, I’ve always been entrepreneurial since a young age, and my consulting practice was not the first business I started. And secondly, I looked around at my industry and saw a tremendous opportunity for a better way to deliver value to clients. I designed my delivery model specifically to make it advantageous to work solo while focusing on bringing oversized value for my clients.

That self-belief and confidence in my ideas was the catalyst for my confidence in going to market. The passion I bring to potential client meetings is what gives them the confidence to invest in working with me. There is no need to pitch or trick my potential clients because my passion radiates through me, and my clarity about how I work best eliminates all potential doubt.

So, lead with passion, follow your heart, and build a winning mindset that your competition can never match!

To be a successful solopreneur, simply being a technical expert is not enough. Your skills and abilities must be multidimensional, and you need to have a deep burning desire to build your own future. The independent consultants whom people want to work with and whom companies brag about employing bring forward an entire arsenal of tangible and intangible traits.

I want to illuminate those traits not to discourage you from chasing your solo ambitions, but to ensure you can perform an accurate audit of your current capacity to be a true solopreneur. By shining a spotlight on the elements that truly make the difference between success and failure, I will give you a roadmap to building the self-confidence you need to inspire confidence in your future clients.

The three pillars I will discuss are skills, experiences and a mindset that you can nurture. They are all fully within your grasp. Nothing that I, or other successful solopreneurs, employ to build a business came from birth. Each trait was built through intentional effort to strengthen it.