How to Grow Your Business as a Solopreneur - 3 Approaches
There’s a lot to get to grips with when you’re building and growing a business as a solopreneur.
When you’re starting out it’s figuring out your niche and what style of marketing suits you best.
Later on it’s about how to best leverage your time while maintaining or growing your income.
We tend to look around to see what’s working for other people and then question why the same approach doesn’t work for us.
What I see over and over again is that the most effective, and easeful, approach is when we can align our business with our natural strengths.
In this article I’m going to desribe three main growth archetypes that I see in solopreneurs. Under each section you will find a descriptor of the archetype, strengths, challenges and things to focus on for growth that feels sustainable.
Before diving in, if you want to find out the archetype that’s most like you take the quiz here.
Three types of Solopreneur
🌱 Creators
Grow through getting their ideas out into the world. They spot patterns and new perspectives that others can’t and enjoy sharing those with others.
Strengths:
You see things that others don’t.
You appear to have a natural ability to turn your ideas into action.
Your energy is contagious and inspiring to others, who feel drawn to your authenticity and uniqueness.
How this shows in your business:
Clients may seem to ‘appear out of nowhere’
Your clients love working with you because you bring fresh thinking and genuine passion to everything you do.
People experience deep transformation through your work.
What can feel hard:
There are times that you crave more consistency but structure, routine and boundaries can also feel constraining to you.
You can find it hard to switch off because your work is a key creative outlet for you.
You are comfortable in holding lots of moving parts and unknowns but there are times that this tips over to be a source of stress.
🌿 Craftsperson
Grow through a honing their craft. They value long term, deep relationships with clients who are happy to spread the word.
Strengths:
You are skilled at what you do and have spent time honing your craft.
You are generous in sharing your time and expertise with others.
How this shows in your business:
People find you through word of mouth because your clients are happy to refer you.
You pour a lot of care into your client work and go above and beyond to provide everyone with a great service.
Your client relationships are meaningful and long lasting.
What can feel hard:
At times, your desire to be of service and help others can tip over into overgiving, leaving you tired, stressed and stretched too thin.
You can sometimes find yourself repeating the same thing over again which takes away some of the enjoyment for you.
🌳 Cultivators
Grow through their commitment to clarity and structure. They take time to build solid foundations and use content to break down complex ideas.
Strengths:
Your diligence, organisation and commitment to your business are what has helped you build really solid foundations on which to grow.
You’re naturally organised and happiest working behind the scenes of your business putting systems and structures in place.
How this shows in your business:
You’re patient and intentional and show up consistently.
Clients find it easy to build trust with you and you get great results.
You’ve built solid foundations that will stand you in good stead for the long run.
What can feel hard:
Marketing and ‘putting yourself out there’ can feel uncomfortable to you.
This means it can be hard to stay consistent or that progress is slow.
There might be a frustration of doing everything right and not seeing results in return.
🌱 How to grow your business as a Creator
Create a weekly rhythm
When your creative energy is flowing you can likely get a lot done but working in this way can also make it hard to feel like you are building momentum over a longer period. Creating a weekly rhythm that has plenty of space built in can be a way to support the ebb and flow of your energy while also making sure you get done what you need to each week.
Build or outsource a repurposing system
Allow your creative genius to go further. Build a system that allows you to use materials that you have created previously again. Content is a good place to start. You can repost the same piece of content a year later, or you can tweak a newsletter to become a blog, or as notes for a new podcast episode.
Focus your business model
As a creator you likely have a suite of different offers, each serving a slightly different group of people, delivered in a different way, and requiring a slightly different approach to selling. This can work well up to a point, but it also requires a lot of task switching, organisation and adds complexity behind the scenes. Instead, focussing in on one core offer and then using your creativity to market and sell that will reduce your task list as well as creating more clarity for your customers.
🌿 How to grow your business as a Craftsperson
Create a call schedule
Decide in advance how many hours per week you want to be on calls and set up a scheduling tool such as Calendly to allow clients to book slots within that timeframe. You might also want to create different categories for coffee catch-ups with colleagues or enquiry calls from potential clients. That way you are proactively setting a cap on how much time you spend in calls each week, making sure there is time around that to do the other things your business requires.
Share case studies
Creating a case study of your work with a client can be a good integration tool, allowing you both to look back over your time together and review what you’ve achieved. If they are also happy for you to share then it can be a great way to support others in making the decision on whether to work with you or not.
Document your core methodology
As you work with more clients over a period of time you will likely find that your core methodology naturally unfolds. This is often when you find yourself repeating the same advice or guidance, or consistently referring people to the same blog post or online tool. Starting to take note of the patterns in your work and organising them into a methodology or framework is something that will help you start to think about ways to leverage your time through for example, a group programme or online course.
🌳 How to grow your business as a Cultivator
Seek out conversations
As a cultivator you are most likely happiest working behind the scenes of your business. But in order for your business to grow you need to seek out ways to have conversations, with colleagues, peers or potential clients. These can be low key coffee catch-ups, market research calls or offering someone a free taster session. One of the key benefits is just getting used to talking about what you do and gathering information on how to shape your business going forward. Set aside time in your calendar each week to set up these calls and invite people in.
Commit to one marketing pathway
You have most likely tried out several different ways to market your work to varying degrees of success. Rather than spreading yourself too thin across several platforms, try committing to building a consistent rhythm on just one to begin with. Once you feel like you’ve mastered that then you can look at adding the others back in.
Distill your message
As a cultivator, you probably enjoy long form content and building structured ideas. This is a great way to build connection and trust but can also mean that the core message gets lost on the detail. See if you can have a go at describing what you do in one or two sentences and see how that feels.
In Summary
As a business owner there's a lot to get to grips with. When you can align your business model to optimise your strengths that’s what makes your business sustainable.
If you want to know which one of these archetypes best fits your business, check out the quiz below.