A solopreneur is a person who started their own business, owns their own business, runs their own business and is responsible for their own business’ whether it fails or succeeds.
The benefits of being a solopreneur are better experienced than reported, yet if you’re curious about the lives of these disentangled, high-risk, high-reward captains of their own fate and are considering taking the same plunge, here’s what you can expect.
1. You can be a workaholic if you want to.
And no ones going to stop you. Workaholics get a lot of stick for being a workaholic. But if you’re solopreneur and working relentlessly is your thing, then you get to do it and no one will stop you, you’ve got no boss to please. No employees to harass. Just you doing what you love whenever however for as long as you want.
2. You get to keep what you make.
Yes, you have to pay taxes. On the other hand, your business profits are yours alone. The money your business makes is the money that you make. And with this comes a massive sense of achievement.
3. You can turn on a dime.
Pivots are a survival tactic. Solopreneurs pivot, too, and they can do so without any accountability to shareholders, stakeholders, board members, employees, investors or even a pet cat. They can pivot like nobody’s business.
4. You get to choose everything about your business.
It takes a lot of decision-making to run the business. From the carpet’s hue to the company’s slogan, you decide everything. If you’re a sucker for control, you’ve chosen the right line of work.
5. You can create your own schedule.
A 9-to-5, a 5-to-9, or a 9-to-9? What gives? You’re the one in charge. Deciding how, when, where and how long to work is completely up to you. Most solopreneurs, though, don’t choose to binge-watch Netflix, sleep in or loll, poolside. And “creating your own schedule” is just another way to describe the inflexibility and demands of working all the time.
6. You are responsible for your own success.
You have to take big risks if you want big rewards. Solopreneurs internalize this truth. Rather than leave their success to the whimsy of an employer, they choose to take their success firmly in hand.
7. You experience adventure every day.
An adventure is defined as “an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity.” That basically sums up solopreneurship. Job security? Not a chance. Steady paycheck? Nope. Benefits? You’re kidding. You live a life of adrenalin-pumping adventure, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Conclusion
Have you noticed a pattern running through each of these benefits. Each can be tweaked ever so slightly, and ultimately turn into a terror.
So, the life of a solopreneur is not for anyone. It takes an iron stomach and a clear head to pull off this kind of self-brutalization and insane risk.
What’s more, these risks of soloentrepreneurship are high, and you can completely dispense with any level of normalcy
You hear people complain of their “healthcare,” and you think what health care? Others brag about their four weeks of accrued vacation time, and you smirk about your unlimited vacation time. Conventional cubicle dwellers moan about their mean boss, but you know the meanest boss that ever walked the planet — yourself.
The risks are high. The burdens are great. Yet the experience is transformative.
The few who have tried and succeeded at solopreneurship invariably achieve great things.
Whether they continue as solopreneurs, metamorphize into entrepreneurs or leave it all behind them, they know what the solopreneur life is about, and they have the glory stories to tell about it.
