Last year, in January of 2024, I quit my 9-to-5 to become a freelance solopreneur full-time. And I failed.
I’ll walk through what happened and what went wrong so you can avoid these pitfalls.
By starting your solopreneurship journey on the right foot, you drastically increase your business’ chances of survival. This is how you make the business work for you rather than you working for the business.
The problem I encountered when I started was that I couldn’t get enough cash flow to sustain my lifestyle and ended up exhausting all my savings.
So, I became desperate for clients and was willing to take on any work that came my way even if it wasn’t a good fit.
Leverage Is The Differentiator
The most successful freelance solopreneurs are the ones that always had leverage - their clients needed them more than they needed their clients.
Leverage is an unfair advantage that you can use to:
Work with your ideal client.
Charge the prices you want.
Do the kind of work you prefer.
So, make sure you always have leverage. If not, find a way to build it.
Here's what I did:
My Start
I began freelancing when I chose not to renew my contract as a UX Designer at an agency because I needed flexibility in my schedule for personal reasons.
I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to collaborate on a web design project with a friend.
It was a one-off project and their budget wasn’t even that big, but it was the start of my freelance journey.
I was ecstatic to work with my first client full-time.
Trouble Finding Clients
It was short-lived because I had difficulty getting more clients after that.
I tried attending networking events and cold emails to get leads but nothing was converting.
What worked though, was referrals from friends.
However, this method wasn’t exactly reproducible plus there weren’t many referrals coming in. So I had to take on everything I could—the dreaded feast and famine cycle.
I realized I had to find a way to build a pipeline of clients myself to succeed, but that’s a topic for another day.
Realization
One of these referrals was a client who just didn’t value design much.
They wanted a website and the budget they allocated for it was minuscule.
Despite my best efforts, I just couldn't impress upon them the value of design in terms of brand perception, conversion rate optimization, and customer satisfaction i.e. the ability for their business to make more money.
So I turned them down.
However, it later dawned on me that I needed them more than they needed me.
It was just business... and I didn’t have leverage.
So I went back to them, tail between my legs, and begged for the job.
In that moment, I immediately regretted quitting my 9-to-5!
This wasn’t what I imagined before I quit to start my career as a freelancer.
No Leverage
Without leverage, I was at the mercy of my clients.
I couldn’t charge higher prices because I needed them more than they needed me.
From there, it was effectively a downward spiral that led to a reduction in income and a loss of job satisfaction because I started:
Taking on jobs I didn’t want to keep the lights on.
Preparing different kinds of proposals for each client.
Downgrading my lifestyle to match the decrease in income.
To be distracted by different client requests, leading to further compromised quality of work.
Building Leverage
That changed after I supplemented my income with other gigs like teaching and coaching to help ease my financial burden.
It wasn’t much but it was enough to pay the bills. And that made ALL the difference!
The lesson here is to have another source of income that is enough to cover living expenses.
I am also lucky to have an S.O. I can lean on who understands and supports me in my endeavors.
What I Should Have Done
I had to learn the hard way, but was it all worth it? I'd say yes - because there are no failures in business. Either it grows or I grow… or we both grow!
I would do things differently if I could start my freelancing journey again.
Firstly, instead of quitting my 9-to-5, I should have built my business on the side while I had a stable income. Why?
It will have given me the time to build a client pipeline.
It will have allowed me to work with my ideal client base.
It will have enabled me to charge work for what it's worth.
Dickie Bush sharing his digital business playbook on Ali Abdaal's podcast
I should also have worked on defining my ideal client or target market and addressed a specific problem they faced instead of just serving everyone. This will have:
Made referrals more targeted.
Increased my lead conversion rates.
Eliminated the need for custom proposals.
Lastly, instead of spending a lot of time crafting a “perfect” design portfolio with projects I didn’t particularly like, I should have reached out to the clients I wanted to work with and worked on a project for free.
I would have a portfolio filled with the work that I liked and even more client testimonials.
Conclusion
If there is one thing you take away from this, it's that the first year of solopreneurship is going to be a tough balance to maintain leverage. Divide your time and attention wisely between something that pays the bills while building your future…
OR just build an extraordinarily long financial runway!
