Solopreneur Strategies

The 6 Stages Of Solopreneurship And What I’ve Learned To Succeed In Each Of Them

With Lydia Lee

Starting, growing, and sustaining yourself as a Solopreneur boils down to where you put your attention and energy.

If you want to succeed as a Solopreneur, you need to know where to focus your efforts.

When you spend time doing things that aren’t essential to what’s really important in the stage you’re in, you’ll end up feeling overwhelmed and frustrated in not feeling traction.

So, which Solopreneur Stage do you fall into?  Take a look at the stages below:

The 6 Stages of Solopreneurship:

In each of these stages, there are specific goals to focus on that’ll help you progress forward as a Solopreneur.

1.  Dreaming Stage

You’re in this Stage if:  You’re aspiring to start a business and to work for yourself.

Primary Goal:  Commit to personal readiness and prepare your mindset for your transition.

Better Focused Actions:  Get real clear on WHY you want to make this shift and the motivation that’s driving you because you’ll need this to progress towards uncertainty.  Start preparing ‘safety nets’ like your finances so you can support your goals.

2.  Ideation Stage

You’re in this Stage if:  You need a business idea and a niche you can specialize in.

Primary Goal:  Know your skills that offer the most effective value and identify meaningful work to pursue

Better Focused Actions:  Take inventory of your work experience and take stock of the ‘qualities’ you’ve enjoyed doing.   Reflect on areas of valuable problems your skills are effective in solving to gain ideas on where you may want to hone in your expertise.

3.  Validation Stage

You’re in this Stage if:  You want to feel confident about the business focus you want to invest time in.

Primary Goal:  Laser focus on ONE specific type of customer that you’re most familiar with (they’re like you or you’re very familiar with working with this type of person or organization – and you enjoy it).

Better Focused Actions:  Take time to be super curious about your soulmate customers.  Have real conversations and conduct interviews for market research to pinpoint how people perceive their problems and what they value.

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4.  Planning Stage

You’re in this Stage if:  You want a clear plan on how you’ll achieve your financial goals with your business.

Primary Goal:  Design a business plan to that focuses on your niche of customers, how to find them, and how you’ll serve them.

Better Focused Actions:  Identify the core problems your expertise solves and where you can provide the most effective value.  Don’t be a generalist.  Consider what stage of customers urgently needs those problems solved.  Think about the simplest way you can find them (start with your ‘low hanging fruit’ of networks and associations you already belong to).

5.  Launching Stage

You’re in this Stage if:  You want to start selling your services and find leads for your business.

Primary Goal:  Design an outreach and marketing strategy to educate and convert leads to paying clients.

Better Focused Actions:  In order to be real clear on articulating the value people will pay for, you’ll need to design a Framework (your concepts, process, steps, journey) for what you offer.  This helps to ensure what you do and say in your marketing resonates with your ideal customers and this is so much easier to sell your services.

6.  Stabilizing Stage

You’re in this Stage if:  You want to fill your capacity, have consistent revenue, and have a trusted product people rave about.

Primary Goal:  Put in the right systems to help you scale your time while creating a memorable working experience with your clients (so they tell others about you!).

Better Focused Actions:  Identify where your time is being spent and where systems can be implemented to save more of your time and energy.  These are things like creating an automated process to field leads to connect with you, onboarding processes, or templates that simplify your work with clients.  In this stage, you would’ve trialled many things that work or don’t work in sustaining your business.  Start to eliminate what isn’t effective, and double down on the things that are.

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