Six Months of Solopreneurship
About six months ago I started CodeTraveller HR, and by “started” I mean, I bought a domain name, got an email address and put up a website naively thinking that would be enough to launch my Fractional Career. About 2 months ago I started to figure out how to be a business owner, and while I’m still very early in this journey, here are some of the weirder things I’ve observed, experienced or been noodling on:
💸 There are way more offers to spend money than to make it. Honestly, it feels like people will come out of the woodwork to sell you something. I’ve gotten offers for personal branding services, PR services, authorship services, how to build a business classes, treasure chests of outdated email addresses - the list goes on and on. I respect a hustle, and granted I’m awful at sales, but if our FIRST correspondence is you jumping into a sales pitch, please kindly fuck off.
🤝 Your broader “network” will gladly take a cut. Sites like Upside market themselves as a way to “build a referral network for your service business”. Folks I admire professionally have sent me, and I’m sure 100s of others, opportunities for work. It’s normally a 2 sentence overview about the role, you make a short pitch, and if you get selected you’ll only have to pay 15% of the contract value. If you don’t get selected, you’ll literally never hear anything again.
I get that it’s alot of work to make a genuine referral, and in an instance like this, folks are basically acting like a recruiter. My question is - why take money from the consultant, who may desperately need this work, instead of charging the client for this service?
👻 Rejections and ghosting are the norm, get used to it. I joke that I was #ForcedFractional after over a year of interviewing, over 10 final round interviews, and a whole bunch of second place trophies to show for it. After securing a short term contract and a speaking gig, I thought maybe I could make independent life work.
I soon learned that not a lot of business leaders are overly enthusiastic about bringing on a consultant. Which makes total sense because I felt exactly the same way when I was in-house. Expect to be a pretty low priority, and expect to send alot of follow up emails that don’t get responded to. You will write many proposals that will be rejected. Good news is, a few kind folks will tell you why so you can improve.
The rollercoaster of solopreneurship life is filled with ups and downs, built on a track that can change so quickly it defies physics. I’m pretty sure these annoyances are mole hills amongst mountains, though and this pain is temporary. I’m pumped about what I’m building and the support, cheerleading and championship has outweighed anything I’ve mentioned here.
P.S. If you are buying, I am selling! Check out my offerings or let’s chat!
