From Employee to Solopreneur: The Critical Mistake You Must Avoid

Welcome to Impact Thinking.

Hi, I’m Peter. I’m a full-time solopreneur. I’ve run a one-person strategy consulting company since 2019. Before that, I worked in finance & strategy at Harvard. This newsletter distills helps you become an impact thinker. Ditch the noise, spot the signal, and think with impact.

Read time: 5 minutes

From Employee to Solopreneur: The Critical Mistake You Must Avoid

How could I not have known this before making the switch?

Despite having success in my previous roles at Harvard, I made the most critical mistake you could make when going from employee to solopreneur.

Believing the skills that got you here will be the skills that make your business successful.

Building a business demands different skills because:

• in business, you generate revenue

• as an employee, you get paid

Those two ways of earning money are very different.

Why does this matter?

The one-person business model requires business skillsets (not organizational skillsets). And that skillset revolves around 2 distinct identities:

• An inward identity must be that of a generalist.

• An outward identity must be that of a specialist.

As an employee, I tried to put myself in a position to be a generalist. I wanted to build dynamic and transferable skills. I took on multiple responsibilities, worked in various areas, and acquired skills outside my expertise.

Despite my attempts, becoming a generalist as an employee is hard.

You don’t see the whole organization’s picture.

The ripple effect of your decisions and actions stops once it hits the boundaries of your bubble.

Even the top executives don’t see the entire picture, as their roles are designed to maximize specific areas.

I was a fool to believe I was anything other than a trained specialist in the vastness of an organization. (For the record, organizations need specialists…it’s a good thing to be one).

So my mistake?

When I started my business, I thought I could lean on my solid skills in finance and strategy to make things work. But the limited skillset (and experience) in business sales, marketing, operations, and admin proved me wrong.

After the newness wore off, I realized I needed to learn the right skills quickly, or it meant the end of my business. I’m talking about studying and experimenting with a lot of iterations.

Your inward identity must be that of a generalist.

When running a one-person business, you are in charge of keeping it going and growing.

That means you must understand 6 aspects:

• Sales: how you acquire customers

• Finance: how you deploy resources

• Marketing: how you communicate value

• Operations: how you produce & deliver value

• Strategy: how you make the big-picture decisions

• Admin: how you keep the business running smoothly

Let me say it another way:

• If you were a rockstar accountant, now you do sales

• If you were a smooth operator, now you do marketing

• If you were a big-picture thinker, now you do customer support

The list goes on.

Do you need to be great at all of them? No, but you need to know each one well enough to make decisions, connect the dots, and execute.

The point here: You must learn to be a generalist to run your business successfully.

Your outward identity must be that of a specialist.

You must also be a specialist for your customers.

Why? Because a confused customer is not going to buy your products and services.

Sales are the lifeblood of your business, no matter how great your product or service is. If you try to be a generalist to your customer (telling them you can solve all 12 of their problems), say goodbye to the sale.

It’s about one thing, especially early on.

I still fall into this trap of wanting to do more than one thing.

• Focus on one specialization (see below)

• Get great at it

• Expand later (once you’ve gained the credibility)

Becoming a specialist requires you to focus narrowly on one of the following:

• Who you serve (who is your ideal customer?)

• What you do (what specific problem do you solve?)

• How you do it (what is your unique approach?)

The point here: You must learn to be a specialist to your customer.

What got you here won’t take you there.

Does it mean you should forget what you know? No

Does it mean everything you’ve learned before this is worthless? Absolutely, not

Most people train themselves to learn and acquire new skills, but few have learned how to unlearn. Unlearning is letting go of old beliefs, assumptions, and skills that no longer serve us.

If you want to go from employee to solopreneur, you must unlearn the skills that got you here and form the new skills that will take you there.