I work directly with expert solopreneurs to help them make this shift, to build a small agency that supports their lifestyle and leaves them with plenty of profit and plenty of time to do what they love and experience whatever freedom means to them. Reach out to discuss what that looks like.
Did you know that only 2 out of 10 businesses make the shift from one person to employing others? It’s a wild stat, and I’ve even argue that more businesses have tried to make the shift, but failed.
I’ve seen it time and time again:
- Solopreneur is really good at what they do, so they get busy
- They want to make more money, but they’re capped
- They try to hire someone else to do delivery, but they’re “no good” and “it’s easier to just do it myself”
- They fire that person, end up back where they were quickly, and then repeat the cycle until they give up or find a better way.
There is a better way. Let me take you back to 2016.
In 2016, I was running my first agency (which I exited to private equity in 2022). We had $3,000 in revenue in April, and $20k by November.
I was drowning. Client management, software development, sales calls. I was stressed out of my mind, and for good reason. I’m just lucky that I didn’t have young kids at that time.
I hired a business coach, and what he taught me changed my life. Since then, I’ve hired 50+ people in contractor and full-time roles. I’ve successfully built and sold 2 agencies, and now I work with solopreneurs and small agency owners to help them build the business, including the team, that supports their lifestyle with time and profit freedom.
Here’s what I learned.
Quit The Unnecessary Tasks
We did a time audit in our first meeting together and divided tasks into 4 buckets:
- Things that I’m doing that don’t need to be done
- Things I’m doing that need to be done, that I hate, that someone else can do
- Things I’m doing that need to be done, that I don’t hate, that someone else can do
- Things that need to be done, that I love doing, and are profitable for the business
The first step is quitting the things that don’t need to be done at all. Maybe you’re doing weekly calls with every client, but that’s not necessary. They just want the work. Quit doing those calls (or cut them back significantly).
Prepare A Profit Plan
Next, you need to understand your numbers. Hopefully, you’ve been working with a bookkeeper and have a Profit and Loss (P&L) from the most recent months that you can reference. Without this insight, you won’t be able to hire effectively and maintain your margins. This is paramount to running a business.
You need to know two numbers:
- Gross profit
- Net profit
Gross profit is what the business makes after everything is delivered (tech paid for, taxes paid, etc). Net profit is what you as the founder get to keep.
Net profit is HIGH in a solo business. You have no expenses, essentially, and it’s just a transfer from the business bank account (you have one of those, right? And an LLC? If not, register the LLC in your state and I recommend Mercury or Relay Financial for business banking).
Your net profit number could change once you start hiring if you don’t approach it in the right way.
Raise Your Prices
Now is the time to raise your prices. It is VERY common for solopreneurs to not raise prices for years, which only hurts your profit margins as cost of living increases. It has increased substantially in the last few years, so if you haven’t raised your prices, that might be why your income doesn’t seem to go as far as before – because your salary hasn’t adjusted because you have not raised your rates!
Raising rates is a process, and one I’ve gone through and guided people through many times. This is something I teach my private coaching clients, but the tl;DR is:
- Know what prices are going to rise to
- Let the client know with plenty of heads up
- Grandfather them in for a few months and tell them when they’ll go up
- Offer to chat with them if needed
If you have not raised your rates in years, most will likely say, “It’s about time you raised your rates.” It’s not as scary as you think, and you’ll get your profit margin higher so that you can hire support and not take a personal income cut.
Plan to Delegate The Things You Hate To Do
Next up, I took the list of things delegated the things that I hated to do, which also meant that I was terrible at them and they didn’t get done well or on time. This could be things like finances/bookkeeping, depositing checks, chasing accounts receivables and late invoices, or even scheduling calls with clients.
Then I made a plan for who to hire to delegate these things to.
For my first business, the first thing I hired for was the business admin things that I hate to do – accounts receivable, accounts payable, bookkeeping, taxes, going to the PO Box. I hired a VA off shore for this, and eventually had a person in my town (Denver) for a while before hiring an EA part-time in 2020 and then a full-time one in 2021, who became the Head of Operations at my next agency.
Other roles I hired for, which were the “I can do it but someone else can do it better” category, included:
- A part time WordPress developer, to take that off my plate
- A freelance designer to tap on a per-project basis
- A content marketer
- A Google Ads agency
I did this so I could eventually sell the business, but also so that I could focus on the things I was best at and wanted to do (SEO, sales, running the business). I did eventually hire someone to qualify leads and introduce them to clients, and this role grew into an account manager role because the person was great at it.
All of this was driven from me knowing where my time was going, what I was not great at, and then made possible because of profit.
Get Out Of Your Inbox and Calendar
Something I let go of way too late was my email inbox and calendar. You think email isn’t taking up much of your time, but the reality is that it takes up a ton of time, as does scheduling meetings.
Once I let go of those, I saved 5-10 hours per week of inbox management, and could just focus on the important messages (categorized by my assistant) and not on marketing link building outreach emails as spam (though I do still get pleasure from doing this).
My assistant would also schedule and reschedule meetings for me, make sure I knew about meetings that they scheduled, and generally made sure I got things done in a reasonable amount of time.
Install Lightweight Business Processes
Solopreneurs fear getting stuck into business admin and management. It’s a very real fear, but is one that can be overcome by installing lightweight business processes so you’re reviewing the business and everyone is on the same page. It should take maximum 1-2 hours per week, and then you’re free to do the work you love.
These include:
- Metrics meeting (30 minutes)
- Weekly business metrics (traffic, leads, sales, cash collected)
- Weekly expenses review (to make sure you’re not overspending)
- Weekly projects/operations review (30 minutes)
- Weekly sync with your assistant
- They should also send you your schedule for the next day at the end of the day. This can also be automated with Google Calendar, if you use that.
- They should also point out any important meetings that you need to prep for, or any conflicts that you didn’t see. They should proactively fix these and let you know that they did, instead of putting work on your plate).
- Exec meeting (30 minutes) – once you have another full-time person leading some things
That’s it. That’s 90 minutes with a team of 2-4 people. I don’t think you need a weekly 1:1 meeting with everyone at the company, especially when you’re small.
A Note on Management
When your team is small, you’re not performance managing people. If you find that you have to performance manage someone, you need to let them go as soon as possible and find someone who can do the job better.
Here’s the mindset shift I’ve made:
“I’m not managing people. I’m working with people, and if they can’t keep up, I need to find someone who I can work with better.”
Are You Transitioning from Solopreneur to Agency Entrepreneur?
I work directly with expert solopreneurs to help them make this shift, to build a small agency that supports their lifestyle and leaves them with plenty of profit and plenty of time to do what they love and experience whatever freedom means to them.
