Solopreneur vs. 9-5 Job

Should everyone quit their job to follow the enlightened path and become a "solo"preneur and live this magical life of freedom and creative bliss?

Absolutely not.

I have no problem with the 9-5 career path.

I worked a 9-5 job for 10 years and the knowledge, experience, and relationships I built over that decade made the business and life I have today possible.

But just like that startup founder or entrepreneur who "could never work for someone else" there's a small group of people like you and me who feel the same way.

- We've built up years of knowledge and experience doing the work in a niche

- We like to do the work and get things done, not sit in meetings

- We hate committees and decisions where everyone's input is needed

- We like to move fast

- We have proven results - we've done the thing we're going to teach others to do

- We have people that are already DM-ing and emailing us asking to pick our brains and want to know if we're available to chat or consult with their company on the problem they are having

- We have a bias toward the creative work vs the management work (performance reviews, budget meetings, annual planning, team offsites, trustfalls, etc.)

- We enjoy doing the work alone (or building a small team of contractors/freelancers) to get a job done

- Although we like people, we don't enjoy spending time our time in 1:1s talking about feelings and emotions and internal politics and managing gossip in the office, having yet another conversation with that difficult employee, or telling Mike the shitty news that he's not going to be able to get that 15% raise he wanted

- We want the challenge; there's a risk to starting your own business but we want that risk. We want the challenge. Let's see what happens if it all goes to 0. We can find a way out of this. We can build something new.  We can find another customer. That is always the mentality.

The 9-5 job might not be for you. If not, then now is the time to start writing and creating online so you can build your audience and begin to build awareness that you can help people with this problem with your unique set of skills.

On the other side, solopreneurship might not be the best path for you. Maybe you get energy from being part of a team and working inside of a company. Maybe you don't want to think about your work on a Saturday morning. Maybe you like the predictability and steady pay check. Maybe you have a great job inside of a big company and your life is good. Great. Keep going. Do you. Don't change your path.

But if you find yourself nodding a long to the bullets I wrote above, maybe the path to solopreneurship is calling...