Have You Outgrown Your Business Model?
From accidental entrepreneur to micro business
I’m an accidental entrepreneur. Ten years ago, I quit my job and started doing contract work while I figured out what to do next. I never wanted to work for myself, but I knew my nine-to-five wasn’t giving me what I needed.
My first jobs were managing projects I had managed before and working for people who knew me and my skill set. I also started picking up other contract gigs offering operations support for solopreneurs who wanted to scale but didn’t have the capacity they needed.
Eventually, I realized that being a solopreneur was what I was meant to do and officially incorporated my company. At this point, I had a solid client load, managing projects that were squarely within the wheelhouse of what I knew how to do before I went out on my own. I also knew that I would need to start picking up more work if I wanted a sustainable business.
I positioned myself as a generalist. I was very aware of the skills I had that businesses needed, but I marketed them in an “anything goes” type of fashion. Anyone I met had a problem that I could solve in one way or another, so I would propose services based on what they thought they needed, even if that meant that I was doing many different types of things for different people.
