Before you start out on your journey as a solopreneur, you need to know that running a business on your own can be one of the most challenging yet fulfilling jobs at the same time. While you get to literally be your own boss and enjoy all the flexibility and benefits that come with the role, you’ll also need to pull your socks up and immerse yourself completely in your job, especially during the first few months or even years.
That’s why it helps to know what exactly you’re getting into since this will help you be better prepared before you set off on your journey as a solopreneur. We’ve put together this comprehensive list of all the soft and hard skills you’ll need to safely jump into business.
The best part about this is that even if you don’t have these skills right now, you can easily pick them up if you put your heart into it. Without further ado, let’s get started on the most important skills you need to run a successful business in 2022 as a solopreneur.
1. Understanding the market and product positioning
Market research. This is something you’re going to have to immerse yourself in to be able to produce a product that’s a good fit for the current market and then proceed to place it strategically so that it attracts your niche audience.
Many great products have not made it big because of bad market research—which prevented the team from marketing it to the right audience and building a consistent brand story.
This is one of the first and most important tasks you’ll need to take up before you begin working on your product and brand, and research is one of the key skills that go into it. Once you’re done with your research, you can begin your storytelling around the product.
For this, you need to be able to visualize the vision you have for your brand and then put it down on paper for your audience to understand as well. It’s as simple as sharing your vision with the rest of the world but doing so in an appealing and consistent way. This will enable your future customers to trust your brand more as it will be more reliable.
2. Social media marketing
Next, let’s talk about the main aspect that’s going to get you almost 80% of your leads and customers—social media. Marketing for social media is very different from physical marketing. This is because every single platform you market on has a different set of rules and audiences that you need to create and cater to.
For instance, the same content that you create for Youtube cannot be reused for Instagram, simply because the algorithm, audience, and type of content changes between each platform.
You also need to make sure you use all the platforms available to market your product—right from mainstream media to Instant messaging platforms—you’ll be able to find leads faster and convert them into customers if you use all platforms to reach out to your target audience.
3. Bookkeeping
This may seem like a tiresome job but being a solopreneur requires you to also keep track of your accounts payable and financial affairs, since everything you do depends on this.
But don’t worry, you don’t have to complete a course in order to keep track of your financial spends, all you need to do to invest in the right software and also have some basic bookkeeping skills up your sleeve—once your business grows and expands, you can always outsource your financial work to a separate team to handle large deals and payments.
Until then, safe and reliable software should work just as fine.
4. Copywriting and content creation
Both of these skills almost always come together, which is why you need to be good at one to do the other. As a solopreneur, you’re going to be the main person taking care of all your storytelling and marketing around the brand, which is why you need to first understand the story you want to put out into the world and then consistently knit it into all the content you create.
For instance, if your brand is healthy chocolate that’s gluten-free, then this needs to be the central theme around which you build your brand’s story. That’s how you create a consistent and reliable brand image that will stick with your customers.
Copywriting involves writing good content for social media and other marketing activities such as posters and boards. Over here, you need to develop the skill of saying as much as you can through as few words as possible.
People have a small attention span on the internet, so using large or fancy words will have your posts overlooked. Focus on building your copywriting skills by studying how other competitors in your market work on theirs.
As for content creation, you need to be able to change your writing style for each platform you’re writing for—whether it’s your webpage, a blog, or a video script, finding the right voice for the content is a must.
You’ll also need to keep up with current trends via market research to see what kind of content you need to be creating and how often you should be doing so. For instance, many content creators have started posting reels on Instagram of late because that brings their page more visibility than regular posts.
5. Time management
This soft skill is highly underrated in the business world, especially among solopreneurs. Many people assume that if they’re busy all day long with no time to even breathe, it means they’re doing something right. However, as a solopreneur, you need to up your time management game and make sure you’re doing everything you need to do while also cutting out tasks that you know aren’t a priority at the moment.
That’s the only way you can prevent yourself from getting burnt out quickly, and make sure you’re able to power through those hard days especially when you’re just starting out as a solopreneur.
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