Solopreneurship: the power of vision and hard work

Anastasia Soare. Ingvar Kamprad. Erika Leonard. Daymond John. Sara Blakely. Pierre Omidyar. Andrew Carnegie. Jeff Bezos. Craig Newmark. Pierre Omidyar. What do all these famous business people have in common? They started out as—and for a long time remained—solopreneurs, a term that’s becoming more and more popular these days.

By Romanita Oprea

Solopreneurs are both founders and employees

The distinction between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur can be difficult to see, especially since so many entrepreneurs start out alone. But their mindsets are subtly different, and noting those differences can help professionals determine the long-term direction they'll take with their businesses. Anastasia Soare immigrated to the US in the late 1980s from her home country of Romania. Anastasia arrived in Los Angeles not fully comprehending the English language and with a small child. Though she had studied art and architecture in Romania, she temporarily put her training to the side and got a job at a Hollywood beauty salon. As an aesthetician, she noticed that the client’s eyebrows weren’t getting the care they deserved. When she brought this to the attention of the salon owner, Anastasia was dismissed. According to her boss, there wasn’t a market for eyebrow shaping. Yet, Anastasia persisted. She began by renting out a room in which she provided eyebrow shaping along with other cosmetic procedures. Anastasia has publicly stated that her first clients were supermodels Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford. Her current celebrity clientele includes the who’swho of Hollywood, including Jennifer Lopez and the Kardashians. She utilises the Golden Ratio method to produce masterpieces on faces, with her net worth now estimated at USD 1.2 billion, and Forbes having ranked her #21 on America’s Self-Made Women list of 2019.

Ranked #23 on the same list, Spanx creator Sara Blakely, whose net worth is estimated around USD 1.1 billion, turned an inconvenience into a money-making, industry-changing idea. According to soloprepreneurinstitute.com, it all began when she started selling fax machines door-to-door in her home state of Atlanta. One day, while getting ready to attend a professional event, Blakely decided to cut the feet off her pantyhose. She hated having the seam show when she wore opentoed shoes, but loved the control-top support the pantyhose provided. Though cutting the feet off was not the most comfortable thing to do, since the pantyhose would roll up her legs, it did give her an idea. Two years and USD 5,000 later, she was once again knocking on doors, but this time, she was looking for manufacturing companies that could bring her concept to life. One out of the many mills she visited decided to take a chance on her.

Soon after, Blakely was meeting representatives of the Neiman Marcus Group, where she gave them a live demonstration of the product. As a result, her merchandise was placed in seven stores throughout the country, including Bloomingdale’s and Saks. Out of all of her marketing tactics, sending a gift basket filled with products to the Oprah Winfrey show proved to be the winning strategy. Shortly thereafter, Winfrey included Spanx in her list of Favourite Things, which led to a swift increase in sales. In her first year of business, Blakely made a whopping USD 4 million. By her second year, profits more than doubled bringing in an estimated USD 10 million. Blakely has since expanded both her company as well as her product line. The company features maternity wear, leggings, and other intimate apparel.

If we take a closer look, we’ll see that all these solopreneurs have certain values in common, as they tend to set up their business ventures with the expectation of taking full responsibility for the risks. In general, all share these basic traits: passion for the job, management skills, ability to live with the risks, adaptation and versatility, financial management skills, quick decision making, and, maybe one of the most important aspect, innovation. For example, Swedish business giant Ingvar Feodor Kamprad, who is famous for having founded the international furniture company IKEA, is said to have displayed entrepreneurial traits at an early age by selling Matchbox in his local neighbourhood. He then went on to trading picture frames, stockings, nylons, and jewellery. At just 17 years of age in 1943, he founded IKEA, which would go on to become the world’s largest retailer of household items and furniture. Kamprad used his built-in sense of ingenuity to trade quality furniture at an incredible low price. This led to his stellar reputation not only on the Swedish market, but eventually all around the world. His net worth today is said to be around USD 59 billion.

Andrew Carnegie started with absolutely nothing and ended up constructing an empire of steel. Originally born in Scotland to a working class family, he witnessed his father losing everything he had ever worked for. His family then emigrated to the United States. He was too poor to attend a formal school so he read everything he could get his hands on and became self-taught. He eventually went to work as a telegrapher and found employment with a few different companies. Carnegie was quick to see that steel was the crucial component to the construction of railroads and worked hard to create a monopoly on steel production in the US. By 1901, he’d become one of the wealthiest men in the world. Today the Carnegie estate is said to be worth around USD 310 billion.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon. With a net worth of US 114.5 billion dollars as of November 2022, Bezos is the fourth-wealthiest person in the world and was the wealthiest from 2017 to 2021 according to both Bloomberg's Billionaires Index and Forbes. Bezos founded Amazon in late 1994 on a road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a variety of other e-commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. It is the world's largest online sales company, the largest internet company by revenue, and the largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services through its Amazon Web Services branch.

Differences To Entrepreneurship

A solopreneur is both the owner and the workforce of their business. They are responsible for organising, managing, and taking on the risks of their enterprise, without the help of a partner. But what makes them different from entrepreneurs or freelancers? As solopreneurs have a single business focus, do everything by themselves, don’t need to spend much time on logistics. Entrepreneurs manage and delegate tasks, look for new ways to grow their business offering, spend a lot of time on decision-making, and need to think about payroll, employee benefits, etc.

Solopreneurs are both founders and employees. That doesn’t mean that they can’t— or won’t—work and collaborate with others, but they won’t hire anyone full-time. A solopreneur might work alongside a freelancer or contractor, for example, to perform certain tasks or meet deadlines in a busy month. But this would not form part of the daily operations of their business. The business also wouldn’t depend on these parties to deliver its core services. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, might have founded their company on their own, but will typically be seeking to grow, manage, and delegate responsibilities to other people over time.

“Solopreneurs don’t want to build an empire. They want to stick with a smaller, more manageable business that allows them to make most or all of the decisions on their own. This means that there’s a limit to what they can take on. There’s only so much time in a day, so a solopreneur needs to figure out the right business model and tools to make sure they’re making the most of it,” wrote Amanda Gaid for Oberlo.com.

On the other hand, the sky is the limit for an entrepreneur. According to Gaid, once they hit their own personal growth cap—and they’ve made enough revenue—they can start to build out their team. They can find partners and stakeholders and hire as many employees as they need to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Versus Freelancers

When it comes to the differences between a solopreneur and a freelancer, Dropbox’s blog writes that solopreneurs undoubtedly share traits with freelancers, but opinions differ from person to person. To some, a freelancer is only a freelancer until their business grows to a certain size. They then become a solopreneur because they are seen as running a business, whereas freelancers are seen more as contractors with a small client base.

“However, we know that a solopreneur is an individual that sets up and runs their business without help. If this is what a freelancer is doing, then they can—and should—be considered a solopreneur. It might be easiest to think of it like this: while some freelancers are solopreneurs, solopreneurs aren’t necessarily freelancers. Is a freelance graphic designer that works full-time for a roster of 10 steady clients a solopreneur? More than likely, yes. Would you consider a one-person dog grooming business a freelancer? Probably not.”

In turn, Amanda Gaid thinks that established freelancers totally count and that they do become solopreneurs. According to her, if you build a freelancing business then decide to scale it up with automation or contractors, that’s even better. “Aspiring solopreneurs are in luck because the freelance industry is booming. In 2019, a survey by Upwork and Freelancers Union found that 57 million people in America alone did freelance work. And it’s becoming a full-time career path: 28 percent of participants said they were full-timers vs 17 percent in 2014,” oberlo.com writes.

“While entrepreneurs can work harder than anyone they know, a solopreneur is a worker by their very nature. If a task needs to be done, their first thought is to roll up their sleeves and start working. For this reason, this new generation of freelance workers and sole proprietors have emerged, with professionals content to run a one-man shop with no intention of bringing another person on,” entrepreneur.com concludes.