.png)
CS Angel is committed to elevating Customer Success and providing value to our members.
Sometimes, this means finding ways to diversify your career path by becoming a Solopreneur. With the help of our sponsors at SnOOOz, we brought in two expert Solopreneurs Alex Farmer (CCO Nezesa and Founder CS Excellence Awards) and Rachel Provan (Founder Provan Success) to share their experiences on their paths to creating something new.
You’ve got dreams of entrepreneurship and being your own boss. You have that million-dollar idea in the back of your head or a vision of taking your passion for coaching the CSMs of tomorrow into a career. But you have bills to pay and mouths to feed, moving to full-time solopreneurship isn’t quite an option just yet. Is it possible to grow a thriving 5-9 outside of your 9-5?
Our Pay-it-Forward panelists say it absolutely is! Experts Alex Farmer (CRO, Nezasa and Founder of Customer Success Excellence) and Rachel Provan (Founder, Provan Success) shared their stories on how they built their side hustle and their top pieces of advice for those contemplating solopreneurship.
How to Get Started:
Validate the Concept of Your Business: both Alex and Rachel saw their business ideas as concepts that currently didn’t exist and could fill holes in the market. To validate this, they began having conversations with potential customers, vendors, and peers to chat through their business plan and to see if they also saw the potential.
Niche Down: Don’t try and boil the ocean. Find your strengths and what specific market you want to target, and go from there. You cannot get too specific in the type of work you want to be doing as a solopreneur.
Outsource When You Can: Alex and Rachel both mentioned they taught themselves these skills and tried to do the accounting and legal sides of their size business on their own initially, but then outsourced those tasks when they could to the professionals once they could. They also leveraged their community for access to templates, sample contracts, NDAs, sponsorship agreements or other resources they may need.
Let’s Get Growing: Rachel mentioned that initially she experienced many failed sales calls trying to follow templated talk tracks or giving too much away for free hoping folks would see value. It wasn’t until she changed up her approach in a way that felt authentic to her that she began to see success. “I think when you go with what you’re meant to do, people can feel that and buy into it”. Alex also agreed with Rachel’s approach saying that “you have to put something out there and it’s either success or a lesson”.
Balancing Both Roles:
Structure and Transparency: Alex mentioned how important it was for him to speak to HR about his initiative. He ensured his employer that the additional responsibilities would not affect his day job. Alex suggested sticking to a schedule and structure for both your full-time position and side hustle to ensure there is no overlap. He also had a conversation with his boss and asked him to have a conversation with him if he ever felt like his performance was slipping due to his side hustle.
Building While On The Job Hunt: When Rachel started Provan Success, she was not in a full-time role but was searching for a new position while building an online prescence. Rachel mentioned that she would bring up her writing while having conversations with potential employers and assured them that her presence and being an authority on the subject they would be hiring for would only make the company look good.
Track Your Success: Rachel suggested using a Success Tracker and writing down all the success and wins you’ve had your company, and to especially note wins you have made since the launch of your solo business. This way, you have data to show that there’s no interference occurring. “You want hard evidence and data, just like you do in CS”.
Be sure to register to listen back to the rest of this webinar on-demand for more great tips on being a solopreneur.
Don’t forget to join our waitlist so you can be the first to hear about our future conversations with CS executives about their key insights into how to succeed in Customer Success.
For more content like this, follow us on Linkedin.
Comments