You’re the boss. You’re also the sales manager. You’re the CMO. When customer service issues arise, they come to you. If there are financial decisions to be made, you will be the one making them. Like so many other solopreneurs, you probably wouldn’t have it any other way.
Although most businesses launch with an intention to bring on multiple employees at some point in their growth journey, advancements in technology have made it possible, in some cases, to stay the course as a company of one.
Solopreneurs share many of the same traits as traditional entrepreneurs. They are often quick to identify an unmet need in a particular market. They develop the products and services that demonstrate a deep understanding of their target customers’ pain points. They can have big ambitions of becoming the market leader in their category. The differences lie in how solopreneurs execute on their vision and strategy.
Rather than rent out office space and fill it with rows of employees, they take advantage of how technology can offer them access to on-demand services. This includes freelancers in graphic design or blogging to help develop marketing assets, or self-service tools that allow them to cover off the most common customer service challenges.
Instead of working 9-5, meanwhile, solopreneurs may want to have more flexibility in the lifestyle they pursue and how their work is balanced with their personal time.
There’s a difference between solopreneurs and an artisan or traditional freelancer, however. A freelancer gets paid for the work they do, such as video production or assisting with social media management.
A solopreneur creates a company where they can make money simply by having customers buy a product or use their service. These are products and services that can be purchased and used without them being directly involved. In that sense, solopreneurs can make money while they sleep!
You can’t truly aspire to become a solopreneur without taking advantage of cloud computing. The power of the cloud means a solopreneur can:
Run everything remotely
There have always been people who have managed to run a one-person operation out of their home, but it usually meant they had to be at home to manage every single aspect of their business.
Cloud computing changed that. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications are designed to be accessed from anywhere. That opened up a huge opportunity for would-be solopreneurs who wanted to grow their business and revenues while working from a coffee shop, or even travelling the world.
Build the ultimate tech stack
When software and hardware had to all run locally, a solopreneur might have faced setting up a data centre in their garage. Otherwise, as they attracted more customers they might have run out the computing power they’d need to keep their e-commerce system working. If their product was a software application, they might have had to halt sales indefinitely.
One of the cloud’s key selling points is the fact that you essentially “rent” compute power and only pay for what you need. That means if you’re a solopreneur offering something that could become highly in-demand at a certain point (like the holidays), you can scale your IT resources and make sure there are no glitches or downtime.
Many cloud-based solutions are also much easier to integrate with one another. Instead of needing a team of developers to connect applications, the process is often something you can handle with a couple of clicks.
Create a community of collaborators
Remember those freelancers we referred to earlier that a solopreneur might hire to assist with marketing or other areas? It may not be feasible to meet with them all on site. Relying on phone calls won’t do the job either, especially if you have to talk about images, videos or even everyday documents and spreadsheets.
Cloud computing has unleashed a plethora of tools that make it quick and easy to work together on a task or project as though you were in the same room with a dozen other team members. It’s easy to share your screen, annotate documents with comments or other feedback, and to track versions of a file without confusion.
This isn’t limited to freelancers you might need as a solopreneur. You might want the same collaboration capabilities with your suppliers, partners and even your customers. Cloud-based tools will work with any of those stakeholders.
Achieve peace of mind
There was always a certain amount of risk in running a business out of your home, which might not be as well-defended against criminals as an office building. Even if you managed to run all the software programs you use on-premises, there was always the danger of being attacked by hackers.
Working with a trusted cloud computing provider offers a much higher degree of security over all your company data, including sensitive customer information. While cyber attacks still happen, cloud providers have a vested interest in safeguarding the systems used by their wider customer base.
The cloud also provides a far more straightforward way to back up and recover your data. Imagine being in the middle of tallying up a spreadsheet filled with order information, only to have your screen go dark. The cloud is based on a model where information isn’t stored locally, which means you can always retrieve it later on another device.
Thanks to the cloud, solopreneurs can take care of many of the chores that once required an entire department or team of people to handle on a daily business. The tools available now let you automate those activities while you focus on the most essential aspects of your business, like developing long-lasting customer relationships.
You can not only launch a one-person company with cloud computing. The technology means you can turn it into an entity that people looking from the outside might assume is a much bigger business. You’re going it alone, but you’re also going to be much more successful.
