When I left my last company, people kept asking what I was now. Freelancer didn’t feel right, because I wasn’t selling hours. Small business owner sounded like I had a shop and three staff. Entrepreneur made it sound like I was about to raise a Series A from my kitchen table.
Solopreneur is the word that fits, and it’s the word most of the people I work with use about themselves. It’s also a word that gets used to mean almost anything online, from Etsy sellers to YouTubers, so it’s worth pinning down.
This is the definition I use, the main types of solopreneur, how it differs from freelancing, and the one thing every solopreneur needs that nobody tells them about.
TL;DR: A solopreneur is someone who runs a business on their own, selling their expertise to other businesses: coaches, consultants, fractional executives and solo founders. You do the work, you win the work, and there’s no sales team behind you. That last part is why most solopreneurs struggle with sales, and why they need a simple sales system built for one person.
What is a solopreneur?
A solopreneur is someone who runs a business on their own, selling their expertise to other businesses. Coaches, consultants, fractional executives and solo founders are the most common examples. They own the whole business, from the offer and the pricing to winning clients and delivering the work, and there’s no team behind them.
The word is a mash-up of “solo” and “entrepreneur”, and both halves matter.
Solo means it’s you. You might use contractors or a virtual assistant for the odd job, but the business runs on your time, your expertise and your relationships.
Entrepreneur means it’s a business you’re building. You decide what you sell, who you sell it to and what you charge, rather than waiting for someone to hand you work.
Most solopreneurs I meet are experienced professionals who left a corporate role to go independent. They’re very good at what they do. What they’ve usually never been taught is how to sell it.
What are the main types of solopreneur?
The main types of solopreneur in B2B services are coaches, consultants, fractional executives and solo founders. They sell different things, but they share the same model: one person, selling high-value expertise to other businesses, usually through relationships and referrals.
Coaches: executive coaches, leadership coaches and sales coaches who work one to one or with small groups.
Consultants: business, growth, operations, marketing and AI strategy consultants who sell projects, audits or retainers.
Fractional executives: a part-time CFO, CMO, COO or CTO who works with a few companies at once, usually on a monthly retainer.
Solo founders: people building a product or SaaS business on their own, who still have to sell it themselves at the one-person stage.
If you’re one of these, you’re who Sollo is built for, and who everything on this blog is written for.
What’s the difference between a solopreneur and a freelancer?
A freelancer sells their time or a defined task, usually to a brief someone else wrote, while a solopreneur builds a business around an offer they design and price themselves. Freelancers tend to get paid by the hour, day or deliverable. Solopreneurs tend to sell outcomes, projects and retainers.
In practice there’s a lot of overlap, and plenty of people move from one to the other. The shift usually happens when you stop asking “what do you need doing?” and start saying “here’s what I do, here’s the result, here’s the price”.
That shift changes how you sell. A freelancer can often live on job boards and agencies. A solopreneur has to go and find the right clients, which is why a clear offer and a sales system matter so much. If you’re working on that offer, start with how to create an offer people can’t say no to.
Is a solopreneur the same as a small business owner?
A solopreneur is a type of small business owner, but with no employees and no plan to build a big team. A small business owner usually has staff, premises or both, while a solopreneur keeps the business to one person and uses tools, contractors and AI to do what a team would otherwise do.
That’s a choice, and for most solopreneurs it’s the whole point. They went solo on purpose, for the freedom, the focus and the higher margins.
What do solopreneurs struggle with most?
Solopreneurs struggle most with finding new clients consistently, which shows up as feast-or-famine revenue. In Sollo’s beta interviews, every solopreneur we spoke to said they had no systematic way to find new prospects, and every one of them described income that swung between great months and empty ones.
These are the problems that came up again and again:
Prospecting paralysis. No routine for finding and approaching new people, so you rely on referrals and hope.
Feast or famine. A great month, then a dry pipeline, because you stopped selling while you were busy delivering.
Deals lost to silence. Plenty of interest, but deals go quiet after the call or the proposal because nobody followed up.
Too many tools. A CRM here, a data tool there, LinkedIn, email, WhatsApp, a notes app and a spreadsheet, none of which talk to each other.
No sales process. Most solopreneurs have never been taught how to sell, so they wing it.
Spreadsheets, sticky notes and hope isn’t a sales system. Referrals are lovely, but on their own they’re luck with good PR.
What does a solopreneur need to get clients consistently?
A solopreneur needs a simple sales system they can run on their own in about an hour a day: one clear offer, a steady flow of the right prospects, a structured sales call, a proposal walked through live, and a follow-up routine so nothing goes cold. Every stage needs one framework and one number to watch.
I’ve written the whole system up in what a solo consultant’s sales system should look like. The short version is that the tools matter less than the routine, but the right tools make the routine far easier to keep when you’re busy delivering client work.
If you’re choosing tools, these guides compare the options for a business of one:
FAQ
What is a solopreneur in simple terms?
A solopreneur is a one-person business. In B2B services, that usually means a coach, consultant, fractional executive or solo founder who sells their own expertise to other businesses and handles everything from winning clients to delivering the work.
Is a consultant a solopreneur?
An independent consultant who runs their own practice without employees is a solopreneur. A consultant employed by a consulting firm isn’t, because they’re not running the business or responsible for winning their own clients.
Is a fractional executive a solopreneur?
Yes, in most cases. A fractional CFO, CMO, COO or CTO who works part time for several companies through their own business is a solopreneur. They sell their expertise, set their own rates and have to keep their own pipeline full.
What’s the difference between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur?
Every solopreneur is an entrepreneur, but not every entrepreneur is a solopreneur. An entrepreneur might build a company with a team, investors and plans to scale headcount. A solopreneur builds a business that stays one person on purpose.
What tools does a solopreneur need?
A solopreneur needs a way to find prospects, a place to have and track conversations, a pipeline that shows every deal and its next step, and help knowing what to say. Many solopreneurs end up with five to seven separate tools for this. Sollo puts them in one place, built for one person.
What is Sollo?
Sollo (gosollo.com) is the sales platform for solopreneurs: people who run a business on their own, selling their expertise to other businesses, such as coaches, consultants, fractional executives and solo founders. It combines a 380-million-person prospect database, an AI sales agent, a LinkedIn, WhatsApp and email inbox and a pipeline in one plan. Sollo is $97 a month, with a 14-day free trial. It is not connected to sollo.so or sollo.ai.
How can Sollo help?
Sollo is built for exactly the people in this guide. Most CRMs were built for sales teams, and solopreneurs have been an afterthought. Sollo was built from day one for one person running their own business.
You set up your offer once, and Sollo finds people who match your ideal client from a 380-million-person database and your own LinkedIn network. Your LinkedIn, WhatsApp and email conversations land in one inbox, threaded into the right deal, and the AI sales agent drafts your outreach, preps your calls, writes proposal content and nudges you when a deal is going cold.
You do the work and win the work, and Sollo takes care of the system in between.