Nobody, it seems is a simple online businessperson anymore. You have call yourself some kind of “preneur” to take yourself seriously! There are lots of different kinds of “preneurs” now, but we’re concerned with 6 of these who are essentially “solopreneurs “ i.e. they like working on their own in a business, but without a team. Why? Because they see some huge joys in doing so, in being masters of their time and business decisions.

They sure have the autonomy to get the best work-life balance out of their chosen lifestyle, but do they always achieve what they dream of? What are their main challenges? Let’s see …

#1: Homepreneurs

“Homepreneurs” are those who have either left a 9-to-5 job, or may not have been working at all. They’d rather work from home than commute to an office for work. By choosing to be like this, Homepreneurs give themselves lots of leeway in lifestyle: working at their own pace; working in their own space; being as dishevelled or disorganized as they want; working at odd hours even into the dead of the night; wanting to be around no others while at work. …

Homepreneurs often value “home working benefits” more than the money and profits from the business. But there are pluses and minuses to this whole situation. Homepreneurs often start unravelling because they may get too comfortably disorganized.

They can start going too crazy that work productivity comes to a standstill. Lethargy is no good, and eventually leads to lack of elementary self-discipline. Homepreneurs have to find some method in their madness to continue to remain steadily productive.

#2: Mompreneurs

“Mompreneurs” (includes also “Dadpreneurs”) are usually parents in charge of very young children who’d like to run their businesses from home, just for the sheer convenience of managing both their kids and their businesses.

It’s also true that Mompreneurs or Dadpreneurs often cut back on childcare costs to undertake the responsibility for their children themselves – often to bolster their budgets for their businesses.

But beyond spreading themselves thin across the home and work, they have other issues to grapple with: there can be frequent distractions at work; working environment chaos; fractured attention span; and with young kids around almost everything is always an emergency that must get precedence over work.

Working from home and also keeping an eye on the kids, can also leave Mompreneurs and Dadpreneurs with eternally frayed nerves. To keep sanity at all times, scheduling and learning to stay focused is the key. As business grows, they absolutely have to factor in the cost of the extra help.

#3: Propreneurs

“Propreneurs” are the class of solopreneurs who are “professionals”, who have either retired and are looking to leverage their experience for money – or they may even be a younger crowd, these days, who want to retire early to be in business for themselves.

Most often, they seek to break out of their corporate job titles and be seen as “people-brands”. Among this class of solopreneurs you can count consultants of all types: chartered accountants, lawyers, management consultants, web strategists, business coaches. (Earlier they were known as “self-employed professionals” – till they became “Pro-preneurs”).

The Internet does seem to be just the right model for the working style of these Propreneurs. They can build online authority, thought-leadership and brand eminence through content marketing.

They can publish a lot of papers and credentials, or showcase testimonials and case studies. But the biggest challenge they face is to be always seen as ahead of the crowd. They need to stay at the cutting edge of business and they need to be seen sharing a lot of analytical insights with their potential and current clients.

They need to network avidly with peers and influencers to get better quality clientele, and it takes a fair amount of time to build the kind of credibility that fetches big-ticket business opportunities. The climb from a nobody to an authority can even take up to 2 years!

#4: Sidepreneurs

The “Sidepreneur” is the person who wants to be a solopreneur on the side, while holding a full-time job. Why would someone want to do this much extra work?

There are loads of reasons: some people want to earn extra income; others feel their day jobs don’t really allow self-expression of their passions as sidepreneurship can; and there are others who may feel less comfortable diving into solopreneurship risks fulltime and would like to take it in stages.

People who opt for sidepreneurship have to find the energy to be doing a full day’s work on their main jobs, and then also burning the midnight oil for their businesses. Believe it or not, a lot of students and millennials, with an ambition to be the next tech-millionaires after university, are part of this crowd.

The main challenge for Sidepreneurs is to know when to quit their day jobs – or if they want to quit their day jobs at all. A lot of Sidepreneurs, unable to resolve this dilemma, keep themselves under physical and mental strain for long periods of time.

Some prefer a connect between their day jobs and their sidepreneurial ventures – others like both to be entirely different so they get a mental break when they switch from one to the other kind of work.

#5: Gigpreneurs

Remember we used to call them “Freelancers” … well. they are “Gigpreneurs”. They are generally people who use their talents, skills or experience in specific task-jobs. They are also people who don’t necessarily aim very high on income or profits.

Many of them seem to follow a “life-sufficiency” based economic model. So long as they are earning enough to pay the bills and have a little over, they like the independence to think of themselves as masters of their own time and owned by no one.

Most Gigpreneurs enrol themselves on job-forums or job-sites and take up tasks or work based on a bidding or mutual negotiation basis, Competitive price-wars are fierce. Testimonials of past clients matter a lot.

It is a hard-fought business territory with a lot riding on “customer-ratings”and portfolios. Since the whole Gigpreneur model is a very price-sensitive one, those Gigpreneurs who understand the value of personal positioning and branding can score a bit higher than others who are just run-of-the-mill.

Being a bit different also helps. There are some Gigpreneurs, for instance, who claim better skills than others by offering to “fix the mistakes’ made by the bargain-basement variety of Giggers.

#6: Wantrepreneurs

“Wantrepreneurs” are a different kind of people entirely. As the name suggests, they are those who desperately want to dive into solopreneurship online, but for some reason, cannot seem to quite take the plunge.

The Wiktionary describes them as “people who aspire to be entrepreneurs, but who never realize this ambition.” Wantrepreneurs procrastinate. They obsess about finding the right idea or the next big trend that will get them rich quickly. Since their minds are not clear on what they’d like to do, Wantrepreneurs try to follow the trend, simply because these may have been proven successful already.

Some experts psychologists who have studied “Wantrepreneurs” have attributed their lack of action to three possibilities: they may fear failure; they may be lazy; or their fire in their bellies is not yet strong enough for them to want to jump into action. Nevertheless, a lot of “Wantrepreneurs” provide good business for other marketers online.

They are avid buyers of books, courses, tools and even mentoring sessions. In fact, you could say they are the ones who should be overwhelmed with information overload, but they still can’t keep their hands off the next expensive course that says “Learn how I made $468,010″ from just one blog post written in 3 minutes”.

In conclusion:

Get clear which kind of solopreneur you are. Understand both, your motivations and the challenges of your choices. They are the twin keys to your success.

There are many millionaire-solopreneurs who have hit the heights, despite the odds of their situations. Their secret: soar on the strengths of your choices, while managing the challenges.

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