I'm self-employed with a portfolio career. That means I do a combination of things to generate income - provide marketing services, run career coaching groups and individual sessions, and work as a head of marketing at tech companies on a contract basis.
Being a solopreneur can actually be a pleasant journey these days - given you've found your product-market fit, of course! I feel like the variety and accessibility of modern software tools have given me not just one but five extra pairs of hands - I can be an accountant, designer, website developer, proofreader and SEO professional without actually, you know, being them. Below, I share the tools that I use every day as a solopreneur.
Finances
Shall we just get this one out of the way first? If you're self-employed without a company, you may still want a separate business account. You're not legally required to have one, but it makes everything so much easier, especially when submitting your tax return. I chose Monzo and I've been pleased with it. It has a lovely intuitive interface, it allows you to generate and send invoices right from the app and create different pots. And it only costs me £5 a month.
Once your turnover (that is, your total sales, not profit) is over £90, 000 during the past 12 calendar months, you'll need to register for VAT. It applies to individuals too, not just companies. Once you've registered for VAT, you need accounting software to submit your digital VAT tax returns (they're different from your annual self-assessment returns). I hope you're still following.
I'll be honest, I didn't go around shopping for the best fitting software, even though The Gov UK website offers hundreds of authorised providers. I went with one of the market leaders Xero and have been pretty happy. My first submission took me less than two hours from the moment of signing up to actually submitting and, given my attitude towards accounting, I was massively relieved. Xero automatically connects with Monzo, so all your transactions are transferred instantaneously. Then you need to check manually if everything is correct. I've learned this process is called reconciliation. Then you just enter your tax rate and - Voila! - your VAT tax return is ready.
Marketing, Brand, and CRM
I'm glad the finance part is over, let's move on to the fun stuff. There're three major parts a solopreneur should take care of: building a brand, promoting and selling products or services and nurturing existing and potential clients. I'm so-ooo relieved all these things (and much more) can be done with one tool.
A bit of a background first. When I work for a tech company as a head of marketing, the default choice would be Hubspot. It's an excellent tool that started as a CRM and extended into a comprehensive marketing/sales/operations/support suite. This is the first choice of most companies I work with and for a good reason. However, as a solopreneur, I simply can't afford it. Let me explain. Hubspot offers some basic CRM functionality for free, however, if you want to add a marketing suite and connect your social posting - a major driver of business of a one-person company - the monthly bill shoots up to £780. Which is a straight no for most solopreneurs.
What is it then? Well I've found that Wix covers absolutely all of my marketing needs at around £50 per month (the cost depends on the functionality you're using). Wix started as a website builder and then grew into a whole marketing and sales suite. So I've built my website using no-code technology, I keep all my customer contacts here and run email campaigns, sell my services, implement SEO and have full-on analytic, I blog, and I've recently connected my social accounts too. So many other functions are available that I don't use, such as Google advertising and advanced e-commerce.
I'm now recommending Wix to many of my marketing clients. The only downside I've found so far is a commission on payments and delay of payouts. My guess is the payment clearance happens outside of the UK so receiving a payment takes over a week and will cost around 2.5%. Which bites given that interbankUK payments are free and immediate. I might be looking into other solutions for that. Other than that, I've been extremely happy with Wix.
And let's now forget another marketing hero - Canva. At £12.99 per month, it's unlimited creativity. I design all my decks and ads, edit photos and videos and do absolutely everything that involves a visual element in Canva. For example, I wanted to create a wallpaper featuring dancers for this website. Two minutes later and I got it! It's such an indispensable tool.
Other bits
I've committed myself not to use LLM tools when it comes to essential writing. It's important to me that my writing is authentic; it comes from the lived experience and therefore bears actual struggles, right and wrong decisions and reflects my journey. I believe this has value in the ever-increasing pool of AI-generated content.
That said, as a non-native speaker, I use Grammarly as a proofreader to check for potential grammar slips before publishing. I try not to use it for stylistic changes, though - I'm worried it can make my content sound less "me". And then, of course, the mightiest of them all - ChatGPT. I mainly use it for research, for quick executive summaries and more often than before, as a search tool. Again, I'm currently abstaining from using it for writing purposes, but who knows how long this one will last for. This may be a theme for another blog post.
Thank you for stopping by and let me know about the tools that you find helpful!
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