Celebrating 10 Years as a Solopreneur: A Journey of Discovery, Growth, and Community
As this summer draws to a close, I’m celebrating a major milestone: I’ve now completed ten years of running my own business. Whether I call myself a freelancer, solopreneur, coach, or consultant (and I’ve pretty much used all those labels at one point or another), I think it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the past decade.
Before we get too far, I want to make it clear that the point of this post is not to name drop or simply list everything I’ve done. I hope that by offering a high-level overview and sharing a few of my favorite moments and accomplishments, I’ll provide you with a few points to potentially explore, whether you’re looking for ways to develop your team or your own skills as a product leader.
Are you an aspiring product coach who’s looking for tips on getting started? You might just want to read this post instead (or skip to the end where I share a few tips for solopreneurs).
Ready? Let’s dive in!
The Early Years: From Managing Director to Freelance Product Manager
In the summer of 2013, I left my role as Managing Director at tolingo, a translation startup, and ventured into the exciting, uncertain world of freelancing. I began as an Interim Product Manager, targeting mainly scale-ups with established business models. As time passed, I expanded my scope to Interim Head of Product roles and even zero-to-one Product Manager roles—building products (like the XING Coaches platform) from the ground up, including finding product-market fit.
During this period, I put my product manager’s toolkit to the test, applied my way of working in various contexts, and developed a solid foundation of knowledge and frameworks I’m still using and teaching today.
Relevant resources:
Evolution to Coaching: Meeting a Market Need
Two years into my solo career, I transitioned into coaching. This pivot was largely influenced by my clients and my interest in mitigating risks by diversifying my income sources. Individual contributors who loved my focus on personal growth began requesting ongoing one-on-one coaching sessions. The benefit? Coaching allowed me to serve multiple clients simultaneously, expanding my impact in helping more people further their craft while also balancing my workload.
Relevant resources:
Balancing the Workload: The Reality of Time Management
Speaking of workload, my initial plan was to work four days a week for clients while reserving Fridays for company development—ranging from website updates to future planning. Reality had other plans. I often found myself working five days for clients and catching up on business maintenance over the weekends.
I’d also like to highlight that time management didn’t get any easier when I became a parent in 2017. My husband and I have worked together to find ways to be present and enjoy both parenting and work, but this has always been (and continues to be) an ongoing planning effort and sometimes even a negotiation!
The good news? Over the years, I’ve gotten a bit better at taking time off and I heartily encourage the leaders I work with to do so and to make sure their team members do, too.
Relevant resources:
Milestones and Learning Opportunities
In retrospect, certain milestones and initiatives enriched my journey and broadened my horizons:
Starting to share my best practices with the world: Contributing to the Produktbezogen and later Mind the Product blog helped me find clarity of thought and form opinions that made me a better coach and teacher. As an added bonus, it helped me build my personal brand.
Developing the #52questions coaching cards: I created the 52questions coaching cards to help product leaders and managers foster deeper conversations and commit to professional development.
Public speaking: I also began speaking and connecting with the greater product community at events like ProductTanks, meetups, and various conferences. I’ve also learned along the way how important the skill of storytelling is for product people. If you’re trying to develop your own storytelling skills, you can watch one of my talks or check out the slides here.
Publishing my newsletter and books: Over time, I learned that my toolkit is helpful for many product people, so I started to share and connect with my community through my quarterly newsletter and published my book STRONG Product People. In autumn of 2023, I’ll be publishing a short companion book, STRONG Product Communities.
Co-hosting Mind the Product Engage Hamburg: In 2016, I teamed up with Arne Kittler to host MTP Engage Hamburg. I got to put the “solo” in solopreneur on pause, adding “event organizer” to my list of titles. And I got to be part of a team again, which I loved!
Launching a conference: In 2022, my longtime co-host Arne and I founded Cultivate Curiosity GmbH, which gave us the platform to organize the Product at Heart conference.
Relevant resources:
The Illusion of "Solo" in Solopreneurship
Being a solopreneur doesn't mean you work alone. There are the people who put me on their stages, invite me to their podcasts, ask me for an interview. The people who send me potential clients to connect with. The people who I can call whenever I need to vet ideas for a blog post or a new service offering. The people that I run conferences with, that I do bigger client engagements with. The people that I learn from, get inspired from, and my small but mighty team (Operations Manager Jan Schmidt, Editor Melissa Suzuno, and Social Media Wizard Jess Bolton). I’m forever grateful for all of these beautiful human beings, but I’ll skip the extensive name-dropping as I mention most of them in the acknowledgements of my books. :-)
The Ups and Downs of Being a Solopreneur
There’s a reason why I’ve stuck with this path for the past ten years—the exposure to new industries and products feeds my curiosity and keeps me learning. Plus, I’m a huge fan of the flexibility this lifestyle affords me—I can make time for family, friends, and new ventures like writing books and organizing conferences. It’s hard to imagine that happening while working a full-time job!
But let’s be honest: It’s hard. In this post, I’m choosing to focus on the positive and I’m not going through every single challenge or hurdle that I’ve faced, but let’s say there were plenty. I’ve also had to get comfortable with building a personal brand and putting myself out there in the online space. This can be daunting, frustrating, and even discouraging at times, but overall I believe it’s worth it.
Tips for Aspiring Solopreneurs
If you’ve ever thought about starting your own business—and I know you have because everybody does once in a while—I have a few tips to share. And even if you’re in a full-time engagement and not planning on leaving anytime soon, I think most of this advice is still relevant for anyone in a product role. So here are the things I would say to my younger self:
Find community: Surround yourself with like-minded professionals. This can be through in-person events and/or online communities like Slack groups.
Seek the stage: It can be hard to put yourself out there (more on that in a moment), but public speaking and content creation help you solidify your own point of view and can significantly amplify your reach.
Learn to say no: Focus on what aligns with your goals, not what keeps you busy.
Go with the flow: I never had a master plan, but chose projects that interested me and offered learning opportunities.
Move before you're ready: Particularly for women, don't wait for the perfect moment. It rarely comes. It’s natural to feel a little scared, whether you’re starting your business, stepping onto a stage, or publishing a book.
Final Thoughts
Ten years have flown by, and as I prepare to publish my second book, I find myself in a balanced space—both personally and professionally. I've been able to maintain 20 hours of client work a week while allocating time for conferences, content creation, and other creative projects. This balance keeps me sane, productive, curious, and a good coach.
Here's to more years of exploration, growth, and impact. Thank you for being part of this incredible journey!
If you’re interested in exploring how we might work together, check out my current offerings here.