After getting laid off, Stephen Warley fell into working for himself. He quickly became so successful that when Google came knocking about a permanent job, he said ‘no!’

“It's not what I want. At the end of the day, [with a permanent job] you're always going to have to submit to somebody else's values, somebody else's needs,” Stephen says. “I'm trying to inspire people to create income in alignment with your values, your needs, your abilities.”

Stephen joined me on the LIVE Without Borders podcast to discuss what that the future of work looks like, how it can benefit you, and the life skills that matter to help you live with more freedom and meaning. We also discuss his solopreneur journey and how you can start down the solopreneur path yourself.

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3 steps to solopreneurship

Stephen says becoming a solopreneur is a three-step process:

1. employment 

2. self-employment 

3. solopreneur 

He says self-employment is the in-between step between working for someone else and having a well-oiled and automated solopreneur machine. Here’s an excerpt from the podcast explaining what he means:

“The simplest way to start a business is to say, ‘Here's all my professional skills. How do I convert them into a freelance or consulting opportunity?’ Basically, I'm going to do the same work in the same industry for similar kinds of people. I just have to go out and find my gigs now, and then I will deliver on them and I'll get paid after a while. 

You get tired of doing that because all of a sudden you can get maxed out. You're working real hard, the money's coming in, but you're working all the time. And that's when we move into the solopreneur phase. And that's where you're going to start taking work off of your plate. 

I actually walk people through an exercise of looking at all of the responsibilities at different stages to keep freeing up their time.

• First one, eliminate. There's always stuff that you really don't need to be doing, or you haven't reflected on in a while and you don't even know why you're doing it anymore within your job or for your business.

• Number two is to delegate. Even if you're a solopreneur or a freelancer, there's always stuff that you could be delegating to other people.

• Automation -- really starting to understand how to use technology. The idea is setting up systems, processes, habits, and using technology to amplify that. 

I think when people want to get into [working for themselves], they try to do the solopreneur thing way too soon.

I really advise people, ‘You need to go through that self-employment/ freelance / consulting phase first. You've got to do the hands-on version of your business to really understand what you're good at, what you like and don't like, really listening to actual humans and not just looking at data and numbers by throwing up a landing page and buying a bunch of Facebook ads.

And then you can have a strong foundation to then build these systems and processes on top of, to really amplify everything that you do. I think sometimes people try to build systems on sloppy foundations.”

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