A solopreneur’s starter kit: What you need on Day 1

You’ve decided to start a solo business. Congratulations! I’ve been a solopreneur for years and love being my own boss. 

My decision to become a full-time freelance writer happened overnight. I lost my full-time job at a marketing agency. Looking around, the job market seemed bleak. Working for myself was a way to start earning money immediately to pay bills.

However, I’d been thinking about a solo business for months. So while the timing wasn’t my decision, it was a direction I was headed anyway. 

I had been freelancing alongside my 9-5 job for a few years, so I had the “infrastructure” in place to turn my side hustle into a full-time business. What you need on Day 1 is a lot different than what you need on Day 1,001.

Here are some of the minimum things you need to get started. 

1. Pricing

Before you even start talking to potential clients, you need to know what you’ll charge for your services. Will you charge by the hour? By project? On a retainer? 

Pricing is one of the hardest things to figure out when you start your own business. You often don’t have a good benchmark to know what you should charge compared to other solopreneurs doing similar work.

You can start with your salary if you were working full-time at a company. Break it down into an hourly rate (even if you’re charging on a per-project basis). Keep in mind that you’ll also be paying taxes and covering your own business expenses.

In addition to determining pricing, you’ll also need a way to present pricing to a potential client. You might want to consider software that lets you put together polished proposals for clients. Some can even collect e-signatures and payments as an all-in-one tool. But this isn’t necessary. You could also put together a proposal in a tool like Canva.

You’ll also want to have clients sign a contract, agreeing to your pricing and terms. You could pay a lawyer to draw up a contract for you, but that’s often cost-prohibitive for new solopreneurs. Instead, you could look for a template that you can modify, or use this free one from the Freelancers Union.

2. A website

I’m a big advocate for launching a website for your solo business. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Mine isn’t—it simply provides some information about my background and the services I offer. It includes a link to my portfolio of work and a “Contact Me” form. 

A website, even if it’s a one-pager, gives your business credibility. It also provides more information than you can showcase on a site like LinkedIn. 

Ideally, you would connect your website to your own domain. If you’ve never done this before, it sounds scarier than it actually is. Most website builders will provide step-by-step instructions to connect to a domain you buy from a company like GoDaddy or Cloudflare. 

If you want to take it a step further, you can connect your domain to Google Workspace so that your email address is @yourdomain.com. However, Google Workspace isn’t free. If you’re not ready to pay for it, you can always connect your domain to your email later. 

3. An invoicing and payment tool

My first invoices were created in Google Sheets. I was lucky that my clients paid me via check, because otherwise, I’m not sure how I would have collected payments.

You’ll want to make it easy for clients to pay you, in the method of their choosing. Some may want to send you a bank transfer, while others want to use a credit card. I’ve even worked with companies outside of the U.S. and needed to collect international payments. Payment should never be a point of friction.

Some tools provide invoicing, payment, and accounting all in one. Or, you can use a standalone product like Stripe to create invoices and collect payments. Platforms like Stripe will charge you a fee (a percentage of the invoice), but they will handle the payment processing for you. They collect money from the client— using whatever payment method the client chooses—and then send it to your bank account.

4. A plan to find clients

Once you have the foundational things in place (pricing, a website, and invoicing/payment), you can start to think about how you’ll find clients—or how they’ll find you.

This is not a single-day activity. Everything else I’ve mentioned can be pretty quick to set up. Marketing yourself is a long-term strategy.

When I first started freelancing full-time, I was desperate for work (I’d just lost my job!). I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. I joined several Slack communities and networked with potential clients. I was a guest on podcasts to get my name out into the world. 

Effective tactics will depend on the services you offer, but you’ll need to do some hustling to find your first few clients. Your approach will likely evolve as your business grows. What worked for me in my first few months looks very different now. Over time, I learned which clients and projects aligned best with my skills and services—and which ones didn’t.

Starting a solo business can feel overwhelming at first, especially in the early days. However, you get to design and build something that’s fully your own. Start with the foundation you need on Day 1, and you’ll figure out the rest as you go. 

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