Those starting out in their solo business often struggle with selling themselves as an expert. It’s more common to take on anything and everything regardless of whether it’s exactly what you want to do or not.

But in recent times I’ve learnt that if you take on anything and everything, you are not focusing on what you do best. For example: I was asked to say in one or two sentences what I actually do for a living. My answer – I’m a writer and I write anything from a letter to a manual plus public relations. But that’s not exactly what I really want to do; it’s how I earn a living. There is a difference.

Pitching yourself as an expert takes courage and this means turning down jobs that are not a good fit for your skills.

When you decline something that is not one of your core functions, you are focusing on exactly what you want to do and disregarding everything else.

You can relate this to any solo occupation, a dog wash business for example. You wash every kind of dog, but you would really like to specialise in the bigger varieties, are you brave enough to make this the selling point of your business?

If you are, it would make you an expert in washing bigger dogs and people with those types of species would welcome having someone like you to take care of their four-legged friends.

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How about house cleaning? You could clean any house, but you really specialise in cleaning tiles and grout. There is probably a huge market for this expertise and when you focus on this particular aspect of cleaning; you have put your hand up as an expert in your field. Now you can charge more and people will pay it because they cannot get this service from just anyone.

This is a big lesson I’ve learnt recently, even though I’ve been a soloist for 16 years.

That’s the great thing about working for yourself; you never stop learning.