7 Failure Modes That Can Sink Your Solopreneur Business

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You’ve worked hard to get your solopreneur business off the ground, but what happens when things start to stall, or worse, head in the wrong direction?

In this episode of The Aspiring Solopreneur, Carly and Joe dig into the “improving” phase of the Solopreneur Success Cycle. They uncover the seven most common failure modes that can quietly sabotage your progress, from burnout and stagnation to external threats and even your own mindset.

Whether your business is thriving or just surviving, these insights will help you spot trouble early, course-correct with confidence, and keep your business aligned with the life you want to live.

Popular Questions and Answers From The Episode

What’s the first thing solopreneurs should address when improving their business?

If there’s an existential threat, that has to come first. These are big, business-ending issues—like a major competitor undercutting your prices, new technology disrupting your industry, or a business model that simply isn’t working. Before worrying about tweaks or small improvements, solopreneurs need to tackle these threats head-on to ensure survival.

What are the “seven failure modes” solopreneurs should watch out for?

Joe outlined seven common failure modes:

1. Misalignment – your business no longer matches your goals or interests.

2. Overload – you’re working too much and burning out.

3. Money problems – not enough revenue or profit to sustain you.

4. External risks – outside forces like platform changes or new competitors.

5. Stagnation – growth stalls or customers start slipping away.

6. Execution failure – not delivering quality results to clients.

7. Psychological barriers – mindset issues like fear, procrastination, or undercharging.

Recognizing which one you’re facing is the first step toward fixing it.

How do solopreneurs know when it’s time to reimagine their business?

It’s time to reimagine when your business stops serving your life. Even if it’s profitable and running smoothly, if you’ve lost enthusiasm, feel misaligned, or your personal goals have shifted, that’s a signal to step back. Sometimes improving your business isn’t about fixing broken systems—it’s about reshaping it so it supports the life you want today, not the one you wanted years ago.

So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, click here to check out LifeStarr Intro!  

Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: Well, we've made it to the improving phase of the Solopreneur Success Cycle, and this is where the real transformation happens. In this episode, Joe and I unpack the seven failure modes that can sneak up on solopreneurs, from overload to stagnation to the psychological barriers that keep you stuck. Whether your business is facing an existential threat or just feels misaligned with the life you want, we'll help you spot the red flags and start moving towards solutions. So tune in and find out how to refine, reimagine, and rebuild so your business serves you, not the other way around. You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for anyone on the solo business journey, whether you're just toying with the idea, taking your first bold step, or have been running your own show for years and want to keep growing, refining, and thriving.

I'm Carly Ries, and along with my cohost Joe Rando, we're your guides through the crazy but awesome world of being a company of one. As part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all things solopreneurship, we help people design businesses that align with their life's ambitions so they can work to live, not live to work. If you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the place for you. But if you want real world insights from industry experts, lessons from the successes and stumbles of fellow solopreneurs, and practical strategies for building and sustaining a business you love, you're in the right spot. Because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone.

No matter where you are in your journey, we've got your back. Joe, I cannot believe it. We are finally in the improving phase of this solopreneur success cycle. I feel like it has been a long time coming for this. Every every component is important in the solopreneur success cycle.

Improving your business is so important, especially if you need it, but it's good knowledge even if you don't think you're there yet. So let's kick off today. Let's talk about refining and reimagining your business as it relates to improving your business in that face of the Solopreneur Success Cycle.

Joe Rando: Cool. Yeah. So last time we talked about documenting the issues, And every once in a while, you come across an issue that you need to think about right away. sometimes it's just some stupid little thing that's making your life miserable, but there are existential threats.

I just wanna start with those. a lot of these changes could just be tweaks, improvements, making things better, fixing some annoying thing. But, occasionally, there are existential threats, and you don't wanna ignore those. You don't wanna hold off on those. So if it's something that's going to destroy your business, either something isn't working from the start or something changed, you know, some chat GPT came along or some new competitor came on the horizon that's, selling for a tenth of what you're selling for because it's a big company, whatever.

You know, if you find yourself with one of these, you don't really wanna be thinking about the tweaks. I mean, obvious to say that, but it's just important. So first and foremost, if there's an existential threat, tackle that first. Ignore everything else. Moving on from that, we have identified kind of what we call the seven failure modes of solopreneurs, things that these might may not be existential, but they may be things that just, are making the business fail in the context of not serving your life. So when we talk about successful solopreneur businesses, we're not talking about, seven figure solopreneurs. We're talking about businesses that serve your life and your goals. So there are different ways they can fill. I'd just like to walk through those.

I think it's important. So, sometimes things happen where, the business is fine, but you've changed. We have people that come along and say, you know, I've been doing this for for seven years. I wanna do something else. And they just have a change of what they need.

So you need to keep that in mind. That can be something that's wrong with your business. It's not really wrong with your business, but it's now no longer serving you. these failure modes, as I said, there are seven. I'm gonna just walk through them briefly.

And the first one is misalignment. It might just be something isn't quite right about what you have to do, what you're doing in your business, and what you want, and that can lead to burnout. So you wanna look at a business and say, hey. You know, I'm bored or I don't have any enthusiasm.

There's probably something about your business that's not really matching your needs. So keep an eye for that.

Carly Ries: And you'll know. It's not like you'll be surprised from it. You will have this feeling that things are hard.

Joe Rando: Yeah. I mean, I don't know about anybody else. If you've had a job or I had a business that morphed into something I didn't wanna run, and you just don't wanna go to work. You're just not excited. You know? And it's not like now I get up. oh, I get to do this. because I love what I'm doing. Failure mode two is overload. you're working too hard. And that's an obvious one. You know? You're just putting in too many hours a day, can't get all the work done.

There's no time for strategy. Maybe your health's suffering. Those kinds of things. That's a really important one to address.

And we don't have time in this SoundByte episode to go into all the ways to address this, but, you're never gonna be able to scale chaos. So if it's not letting you have a life around the business, at least after the beginning sometimes the beginning can be hard. But after if the day to day of running this business is eating you alive, do something! 

Next one is you aren't making any money. Everything is great in terms of, you like the business.  You know, this is happening, but you're you're either not getting customers or the customers aren't profitable enough to to pay the bills, and you're not making enough money to survive. Obviously, an important one to address. Lots of ways to do that. As I said, we're just gonna cover the concepts here. All the other stuff is in the book, or, if you join us over at LifeStarr, we get into all this stuff.

Failure mode four is external risks. So a real good one of those recently was ChatGPT, and a lot of people that are freelancers are like, uh-oh. what am I gonna do now if ChatGPT is a pretty good copywriter, for example? What am I gonna do as a copywriter? And you know, there are ways to get around this. It can be things like, you have  a big following on Instagram, and your account get suspended. There are lots of different things externally that can come along and mess you up, and you didn't do anything wrong.

So, the next one is stagnation. The business was growing, all of a sudden, it just starts to stagnate. it's not growing the way you wanted it to, or it's getting to the point where you start to feel like you're gonna start losing customers. You know, it feels stale. That's something that you need to worry about. Failure mode six is execution failure. You're not delivering properly. It's not going the way it should in terms of the product, the results that you're delivering to your client. And this is on you. You've got all these ideas, but you're not putting something out there that's actually working for your customers. And that's obviously a real problem.

Carly Ries: That's the whole overpromise a deliver syndrome.

Joe Rando: Yeah. don't do that. Absolutely. And then, the last one that we've identified is psychological barriers. You're not doing things that you know you should be doing. You're avoiding, going out and trying to generate leads doing the prospecting, or you're not charging enough even though you know you should be charging more, overthinking or feeling isolated. These kinds of things that can come up and you know, these psychological barriers to you doing what you know you should do. And those are the kinds of things that you really need to think about. Now none of these are quick fixes, but all of them are things that you can address if you understand first and foremost what the problem is.

And it makes it so much easier to think about solutions when you know what the issue is. So, try to figure that out, and you'll be much much closer to a solution to the problem once you can at least name the problem.

Carly Ries: in the next episode, we're gonna be talking about deciding which changes to make. So listeners, be sure to stay tuned for that. But for this episode, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, leave that five star review for real. Share this episode with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

And we'll see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs.

Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.