Growing Your Independent Business: The Road Trip Model for Setting Out on Your Own

After researching thousands of independent businesses, we’ve summarized the general components of a growth journey. You’ll find they’re relatively consistent across a variety of experiences—and they map 1:1 onto the elements of a good old-fashioned road trip. Use this analogy to get a better idea of what’s ahead and understand how each part of your journey contributes to your long-term success.

The phase of maturity that your business is in should inform what component you focus on. So if you find yourself wondering “what should I be doing right now to build my business?” you can use this as a roadmap.

Plan your route – Design your business

Journeys start with preparation. If you’re headed out on a road trip, you’ll choose a destination (or several), plan your route, pack clothes, prepare snacks and caffeine, get your car checked out, and maybe download an audiobook or two. If you’re starting a business, you’ll take stock of your goals and resources so that you start your journey with a good understanding of your plan. 

For independents, this is the business design phase. It involves researching your target market and reviewing your personal and professional goals, assets, liabilities, and responsibilities. Here are a few tasks to complete before you get underway:

• Finalize your business design. Take stock of your preferences and needs—such as when and how you like to work and how much you need to earn to meet your financial obligations. Our framework for designing your business can help you map out your priorities and clarify what your ideal business looks like. 
• Conduct market research. As part of your business planning, research your target audience and develop your ideal customer profile (ICP). During the research phase, aim to learn about the demand for your product or service, identify key competitors, and gather information about the behaviors and preferences of your target customers. 
• Map your finances. Review your personal and business finances, taking note of liabilities (like your mortgage or car payments) and assets (like the money you’ve set aside for runway and expenses). 
• Review your network. Take stock of your personal and professional network. Do you have access to mentors with experience starting a consulting business in your field? Is there anybody to whom you should reach out personally before making a broader announcement about your independent venture?

How long you spend in this phase is up to you, and it depends on which on-ramp to independence you take: You might spend more time here if you’re side-hustling than if you’ve already taken the leap. Give yourself space to be intentional about your choices while avoiding analysis paralysis—you’ll eventually need to go to market, even if you’re tempted to tinker forever.

Start driving – Get your first clients

This step is critical to finding product-market fit. Those first clients will teach you how the market responds to your services, if people will pay you enough, and whether you actually like consulting—all of which will help you  decide if you want to keep going.

Your website, referral partnerships, internal processes, etc., can all come later. Right now, you’re focused on getting that first client. To do this, you’ll use a mix of the following tactics:

• Emailing your network to announce that you’re open for business
• Announcing on LinkedIn and social platforms
• Asking for warm intros to specific ICPs
• Using cold outreach to pitch targeted strangers
• Joining hiring platforms
• Reaching out to former employers to consult on a contract basis

There’s a good chance that your first client will be a referral from someone you already know. To drum up interest beyond inbound referrals, move down the list of tactics. The first—and most likely to yield fruit—is asking for warm intros. This entails looking for second-degree connections who fit your ICP and asking for an intro from a trusted person in your network. 

From there, you can try cold outreach: cold calling, emailing, or DMing people who fit your ICP and pitching them your services. You can also join a platform for freelancers or fractionals to get your profile out there quickly. Finally, you can reach out to former employers and offer to consult on a contract basis. Some companies have a policy against this, but others may jump at the chance to have you back on the team.

Our opinion is that it doesn’t matter where your first clients come from, so don’t let ego get in the way of bringing in work early on. Everyone starts somewhere.

Start your engine – Build a sales process

At this point, you’ve already brought on your first clients. Now you need to start building a growth engine that will generate leads and encourage conversion over the long term.

For most consultants, this is a classic business development and sales process. You’ll typically have a growth engine that consists of both inbound and outbound business development and sales. Some common strategies for building a smooth sales process include:

• Creating inbound lead forms on your website
• Building a smooth internal sales workflow
• Honing your sales, objection handling, and negotiation skills
• Bringing on a CRM to track your performance
• Standardizing your proposal and scoping process

And just as your car’s engine propels you on your road trip, your core growth engine is what powers your business journey. In the next step you’ll expand your top-of-funnel processes, using traditional sales outreach and virality to fuel your growth engine.

Add fuel – Find your primary lead sources

To get the pistons in your growth engine firing, you’ll need fuel. Regardless of how you approach marketing, your aim is essentially virality, so that people can find you via word-of-mouth, personal referrals, and captivating content.

Here are a few sources of fuel to consider:

• Networking and business development. Continuing to build your network is the best way to drive business growth. Join industry groups, attend networking events, and participate in communities. 
• Content. Any content you produce can also support your sales and marketing efforts. This includes your website, blog, newsletter, and social media channels. A newsletter and social media can help keep you top of mind with clients, build trust, and increase your visibility; while your website should help prospects understand your work and optimize for conversion. Good content can help you create an evergreen organic source of leads.
• Referrals. Once you have clients, they can also act as fuel to your growth engine. Satisfied clients can make an excellent referral source, and you can use social proof (such as testimonials) to build trust with new prospects. As your client base expands, so will your word-of-mouth reach.
• Cold outreach. Bring on a cold reach automation tool, work with a virtual assistant to generate outreach lists, and create a weekly habit of reaching out to people. The key is consistency.

Find the highway – Grow your business

If launching your business is like a road trip, then a highway is anything that promotes faster or more efficient progress towards your goals. Look for these opportunities to accelerate your trip:

• Take on different projects. Diversifying the services you offer can help you do more work for your existing clients or allow you to serve an expanded client base.
• Adjust your prices. You can adjust your pricing structure with existing clients (for example, move from hourly to retainer, or increase your effective hourly rate at the end of the year) so you can smooth income, make more money, and reduce operational overhead.
• Move upmarket. You can move upmarket by targeting bigger clients (with bigger budgets). Once you’re established in your field, adjust your sales and marketing efforts to target the clients you really want to serve. You may also be able to command higher prices with more upmarket clients, increasing your revenue even more. 
• Automate processes. Automation can reduce your workload per client and free you up to sell more work, so invest in tools designed to help you automate routine business tasks. 
• Build a reputation. This takes time, but if you can become known for the work that you do by making content and speaking on panels, it’ll help you stay top of mind when people are looking for help.

Look for one-time shortcuts – Accelerate your progress 

Shortcuts get a bad rap—but when you’re on a long journey, any safe and legal way to cover ground more efficiently is worth exploring. In a business context, look for one-off ways to temporarily increase attention on your brand and boost your rate of progress toward your goals. Shortcuts aren’t designed to last forever, but when you combine them with your marketing strategy, they can still reduce the total amount of time it takes to get where you’re going.

Here are a few examples:

• Host an event. Events can increase brand awareness and elevate your profile. You might host a webinar designed to help your ideal clients solve a common problem or sponsor an in-person networking event for leaders in your industry. Consider co-hosting with other independents, too: You’ll reduce your costs and gain access to your partners’ networks. 
• Get press. Creating newsworthy press releases, hosting splashy events, and sponsoring local initiatives can boost brand awareness by getting your name in the news.  
• Go on a podcast. Being a podcast guest can give you intimate access to a niche target audience. Craft a pitch that emphasizes the value you’ll provide the podcasts’ core demographics.
• Guest post. You can also approach online publishers about guest posting on their blogs and accept guest posts on your site, effectively sharing audiences with other influencers and entrepreneurs. 
• Go viral. Posting a hot take or making viral content that generates a lot of attention can rapidly expand your awareness. It’s hard to predict, but powerful when it happens.

Take on passengers – Build a team

We’re not suggesting that you pick up hitchhikers, but what about a vetted collaborator with a robust referral network and a skill set you need?

Consider whether you’d benefit from the following types of passengers:

• Find collaborators. Collaborator partnerships can help you expand your client base and allow you to take on projects that require diverse skill sets. If you’re a web developer, for example, you might consider partnering with a marketing consultant or a graphic designer. Both collaborators are likely to encounter clients who need your services, and teaming up will allow you to offer a full-service solution to a client’s problem.
• Hire employees. If you have more work than you can handle or need reliable internal access to a skill type you don’t have, you can hire help. If your needs are inconsistent or you don’t yet have the budget to support a full-time employee, start by bringing on contractors for specific projects and scale up over time as needed.

Maintain your engine – Optimize processes

Fine-tuning and maintenance can help your car run better and faster—and help you avoid a time-consuming and costly breakdown on the road. 

Here are a few ways to fine-tune your business’s growth engine:

• Optimize sales conversions. Review your sales performance data to identify the most effective tactics and messages and adjust your strategy.
• Create a re-engagement strategy. Boost conversions by following up with leads that have gone cold. You might develop an email series or reach out over the phone with a particularly attractive offer. 
• Create a wedge product. Consider creating a wedge, which is a product or service designed to help you win work from clients who fit your ICP but aren’t yet ready to purchase your core offering. Short trials, free consultations, and small projects are all popular types of wedges. 
• Expand awareness. Review key marketing metrics (like engagement rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate) to discover what channels and tactics work for you. You can then double-down on effective tactics and either modify or abandon less successful initiatives. 

Enjoy the open road

When you work as an independent, you get to experience the exhilarating freedom of the solo road trip. You can adventure, explore, change course, or even pull off for a midday nap—whatever calls to you, you’re free to pursue it.

So take that left turn into the sunrise! Give that new type of work a try. From here on out, the route you take on your business journey is entirely up to you. 

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