Dr Petra Wuest has been solo since 2004.
That's over 20 years of keeping a business of ONE alive, and for a long time the work just came to her.
After COVID, that changed.
Petra is the first guest in something new I'm calling the Sollopreneur Spotlight, where I introduce you to incredible solopreneurs, how they win work, and how they use Sollo to do it.
Her whole job is helping brilliant, quiet people stop being invisible. Her clients are experts, often scientists, who love the work and HATE the idea of promoting themselves.
How she wins work
When Petra went solo, she couldn't take a single client with her, so she started from zero.
→ She went old school. She mailed letters to companies, then hired someone to call and ask "did you get the letter?" (yes, really). It landed her two or three really good clients she says she'd never have got otherwise.
→ She wrote books. Eight of them in ten years, and she says that's what gave her massive visibility.
→ She showed up in person. Her biggest client for years came from a women's network lunch, where she sat next to someone from HR at a pharma company who said "we're building our training programme, come tell us what you do."
The one habit that saved her 3 jobs
Once the work stopped coming to her, Petra couldn't afford to let a single lead go quiet. And she was very honest with me about her weak spot:
"I'm super with people, I'm super delivering all these speeches, but I'm not a good organiser… it slipped all the time."
So now her leads and follow-ups live in Sollo (and she reckons she's the heaviest user of the Sollo agent for drafting her emails, which made my week).
In roughly three months:
"I certainly have three, at least three jobs where I only got them because I followed up."
Boom. Three jobs that would have slipped straight through the cracks.
Follow-up is the bit most of us drop the moment we get busy, and it's exactly what Sollo is built to handle:
→ It finds the right people, in your network and beyond, with their email and phone number.
→ The agent preps you on each one and drafts the first message, so you never have to stare at a blank box.
→ Every conversation lives in one place, and you get a nudge when someone goes quiet.
All you have to do is have the conversation (with me and a community of solopreneurs in your corner).
The full story, including the post-it exercise she ran on me live, is on episode 2 of Going Sollo.
Power to you,
Mike
Look, a human!
P.S. Try Petra's trick tonight. Find three people who went quiet after a good conversation, and follow up with them. Just make sure you lead with value when you do (and you don’t say “just following up”)