I left corporate and don't know where to start. What's the first step?

What is the first step? Where do I start building a solo career, and how do I plan the transition? How do I create an offering, check that anybody wants it, and launch?

Those were the questions people sent me before my masterclass, and I recognised every one of them.

The pile of advice

The worst thing about leaving corporate wasn't the lack of advice. It was the pile of it. Build a website. Post every day. Make a lead magnet. Niche down. Start a podcast. It arrived with no order, and no way of telling what mattered this month and what mattered in a year.

I did a bit of everything instead of one thing really well.

For years I worked on workforce strategy, on the side of the table that set the order. Then I left, and I realised somebody else had always decided what came next, and I had never once had to do it myself. Everything on my list was a step two.

I also thought: I am clever, right. I can work this out. And you can. You can also do it a hell of a lot quicker when you are not doing it on your own. What I tell people now is to focus on less, not more.

The step that comes first

Every other step depends on one answer: who you help, and with what problem. A website for no particular person converts nobody. Posts about everything reach nobody. An offer with no buyer in mind cannot be priced.

So the first step is not a tool or a plan. It is a sentence:

1. Write down who you want to help, as a person at a moment, not a sector. "Heads of function in the six months after a merger is announced" is a person at a moment. "Financial services" is a sector.
2. Write down the problem they have at that moment that you have already solved.
3. Test it in three conversations with people who have that problem.

Everything else, the website, the posts, the price, comes after that sentence and gets much easier because of it.

For how to find the right moment, read how to pick a consulting niche after corporate.

Your next step

This is literally what my free masterclass is called: Where on earth to start when becoming a solopreneur, and where AI actually helps. Ninety minutes, and you leave with one thing to test, and what you are doing this week to test it.