Running a Business on Your Own: How to Manage Solo
At the start of 2025, 4.3 million UK businesses — 75% of the total — had no employees other than the owner. If you’re running your business alone, you’re not the exception. You’re the norm. Here’s how to make it work.
The specific challenges of running solo
Understanding what makes running a business alone difficult is the first step to addressing it. The challenges tend to cluster around a few recurring themes:
There’s no delegation, no cover, and no separation between you and the business. If you’re ill, the business is ill. If you take a holiday, nothing happens while you’re away — and a backlog waits for you when you return. This creates a low-level anxiety that many solo business owners carry permanently.
One of the most underrated advantages of having colleagues is someone to think out loud with. Solo business owners make all their decisions alone — which is fine for routine choices but genuinely difficult for bigger ones: whether to raise prices, take on a large contract, or change direction entirely.
You’re simultaneously the CEO, the delivery person, the accountant, the marketing department, and the receptionist. Switching between these roles constantly is cognitively exhausting — and means none of them gets the focused attention it deserves.
Running a business alone can be lonely. Research from Xero found that half of UK sole traders have felt lonely, and 46% felt unsupported. The mental load of carrying the business — worrying about it, planning for it, problem-solving constantly — doesn’t switch off at the end of the working day.
When work is quiet, there’s no salary arriving regardless. Managing the emotional as well as financial reality of slow periods is one of the genuinely hard things about going it alone — and something most solo business owners face at some point.
How to structure your working week
The most effective solo business owners share one habit: they treat their time as deliberately as a larger business would. Without that structure, the urgent always crowds out the important.
Separate your roles
Even if you’re one person, it helps to mentally separate the different hats you wear. Many solo business owners find it useful to designate time for different types of work:
| Role | What it includes | Why it needs protecting |
|---|---|---|
| Client delivery | The actual work clients pay for | Revenue depends on it — but it can become all-consuming |
| Business development | Finding clients, following up leads, networking | Without dedicated time, the pipeline quietly dries up |
| Admin | Invoicing, bookkeeping, emails, compliance | Necessary, but should be batched — not constant |
| Strategic | Reviewing performance, planning ahead, improving the business | Most impactful long-term, but most easily sacrificed short-term |
Protect your peak hours
Identify when you do your best work and protect that time for your most important tasks. Don’t let your sharpest hours get consumed by admin or email. For most people this is mid-morning — guard it accordingly.
Set working hours and stick to them
One of the insidious features of working alone is that work can expand to fill every available hour. Setting clear start and finish times — and keeping to them — is harder than it sounds but important for long-term sustainability.
Getting strategic input without a business partner
Not having a business partner doesn’t mean making every decision in a vacuum. There are several practical ways to get the sounding board you need:
- Find a peer group or network. Business networking groups like the FSB, local Chamber of Commerce, or sector-specific networks give you regular contact with other owners facing similar challenges. The best of these evolve into informal peer advisory relationships — people who understand your situation and will give honest feedback.
- Work with a mentor. Several free mentoring programmes operate in the UK: Enterprise Nation, the Prince’s Trust (for under-30s), and local Growth Hubs all offer mentoring support. Your bank’s business relationship manager is also worth approaching — many are happy to act as a sounding board.
- Consider a business coach. A paid coach is more structured than a mentor, with a specific focus on accountability and decision-making. A good one pays for themselves in clarity and better choices. Costs vary widely — worth shopping around.
Managing the financial reality of going it alone
The financial risks of running solo are more acute than for a business with employees. A few principles that make a real difference:
- Build a personal cash reserve. When you’re employed, your employer absorbs some financial shocks. When you’re solo, they land directly on you. Three to six months of personal living costs in reserve makes the inevitable quiet periods far less stressful.
- Separate business and personal finances. Use a dedicated business bank account, even as a sole trader. The clarity this creates about what the business is actually earning and spending is worth far more than any small account fee.
- Price for the reality of solo business. You pay both employee and employer National Insurance, fund your own pension, cover your own sick pay and holiday, and have no employment safety net. Your pricing must reflect this. See our guide to pricing your services for the full calculation.
- Pay yourself a proper salary. Set a regular transfer from your business account to your personal account — even as a sole trader. It creates discipline and makes it far easier to understand whether the business is actually profitable.
- Set aside tax as you go. Self-assessment tax is due in January and July. Set aside 25–30% of everything you earn into a separate savings account as you go. When the bill arrives, the money is already there.
How to handle being ill or needing time off
When you can’t work, you can’t earn — and the business can grind to a halt. A few things worth putting in place before you need them:
If you’re going to be unavailable, let clients know as far in advance as possible and set clear expectations. Most clients are understanding when managed well — few are understanding when left in the dark.
A colleague from your network who works in the same field and with whom you have a reciprocal arrangement is invaluable. Knowing someone who could step in for urgent work — even informally — is worth more than a formal agreement that never gets used.
If the only person who knows how your business works is you, the business is fragile. A simple document covering key processes, passwords, client contacts, and critical deadlines means someone else could step in if needed — and protects you too.
Income protection insurance pays a proportion of your income if you’re unable to work due to illness or injury. As a solo business owner with no employer sick pay, it’s worth understanding your options — even if you decide not to take it out.
Managing the isolation
The loneliness of working alone is real and worth taking seriously. A few things that genuinely help:
- Get out of the home office regularly. Coworking spaces — available in most UK towns and cities, often by the day — provide the combination of structured work time and incidental human contact that makes a real difference to how you feel.
- Join communities of practice. Online communities, local business groups, and sector networks are ways to be around people who understand what you’re doing. The value isn’t just practical — it’s psychological.
- Separate work and personal time deliberately. When your work and home life share the same physical space, they can merge uncomfortably. A clear end-of-day ritual — a walk, shutting the laptop, not checking email after a certain time — helps protect your personal time.
- Talk to someone if it’s becoming genuinely difficult. Several organisations specifically support self-employed people: the Mental Health Foundation, Mind, and the Self Employed Hub all have relevant resources. The pressure of running a business alone is a legitimate reason to seek support.
When to stop doing it all yourself
Running alone is right for many people for a long time — and for some, indefinitely. But there are clear signals that it might be time to get help:
The options range from outsourcing specific tasks — a bookkeeper, a virtual assistant, a subcontractor for overflow work — to taking on a first employee. The outsourcing route is usually the lower-risk first step: you get capacity without the full commitment of employment.
When you’re ready to think about your first hire, our guide to hiring your first employee in the UK covers the process in full.
Free resources for solo business owners
- Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) — membership gives access to legal helplines, business support, and networking at fsb.org.uk
- Enterprise Nation — free resources, events, and mentoring for small business owners at enterprisenation.com
- Your local Growth Hub — free business support across England; find yours at great.gov.uk
- HMRC self-assessment guidance — everything you need for self-assessment tax returns at gov.uk/self-assessment-tax-returns
- Mind / Mental Health Foundation — if the pressure of running solo is taking a toll: mind.org.uk
More guides for UK small business owners
Right Hand Man covers everything from running solo and managing your time to cash flow, pricing, and hiring your first employee. Browse our guides or get in touch if you have a question.