Solopreneurs, how do you maintain a professional/social network?

So this is just my experience and absolutely not some advice.

Building and talking to customers takes all my time. I stoped attending meetups and going to events if I don't have something concrete to show or to talk about.

A network is a very valuable asset, but networking looks like a productive activity where in reality it is a time and energy trap.

I wish I spent more time being social for my own sake but honestly I just don't have the time to do it all especially since I don't have someone to share the work burden.

So yeah I just live like a monk and I am mostly fine with that otherwise I would look for a cofounder.

This is in my opinion what being early stage look like, a relevant network will grow with the business.

The people I have met that were the best at networking (by far) made it look easy and seamless. They never (or rarely) specifically tried or did things just to network for network sake - they were just constantly naturally doing it. They made friends everywhere and took initiative constantly to organize groups of people meeting up or dinners with individuals or couples or attending events and things like that. Most people are terrible at making and even more so maintaining friends - you would be surprised how amenable people are to an occasional phone call or suggesting something like doing out to dinner - all it takes is a little bit of initial initiate from you. And like everything in life practice practice practice

I joined some Discord servers for maps, webgl (I'm building a mapping application) and I created one of my own. This has mostly filled the workplace Slack void. I hop in there or mute it whenever the mood strikes.

I answer some questions on StackOverflow to fill the void of mentoring in my past jobs.

I work from coffee shops or WeWork to have the opportunity for random small talk with strangers.

I do a few running clubs, pickup soccer games or hikes from Meetup to meet and talk with new people.

I try to read and reply to comments on Hacker News.

This mostly fills my socializing needs, but I also live with my girlfriend and we're semi introverted so it might not be enough for people who lean more extrovert.

I've always been a single child, so I'm used to it.

That's only half the truth.

Over a decade ago supposed friends turned enemies over a romantic relationship involving another supposed friend. Long story short, it hurt a lot and changed my life, one by one I had a fight with those so-called friends, of which not a single one turned out to be a friend. It seems like they were just looking for a reason to end the friendship.

So that was really tough to find out that not only the romantic other cheated on me, and even worse what came afterwards, but to lose the social real life network, that existed for 1-2 decades, over laughable things.

I tried to find new contacts on Facebook back in 2010. It was a place filled with stupidity and ignorance. I found Google+ where I met like minded people, but no friends.

So I live my life without any social contacts except my mother. And I post on platforms like this, but those aren't social interactions.

I tried to build a cooking / food sharing group, I have found no one interested. I walked around a lot in town and around in hopes to meet someone new. There were some opportunities but nothing stuck.

So yeah, meanwhile I sunk so low that I watch twitch IRL streams for some human component, but those beggars are just trying to exploit that, so I turn it off and play MMORPGs, but the interactions there are... people are rude, inconsiderate, selfish assholes. It seems to me that the bottom feeders of society populate MMORPGs. Back in 1997-1999 that wasn't the case and you had mostly educated and friendly people playing. Games also weren't as predatory.

So yeah it hurt to lose the "friends" but nowadays I don't care anymore, it's me who doesn't want to put up with the majority of people out there anymore.

One guy, a former "friend" had the nerve to come to me, he was jobless for a very long time and living off social security. In the time that was rough for me and when I reached out to him he just never called back. When he learned that my business took off, there he was again. The first thing he said was "Can you lend me 5€". I said no. Then he said, "If I go now I'm gone for good". I shrugged and closed the door.

People suck.

I would target the segments that make sense for your project. Engage with them with genuine interest (i.e. don't try to sell your stuff). For professional networking, LinkedIn is straightforward to keep animated. With just a little automation and careful targeting (phantombuster + one month of sales navigator for extracting the initial lists) you can send 10 invites per day to people in your target network. In 10 minutes (2h on your first try) you can prep a quarter worth of LinkedIn invites. With tools like buffer, and curating other people's content, it's also simple to appear active on social networks with comparatively little effort. Source: I'm in B2B technology; since COVID started, I doubled my LinkedIn audience to more than 5k, engage with a few dozen important prospects every month. It keeps the commercial pipeline full enough for me to worry about recruitment, not networking.

Solopreneur is massively different. There are some communities, imagine reddit for your subject etc but often will be filled with beginners. If you are missing that busy feeling and communication I don't think you're going to get it unless you formally startup and hire others.

I've done it for the last 4 years and basically worked alone. Had some contact with others over discord around related subject and companies but overall it's quite isolating. I even have clients and telegram chats but right now I message once a month with performance updates. You need many people in one place to get a regular level of communication.

I have been a solo entrepreneur for about 10 years. I guess I’m lucky since my wife is a stay at home mom and we’ve been able to keep each other company. Outside of that, I play a lot of sports, so I engage with people that way. I’m also friends with other entrepreneurs, and we sometimes go to one another’s apartments to work. My schedule is pretty flexible, outside of kid duties, so whenever opportunities crop up to do something new and interesting, I try to take advantage of it.

I'm gonna say something outside the norm.

Recently, I've been more engaged on apps where you can batch thought dump and then schedule posts. This allows for:

1. community growth without overwhelm

2. (relating to 1) relationships take time, but as a soloprenuer, time is rarely available

3. batching all you want to say in (video, text, audio) format allows you to schedule "talking" and spend the rest of the week "listening"

4. (relating to 3) I reject real time communication apps unless I really trust the small community -- the stress of being on 24/7 through all concievable timezones is not healthy communication, don't fall into this trap

I found I missed the social contact and feeling of being in a tribe in the office.

I looked for non-work communities that I could join. I took my daughter to parent child classes and joined a martial arts club. Those two communities replaced my office community.

Interestingly the martial arts class that I took during the day was full of entrepreneurs and business owners.

Don't focus on the network, focus on the users. They are the most important 'network' you'll ever need.

Your professional network will arrise organicically just by exercising things you are passionate about.

I went solo about 2.5 years ago and Twitter has surprisingly filled that gap for me. I ruthlessly prune the folks I’m following which makes me enjoy the space way more than if I followed a ton of folks. The relationships go so far as to meeting IRL with a bunch of them at a recent conference.

One of the easiest ways is Meetup.com. If you don't find a community that works, you can create your own. Twitter is helpful for finding people and their new Circles feature looks interesting. I don't use Facebook much these days, but have joined several groups in the past. It's a lot of work, but I also once (pre-Twitter) built my own website with a forum and posted articles and tutorials that got pretty good search engine traffic and pulled like-minded people to my site.

Joining communities and virtual meet-ups is helpful. I really like this one: https://microsaashq.com - it's community plus newsletter for solo-founders/bootstrappers.

I highly recommend daily walks with your SO or cofounder to talk through whatever issues you’re working through at the time.

There’s something about the different context and a stroll while explaining something to someone else that can help lead to clarity.

When things are in beta, set up a chat room or forum asap. The PhotoStructure forum and Discord have been invaluable to me, and to my users.

Hey! While I’m not currently a solopreneur, I’m the creator and one of the maintainers of a developer community called Virtual Coffee, https://virtualcoffee.io/.

Having a community of people to talk to and grow with who are outside of my work has been incredibly important. I’ve learned so much from our community, had the opportunity for gut-checks over decisions, been able to share wins and losses. So much of my growth and success over the last three years can be tied to Virtual Coffee—we also have an indie-hackers group 2x a month that’s been awesome to be a part of. We also have virtual meetups 2x/week and other supportive events. So there’s always something for everyone.

If you want to chat, feel free to email me: bekah @ virtualcoffee.io

Well, first you join HN, :) but after that:

1. If you're into in-person, there's groups for startups and particular tech topics (like a programming language), on meetup.com and elsewhere. Just Web search for your city and the topic. Also, some universities will post calendars of talks that are open to the public (and some departments will have their own calendars that have more things than the main university calendar does).

2. For online activity throughout the day (but which you can turn off), there's online chats for various tech topics. Some of these turn into long-term online socializing (sometimes with a forked channel, so the public topic one remains, but some people also off in the one where everyone is familiar and generally talk about other things).

It depends what you’re looking for.

1. Join a social club (golf, shooting, cars, etc) or if you’re religious in any way a church (or equivalent in your area / belief system). These help build connections in the local community and branch out. It’s good socially and professionally.

2. Go to meet ups / conferences and force yourself to meet people and make connections. Meet for coffee, lunch, etc

3. Keep in touch with former coworkers. I tend to reach out to everyone at least twice a year and wish everyone happy new year, etc.

4. Reach out to people on GitHub, linkedin, what have you via email. I tend to meet some interesting folks that way.

I personally blog, post here a lot, have a farm (work with neighbors to get stuff done - the farm is not where I live), join local social groups and make sure I know my neighbors where I live and get together.

I leveraged the silence to focus on shipping, and went to friends (physically) when I felt lonely. If you are looking for other builders to hang out with, check out StartupSchool and IndieHackers.

Post launch, life has been chaotic, and now there are times I miss the tranquility.

Good luck!

Check out the microconf scene: https://microconf.com/

US and EU conferences. Very cool vibe and you’ll quickly start making great connections and picking up tips.

I don't know if I'm just lucky or something, but I somehow managed to turn quite a few contacts on LinkedIn, that I've never met before, into really nice in person connections. It's almost surreal. One became a friend, with kids playing together. Others are cool to meet for beers and good conversations, etc. Just last week I was on a plane and recognised someone, who I thought was one of the people on LinkedIn. Dropped a message just before the flight, ended up going through customs together. Got invited into a tech meetup, etc..

I’m not generally someone who benefits from being on Slack all day, and time zones make that a challenge anyway, but a community of close peers with similar business models is a godsend. I found mine mostly ad hoc in the MicroConf/etc crowd. Some people formalize this vis “mastermind groups” which should give you all you need to Google the technique and organizers.

The useful thing is to have people who know your business intimately over quarters/years and who you can occasionally chat to about projects with timespan of weeks.

Profesional/social i always found rather lonely. I joined a local programming language meetup, which was something, but its not directly related to what i do, and it's died off since corona. Profession specific network i find rather difficult, as in my business basically everyone is a competitor. Also, since everything can be done online and remote, even contact with customers is limited. The most difficult is not having someone to reflect off ideas, so often a lot of gambling when taking decisions.

Coworking places. Great to meet IRL like minded people (entrepreneurs, freelancers, devs…). Better than colleagues because truly your friends.

I think you have to join two kinds of communities, customer-oriented and peer (and potential competitor) oriented. You need to join communities where your prospects hang out so that you can understand their needs better. And it's very useful to be able to compare notes with peers.

I find this communities have serious conversations / exchanges between entrepreneurs:

Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/

IndieHackers https://www.indiehackers.com

Reddit Entrepreneur https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/

Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings https://bootstrappersbreakfast.com/

Lunch/Dinner — of my favorite: walk and talks — with former colleagues a couple times a month. I really have to nudge myself for social contact since I'm a hermit by nature and can easily go long stretches without connecting with friends or family. This same principle applies for maintaining my professional network.

Giving talks at local programming meet-ups.

Get on discord - join servers that interest you, join servers for the city you’re in.

Start your own discord, with a group of existing friends

Go to museums, actually talk to people - not superficial nonsense, be curious and listen.

Help strangers. Joke with people randomly. Don’t be afraid to be quirky or eccentric.

"Note that on average most people have fewer friends than their friends have, a phenomenon known as the friendship paradox, which means that one is unlikely to be friends with someone who has very few friends. In other words, building a larger social network is essential to making friends.

And how does one build a larger social network? By taking an interest in others, or taking an interest in something and finding likeminded others who will then seem interesting."

From: https://moviewise.substack.com/p/movie-wisdom-on-making-frie...

I use socialchamp to publish small updates about my work. They're a mix of design details, things I have learned about the topic of my website, small PSAs about that topic, new posts, and building in public.

It's very effective on LinkedIn, and it feels good to talk about things that are not the final product.

Out of it, I got new friends, a few business conversations, some newspaper articles and a bit of goodwill from the users.

That's on top of regular networking, which I learned is a lot more about growing other people's business than growing your own. It's a "I give you free fish if you give me free bread" kind of deal.

Since people are posting virtual place for solo dev to meet.

I wanted to know if solo dev here would be interested in a user "testing" journalling network. Basically you would signup, make a symmetric/reciprocal connection to max 10 devs. You would then commit to make a post at least once a week about how you use their app. Details to be fine tuned of course.

I love exchanging with other devs about their projects and I realized that I hate it when it's a one off interaction. To me it's the best kind of friendshipping. And of course, I love to work on stuff.

If you are curious or interested, just add a reply here.

It's been a while since I was bootstrapping anything, but at the time I really enjoyed these: https://bootstrappersbreakfast.com/

I joined a discord channel to help people with some tech I’m an expert at. As a side effect I’m now one of the “regulars” and we lightly chat a bit through the week. It feels about right for me.

Making friends as an adult is a deliberate process. You have to intentionally pursue it. Don't look for only tech people, it is important to have a diverse network of friends where each provides their own unique value to the friendship. For example -- I joined CrossFit for the sole purpose of making more friends, getting in shape was just a plus. There I can meet people of all walks of life that I typically wouldn't otherwise.

You need to change your mindset. I.e. as a founder you should become a content creator which is different from a regular peer social contact. I.e. the amount of people in your network should increase 100X but you will not know most of them.

The best way is to become a B2B creator in linked in.

As a creator you should be ready to add value to your network in any post. It is a lot of free work, but the main goal is to gain trust.

Once you have the trust, you can start asking the network to be customers, etc.

I joined Virtual Coffee (https://www.virtualcoffee.io)! It's a free, volunteer-run community.

It's helped fill the need in my workday for social interaction, through twice weekly facilitated chats (Tuesday 9 a.m., Thursday noon EST), lunch and learns, and other events. There's a few entrepreneurs kicking around the group, too, who have now become friends.

Find a few events in person or online to attend every week or two. If you can’t find one, consider starting one, there probably are others just like you in your area. I was lucky to do the latter and start a small group in my city about 10y ago and it has become a great group of friends who were acquaintances or strangers that has experienced exits, marriages, babies, first house purchases and moving to different cities.

Yes! Exactly my pain too! I was bouncing from networkong group to networking group before the pandemic and then nothing. Zoom did change that for the better, and the worse..

Then I bought a vr headset! I saw there were tons of people hanging out, hosting shows and games in the metaverse. And so I thought why not business networking.

That’s when I started VR Networking. You should check it out! www.vrnetworking.com

You might really enjoy it!

In the same boat, I left 2 months ago to bootstrap my own startup. I'd recommend getting a shared co-working space. It'll give you home/work separation and you'll get to meet others who are in a similar situation and you can bounce ideas off or just socialize. Of course, keeping up with friends, ex-coworkers and getting lunch/coffee every once in a while is nice too. Good luck!

I would suggest getting involved in volunteer work. This is something that I always recommend.

It can do absolute wonders for your "social graph."

Back when I did it before the pandemic I got in contact with a lot of interesting people through local (Sth-Swe) meetup groups centered around both programming languages and entrepreneurship. Sadly those seems to have kinda fizzled out (but are kinda getting new tracation slowly), no idea if this is feasible in less populated places though.

I enjoy sharing an office space with someone else who has a similar work schedule and work ethic as mine. Even though our industries are unrelated, we can still talk through ideas as we both do sales.

Going out on a midday run with someone has also been good as it is social and helps break up the work day.

As some one was mentioning in the comments, https://microsaashq.com is one the communities out there and I run this community. Its primarily an async community for conversations.

Also, note that its not just a simple community but its a massive ecosystem for Micro SaaS builders with niche reports (detailed reports for multiple ideas in a given niche along with a lot of analysis on technical chops, marketing chops, competitor analysis etc, costs analysis to implement an idea). We also recently launched Founder Insights series with Founder Interviews from 1000+ founders mapped to each niche.

And to answer your original question around communities - Our community has all conversations ranging from mental health to idea feedback to landing pages feedback to sharing wins/loses with some weekly streaks/monthly streaks.

Would be happy to answer any questions. I am a builder and I myself took a few of these models and implemented successfully.

That’s how I felt when I was working on my own during the lockdowns. The harder I worked the lonelier I became. Sorry for the plug, but to resolve this I built confluo.app to keep others informed as we work. I’m still testing this idea out.

Co-working space was the way to go for me. Some co-working spaces are run by very friendly and out-going community managers that really work hard to bring people together and I think this works well especially for shy/introverted people like myself.

Having a community of people outside of work (such as religious, hobby-based, etc.) helps a lot. I found that "founder-focused" Slack workspaces tend to just be a waste of time (everyone is just trying to sell to each other).

So this feels super relevant to me. I'm working on a new community platform for remote work. Would be interested to find out what kind of tooling might help.

https://m3o.org

Find a community of practice -- Indiehackers, listserv, whatever -- and be useful to colleagues with advice and encouragement.

Across a couple of solopreneur careers, I've found that this creates deep connections and lasting networks.

I gave a handful of talks/presentations at various local meetups that has resulted in most of my inbound requests.

Also participating in hackathons has been good ways to get a network and to be noticed.

Network of what? Just in general? Now that conferences are back that's usually a great way, combined with local meetups / co-working depending on what city you're in.

Lately my biggest social outlet has been an improv group. But other than that, I’m honestly struggling with my social life and network as an introvert and a solopreneur.

I have a cofounder now, but didn't for a long time. I go to a nice co-working space every day. I pay for it out of pocket, but it's well worth it to me.

I enjoy Twitter Spaces, as you can just listen in or actually participate in a discussion, or try starting one of your own. Most people are very helpful.

For me helped connecting with other makers. My favourite communities are:

- Indie Hackers - Product Hunt - Indie Worldwide

For starters, you can stop thinking of making friends as “maintaining a social network”.

You might enjoy an online community like https://wannabe-entrepreneur.com

Talk to your customers!

You will learn a ton.

Best time investment imo!

Martial arts and the gym.