The Solo Business Playbook

Laura Stevens spent 11 years in corporate, most recently as a senior e-commerce product manager, before a message about voluntary redundancy landed while she was away in Cape Town. She had 24 hours to decide. Five months later, she's the founder of Build With Laura, working as a transformation coach and creative director for founders, brands and people in creative transition.

In this episode, Laura and Laura (yes, two Lauras) talk about why so many founders feel stuck even when they know exactly what they want, why the answer is usually the who rather than the what, and how breaking a mountain down into tiny steps changes everything. Laura also shares why she stopped letting fear of failing in public keep her in the comfort of planning, and the one question to ask yourself each morning to move closer to the person you want to be.

In this episode, we cover:

• Taking voluntary redundancy as a sign to finally go for it
• Why coaching should start with the who, not the what
• What "feeling stuck" usually means, and why you often already know the answer
• Make it so easy that it's laughable: building momentum with tiny goals
• What 11 years in corporate taught Laura about self-trust and finding her voice
• Why so many people sit on an idea for over a year
• Fear of failing in public, and getting trapped in endless planning
• Action creates clarity
• Why you shouldn't try to do it all on your own

Connect with Laura (Stevens):

• Build With Laura: https://buildwithlaura.co.uk/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-stevens-b9019457/
• @buildwithlaura on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube & Substack
• @tiredoatsclub Tired Oats Club Instagram

Wearing too many hats in your business?

Momentum is hard to build when you're the founder, the admin, the project manager and the person chasing every invoice. At Luna Business Solutions, we give small businesses fractional operations support, so you get a senior pair of hands on how your business runs without the cost of a full-time hire.

Not sure where the gaps are? Take our free Operations Scorecard to see where your business stands: https://www.lunabizsolutions.com/free-operations-scorecard/

Ready to talk it through? Book a call with us: https://www.lunabizsolutions.com/contact/

After more than a decade in senior finance roles at ASOS, Just Eat, Deliveroo and Global Fashion Group, Chenge Garaba realised the next step up the corporate ladder wasn't the life he wanted. So he started Forc Advisory, a fractional finance and tech finance consultancy for founder-led and VC-backed scale-ups.

In this episode, Laura and Chenge talk about what's driving so many people out of corporate, why the fractional model works for both sides, and why fractional support shouldn't be limited to C-suite titles. Chenge also shares how he helped one business cut its tech spend from £100 million to £70 million without switching anything important off, plus the three questions every founder should be able to answer about the tools they pay for.

In this episode:

• Why control over your time can matter more than a bigger salary
• The worst case of taking the leap is usually just your current reality
• How fractional work gives you a spread of income instead of one basket
• Why most businesses waste 20 to 30% of their tech budget
• Three questions to spot a tech spend problem: what are you paying for, what is it costing you and what do you get back, and who owns each tool
• Why it's always worth telling a supplier you're about to cancel
• Chenge's honest lesson six months in: it's hard, so choose which hard you want

Connect with Chenge:

• Forc Advisory: https://forcadvisory.com/
• Forc Advisory on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/forcadvisory/home/
• Chenge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chenge-garaba-aca/
• Off Duty Accountant on Instagram and TikTok (coming soon)

Wearing too many hats in your business?

If you're the founder, the ops team, the finance team and the person who remembers which subscriptions renew next month, something is going to slip. At Luna Business Solutions, we give small businesses fractional operations support, so you get a senior pair of hands on how your business runs without the cost of a full-time hire.

Not sure where the gaps are? Take our free Operations Scorecard to see where your business stands: https://www.lunabizsolutions.com/free-operations-scorecard/

Ready to talk it through? https://www.lunabizsolutions.com/contact/

Most founders know they should be showing up on social. Very few know what to actually film, how often to post, or which numbers are worth paying attention to.

In this episode I'm joined by Ella Bradley, co-founder and creative director of Blank Social Co, a social creative direction house working with brands from upfront strategy through to ideation, production and delivery. Ella launched the business off the back of a single LinkedIn post that brought in more client enquiries than she could handle alongside her full-time agency job.

We talk about the thing Ella sees founders neglecting most often, which is the personal brand side of the business. She makes the case that people connect with people, and that your face and your name will often do more work than your brand account ever will. We also get into what stops founders posting in the first place, usually not confidence but a lack of ideas, time or a clear sense of what anyone actually wants to hear.

What you'll take away:

• Why personal brand is the gap most founders leave open, and how to start without doing talking videos
• How to work out what your own "blank" is, whether that's ideas, time, or knowing what to post first
• Why the content you agonise over rarely performs as well as the thing you filmed on the fly
• How to find a natural voice on camera when talking to a phone always feels a bit performative
• The one question to ask before you post, to work out whether something is filler or not
• Why Ella still shoots on iPhone, and the point at which upgrading your kit does make sense
• Where to spend a few hundred pounds on content, in order, and the cost most people don't need
• What UGC used to mean, what it seems to mean now, and why the line has blurred
• The one thing worth keeping from big-budget agency shoots that costs nothing
• How to batch film so a month of content comes out of a single day
• A realistic posting rhythm for a founder, and why once a day across platforms is not the same as once a day on every platform
• Which metrics to look at depending on whether you want awareness or conversion
• How long to give something before you decide it isn't working, and why two weeks tells you almost nothing
• The point at which it makes sense to bring in outside help

Find Ella:

• Blank Social Co: blanksocial.co
• Blank Social Co on TikTok and Instagram: @blanksocialco
• Ella on TikTok: @blankbyella
• Ella on LinkedIn: Ella Bradley

Final Note

Ella's point about being a team of one but doing the job of every one is the thing most founders recognise straight away. The work you're best at ends up squeezed in around everything else, because there's no one else to do the everything else.

If you want to know where the pressure is actually building, start with the free Operations Scorecard. It takes a few minutes and shows you which part of your business is holding everything up.

Take the Scorecard: lunabizsolutions.com/free-operations-scorecard/

If you already know something needs to change and you want a clear plan for what to fix and in what order, that's the Operations Audit. The fee comes straight off your first month if you decide to bring me in as your fractional COO afterwards.

Book a call to talk it through: calendly.com/laura-lunabizsolutions/30min

And if this episode was useful, following the show or leaving a quick review genuinely helps more founders find it.

Hayley Garraway founded Cos We Can, a single serve cheesecake brand sold in cans, on the idea that anyone can do the thing they keep putting off. In this episode she talks through what it actually took to get from baking bespoke cakes for friends at uni to running weekly drops with a proper order window, a canning machine shipped over from China, and a launch built on giving away the first 100 cheesecakes for free.

We get into the logistics of a made to order food business, how she funded the equipment by asking friends and family and paying them back in cheesecakes, and the year she spent filming monthly check ins with herself because she could not work out why she was stalling. Her verdict on all the branding and website tweaking she did while she waited to feel ready: procrastination with glitter on it.

What we cover

• Why she picked cheesecake when everyone else was doing postal brownies and cookies
• How the weekly drop works behind the scenes, from Monday prep day to freezing, insulated next day delivery and collections from a family shop
• The point where a side hustle became a business: food hygiene training, a separate business account, registering with Companies House and a simple website
• Setting a deadline by ordering the equipment before she felt ready
• Raising the money for the canning machine by asking her close friends directly
• Handing out 100 samples on the streets of Manchester, playing rock paper scissors with strangers, and collecting emails and numbers while she did it
• Sitting in the car at the Trafford Centre absolutely terrified before the first conversation
• Why in person sampling gets you feedback that posting online never will
• The customer who cleared out the whole fridge for her office and sold Hayley out in an hour
• Building a brand around connection and encouragement rather than just a sweet treat
• Nobody has it figured out, at any stage, in any business

Timestamps

• 01:05 Meet Hayley and the idea behind Cos We Can
• 01:36 Baking and selling at uni, and why it fizzled out
• 03:44 Low effort, high reward, and choosing cheesecake
• 04:21 How the weekly drop actually works
• 06:23 Going from hobby baker to registered business
• 09:40 The pre launch runway while she waited for a shipment
• 10:39 100 free cheesecakes and building the mailing list in person
• 13:11 Being scared in the car, then doing it anyway
• 14:05 Why authenticity beats looking established
• 16:16 The best moment so far
• 17:11 Selling connection alongside the product
• 19:04 Everyone is figuring it out as they go
• 22:04 Waiting to feel professional
• 23:01 Filming monthly check ins to hold herself accountable
• 26:58 Asking friends and family to fund the machine
• 28:45 Procrastination with glitter on it

Quote

"The excitement and the belief in the idea outweighed the fear."

Find Hayley

Cos We Can: coswecancc.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coswecancc

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@coswecancc

Find Laura

The Solo Business Playbook is hosted by Laura Butler of Luna Business Solutions. If your business is growing faster than your systems can keep up, start with the free Operations Scorecard at lunabizsolutions.com/free-operations-scorecard/ or book a call https://www.lunabizsolutions.com/contact/

Most people spend a year building an idea nobody wanted. Jacon Petel spent that year finding out what people would actually pay for.

In this episode I'm joined by Jake (Jacob), founder of Fractional Creative, a creative agency running Google and Meta ads and website development on flat monthly pricing with no long term contracts. We met in Bali about four years ago when we were both working overnight hours for other people's businesses, and a year on from Fractional becoming his full time job, we get into what's actually worked.

Jake is refreshingly honest about the parts that aren't fun: the tax bill, the multi currency cash flow, the sleepless night before raising his rates. And he's got a genuinely useful method for testing an idea before you sink money into it.

What we get into

• Why the smallest possible version of your idea beats the polished one, and how to fake a product before you've built it
• The 80/20 rule, the perfectionist trap, and why hitting publish matters more than pixel perfect
• How shipping early and iterating for a year got one client an enormous return on ad spend
• Why every idea shouldn't be built, and how AI has made that problem worse rather than better
• Fractional's origin as a backpacker travel service, and how years of pivoting landed on something that worked
• Hiring people better than you, and why Jake doesn't touch the ads himself
• What the first year of an agency actually costs you: taxes, budgeting, and the accounting software nobody can face opening
• Raising your prices when your team outgrows your rates, and the reframe from Jake's wife that settled it
• Why hourly billing quietly serves the agency and not the client, and the two big agencies that pushed Jake to build the alternative
• The post trust economy, and why Jake is choosing trade shows and events over more ads
• Bartending as networking practice, and why it's worth a year of your life if you struggle to talk to people
• Setting a hard launch date to cut your own perceived complexity, plus the anti hustle case for a business that pays you minimum wage

Find Jake

fractionalcreative.ioInstagram: @fractionalcreative

Want more?

If you're wondering if your business is costing you time or money unnecessarily, try our free operational diagnostic scorecard. 

Amy is the founder of Eat by Amy, a vegan wholesale bakery, and Crumb, a vegan cookie and coffee shop, both in Islington. What started as a savoury vegan meal prep business (before Amy could even bake) turned into a bakery almost by accident, after customers kept asking for dessert.

In this episode, Amy talks honestly about a first year of business that made her think she was smashing it, followed by four years of taking home almost nothing once she committed to a bricks and mortar bakery space. We get into the wholesale client cycle that kept eating into her income, the very specific moment on Camden Passage that led to finding the Crumb shop, and why she believes that when you get a strong feeling about something, you have to follow it.

We also talk about pricing a physical product versus a service, why her dad's involvement as an unofficial accountant has kept her honest with the numbers, and the concept of visibility tax, the real cost of building a business in public that Amy has learned the hard way.

What we talk about:

• Starting out in journalism and food editorial before pivoting into food entrepreneurship
• Why her first business was savoury vegan meal prep, not baking
• How customer demand during lockdown pushed her into baking almost by accident
• A deceptively profitable first year that didn't prepare her for what came next
• Four years without meaningful profit after committing to a bricks and mortar bakery
• Losing wholesale clients to cheaper competitors, and the cycle that created
• The Camden Passage moment that led to finding the Crumb shop space
• Trusting a strong gut feeling even when the timing looks wrong
• Splitting time and attention across two businesses
• Pricing a physical product using a formula versus pricing a service
• Her dad's role as an unofficial accountant keeping the numbers honest
• The ice cream cart idea, and using social posts as informal market research
• What visibility tax actually means, and the real cost of building a brand in public
• A moment she posted something online and wished she hadn't

Favourite Quotes

"I think people think energy input equals output. It just doesn't."

"As soon as I get that feeling from something, I think it's imperative that you have to go down that road."

Connect with Amy:

Amy is the founder of Eat by Amy, a vegan wholesale bakery, and Crumb, a vegan cookie and coffee shop, both based in Islington. She started out in food journalism before building her first business in savoury vegan meal prep, later pivoting into baking, and has now run both brands for six years.

• TikTok: @eatbyamy
• Eat by Amy: eatbyamy.com
• Crumb: crumbvegan.co.uk

In this episode I'm joined by Jody Gilligan, founder of Arvo, a neighbourhood sauna and plunge space in Walthamstow, East London. Jody spent years in tech, most recently as Head of Growth at a fast scaling software company, before walking away from it all at 30 to self-fund a bricks and mortar wellness business from scratch.

We talk about what life actually looked like before Arvo, the slow burn of discontentment that led her to leave a high pressure, high visibility career, and why she doesn't believe you should need a holiday to escape your own life. Jody gets honest about the British Business Bank startup loan that helped fund Arvo alongside her own savings, what the business plan process actually involved, and the privilege and risk calculations that go into choosing bricks and mortar over a digital business.

We also start to get into the maze of commercial leasing, from use class requirements to filtering property listings, and why there's so little accessible information out there for first time founders taking on a physical space.

This one is a genuinely useful listen for anyone who's ever thought about taking the leap into something physical and had no idea where to even start.

What we cover

• Leaving a high pressure tech role and the slow build of discontentment behind it
• Funding Arvo through savings and a British Business Bank startup loan
• Writing a business plan with no background in property or hospitality
• Commercial leasing lessons, including use class requirements learned the hard way
• Being taken less seriously by estate agents as first time founders
• Quitting her job before the lease was signed, and the gap that followed
• The fit out: working with a freelance architect, a trusted carpenter and single trades
• Ventilation and drainage requirements that nearly derailed the build
• Using AI generated renders to market a space that didn't exist yet
• Building a 2,000 person waitlist organically through Instagram
• Running a discounted soft opening week to gather real feedback
• Why a viral TikTok video did nothing for bookings, and choosing revenue over reach
• Her honest advice for anyone dreaming of a bricks and mortar business

My Favourite Quotes from this episode:

"I don't love the idea that people go on holidays to escape their life."

"Followers made everything feel amazing, but they don't pay the bills."

About Jody

Jody Gilligan is the founder of Arvo, a neighbourhood sauna and plunge space in Walthamstow, East London. Originally from Melbourne, she spent seven years in London working in tech before leaving to self-fund Arvo with her business partner Will.

Connect

• Arvo: arvosauna.co.uk
• Instagram and TikTok: @arvo.sauna

Virgo and Sofia are the founders of Molto, a whole foods dessert brand born out of a Sunday night ritual. In this episode, we talk about Virgo's redundancy from a corporate finance role, the solo trips that quietly shifted both of their perspectives before Molto existed, and the exact moment a supermarket cookie run turned into a business idea.

We also get into what it actually takes to build a business with your best friend and flatmate, why they've deliberately kept the relationship non-transactional, and how they navigated different working styles, one more intuitive and feeling led, one more research and execution led, without it becoming a source of friction. This is an honest, warm conversation about creativity, partnership, and building something that doesn't cost you your wellbeing to run.

What we cover

• Leaving corporate finance after redundancy, and why it felt like an opportunity rather than a threat
• Solo travel as a turning point, and how stepping away from routine shifted both founders' perspectives
• The Sunday night ritual of supermarket cookies and ice cream that became the idea for Molto
• Discovering creativity outside of traditional definitions like drawing, singing or performing
• Navigating different working styles as co-founders, one intuitive, one execution focused
• Early imposter syndrome and finding a rhythm before things clicked into place
• Why they deliberately avoid a transactional mindset in both their friendship and the business
• Living together as flatmates and business partners without resentment or score-keeping
• The distinction between launching a product and building a brand people actually align with

My favourite quotes

"We're not transactional. We're not keeping count of things."

"It's not about escaping, it's actually about returning."

About Virgo and Sofia

Virgo and Sofia are the co-founders of Molto, a whole foods dessert brand based in London, making real ingredient alternatives to supermarket desserts. Both left corporate careers in finance and started Molto together after years of living as flatmates and best friends.

Connect

Website: https://justmolto.com/

Socials: https://www.instagram.com/justmolto/ / https://www.tiktok.com/@twoflatmates

Looking for more?

Build a business, and a life that works for you

https://www.lunabizsolutions.com/

Danielle Greene didn't set out to build a marketing agency. She helped a friend with her salon's Instagram, and eight years later she's running Greene Creatives with a team, a wait list, and clients who've stuck with her since the start.

In this episode, Danielle talks through the corporate marketing job that pushed her toward self employment, the lockdown moment she handed in her notice on a Teams call, and what it actually took to go full time (spoiler: a lot more planning than the "I just quit" stories you see online). We also get into hiring people you trust, why she still struggles to delegate even with a team in place, and the pricing lessons she wishes someone had told her from day one.

What we cover:

• How Greene Creatives started as a favour for a friend and grew into a full time agency
• Why Danielle left a corporate marketing role in the oil industry, and what it taught her about trusting your own judgement
• The financial planning behind her leap to full time, including a three month buffer and selling a car
• The moment on a Teams call when she decided she couldn't do the two jobs anymore
• Building a client wait list during lockdown, and why staying consistent when others went quiet paid off
• Hiring her first team members, including her best friend's sister and a university placement student, and why trust made those hires work
• Why having a team doesn't mean the delegation struggle disappears
• Lessons learned the hard way: being clear on services, having contracts in place, and trusting your gut on red flag clients
• Pricing struggles, undercharging early clients, and using introductory offers instead of permanently low prices
• Why word of mouth and consistency, not virality, built her client base

My favourite takeaways:

"If you're good at your job and you price low to get that client in, it's really difficult to raise the price to what you should have been charging at the start."

"If you've got a gut feeling this isn't the right client to work with, it's probably right."

"I'm the type of person that needs to be working in something that matters. I couldn't just do a nine to five job."

About Danielle:

Danielle Greene is the founder of Greene Creatives, a marketing agency specialising in social media management, with additional work in websites and email marketing. She's been self employed for five years, with the business running for eight, and now leads a small team supporting clients with results focused, no fluff marketing.

Connect with Danielle:

• Greene Creatives: https://greenecreatives.co.uk/
• Danielle on Instagram & TikTok: @greenecreatives
• Danielle's podcast series: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gYogGOTsgpLJwQhRyGS21

Want more?

If you're looking for more support with your business, whether your launching or growing, head to https://www.lunabizsolutions.com/

Or follow us on Instagram and TikTok @laurfromluna

In this episode I'm joined by Nadia Rose, feminine embodiment coach and founder of Raya Rituals, a space helping women reconnect with their bodies and rebuild trust in themselves.

We get into why "fake it till you make it" is a lie, what it actually means to embody your brand rather than perform it, and how the fear of not feeling "ready" can keep you stuck for years. Nadia shares her own story, from social media creator burnout to building a business rooted in something far more honest, and we talk openly about ego death, survival mode, and what it looks like to build slowly, on your own terms.

If you've ever felt physical resistance to a part of your business (looking at you, LinkedIn), or found yourself performing a version of success that was never really yours, this one's for you.

In This Episode, we cover:

• Why Nadia doesn't believe in "fake it till you make it"
• The difference between performing your brand and embodying it
• How authenticity can quietly turn into a new kind of performance
• Nadia's own ego death moment, and what it taught her about worth
• Feeling physically ready versus mentally ready to start- Why some marketing channels will always feel wrong for you, and that's fine
• Staying grounded when survival mode kicks in
• A simple daily practice for reconnecting with your body
• Building a visual brand that comes from your body, not a mood board

A Moment from the Episode

"At what point are we going to honour our truth and who we are, to get to somewhere that we actually are really devoted to and passionate about?" — Nadia Rose

Connect with Nadia

Nadia is a feminine embodiment coach and the founder of Raya Rituals, a space for women to come back to themselves and build deeper trust with their bodies. Raya means "remember all you are." Nadia's own journey, from losing herself in relationships to rebuilding her identity from the ground up, now shapes the work she does helping other women do the same.

rayarituals.com

@rayarituals on Instagram & YouTube

--- WANT MORE? Visit lunabizsolutions.com for resources on freelancing, starting & building a business