Rhod Jones

Ex-rugby pro. 7 years running a solo agency. The feast, the famine, doing everything alone. I built systems to fix that.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

Some of you will have noticed I have gone a little quiet in the replies and comments recently.

There is a reason for that. I have been wrestling with something for a few weeks. But in the last few days I have made a decision.

Home Office Hero was a brand I built around working from home as a parent. And I meant every word of it.

But if I am honest, it was not the sharpest version of what I actually do and what I have actually lived.
The sharper version is this.

I have spent seven years running a one-person digital marketing agency. I have felt every bit of the financial pressure that comes with that. The slow months. The clients who leave without warning. The underpricing because you are too scared to hold the number. The doing every single thing yourself with no one to sense-check a decision or share the load.

That is the world I actually know. That is the world I want to talk about.

So from today this account becomes the home of Solo and Solvent. For solopreneurs who are running the whole thing alone and are tired of the financial rollercoaster.

But here is the thing. The crossovers with everything I was talking about before are still very much there.

The isolation of working alone. The focus blocks where you sit down to work and two hours disappear into client emails and you have built nothing. The being physically present for your family but mentally still at your desk. The business that has no off switch because there is no one else to switch it off. The boundaries that do not exist because you never built them. Emotional, physical, professional. All of it bleeding into everything else.

I know that world because I lived it. And I built my way out of it. The structured work blocks. The 8 to 12 focus periods that actually protect the morning. The shutdown rituals that tell your brain the day is done. The reset activities that bring you back to the room your family is actually in. Those systems are real and they work. And they are coming with me.

Same Rhod. Same honesty. But a sharper focus.

If that is you, please stick around. It is about to get more useful.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

When did a client last tell you, out of nowhere, that they were happy with your work?

What did you actually do about it?

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

https://t.co/nyj0nWZL6M

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

1/ Spent years hunting for new clients while the cheapest one sat untouched in my inbox.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

There's probably an email sitting in your inbox right now that could've been your next client. Wrote up the exact wording and timing to use next time it happens.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

It's not confidence that stops you asking for referrals.

You just let the moment go.

Client pays without a chase, says thanks, and you're straight back to hunting for someone new.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

The cheapest client you'll ever win is already sitting in your inbox. You just haven't asked.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

https://t.co/nyj0nWZL6M

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

There's probably an email sitting in your inbox right now that could've been your next client. Wrote up the exact wording and timing to use next time it happens.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

Half eight on a Tuesday, and my stomach dropped the second I saw the chairs set out in a circle.

Another networking event, another hotel function room, in the hope one of these mornings would finally bring in a new client.

Facilitator clapping twice before I'd even got my coat off.

Thirty seconds each, name and what you do.

I did that for years, chasing work this way, and never once left feeling it had grown the business.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

My pipeline used to run dry and I decided it was because I wasn't likeable enough.

Not enough confidence, not enough presence.

Wrong diagnosis.

Every visibility option on offer demanded I perform, and when they dried up I had nothing else built.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

Seven years alone taught me one marketing rule: shut up everywhere except one room.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

@zkjays Substack mainly. Own the list, own the relationship. What's working for you right now

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

You know the exact week your diary starts thinning before you'll admit it out loud.

It's not because you're unlucky.

It's because you never built a way to be found.

I call it the Pipeline Gap: the space between clients running out and nothing built to replace them.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

@misfitwriter_ Very true. Hope isn't a pipeline and panic isn't a strategy. Learned that over the years.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

@itsbriankelly Exactly Brian. Build it when you don't need it. That's the only version that actually holds.

[Rhod Jones @solosolvent]

Most solo owners spend months fixing the wrong pressure point before they realise it was never visibility.

Built a free Pressure Loop Audit to help you find yours first.

Few minutes, no fluff.