Welcome to Issue #2 of Skills to Solo Income. Each week, I help employed professionals turn what they already know into a validated path to solo income - without burning the career they're still in.
The fear most professionals carry: leaving one employer means losing income security.
I carried that fear for eleven years
During those years, I was a full-time lecturer at a college. Stable income. Occasional upside if I taught more hours. But capped. One paymaster.
The unspoken assumption: this is as good as it gets unless you change employer. Not leave employment. Just move sideways to another employer.
I once read a post about pay. The writer talked about people who kept comparing themselves to their peers, kept building a case for why they deserved more.
That was exactly how I used to think before the early 2000s, until I figured out something different.
The pay ceiling is not set by your worth. It is set by your paymaster's capacity to pay.
You can compare yourself to peers. You can justify why you deserve more. None of that matters if the paymaster cannot pay more regardless.
That observation flipped the risk calculus in my head.
2008, I made the leap. Not to another employer. To multiple clients through agency-brokered relationships across institutions.
Employers became clients
That was the mechanical shift.
In practice: I could choose which institutions to work with. Negotiate my own rate with each one. If one client had a bad year, the others still paid. No single paymaster controlled my ceiling.
Fear was not the operative factor by that point. The risk had already flipped.
2x → 4x → 6x
IMMEDIATE · PEAK · CURRENT - VS. STARTING INCOME
Meanwhile, the pre-2008 rate for that same role type is still paid at the low end today. The ceiling that scared me into staying would not have moved even if I had stayed.
The fear was aimed at the wrong risk.
One paymaster's ceiling is the actual risk. Multiple clients are the actual safety net.
If you are sitting on expertise that could serve more than one organisation, the question is not whether you can afford to leave. It is whether you can afford to stay.
The One Move - 10 Minutes
List every organisation you currently serve, help, or influence. Not just your employer. Colleagues in other departments. Vendors. Partners. Anyone who benefits from what you do.
Now ask: how many of these could pay you directly, if you offered?
If the answer is more than one, you already have the start of multiple paymasters. You just have not asked any of them yet.
P.S. Knowing you could have more than one paymaster is one thing. Knowing which of your skills is strong enough to sell to a second one is different. Want to know which one sells first? That's what The Sellable Skills Audit is built to answer.