Featured Solopreneur Koldo Barroso: “I Only Compete With Myself”

This is “Featured Solopreneur,” an ongoing series that gives all of us a glimpse at how other solopreneurs operate their small businesses. Click Here to read more Solopreneur Success Stories.

Name of solopreneur:
Koldo Barroso

Name of business and city:
Koldo Barroso; Bellingham, Washington

Web site address:
www.koldobarroso.com

Type of business:
Author and illustrator

When did you officially go into business?
I started selling my own art as a teenager in galleries and street markets all over Europe, back in the mid-1980s. I used to live in a van and sell my stuff while traveling around Spain, France, and the U.K. Besides that, I consider my career officially started after I moved to the USA in 2008.

Why did you start your own business?
I guess my business started by itself, even before I ever decided to and knew the reasons why. What I do is the natural result of what I am and what I can be at my best. It looks simple but it took a little while for me to realize.

What was the best thing you did when you were starting up your business?
Starting up. Nothing good or bad can happen with no action so…

What is a mistake that you made that you have learned from?
To resist accepting who I am.

What is your biggest current challenge in the business and what are doing to try to solve it?
Without a doubt, breaking out my career in a new country and in a moment when the publishing industry is about to re-invent itself. Today, new authors and illustrators like me are not precisely welcomed by AR’s and agents regardless of our talent and potential to reach a wide audience. This seems to be the worst moment in history to do start a career as an author, but I see it as a wonderful possibility to take part of a beautiful change in the scheme of things. There’s a lot of things that can be better in the future of the publishing world, and this is the time. Thanks to the Internet, we authors and artists have the possibility of connecting with our potential audience without the interference of middle people. We can establish a more human relationship with our audience and have more control over our product at the same time.

This is just what I’ve been doing with my new self-published book “Kooky Pets”. My audience collaborated in the project from the very first day through my blog. They became participants, co-authors, and supporters. They told me what they need from me and I worked to give them the best I had for them. It’s an achievement that the book has been published and I believe it’s being very successful because all the collaborators look really happy.

What are your goals for the next 12 months?
On a business level, I expect to see my work advertised by word-of-mouth as much as possible so I can reach a sufficient group of people who resonate with my work. This way I’ll be able to give life to new, exciting projects. On a career level, I’m working on a visual narrative project that will start seeing light in the next year or so. It’s a modern Gothic fairy tale for adult people. So far, it will also be a self-published work.

Where do you want to be with the business in five years?
In my studio, in Portland, because my wife and I are moving soon. Working in new projects and feeling close to my audience. Probably hearing my future kids playing around the house, so I also hope that my profession can pay for their diapers!

What are your main software programs?
My heart, my head, and my body are my main tools, but they’re all borrowed after all.

What are your strategies for staying competitive?
To be myself. We’re all one-of-a-kind in this world. If life has been generous enough to give us the opportunity to experience ourselves the way we are, then there must be a way that we can make other people happy giving the best that we have, which is our uniqueness. I don’t compete with other artists and I don’t give a damn if they’re better or worse than I am. I only compete with myself and each day I try to be more authentic so my spirit reaches my audience in the most faithful and honest way. Which is not easy at all, but it is exciting.

If your business should fail, what is your fall back position?
To me, success means learning to fail. So if I fail again, I will always be me to pull myself together and keep going on. All things pass in this life: failure, success. I don’t believe in money as a measurement of success. Money is an energy that can move many things but it depends on us if this will make us and other people happy. To me, the only one that really pays at the end of the day is love and the one that really doesn’t, is fear.

What’s your advice for aspiring solopreneurs?
Don’t listen to other people’s advice too much, not even mine. Personally, I follow my own path.

Are you glad you became a solopreneur? Why or why not?
I’m glad that I realized that, being the way I am, in this particular moment it’s good for me to be a solopreneur. I really don’t care if I’m a solopreneur or not as long as I can be honest and true to my audience and my career. For some reason, so far nobody has opened their doors to me in this direction, except for my audience. So I’m happy to find a way to make it work like this. On a different page, I also work in a different business with my wife Naomi Niles, and I feel really happy about that too.