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A Support Sanctuary for solopreneurs
ABOUT SOLOREACH
I help solo business owners find and fix what's really keeping them stuck.
Most coaching programs were built by people who studied the problem.
This one was built by someone who lived it.
Hello all my fellow Solopreneurs!
My name is Gerhard, a 54-year old entrepreneur, people developer and the creator of SoloReach. I'm a Strategic Intervention Coach who exclusively work with solo business owners on a one to one basis. I find the problem, whether it sits in the business, in the owner or in how the two interact, and I help implement the solution for that specific challenge. No generic programmes.
I designed this because after more than ten years of running my own business, I learned firsthand that solo operations come with unique challenges, some of which I simply couldn't find anyone to help me navigate at the time. Running a business alone is tough, and generic advice just doesn't cut it. That's what motivated me to create this program.
My Credentials
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B.Com Honours in Industrial Psychology
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Certified NLP practitioner, CliftonStrengths coach, Brain profiling and Strategic Intervention.
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Ten years strategic business development and channel management in SME market.
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Four years running my own consulting company, teaching sales teams to leverage their personal strengths and unique sales approach.
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A decade running my own solo business, including the part where it broke and took be down with it.
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My top 5 Clifton Strengths: Strategic, Relator, Individualization, Ideation & Empathy.
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I'm based in Pretoria, South Africa, working online with clients across the world.
My Story
SoloReach was not designed in a boardroom or reverse-engineered from business theory. It was built by someone who lived the battle and spent years figuring out, with hard-won clarity, exactly what broke and how to fix it.
For over a decade, I ran my own luxury upholstery manufacturing business. Built from nothing, my side hustle became a small enterprise within three years.
From the outside it looked like a great business - R3 million in annual turnover, flawless five-star ratings, more customers than I could handle. Always busy. Always running. 60 hour weeks.
But generating revenue wasn't the problem.
From the inside, I had built - without realizing it - something I couldn't walk away from, but couldn't afford to stay in either. The business had plenty of top clients, a great reputation and real output. What it didn't have was a structure that could convert all of that activity into actual forward momentum. I was running hard, but the needle wasn't moving. It slowly dawned on me: I built myself a cage disguised as a business and I was trapped inside it. I didn't enjoy what I was doing and I knew that it was a dead end... but I had staff to pay and serious commitments, so it was a case of putting my head down and pushing forward, even though I was moving in the wrong direction.
Ten years of grinding it out inside a business I didn't want (but couldn't admit to anyone) eventually extracted a price I hadn't budgeted for. Not financially. Physically. My health gave way completely - the doctors called it: severe burnout.
The cure: Three months off. No emails. No choice. That was the end of my business.
That verdict gave me something I hadn't been able to give myself in ten years: permission to stop. That enforced pause gave me something a decade of hustle never had: the space to ask a different question. Not, what am I doing wrong, but rather, what were the reasons for this business going under, taking the owner down with it?
The answer, it turned out, was specific, both structural and personal, and more importantly: avoidable (if I only knew earlier).
In the year that followed, I combined my background in industrial psychology, a decade in SME business development, four years of coaching and consulting, and the hard-won lessons from the upholstery decade to build SoloReach: a diagnostic and coaching system exclusively developed for solo-run businesses.
I help solo-business owners find out where they are stuck, how to fix that and ultimately build a business they want - whatever that looks like.