Lead Like a Starling: What Nature Can Teach Solopreneurs About Business
Not every creative business needs a five-step funnel or a six-figure launch. For many solopreneurs, what’s missing isn’t a strategy—it’s alignment. Not just with clients, but with their own energy, values, and capacity.
That’s where Emergent Strategy comes in.
Popularized by adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy pulls from nature’s blueprint—flocks of starlings, root systems, tides—to offer a more fluid, humane way of running a business. Instead of rigid rules and one-right-way thinking, it invites us to adapt with intention, to collaborate rather than dominate, and to measure success beyond the bottom line.
Nature Doesn’t Burn Out—So Why Do We?
Creative entrepreneurs often build businesses in their own image: multi-layered, passionate, and purpose-driven. But without sustainable systems, that brilliance can become brittle.
Emergent Strategy shifts that dynamic by offering a different lens:
Shared leadership (think: birds migrating in shifts)
Networked awareness (think: tuning into your business neighbors)
Adaptive pace (think: moving with seasons, not in spite of them)
When you operate this way, your business doesn’t just serve your clients—it serves you.
What It Looks Like in Practice
For solopreneurs navigating chronic illness, neurodivergence, caregiving, or even just plain burnout, the usual advice—work harder, optimize more, push through—doesn’t cut it.
Instead, business starts to feel better when we:
Redefine success to include energy management, rest, and values alignment
Observe and learn from the shifts of peers in similar spaces (“business neighbors”)
Let go of binary thinking (profit vs. impact, rest vs. results) and embrace fluidity
Choose intentional language that reflects what we believe—not just what converts
Pay fairly and lead gently, even when it’s “just us” behind the scenes
It’s not just about strategy. It’s about choosing to run your business in a way that mirrors the world you’re trying to build.
What Might Change If You Led Like a Starling?
Start here: Who are your closest business neighbors? What shifts are they making? What would it look like to trust your instincts, follow your body, and build systems that actually support your capacity?
This isn’t a rejection of structure—it’s a reframing. One where strategy feels less like squeezing yourself into someone else’s model and more like designing a process that flows with the way you work best.
And if that sounds like the kind of business you want, you’re not alone.
If you want to hear more about how this can play out in real time, check out my full conversation with strategy coach Taina Brown on Here’s What I Learned We dig into values, sustainability, client experience—and what happens when your business has to hit pause.
