SELF-EMPLOYMENT: IS IT FOR YOU?

BECOME A FREELANCER. SELF EMPLOYMENT –IS IT FOR YOU?

Jasmine Birtles

So you think you might like to go selfemployed (or become a ‘freelancer’) but you’re just not sure?

This short, introductory guide will help you decide whether or not the business you set up will help you achieve the goals you set for yourself.

Chapter 1

WHY DO YOU WANT TO SET UP THIS BUSINESS?

You have to be able to answer this question clearly to yourself, otherwise you could end up starting a business that takes over your life without giving you what you want.

So, the questions you should ask yourself are:

•What do you want your life to look like in 2-5 years?

•How many hours do you want to spend with you family?

•Where would you like to live?

•What sort of house/ flat would you like to live in?

•Would you want to do other things like travel, scuba dive, learn a new language, do charity work?

It’s about sitting back and really thinking about the kind of life you want to live. Running a business, or setting yourself up as a freelancer, will greatly affect the rest of your life - and your income. Make sure it does so in the right way.

In essence, you have to know how you want to live. And to do that you have to set some goals.

Chapter 2

SET GOALS

Many people think that setting goals is a way of setting yourself up to fail.

It’s not.

Everyone should set goals because:

1. Goals are there to help you know if you are doing the right things and not wasting your time. They’re guiding lights not threats. You should take them seriously and aim to hit them, but don’t think of them as pressurizing deadlines.

2. You are supposed to make mistakes! So what if things don’t go to plan and you take a bit longer to hit your goal? That’s OK. What’s more, you may change your mind about some of the things that you want. If you do you can just change your goals.

HOW WILL YOUR BUSINESS HELP YOU ACHIEVE THESE GOALS?

If you write down your goals and aim to achieve them you’re less likely to be sucked into working all hours at the wrong thing.

For example, if you want to work no more than 12 hours a week and at the same time you want to earn £5,000 per month then an ironing service that you provide on your own is not going to cut it. You would have to iron every item of clothing within a 50 mile radius, working 20 hours a day, never seeing your family and not even getting close to what you want to earn or the hours you’d like to work.

So you need to create a different approach. For example you could bring together a community of people who want to do some ironing in their spare time and get paid for it. You could be the person who goes out and gets all the customers taking a commission on the work done. That business model is ‘leveraged’ on your time i.e. you only put in a relatively small amount of time compared to the work completed and the money that you earn.

Leveraging your time

Rather than spending 100 hours earning £10 per hour ironing, you put in 100 hours setting up a community of 10 ironers and bringing in 50 hours worth of customers for each of them. Your earn, say, 15% commission on their hourly wage so that they still get £8.50 per hour.

In the first model where you do all the ironing you would earn £1000 for 100 hours work and then have to do all that work again next month to earn another £1000.

In the second model you would earn 15% of 10 people ironing 50 hours at £10 per hour i.e. 15% of 10 x (50 x £10) = 15% of £5000 = £750.

In the second month the work you’ve already made will continue to earn money for you – the people doing the ironing would probably keep a fair amount of the customers and you would still be earning commission (assuming you have signed them up to an exclusive deal) – maybe around £500. So you could do absolutely nothing and still earn £500, or you could do another 100 hours setting up clients with people who can do the ironing and earn a further £750. So at the end of the second month you’d be earning £1,250.

If you keep doing this month after month then your earnings would go up and up even though you would be putting in the same amount of time.

WHAT BUSINESS SHOULD YOU DO?

The simple answer is whatever you enjoy and is going to make money. If you are going to keep working when you are tired and it’s late and everyone else is going to the pub or watching TV then it had better be something that you really believe in.

That can be something that you really enjoy doing or it can be something that you are absolutely convinced will make money.

There is a great advantage in doing something that you are passionate about. People invariably put more time and effort into things that they enjoy. They also come up with more ideas, are better informed and are generally more enthusiastic. Therefore they’re more likely to gain and keep customers.

So a good starting point is to look at all the things you are good at or enjoy and think about how you could turn one or more of those things into an income stream. Could you do gardening, interior decorating or teach pretty much anything that might be of use or interest to others?

If you can do anything like this then think about how you can make the proposition more attractive to your potential customers. For example if you do gardening for someone, set up the initial agreement that you’ll grow vegetables for them that will save them enough money on their grocery bill to pay for you.

Alternatively bring someone along to help you do the gardening who is there to learn from you. They might even pay you for the lesson so that you get paid twice – once to garden someone’s house, once to teach someone else how to, say, create a successful year-round vegetable patch.

Ideas like this will set you apart from everyone else in the market thereby making you a more attractive proposition. If you try to do exactly what everyone else is doing then you will find it considerably more difficult to create a customer base.

Chapter 5

IS THERE A MARKET?

Are people ready to pay for the service or product that you want to provide?

The ironing example makes the assumption that there is a market for people who need ironing and are prepared to pay for it at a rate that makes it worth your while, as well as people who are competent at ironing, trustworthy, reliable and looking to do paid ironing work.

Here are some of the ways in which you can find out if there really is a market

1. Ask your friends, colleagues, relatives etc if this service would be of interest to them. If they say ‘yes’ then ask them when they would like to start using the service.

2. Ask them who else they know who’d like the service.

Do not fall into the trap of believing a few friends who tell you that it’s a great idea and that they’d probably pay for ironing. Nine times out of ten, while they may genuinely think it’s a good idea for other people, they have no intention of putting their hands in their pockets and paying for the service or goods that you’re offering. They’re not taking the risk so it’s very easy for them to be generous in spirit!

3. Check your local newspaper and yellow pages to see who else is offering a similar service – phone some of them up to find out what they charge and when they can fit you in. The busier they are and the more they charge the more likely it is that that market has room for you.

EFFECTIVE NETWORKING

The two key points to remember with networking is this:

DON’T: Meet people and try to sell your service or business to them

DO: Meet people and find out how you can help them in some way

By doing the former you are simply putting people off. They’ll think you’re pushy and tiresome.

Your business is guitar lessons

You meet someone in the library looking for a book on a specific artist.

You may know someone else who is familiar with art and might be a useful resource.

You strike up a conversation asking what they are looking for and wondering if you can help.

By doing the latter you’re creating advocates – people who like you and appreciate your generosity and expertise. They will tell other people about you in a positive way. This will include the fact that, unlike most people, you didn’t try to get something out of them, rather you offered them something for nothing and are, therefore, someone to be trusted – i.e. a good person to be in business with.

If you keep this in mind then you can apply ‘networking’ to any situation by starting a conversation wherever you are. By being friendly and finding out how you can help someone you are networking.

If they are receptive then you can mention your friend who is very knowledgeable and would be able to help find related works, galleries and so on. If the person you are talking to is receptive then you can ask if they’d would like you to pass on their email address to your friend.

If they are comfortable with that then take their email address (or business card depending upon the situation). Later on send an email address to your art friend and cc in the person you met at the library.

Make sure that the email address you are using to send the message from is your guitar teaching email address with your website mentioned in the foot of the email and the ‘Free first lesson’ that you offer.

Chapter 7

ADMIN – DON’T LET IT CONTROL YOU

Make sure you are on top of the paperwork. Set aside the same time every week to do admin, keeping up to date on your expenses, paying bills, ordering stationery – all the stuff you hate.

One effective way of doing this is to set Monday morning (or the whole day if necessary) aside for admin. That lifts the burden of nasty tasks for the rest of the week and prevents you from losing yourself in a pile of paperwork.

In order to make sure that you’re paying the taxes you should, keeping the records you should and generally running your business in a legal and efficient way, make an appointment to see an accountant. You will know someone who can recommend one e.g. your doctor or your neighbour.

The Accountant will only need to spend one hour telling you how to set up your business and the administration of the numbers in the right way. They won’t be able to make decisions for you, but they will save you a huge amount of time and hassle up front.

Chapter 8

CREATE A MASTER MIND GROUP

If you send your children to a school of violent thugs then your children will become familiar, even comfortable with that mind set. So, like all good parents, you send your children to the school with the best prospects, facilities and teaching.

Join free associations, sign up for relevant email newsletters, even put yourself through the mostly unproductive process of attending your bank’s business networking evenings. But do so with a view to making friends with people who are going through the same sort of things that you are.

The same principle applies to your way of thinking in business. If you associate with people who watch TV or go to the pub most of the time then that’s the mind set that will influence you.

Such people will have a unique understanding of the pressures and excitement of being self employed. They will have been through some of the problems that you have and will know people with whom you can talk about particular issues.

Therefore you need to spend as much time as possible with people who are making their own way in business, freelancing or self employment.

Also don’t be afraid to contact people who are where you want to be. If you phone up a business person and ask them if you can buy them a coffee or lunch in exchange for the opportunity to pick their brains then, 60% of the time, they’ll be delighted to help. It works –try it.

BRINGING UP BABY

Starting a business is like having a child – it’s no coincidence that people refer to a business as ‘their baby’.

No one is born with experience in parenting. They do all the preparation and research they can, consult with other parents and deal with issues as they arise as best they can.

Parents make mistakes, learn from them, and are much better equipped and more confident when their second child comes along.

So it is with business. You can only learn how to do it by doing it.

•Don’t wait until everything is ready –it never will be.

•Do as much research and preparation as you can, but have a point at which you make the decision to do it or not, then stick to that decision.

•Do associate with people who are where you want to be, living the lifestyle and running the business the way you’d like to run yours.

•Do embrace mistakes – they are feedback and learning. You absolutely MUST make mistakes. If you are not making mistakes then you should be very worried because it probably means that you are not doing anything! Embrace mistakes – they are feedback and learning.

•Don’t expect to get rich quick. Establishing a business generally takes 2 to 5 years. If you have set the right goals with deadlines then you will know how long it will take you to get where you want to be (though you have probably not allowed anywhere near enough time and should double it!)

BECOME A STUDENT OF SALES AND MARKETING

The onus is on you to bring in customers. No one else can do this for you as effectively as you. Don’t fall into another classic trap of looking to offload the sales and marketing to someone else. It almost certainly won’t work – they’ll do what they think is right, charge you a lot of money but not generate enough of the right customers.

And make sure that the people whose information you are studying know what they are talking about.

So it’s down to you. Read all the books you can get your hands on, absorb as much information as you can, but apply it all yourself. Do not be seduced by marketing agencies who want to take it over for you. It’s a false dawn.

A good starting point is the late, great Gary Halpert and the not so late but equally great Dan Kennedy. They are both no nonsense marketing men who have been there and done it. They’ve both written lots of books so look for their name on Amazon buy just one book (or get it out of the library), study it in detail, and apply what it says straight away – immediately!

CONCLUSION – SO IS IT FOR YOU?

It’s a great deal of hard work so, as mentioned above, you have to be passionate about what you’re going to do – either in terms of enjoying the process or believing in the potential of what you could create.

It may sound corny but it’s true. You have to set up a very clear image of how you would like your life to be, what car you would like to drive, how much free time you’d like to have to spend with your loved ones, what holidays you’d like to take, what food you’d like to afford.

So the final point takes us back to the beginning. Why are you doing it? What is going to keep you motivated when you are working stupidly long hours, getting angry emails from dissatisfied customers and wondering how you are going to deliver the next customer’s requirements on time?

Dream in detail. Be vivid in what you want. These dreams are the foundation of your business. If you don’t put them in place then your business will be less likely to survive.

These things will happen – that’s part of the deal. Your job is to focus on WHY you are building the business. And that all comes down to one thing: dreams.

In short, dreams lead to goals, goals lead to a plan, a plan requires action, action leads to challenges, challenges can only be overcome with dreams.

Go for it!