Becoming self-employed; how not to do it.
So you have had enough of the corporate bandwagon. You’re sick of the commute, the early starts and your boss. Your team drive you up the wall and you want the Holy Grail of a better work-life balance. So you hit on an idea…go self-employed!
Yes, self-employment is the answer to all your woes! You can go to the gym in the daytime, you’ll do those woodland walks you promised you’d do, but never got round to. The house will stop looking like a bomb site, there will be home cooked meals on the dinner table every night, and you will enjoy sociable time with your family. You will glow with health and vitality and instead of working your backside off for a big organisation, leaving in the dark, coming home in the dark. Every ounce of effort you put in will result in a pay cheque in your bank account not theirs.
So if you have made your decision to quit the rat race and join the ranks of sassy women who are enjoying life in utopia, here is a light-hearted look at the reality of that dream…just to make sure you don’t forget all those wonderful promises you made yourself on the 7.42 to Euston!
Scenario 1: the first day
Yay, it is day one and you’ve posted on Facebook a picture of your stairs and a funny message saying ‘Oh well, time to start the long commute to work LOL ;-)’ just to make ex colleagues sick with envy. On the way you sort out the laundry and put a wash on thinking ‘this is just great’ as you flick the kettle on for a cup of tea in your pyjamas.
After cup number ten, still in your pyjamas you come off Facebook and decide you’d better get an action plan together. Might as well do that with a cup of tea and while you’re at it get an online supermarket order in.
Having done the shopping and pegging out the washing, you are quite pleased that you have also purchased your entire holiday reading list from that online book retailer. You also realise you haven’t yet got dressed. It has been a productive morning though, because you have managed to link in to about four hundred new contacts, you’ve registered a web domain name and you have spent a fair amount of time deleting your in box of all the new messages you seem to be getting from overseas web design companies.
You try and print a document but your printer refuses to co-operate. ‘I will ring IT’ you think to yourself, before realising…you are IT. In fact you’re the marketing department, the finance team, the sales team, the strategy team, the design team……….the walls may at this point begin to close in a little.
By now you have got dressed and realised that the only conversation you’ve had with a human being was when the postman delivered a parcel about four hours ago. Office banter has been in the form of laughing inanely at a post on Facebook at around 8 o’clock this morning and you’re looking at the clock wondering what time your family will get home. You’ve not been for that walk, the gym is still a mystery and now it is nearly 6.30 and there is no time to cook a proper dinner. Ready meal it is then. You post something on Facebook to say what a FANTASTIC first day you had to make your ex-colleagues jealous and go to bed resolving that tomorrow you will be a bit more focused, just as you realise you didn’t bring the washing in.
Scenario 2: the first day
You get up at 5am because ‘this isn’t a holiday you know’ and you make it clear to anyone with whom you share the house that you are not about to become a domestic goddess because this is serious hard work and you mean business.
You’re showered and dressed before it is light. You are at your desk and pounding the keyboard. You have found your target market, a series of networking meetings you plan to attend this week alone. You have a marketing plan and you’re already half-way through it before you’ve thought to have your first coffee of the day.
You have made an appointment to see your accountant and you are already armed with your projected figures for the year. You have scoured the competition to see what they’re up to and you already know which social media platforms your target market are occupying. Three blogs before lunch are all pressed and ironed and sitting on a public blogging site, and you are already getting a few ‘likes’ on social media.
You plan to work till five and then you will stop and relax, safe in the knowledge that you have put in a good day. After dinner you take a quick look at your in box and you have an enquiry. You respond, you put a proposal together and it is midnight and you’re still up in the office. You resolve to take a couple of guilt-free days later in the month to go and do something indulgent.
Except you don’t, because there are no days that are guilt-free. ‘It’s ok’ you say, ‘I will take a proper break when we go on holiday, because, after all this is the reason I went self-employed, so that I could have more quality time with my loved ones’. Holiday time comes and you are high-fiving yourself on day four, because you managed not to take a sneaky peak at your emails for AN ENTIRE DAY. Well you did, in the loo where you were fairly sure your significant other wouldn’t catch you.
The moral of the story
Of course this is a light-hearted look at the two possible pitfalls of self-employed life, but there may be some serious lessons to take away. Embarking on my own self-employment journey, two things that I learned really quickly are this; you have to be focused, and you have to have boundaries. If you don’t have the first, then the business may fail to take shape. If you don’t have the second, you might burn out.
Positive steps to take
Establish a routine. Earmark days where you will focus on specific tasks. For example, Monday may be the day you research ten new customers to write to. Tuesday, perhaps is your writing and personal development day, where you research your business, and create blogs. Set part of a day aside for networking, a day for managing your admin and so on. Obviously, the structure of your day will depend on the nature of your work, but you get the idea.
Ensure you factor in coffee meetings to maintain human connection. This could be friends, ex-colleagues, people you are meeting at networking events, or even people who are operating in your field. In my work as a coach and trainer, I don’t view other coaches and trainers as competitors, I view them as colleagues with whom I can collaborate and share ideas. I regularly meet up with people in my line of work and give and receive a lot during those encounters.
Draw up a ‘to do’ list every morning including how long you plan to spend on each activity. Stick to it and that includes stopping at the allocated time. Having a time limit will keep you focused on the task and ensure you use the time productively.
Have office hours and stick to them. You can choose what those hours are to fit in with your lifestyle. See a visit to the gym as a work related task, a break from the desk can open lots of creative thought. If you have young family you might prefer to work in the evening so you can have time with the children late afternoon.
Holidays are sacred. Put your out of office message on, and warn your clients in advance that you will be away. If the nature of your business means you really can’t ignore your in box then agree with yourself a set time each day to scan your mail. This should take no more than five minutes, and then switch off the device until tomorrow.
Have a regular performance review with yourself to ensure you are on track with existing goals and thinking of new targets to set yourself. Remind yourself why you wanted to go self-employed. Are you sticking to the promises you made yourself? If you wanted more woodland walks in your utopian life, this would be the perfect opportunity to combine the two activities.
Have a trusted ‘critical friend’ who has the job of giving you a nudge if you are not sticking to the plan you set for yourself, celebrate the successes with you and give you a bit of a leg up if you’re feeling wobbly.
Wherever possible sub-contract outside help. If you are no good at marketing, then hire someone. If your time is better spent working than looking after the home, can you hire a cleaner? While it is tough at the start owing to cash flow, investing what you can for professional advice can save hours of headaches or costly mistakes in the long term.
So there you have it. Learning to find the mid-line between floating aimlessly in cyber space, and driving yourself into the ground can be a challenge, but by reviewing regularly, setting realistic goals and enlisting the support of people you can trust, there is a utopia out there.
Now I’d better get dressed……..it’s nearly lunchtime!
Angela Jowitt
Angela is the Director of Dolphin Team Development Ltd., experienced team and leadership development consultant, coach and author. She is a terrific procrastinator and her own worst critic, is really rather good at helping other people achieve greatness, just not so good at taking her own advice. When she is not working her fingers to the bone, she can be found reliving her misspent youth as a lead singer of a band, or digging for victory on her allotment.
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Empowered Magazine 