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2 Jul 2023 | Self-employment

Considering being Self-employed?

Walking through a maze. Considering being self-employed article by Joe-Hendley

This may be a short one for me this Sunday ← It turned out not to be… There’s a shocker.

I have been reminded this week by those who are setting out to carve their own groove through life of the joys, and of the pitfalls of deciding the best way forward is to be generating an income under your own steam.

And one very important reminder for everyone, as I sit here listening to “Everybody wants to rule the world” by Tears for Fears – incidentally noting that he sings perfectly imperfectly slightly out of tune at the start. A well-timed analogy for anyone starting out on a path of being self-employed to rule your own world. Remember you’re a perfectly imperfect human. Things won’t go as planned and that’s to be expected.

Tl;dr* Keywords: Coaching, self-employed life, horrible bosses, bright new eras, sarcasm, “success on your own terms”, consciously mindful self-checks, your “why”

Why go self-employed?

Maybe it’s because your experience of employed life is less than joyous and inspirational or impactful and alive with meaning.

Maybe you are tired of being treated like and adult child at primary school for adults, or of being micro-managed, of being questioned, “Why are you doing that?”

Maybe you feel you have brilliant ideas of how the organisation can create actually better outcomes for everyone, how processes could be improved, how to treat customers better and how to treat staff as human beings rather than systems whose sole purpose of existence is to do the one job (or 10).

Perhaps you feel you are worth more than the minimum wage, tired of being endlessly chirpy (exhausting for us introverts) and repeating the same opening lines when answering the phone like “Hi, you’re through to Joe at FML Incorporated. How can I help you today? Oh no, I can’t do that, policy says no.” Whilst dreaming of being able to have time to think about how we humans can save ourselves from ourselves.

Perhaps you just feeling the core of your self you could be doing more.

This is the beginning of a new era in your life

So one day you decide you have had enough and yes, actually, you are better than this. And let’s face it, you are.

No more taking commands from people. No more having to clock on and be questioned about being 32 seconds late, or clock off on time and have managers proverbially, sarcastically look at their watch and then you as if to say “Early shift, is it?”

No more having to negotiate lunch times so you can pick up the kids from school. No more having to ask permission to go see a doctor and do almost pointless “return to work” forms, or get to the bank, or simply just go for a walk for mental health reasons (or a smoke).

No more meetings with difficult empire builders, or having to wait for the committee and 20 project stakeholders to decide that communicating honestly with each other will actually improve chances of project success.

Wonderful.

You’ve worked out your minimum survival budget, told the cat it’s back to cheap tinned food or remind him he’s a natural born hunter so it’s time to go hunt, and stocked up on the largest box of tea bags you can find. You’ve learned how to make bread and biscuits. You’re ready.

Your dreams of being able to spring out of bed without an alarm, feeling alert, refreshed, alert and ready to take on the world every. single. damned. day.

This is your new start. A bright new era.

Some Reality

The reality is, in equal measures both liberating and terrifying.

All the aspects of running a business you don’t see working in an employed role of is suddenly your own responsibility, at the very least and at a very high level:

  • Admin & Legal – setting up the business, adhering to national regulations eg GDPR, accounting, invoice and receipt design and tracking, setting up payment methods, banking etc etc
  • Marketing – social media content creation regularly, website designing, oh and SEO. Holy sh!t SEO…. Also networking if that’s your thing.
  • Sales – not just via the website but depending on your business, converting enquiries to paying customers and doing your best to provide the best service possible
  • Customer Service – keep folk happy (within reason)

There is no-one else to announce your arrival on the scene that you are ready for custom and your pre-defined ideal audience sure as hell won’t instantly find you.

It’s just you and your brain.

There’s an often overwhelming and bewildering amount of stuff to learn and do. All within your dreams of working from your bed – working a stress-free day less than 8 hrs a day, or even less than 5 days a week – working 4 days a week or at least have Friday afternoons off. And weekends of course. Spoiler alert: That’s not reality for the majority. You can of course be ultra flexible in when to work which is absolutely wonderful.

For example, as much as I enjoy writing (thanks to those who encouraged me over the years), it’s still an aspect of the work I do and it’s currently midday-ish Sunday. I chose to do a weekly article on Sundays. I offer coaching sessions at any time between 8am and 8pm six days a week, 8 am Sun to midday to help accommodate those with 9-5 office style jobs which tends to be my audience. But then I can go for a walk and make home made soda bread whenever I damn well like during traditional office hours instead, so it’s balanced for me.

Back to the points…

There’s a whirlwind of opinions, blogs, newsletters to read (if you’re new here, remember to subscribe, folks!) to learn how to do everything to create success on your own terms.

Even when you have adoring friends and family to give moral support, it’s just you who’s responsible for doing all the tasks required to make a living (unless you’re fortunate enough to be able to hire staff OR have the confidence in outsourcing tasks to freelancers you don’t yet know and trust).

Equally there is no-one else to blame when things invariably go wrong or setbacks occur.

To be fair there are many benefits to it and personally I love it – the responsibility, the need for decision making, the need to effectively create your own effective policies, strategies and goals, being able to decide who you are going to work with, how, where, when and for how much* is great. Being able to go to personal appointments for everything, being able to go for a walk, deciding when to start work and finish for the day is incredibly liberating. Every single person I have ever met who has been self-employed has expressed that they don’t feel they could ever be happily employed again.

(* taking into account market forces for pricing is a whole different article on value and values. It’s on the “to write” list.)

As I often say and as others have expressed to me – I’d rather be poor and happy and autonomous with liberated agency (within reason) than be employed. I’ve tried various careers paths in employment and I clearly don’t fit that well – I rarely thrive at all unless fortunate enough to find a genuinely nurturing leadership. The majority of self-employed people I have met do tend to be less well off financially than their equivalent employed lives, but boy, are they happier!

More specifically in the coaching industry – which I will write more articles on the reality thereof in time – even one of my old accountants who served a good number of clients on their books explained to me one day (2018 ish) that most coaches they knew were supported by employed partners or redundancy payouts etc. Most coaches (especially Life Coaches), I was told, earn about £5-6k a year which is barely a part-time wage and, somewhat disparagingly, their businesses would be referred to as ”hobby businesses”. Rather upsetting when you’re proud of generating any income at all off your own steam with barely any external support. Yet also a relief when you realise you’re not doing that bad relatively – oh how we like to compare our success to others. Well, I did anyway. Less so these days. That’s another story for another time.

If you’re reading this thinking “I’m going to become a coach”, be aware it’s absolutely not as easy as the smiling faces on countless coaches’ websites might lead you to believe.

Having said that I have also been aware of other coaches who are making 6 figures a year, so your mileage may vary. Wildly. Naturally, your needs and wants are your needs and wants – success on your own terms. Repeat this until it becomes ingrained. It’ll help in time to revisit that mantra.

Coaching is a wonderful profession when you find your groove. Helping others to make positive impact on their lives is deeply, emotionally rewarding.

I’m sure making organic soaps would be great too. If only I could smell.

The reality is, even when finding your groove, that making a living out of ONLY one self-employed income stream is difficult and so very challenging.

Remember your why

One of the ideas when starting out on your own you’ll come across plenty of times is “Start with Why” as per the book of the same name by Simon Sinek.

It is a very good point – Why are you doing what you’re setting out to do? Write that down, put it somewhere that you can revisit once in a regular while – make a point of looking at it and considering it consciously at least once a year as a grounding point.

Define your “why” as a foundation and then build on that with your how, when, who, where. Solid advice.

It is very very easy in the vortex of everything you do and learn in this bright new era of your life, and even when you settle into years of being self-employed, to forget why you started it in the first place.

What did you want to gain? What did you want to leave behind?

It’s also easy to settle into habits of working 12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week in the sheer determination to succeed (and to avoid going back to the world of salaried employment).

It’s easy to forget the dreams of taking Friday afternoon off or lying in bed lazily on a Sunday morning. Or being able to afford time away from it all to have a holiday without having to ask permission to do so. These simple things make all the difference.

If you’re staring a the screen, rolling your eyes and thinking “he’s talking sh!te; that’s not reality”, then perhaps step away from the keyboard and put the phone down and have a think to remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.

The two most important questions to be asking yourself

Most people I know went self-employed because they love their autonomy and are determined to make a living if not “untold” riches (in their own terms) from it. It’s not easy, no. But if you’re working your ass off and are feeling stressed about it, then why are you doing that to yourself?

Balance is key to happiness. Too much or too little of anything sucks and is destructive.

If you get to a point of feeling stressed, frustrated, overwhelmed, tired and confused, here are the two questions I return to again and again – sometimes simply to snap myself out of endless scrolling on “the socials”, sometimes to consider after Day 28 of working out how to actually use SEO to tank rank and be found that perhaps my time could be better used elsewhere

  • What am I doing?
  • What am I getting out of it?

As good for life as for business also.

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