Guest blog - Antoinette Oglethorpe - Lessons from taking the plunge

Lessons from taking the plunge to self-employment

Over recent months I have been doing some informal research among those who are self-employed asking them the question “What lessons have you learnt about becoming self employed and running a business that you wish you’d known at the start or before taking the plunge?”  Here is a summary of the key themes in their answers:

Lessons from taking the plunge

1. Specialise don’t generalise.  Go an inch wide and a mile deep in a niche or a couple of niches rather than trying to serve everyone.  You have to be very clear right from the start on who your target market is and what you are offering them and avoid the temptation to be all things to all people.  Find an area you can call your own and build a name and a reputation for yourself.  Become known as one of the experts in that particular problem area and go the extra lengths to learn everything you can in your field.

2.  Develop a support network and nurture relationships with business mentors.  Surround yourself with other people who are also taking the plunge to self employment and running their own business.  Apart from helping with the occasional lack of social contact, only they understand what you are going through and will be more than happy to share their personal stories oftaking the plunge themselves, the barriers they’ve encountered and how they’ve kept going!

3.  To get a good business and not just a well paid job, you have to work on the business as well as in the business.  You need to constantly work on developing new business even when you are busy to ensure work in the pipeline.  Recognise that for contracts with bigger organisations the lead time is long and never work 90% or more for one company – spread the risk.  All of that means you need to constantly market yourself and your business by making phone calls, sending emails, maintaining your web and social network pages and raising your visibility.

4.  Keep positive, focus on the end goal and keep it real.  Believe in yourself and what you have to offer.  Dare to aspire to whatever heights you wish and let no-one tell you that you can’t achieve the impossible as it is simply beyond THEM and their mindset not yours!

5.  Value your value.  Don’t undervalue what you can offer – even in tough times do NOT drop your day rate – it is not sustainable. If work is poor it’s because you have not been ‘out there’ putting your name and reputation about.

6.  Always make sure there is more money coming in than going out!  Avoid unnecessary overheads.   Don’t spend on anything that doesn’t help win customers or deliver the work so think about whether you really need that office, that new laptop/pc/printer and so on!

7.  Build your strategic team and be ready and willing to outsource to them the things that they can do better than you.  If you are the product, be the product, don’t be the web designer, the printer, the PR specialist etc.  Above all else, make sure you get a well respected, pro-active and on the ball accountant, unless you are an accountant yourself.  Their advice, support and guidance will be invaluable, especially when it comes to tax planning.

8.  Get organised and develop systems that help.  At first you will feel that you don’t need systems because there’s enough space in your head to remember everything.  Before long that will no longer be true but by then it might be too late to get the time to put things from your head into a system without a long period of down-time.  So start writing your processes from day one.

Final words of wisdom came from Alex who summed up a lot of what others had said ”Surround yourself with positive people, delegate, read & learn how to run a business, reach for the stars & don’t forget you have a family/homelife to enjoy!”

 

Antoinette Oglethorpe is a executive coach, trainer and facilitator  www.antoinetteoglethorpe.com

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