« STINKIN’ JAYHAWKS! | Main | JLP’s Weekly Roundup »
7 Steps for a Solo Career
By JLP | March 24, 2007
Tired of your job? Want to go out on your own? Well, before you leap, here’s some stuff you should think about. I found this article over on the Money website. Below are the steps. See the article for some great advice on each step.
1. Give yourself financial padding – Be realistic. You will most likely need AT LEAST one to two years of living expenses set aside so that you don’t have to eat beans every night. One way around this is to start your business while you’re still employed. You can be working on it while you still have a regular income. Then, if you think you want to go solo, you can.
2. Don’t confront the isolation alone – Get out and talk to people (and be sure to remember the next point while you’re talking to them).
3. Be an advertisement for yourself – I’m bad about this one. I think it is my quiet personality.
4. Coolly calculate your worth – You have to have some sort of basis to decide whether or not your solo career is worth it.
5. Remember, you can’t bill out every hour – So true. In a typical 40-hour work week, you’ll be lucky to bill 20 hours.
6. Trust, but verify – Look out for deadbeat clients.
7. Don’t worry about job security – These days, there’s really no such thing as job security so don’t worry about it.
It’s a pretty good article if you are at a point in your life where you are ready for a change and going solo is your dream.
Topics: Miscellaneous | 4 Comments »
March 25th, 2007 at 1:46 am
Great post. Thanks for the info. I’d agree most strongly with #7 out of all of them. The myth of job security is long gone. Anyone who thinks their company will be taking care of them long into retirement is in trouble. Every person is a company of one at all times, no matter where you work you better be building your personal brand.
March 25th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Amen to number 7. I’m independent right now. Going to have to get the paperwork done yesterday. Somehow my customers found me before I was “ready”. I fix houses, sub, and do general fix-it as needed. Nice people so far.
Working for the man ain’t my bag anymore.
March 25th, 2007 at 11:47 am
My wife and I both are involved in separate businesses and the most important thing we’ve learned is to hold expenses down — both personal and business. You can ride out rough patches if you don’t have mandatory bills. You can use that extra money to fund necessary equipment or advertising to grow the business. Otherwise, you’re then putting expenses on credit hoping your revenues grow faster than your credit balances which at 20% compounding is a poor bet.
March 27th, 2007 at 9:43 am
One other thing I recommend for both people going solo and those of us still working for someone else. Look at every job, every project, and every client and ask yourself how they can increase your skills individually and the marketability of your company. The way I try to word that is simply this: If I succeed at this, what terms do I describe the success in?
Sometimes the value of that question is in recognizing networking opportunities. Sometimes, you are building valuable skills. Sometimes you are achieving concrete successes that you can put on your resume. But it will force you to put your successes into the terms of the people paying you. Customers are what its about.