That’s right, it’s a dream for many. It’s about freedom and flexibility. It’s also about taking control of your work life. Before you take the leap, here’s the reality check you need. Working for yourself will make you understand that there is no incoming paycheck starting from this month-end forward. If you do it right, the paycheck could probably come not just once a month, but once a week or better, once a day.
Working for yourself means you are earning income from your business. When you do this, please ensure that you select the business correctly. It must revolve around not just your passion and interest, but also these:
- Solving real problems.
- Your experience.
- Your expertise.
- Your knowledge.
- Depth of your professional contacts or circles.
I always encourage people to go cash-flow-driven. The idea behind this model is to get people to pay you for the same product or service again and again. This is not a high-ticket game but volume-based. Do not seek funds at this stage. Keep the business bootstrapping as it will force you to be creative and stay alert. Here, you’ll likely work more, especially at the start.
Spend that long hours to build a system to automate it as much as you possibly can. This is the part where you get to wear many hats—whether you like it or not. You’re now responsible for everything, from marketing and sales to accounting, tech and customer service. This requires diverse skills and a willingness to learn fast. Be prepared to tackle tasks you might not enjoy.
Working for yourself means financial stability won’t happen overnight. I always suggest people to not jump into entrepreneurship without any proper planning. This is the reason why—and it will be a big mistake if you do. You need money for those commitments back home. From your family’s expenses to paying bills, car instalments, loan repayments and others. Without taking care of these, you won’t be able to focus on your business—period. If you already left your employment, it is time for you to start looking for gigs that can cover your commitments month-in-month-out. Without any proper income for this, you will get stressed big time. Living a stressful life to settle financial commitments is an early signal of a business collapse.
Being comfortable is your enemy. Without a boss to answer, you need serious self-discipline. This is where clear goals, deadlines, and routines come into the picture. Design your business to have short-term, medium-term, long-term wins and bonus wins. Without short-term wins, you will run out of motivation fuel. You need this to move forward to hunt for more. Celebrate wins, especially small ones.
Remember, expect setbacks. Entrepreneurship is full of them. Setbacks happen when you make mistakes. Did you know that mistakes made on paper are still free, but once you’ve entered the execution stage, mistakes can be expensive? This is why detailed planning is important. This is why observation is important too and understanding mistakes made by other businesses is crucial too.
Yes, being human, you can’t avoid mistakes. Now, there’s a proven way to minimise mistakes. The method is called mentorship. Find someone in the same business or industry and appoint them as your mentor. There’s a caveat to this. The person is already successful and qualified to give advice and pearls of wisdom. Learn from him or her, especially on past mistakes made and the how-tos. You don’t have to do this alone.
Don’t follow others on having a large team. Keep your setup lean for as long as possible. Create a small core team and make them happy. Expanding the team can be tempting but risky especially when you need to scale down due to unforeseen circumstances. Simply outsource certain tasks on a project basis via short-term engagement. This will keep your costs manageable.
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