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You are here: Home / Archives for self employment

self employment

November 12, 2013 by Christine

5 Warning Signs Your Self-Employed Dream Will Never See The Light Of Day

2119487_mlLook, I know.

I’ve been there.

Telling myself that I want to quit. Do my own thing. Get more balance.

While still sitting in a job that feels like family, no matter how dysfunctional, and that puts money in my bank account every month.

It can be tough to believe that not only does the grass look greener on the other side, but also that you can create it that way.

The number of people going self-employed is rising, both in the US and in the UK.

Here are 5 signs that you’re not going to be one of them any time soon:

1. You’re all talk, no action

Go on holiday, have a night out with mates, drink yourself to the bottom of another bottle of wine and you’ll tell anyone away from the office who will listen how you really want to pack in your job and do something else.

You may well have an idea.

Maybe some fabulous new product offering. Or a way to sell your services on a more freelance basis. Or to work in more of a helping space.

You talk of how you’d love it if only you could do something with your life that was more satisfying and fulfilling. And you mean it. It lights you up. Sets you aflame.

But you never do anything about it. You just talk.

And, since at the end of the day, it’s only ever action that gets results, chances are, if this is you, you’re not going to be realizing your dream any time soon.

2. Action equals moving jobs

Okay, so maybe you are doing something, imagining it’s furthering your self-employed dream, but that “something” means doing another job.

Either within your firm, or beyond it.

How you’re justifying it to yourself is to say that THIS one will give you the skills or resources or contacts that are going to be critical for when you make the leap.

Things that may indeed be long term beneficial.

The real warning sign is when you allow yourself to get just as embroiled in a different kind of overwhelm as you were in your old gig, and are pretty much back to square one.

3. Your key motivation is escape

Another danger sign is that, when anyone asks you about your business dream and what it entails, it doesn’t take you too long before you come back to bitching about what it is you’re doing just now. Why it’s so awful. Why all you want to do is escape it.

Your dream is just that. A dream.

It’s the white to your current black. But it’s undefined and very idealized.

And so long as you keep thinking only of escaping, and rarely in a concrete way of the challenge of creating your own thing, your dream will never be firmed up enough, or grounded in enough reality, for you to bring it ever to life.

4. You’re doing nothing to free yourself up

There are two ways I see this playing out, and both are big warning signs.

First, there’s the overwhelm monster.

Most of the people I work with these days have full schedules. And that’s a polite way of describing it. Many talk of being completely overworked.

So much so that burn out is never very far away.

Meaning that, if you ever want to line up some kind of self-employment while you’re still working, you’ve first of all got to get to grips, not just with the amount of work coming in your direction, but the time and headspace you give to it.

If it’s always easier to roll with what comes, you’ll never be free enough, or clear enough to hatch plans your alternative ideas.

Then, of course, there’s money.

If you really want to do your own thing, you have to have thought through what that means financially. How you’re going to fund your new venture. Where the money is going to come from in self-employed land.

It’s also critical that you have a grip on your personal finances. That you’re paying down any debt that you have and spending within your means.

Keeping your finances in a state of disorder is one of the surest ways to never allow your self-employed dream to come true.

5. You’re still caring too much about what other people think

People will have their opinions about you.

One of the things that’s holding you back is always needing to be seen to be perfect in the eyes of the people you’re around. That’s one of the biggest challenges as you actively disengage in order to create your own thing.

If it’s still important to you to get the top performance rating in your existing firm, and for everyone to rave about you, you’re focus is off, and you’ll find it very tough to have the kind of discernment you need to go solo.

The Real Issue?

The obvious advice for me to give you is to beef up your confidence, make a plan, get into action, sort your money, kill the overwhelm and give less of a shit.

All of these will go a long way to help.

But, I also want to leave you with an off-the-wall question, and a thought:

What if these things weren’t the real issue? And…

If they weren’t the real issue, what would be?

What if they were symptoms masquerading as the real problem? The real one being of your inner happiness?

How happy do you think you deserve to be?

Where do you think happiness comes from?

What would you do; what would you choose if your happiness was never in any doubt?

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship Tagged With: happy, self employment, work life balance

May 23, 2013 by Christine

How To Reignite Your Small Business Passion

energy

Quit your job and live happily ever after.

Admit it, that’s a myth you bought into when you left your corporate career to set up on your own.

And now you’re sitting there, some years in, feeling jaded. That early passion you had around doing your own thing has gone.

Maybe the low-hanging fruit you went after in the beginning, telling yourself it would ease your cash flow, has turned into a job in itself. Maybe you’ve just got so entrenched in delivering stuff that you don’t know how to get off your self-created hamster wheel.

But don’t beat yourself up. This kind of thing comes with the small business owner’s territory. It’s just that not many people tell you about it.

So when it happens it’s all too easy to feel like you’re failing somehow.

Realising that, and normalising it is step one of getting your groove back.

Beyond that, here are some things that work for me:

Recover your “why”

I bet you started up your own thing for at least one of the following reasons:

  1. You had a clear, emerging sense of purpose; a big feeling that you had some thing, or some service, to give to the world that you couldn’t give from the confines of your corporate job. 
  2. You had a big need for freedom; you wanted to create the kind of lifestyle that it’s hard to create while doing a corporate job.

What was your “why”? It’s so easy when we’re out there doing our stuff to forget. So, remind yourself. Go back to whatever inspired you in the beginning. Connect with it again.

That’s a key source of your energy and enthusiasm right there.

Step back and review

When you were working for whatever corporation it was, I imagine they did away days from time to time to encourage you to get your head out of doing stuff, and into envisioning the future.

So easy not to do this for ourselves as little businesses. But so necessary.

Remember you’re the CEO of your business. Invent your own away day. Find a lovely venue and get away from wherever it is you normally work.

Cancel the time out in your calendar and don’t let anything interfere with it.

Create a little process for yourself in advance. The kind of things you want on your agenda are:

  • What was my original vision for this business?
  • What have I achieved there? What haven’t I achieved yet?
  • Is the vision still right? Now that I’ve been in business for however long, do I need to tweak it or change it? If so, how does it need to look now?
  • What are the core services or products I need to have in place to deliver my vision now?
  • What is in place that I can continue and leverage?
  • What’s not in place yet that needs to be developed?
  • How will I develop it?
  • What’s in place that no longer fits my core business and that I need to manage off my portfolio?
  • How will I do that?

Use this as a time to accelerate your personal growth

And while you’re stepping back to refresh your business, think about the things this moment of inertia may be calling on you to develop in yourself.

Many would-be entrepreneurs get stuck doing contracting work, for example, because they are afraid to package what they do and to take it to new prospects.

There’s a fear of looking stupid, being told “no”, having ideas that no-one runs with.

Again, these fears are pretty normal. So the challenge isn’t whether you have them. It’s what you do with them. A lot of coaches will suggest you develop a fearlessness in yourself. I don’t think that’s for real. But I do think it’s possible to engage courage to help keep you moving despite fear.

Other people get stuck behind beliefs like “I’m no good at marketing myself”. Again, pretty normal. But they’re just beliefs. Don’t assume they’re real. Test them. Challenge yourself to learn about marketing, or whatever, and see how it feels – and indeed what becomes possible – when you hack it.

Whatever, use this moment to acknowledge where your learning edge is, and use it to grow, energise and inspire yourself.

So, I’m curious. As a small business owner, what gets in the way of your being engaged and motivated? How do you stay fresh and engaged?

 

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Filed Under: Self Development, Thriving @ work Tagged With: entrepreneurship, self employment

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