Is self employment for you? Perhaps you’ve lost your job or you’re facing redundancy and think self-employment is the answer. Or maybe you just woke up on a grey, cold Monday morning and thought “why don’t I give it all up and work for myself?”If you are considering self-employment, you’re not alone. Around 300,000 people are likely to take the plunge and turn self-employed in the UK this year, according to the Federation of Small Businesses.Sadly, figures also show that three out of five of those businesses are likely to fail within the first three years. So how can you be sure that self-employment is for you and that if you take the plunge, you will be one of the people whose business succeeds?Obviously there are the usual considerations that appear on any self-employment checklist – factors such as writing a business plan, choosing an accountant, deciding whether you should be a limited company or a sole trader etc.But I’m talking about some of the more fundamental psychological considerations that make the difference between success and failure. When I made my own transition to self-employment three years ago I was lucky enough to benefit from a unique research project carried out by Cathy Brown in conjunction with Birkbeck College, University London. Cathy looked at those who had already successfully made the transition to self-employment and identified that there are 8 key factors that are important to focus on in order to make that transition easier and more successful. The following questions will help you begin to think through those 8 factors:
Is there enough of a push to move you from your current situation? People who move successfully into self employment have a degree of restlessness with their current situation. In other words, you’re likely to be frustrated with how things are right now, enough to motivate you to want to change and set up your business.
Do you have a passion, not only for the work you do but for turning it into a business? If you’re passionate about what you do you’ll find it easier to ride the waves of change and keep going when starting out. You’ll also find that others will be attracted to your passion and will be more likely to help you make your business a success.
Do you have a clear vision for what you want to achieve both commercially and personally? In answering this question you need to think through the commercial aspects of your business proposition i.e. what the business is going to offer, to which customer groups and to which geographical markets. But you also need to think about what success look like for you as an individual. Is it about earning a certain amount of revenue, having independence and autonomy, working certain hours or days of the week, all of the above or something completely different?
How well do you know yourself and how to manage your energy levels and emotions? You need to know yourself well enough to know what you can do to stay motivated and energised. For example, do you like working on your own or do you prefer to have lots of people around. If you’re an extraverted gregarious type you may find days of working alone at home sap your energy and motivation so you may need to develop strategies (such as meeting a friend for lunch) to keep your energy and motivation high so that you are set up for success.
Do you believe in yourself? Are you confident in your own abilities? To move successfully into self-employment you need to believe in yourself, your capability and your ability to make things happen. In essence, you need to know you can make it a success whatever happens.
How much personal drive do you have to keep going even when things get tough? Research shows that people who move successfully into self-employment are focused on continually improving what they do and learning how things could be better; resilient when the going gets tough and personally driven to keep going at all times
What about your financial buoyancy? Do you have plans in place to guarantee some form of a positive cash flow or income stream during your transition? This could be achieved through a range of means e.g. savings, redundancy payment, financial support from a partner, part-time job etc. A general rule of thumb is that people feel that they need a financial lump sum that covered six months of living expenses.
How good is your support network? To make a success of self-employment you need a well-established network of contacts that can provide different types of support at different times. People typically need three types of support – (1) Practical support such as child-care, help with household chores etc (2) Technical support in areas outside of your expertise such as IT, finance or some other discipline that is an absolute necessity but a complete mystery to you and (3) Emotional support from people close to you who can help you through the tough times.
Tag Archives: Employment Work
Employers and Employees
THE PROBLEMWhy are employers struggling so much to hire “good” employees? Regardless of the economy and regardless of the unemployment rate, Employers should never struggle to find “good” employees. As a matter of fact, employers should be able to find and hire “great” employees. Most employers just don’t understand what it takes to find “great” employees. I know what it takes and the exact reasons why employers struggle. Simply put: Employers are terrible at getting people to want to work. When I have the discussion about employers and employees, I usually put most of the blame on the employer. Just for the record, most of the time, employees are not without their share of the blame. THE FACTSLet start with a two facts:
Employers hire employees for a certain amount of money and expect a certain amount of work in return.
Employees take jobs with employers and expect to do a certain amount of work and get a certain amount of money in return.
Sound pretty easy, doesn’t it?THE TROUBLEIn the next two facts, is where the line starts to get fuzzy. Over the course of time the employer/employee relationship starts to change.
The employers have invested their resources up front to train employees, therefore the employers expect employees to get better at their jobs over the course of time, thus becoming more profitable to the company.
Since employees feel they were hired to do a certain amount of work and cost of living keeps going up, employees expect to be paid more and more each year for doing the same amount of work they were originally hired to do.
It is usually at this point where the train comes off of the tracks.The employer begins to feel that the employee is a pain and no longer has the business’ interests at heart. The employee feels that the employer doesn’t appreciate his loyalty for staying with company and always doing his job.THE EMPLOYERS’ SOLUTIONHere is how both the employer should handle the above differences. During the interview process or early on in the employment process the employer should state “We pay employees $8 per hour for the first 30 days, after that time we pay them what they are worth. If you are doing twice what we expect of you then you will be paid $16 per hour. If you are doing less than is expected you, you will be terminated. Sound Fair?” (If you live in a state where an employee can’t be simply terminated after 30 days you just inform them that they will never receive anything above $8 per hour for below average work. This means no raises, for any reason, ever!)This simple conversation will save everyone a lot of trouble. It sets the expectations up front for both parties. This conversation will highly discourage a “bad/lazy” employee from taking the job.THE EMPLOYEE’S SOLUTIONHere is how it looks if the shoe is on the other foot, if the employee is trying to figure out if this employer will be a good fit. Prior to taking the job, and perhaps in the second or final interview the employee should ask the following, “How do you determine future pay increases? Are they standard or merit based? Would you be opposed to paying someone twice as much if they were doing the work of two people?”The employee should expect a little shock and perhaps even a little irritation from the employer at these questions, but the potential employee can follow up by saying “I am not trying to be a pain, but I believe that employees should work as if they own the business. That means doing whatever it takes to make the company better. I was just wondering how employees that work like that get compensated?”This simple conversation sets you apart from almost all other potential employees and it will also let you know if this is a place you want to hang your hat. You should be able to tell at this point what your future income potential will be. And whether you like the answers or not, you need to face the truth, before you take the job.HOW EMPLOYERS GET FROM THERE TO HERESo how does a business with an existing staff make the move to the above scenario? Before we get to that here is a quick example of a business I recently worked with. The business currently had 9 employees who were terrible at their jobs and had never increased the amount of work they could get done on a day in day out basis. The employer spent about $18,000 per year on each of these “bad” employees. I asked the employer, “Would you pay 3 people $54,000 per year if they could get the same amount of work done?” It really surprised me when the business owner took several minutes of thinking to come up with his answer “Maybe, it depends?” Are you kidding me? Does this employer really need to think about this? The employer would be getting rid of 6 complaining, show-up late, raise-wanting, insurance-costing, benefit-sucking employees for the ease of 3 people who would work 3 times as hard to make him money.This is clearly a case of an employer that doesn’t really know what he wants from an employee. Don’t you think that three $54,000 dollar per year employees would be of higher quality than nine minimum wage workers? If you have to think about that answer, you really didn’t understand the question.So back to the story, I responded to the employer with a polite version of my above rant. The employer agreed that the 3 employees would be a better formula for his business.THE NEGATIVE RESPONSESEvery time I talk about this some employer says something like “That would never work in my business, 3 people could never do the work of 9. My business doesn’t have any measure by which to judge employees and their amount of work.” They are basically all saying “My business is different!”Sorry to inform you. Your business is not different. You have customers, clients, prospects or patients. You have bills to pay, people to report to or a budget to control. Your business is not different and these techniques and the others I teach can be applied to your business.