Five Secrets to Becoming Self-Employed
- Sep, 13 2011
- By Heather Kate
- Entrepreneurial, Money
- 2 comments
I sat down to work on my running list I started yesterday, but it turned into something totally different. Thank goodness the other list is still running, though, because my poor knees are telling me “NO running.” Bill and I went out for our first walk yesterday, the first, we thought, of many. I told him to put his running shoes on early, because we were hitting the pavement at 6:45 sharp after the bus pulled away. Wouldn’t you know, my knees have revolted against living in a two-story house that sits on a basement, and they are telling me no running is allowed. Not even walking up and down the hills. So how am I supposed to stay in shape?
I’m not complaining about my house, though. I love my house. I love it almost as much as I love my free lifestyle of working for myself and having hubby at home to help me with work and help me with the house. I’ve heard the neighbors wonder out loud how we could live this way–home all the time. I sensed a little bit of jealousy from one who couldn’t quite figure out how neither of us ever seem to go to work. I’m still grinning pretty big about it, because it is quite the dream come true. I still don’t know how we managed to take the leap of faith required to get here, but we’re sure as heck enjoying it. Bill talks to friends “back home” occasionally who ask if he has found a job yet. A job? Who’s looking? He says. We jest, but he is full-time handyman right now. And part-time website updater and marketing assistant. We have our hands quite full of job and house. But there is still plenty of time for swinging a golf club in the backyard midday or galavanting around town together looking for kitchen cabinet stain or having lunch at Edgar’s bakery.
Did you know that there are places in the world you can actually EAT OUTSIDE?!? Birmingham is one of them. You can eat lunch in the middle of the day in September, and be completely comfortable with the temperature, and the wind does not blow your entire plate of food off the balcony. Unbelievable. That balcony we ate on is sitting above Main Street. Main Street, which I think is in Hoover? is this fantabulous little shopping area with restaurants and salons and boutiques, and a couple of open storefronts for lease that are just begging me to hang an awning with my logo on it. One day, I told Bill, we will make so much money, we will HAVE to open a storefront so we don’t have to give so much money to the gubmint. But, that’s probably a long time from now. For now, we’ll be happy to just pay the bills.
And, in case you’re wondering, (and I know there are lots of wondering minds who’d like to know), there are some secrets to being able to quit your full-time job and venture into the world of self-employment. I’m not getting too personal here, but I think there are some important factors that have helped us get to this point, and maybe they could be helpful to others. None of them are earth-shattering or new. The most important ones are age-old principles found in God’s word.
1.Live on less than you make. Proverbs tells us that the “borrower is slave to the lender.” So true, so true. He is also a slave to his employer. We admittedly still have ties to our mortgage lender, but other than that, we’re debt free. If you live on less than you make long enough, you’ll eventually have some extra cash laying around to be a safety net should you ever want to stop being a slave. But you don’t want to have to use that safety net.
2. So become an expert at what you love to do, and find a way to make money with it. I won’t claim to be an expert at everything related to building websites, but I have learned how to provide exactly what most small businesses desire when it comes to establishing or refining their online presence. I have spent several years perfecting my business model, and I’ve honed it to the point of being able to have confidence that there are enough businesses out there who need my services and will happily pay my fees to obtain them. Do what you love, then build your business skills until everyone else loves what you do.
3. Set goals and establish ways to measure them. Three years before we went job-free, I set some very specific and measurable goals and wrote them down on paper. Honestly? They were my six-month goals. After three years, I was halfway there. I wasn’t quite ready to leave the nest, but the Lord’s continuous prodding left me flapping my wings and learning to fly, despite what I thought my success indicators showed. If I had never set those goals, though, I wouldn’t have done what it took to reach them, and I wouldn’t have been ready when He said to “Fly.”
4. Don’t be afraid to do a 180 mid-stream. Owning your own business is a constant balancing act of managing supply and demand and figuring out what the market really wants from you. What I thought would work beautifully at first turned out not to be all that great. It worked okay, but I could feel the undertow pulling me in a different direction. I responded to that and changed things up to where they are today at SitesOnMain.com. And I’m still learning the balance. I changed things again after a year of doing business the new way, once I learned what worked and what needed tweaking. Understanding the customer’s needs and balancing that to my needs requires thought and attention. For right now, I think I’ve finally found my sweet spot. But in a few months, I may see that it needs more tweaking. I will do what works best for both me and my clients, in effort to bring the most amount of happiness to everyone in the equation.
5. The biggest thing required for making the leap is faith in God. Don’t be doing anything crazy if you’re not prepared and/or He hasn’t instructed you to in terms you feel very confident about. Bill and I prayed for many months, really years, for direction in our lives about our decision. We sought lots of wise counsel, we immersed ourselves daily in His word, we prayed and we prayed some more. We knew He was calling us to something different, even though He really didn’t share with us all of His details. (Not even some of the important ones.) When we couldn’t see His plan, we did what we knew we were given to do, and we built on the foundation of the business goals we had set years before. Years of daily, weekly, and monthly goal-setting and preparation, flexibility of adapting to market trends, and lots of head-banging hard work at the computer laid a firm foundation on which we laid our faith and prayers as God urged us to take the next step.
When I started making websites, it was merely experimental and driven by boredom. I had no idea God would use it to be the springboard that launched my entire family into a new phase of life in a state none of us has ever lived. There is no telling where God may lead my children because of our lives here, or even where He will lead me and Bill. Every day is up for grabs; we are totally dependent on what He has for us. If He turns the tide and tells us to do another 180, than that is what we will do. For now we are relishing in the peace and delight of the departure from the 9 to 5. Roll Tide.
