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.
To Coupon or Not To Coupon
- Oct, 18 2009
- By Heather Kate
- Money
- No comments
My family and I journeyed to Tulsa over fall break (by way of Kansas, incidentally, since I failed to navigate one of the more important turns we should have taken in Oklahoma City). While we were there, every time I used something, my friend Holly told me, “Oh, I got that free at Walgreen’s.” “I got that free at Walgreen’s too.” “That was only 99 cents at Walgreens.” It became the running joke to me that if we used it and liked it, it obviously must have come from Walgreen’s. For free.
Holly explained to me how the Register Rewards work, and how through websites like Couponing101 and others, you can really learn to save big bucks at the grocery store and drug store. I made a habit of cutting coupons a couple of years ago, and I finally got tired of having too many Sunday newspapers to throw away, since all it did was just break even for the expense of the paper. But now I know that I did it all wrong. You can’t just cut a coupon and then take it in to the store for your discount. Oh noooooo. You cut the coupon, then hold on to it until the item goes on sale, then pair it with a store coupon, use it when they double it, and get the product for pennies on the dollar. And if you play it right at Walgreen’s, with the Register Rewards you can actually MAKE money instead of spending it. Imagine…making a round through the drug store, picking up a few things you need, checking out, and the clerk hands you your goods and some MONEY!?! It’s possible. Totally possible.
So, being the tightwad that I am, I decided I would be wrong to not at least give couponing one more decent effort. I started online. I read up at Couponing 101 to find out the whole scoop. I scouted and scraped and printed, printed, printed. We’re talking hours of hard labor to gather coupons online. On the way home from church today I stopped in to Walgreen’s for a sales paper (that you can also view online), and I stopped by United for a Sunday paper and a store flyer. When the machine gave one of my dollars back to me, I knew it was a sign that I would save lots of money today. I spent the ENTIRE afternoon cutting coupons, organizing them by product type, and scheming which store would be the most beneficial for claiming each bargain. I even hired some child labor to help with the process.
Finally, armed with my makeshift coupon notebook, the Walgreen store flyer, and VERY detailed lists of what to buy, in what order, and which coupon to use, I headed off to Walgreen’s to get started. I immediately found myself overwhelmed, as I realized that I had to juggle the notebook and piles of coupons to figure out EXACTLY which product, which quantity, and which flavor to buy. You can’t buy the wrong thing, or the coupon won’t work. It’s a good thing I did not take a child with me. I might have headed straight back through the door. I did, finally, find almost everything I planned to buy. I deliberated more than once over whether the cost with the coupons was more than it would cost paying retail at Wal-mart, and I did decide to leave some things on the shelf for that reason. Before I was done I hit the jackpot with the clearance gift bags. At $1 each, they were Dollar Tree prices with Hallmark cuteness. I had been meaning to stock up on gift bags anyway, so that was a perfect little surprise.
As I aimed my buggy for the register, undoubtedly filled with more goods than the Walgreens buggy manufacturer intended, a sense of dread immediately set in. I had read about how ladies get a bit nervous when they head into a store with an armload of coupons, and I thought they were pretty sissy about it. Why would you be ashamed of being a smart shopper? You walk out richer than anyone in there. But it happened. My heart started beating faster, my knees got a little wobbly, and I realized I had to face the dreaded Walgreen’s clerk with shaky hands and a toppling load of toilet paper. I started my transactions rolling with the first few items that earned Register Rewards. I had SO CAREFULLY planned what to buy with the best coupon and Register Reward combinations. The clerk ran the final total, I scanned my card, and as I signed on the dotted line, I saw my pile of coupons sitting there. Unused. What an idiot! Could this get any worse? I of course became more flustered and then had to sort through the coupons to see if there was any way to rectify my mistake with the next of the three transactions I had to run in order to effectively scam Walgreen’s.
There wasn’t. So I started loading up my goods on to the tiny little counter. Three 9-packs of Big Rolls of Quilted Northern ($2.99 each). Umpteen gift bags. Two Emergen-Cs (Buy 1 Get 1). A motherload of Huggies wipes (whose $2 coupon also made it home). Six padded mailers (that I wasted $6 on since my coupon got stuck in the folder pocket.) A $2.50-gallon of milk. The list goes on and on. The line behind me started to pile up, and I suddenly felt ashamed of myself and frustrated for the people behind me who all had the token 2 or 3 things people normally go to Walgreen’s for. This is NOT Wal-mart. You are not supPOSED to buy a whole buggy full here. You come in for the good deal they lure you for, buy two extra things that are ridiculously overpriced, and check out before you lose your whole paycheck. I could hear all these things fuming from the line behind me, even though none of them were spoken audibly. I would have been thinking the same thing. But I was already in too deep to turn away. I had to USE all those Register Reward coupons for which I bought stupid stuff to receive.
I quickly wrapped up my transaction with coupons, reward certificates, and receipts flying and flew to the car with my buggy, which, unfortunately isn’t made for groceries. They don’t mean for you to actually buy more than you can carry in a sack or two. When I got home, I was stressed, mad at myself, and wondering if I wasted money or saved money. But when I tallied up the total, I was quite pleased with how it came out. Despite missing FOURTEEN DOLLARS of the coupons I had clipped, I still saved over $58. I spent $92, so I counted that to be a pretty darn good coupon trip. Had I used the $14 in overlooked coupons, the totals would have been Savings: $72; Out of pocket: $78. That would definitely have sounded better. I can honestly say that everything I bought was something I would have used in the near future, with or without the coupons, or something I will substitute for something I would have used. Like some things are a slightly different brand, or a different quantity than I normally buy, but still relatively the same product. The only thing I bought that I never ever buy was Zantac. And it turned out to be free with the Register Rewards. The only reason I bought it was because I had a $1 off coupon, which would have actually given me a ONE DOLLAR OVERAGE. And then I forgot the coupon.
I still anticipate saving another $20 with the coupons I’ve clipped that I plan to use this week at my other two stops. So all in all, I think I turned out with a pretty good week of savings. The trouble is, I’ve already spent over SEVEN. HOURS. Yes, that’s right. Seven hours it took for me to do all that scouting and printing and organizing and whatnot. I calculated my wages down to an anticipated $11.31/hour saved/earned by couponing. Had I not forgotten that chunk of coupons, I would have made like, $13 an hour. Or something like that. I think with some practice and some experience, I could probably scootch that up to a decent amount of money I could save by couponing. That’s pretty good return on investment, really. However, if I had actually spent my couponing time on my current work list that is staring at me from the sticky pad next to me right now, I could have made a heckuva lot more money and had time left over to relax.
I’m not quite sure if couponing is worth my time. I’m not done with it altogether, though. If I can find some ways to trim down the time it takes to prep for the shopping trip, and if I can overcome the stress and aggravation and chaos that the couponing grocery trip creates, it might be worth a try. Given these economic times, it’s good to know that I can find a way to save literally hundreds of dollars a month if I put the effort into it. I’m sure there are a lot of ways I could be more organized and more intentional about saving money if I really put my heart and soul into it. The question is whether or not I want to!
