My business journey
My business journey
Hi everyone. Welcome to my video series today I thought I would do something a little bit different. I get quite a lot of emails and notifications from people who are thinking about working for themselves and whether or not they’d be ex-colleagues or people that I’ve just met and were introduced through networking.
I do seem to get asked this question quite a lot. How do I find taking that leap from the corporate world into working for myself?
So I thought I would just give you a little bit of a brief overview of how I found it. So I’ve been going for nearly I think two years, 10 months potentially since I left my job. So I am now essentially not classed as a startup, which is great. How did I find it? Initially, I found it like really scary to think about not having that security of going to a workplace every day, getting the same salary, getting paid, that kind of thing.
That’s a really scary prospect when you first start out. I know I originally started out doing this on the side as a hobby business and then I got like serious, I started thinking about getting a website developed, developing social media feeds and all of that kind of stuff. I did that whilst I was in my job, so I actually built up a lot of traction from my business whilst I was still working. And that gave me a lot of confidence to kind of start-up myself. So when I actually did end up leaving work , I just remember the day that I left my job I kind of walked out at two o’clock in the afternoon because I wasn’t doing anything so I said goodbye to people and the next day I was going to a client meeting and thinking, this is great. You know, I’m not stuck in an office and I can do what I want. So it does take a lot of guts.
I did do a lot of preplanning. I did get my website set up beforehand. I did get my SEO sorted and social media sorted. I joined networking, a great one called women in business before I handed in my notice that I had three months of networking behind me. So when I did actually hit the ground running I did kind of have clients and I was ready to go and it’s just kind of built on that sense. Don’t get me wrong. It is hard work and it’s very different. There’s a lot of business development.
It’s a lot of, you know, talking to people. It’s a lot of collaborations. It’s lots of getting yourself out there doing these types of videos and all of that kind of stuff but it does work, but you have to be really persistent and consistent about it and make sure that you have a plan in place. You know, what you want to offer, keep it simple. You know what your pricing is, you’ve got a good website, you’ve got the right contacts and you just need to make sure that these are all kind of in line before you just kind of go, Oh, I’m just going to do it. I also took on a business coach just before I handed in my notice. So I had a couple of months with her and she was helping me kind of understand what the world of businesses like.
But really, you know, been going for two and a bit years. I’m doing pretty well. Yeah, I’m very happy with how things are going and I have more of a life now I get to um, see the sky cause I’m not in the office anymore and I get to work myself and work at the times that, you know, suit me because I’m quite an early morning person rather than working in the afternoon. So what I would say is once you work for yourself, there isn’t any going back on that. You can’t go back into corporate once you realize that there’s a whole world out there. If you are thinking about it, then I am very happy to have conversations. Or if you’d like to look at working in a consultancy or mentorship around that, then I’m thinking about developing an offering around that because I get asked about it so much.
So if you’re going to do it plan it, but do it, and it’ll probably be one of the best decisions that you ever made. So that’s really just me this week talking about my leap into business. I hope you found that helpful and I’ll hopefully see you next week. Bye for now.
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