Moving from self-employed to business owner
Laura MarianiShare
ThePeopleAlchemist Edit: HR, Business and entrepreneurship
OK, you have made the leap from employed to self-employed, and now you have realised that there aren't many options for moving forward: you can increase your rates or land bigger and better clients. But as long as you are "self-employed," your path can be limited.
As a freelancer/consultant/self-employed person, income is directly proportional to the time spent working. The more time worked, the more you can make, and there it goes the work-life balance that perhaps was one of the reasons why you wanted to work for yourself in the first place.
FROM SELF-EMPLOYED TO BUSINESS OWNER
Instead of thinking you are on your own if you only start thinking of yourself as a small business owner/entrepreneur, the opportunities available boom.
Doing so gives you leverage to start earning a lot more money, dreaming a lot bigger, and most importantly, helping to bring bigger/better service/s to your customers.
Running a business means creating services and products that don’t require direct input.
The business is scalable and has intrinsic value. Freelancing/consulting etc., is trading time for money. As a business owner, you can earn income without necessarily increasing the time you spend earning it.
So, how do you do that?
1. Schedule time for business development
Spend a regular proportion of your time building your business until it can replace your freelancing income.
At first, your time might be spent on figuring out what kind of business to build, researching how to market services in a more focused way and maximise the potential of the network of contacts and colleagues without taking advantage of them.
Research the market well and offer an attractive overall package to prospective clients.
2. Automate
Many skills/services can be automated into products that people are willing to pay a subscription to use.
3. Hire people to leverage your time
A self-employed person working alone must do everything from high-value to low-value activities ( i.e. using your main skills to doing admin). Freelancers can leverage their time by hiring help for lower-value tasks. The booming virtual assistant industry makes this cheaper and easier than ever before.
If you can start to use one or all these 3 methods, you can then start to enjoy the benefits of multiplying your income without multiplying the time you spend working.
Attractive, non?
