Tips for working for yourself

tips for working for yourself

Working for yourself is ever more popular, with all the shiny things that come with it: freedom, independence, creativity… It’s an incredibly attractive proposition, and in my experience it’s all true! But. That wonderful freedom that seems, and is, so appealing, can also potentially be a curse. There may be moments when you look back on those big Christmas parties with a twinge of sadness, or when you wish that all your taxes, insurance and other admin would still be dealt with by your employer. There may be moments when you feel lonely and lost in all the possibilities that are out there with no one to guide you.

Being aware of the negatives is important when you’re making the decision to leave behind your full-time job, so that you don’t launch yourself into something where you’re not prepared for the challenges to come – but I’m also happy to reassure you that there is usually a solution even to these challenges!

Here are 5 challenges when you’re working for yourself from my own experience:

1. Finding somewhere to work

It’s such a basic premise, and when you’re an employee you take it for granted that you’ll turn up at the office every morning and sit down at your desk. When you work for yourself, though, you can choose to work from home – bedroom? kitchen? living room? – or head out to a café – which one? – or maybe find a more formal co-working space. The fundamental requirements here are, first, WiFi – it’s embarrassing and frustrating when you’re in a call with a client and the connection is bad – and, second, a bit of peace and quiet. Personally I think there should be specific cafés allocated to parents and their screaming babies and others for hipster digital nomads who are trying to work (maybe there are and I’m just not hipster enough to know about them!).

Solution:

Having a regular spot in a co-working space of course removes the uncertainty and ensures that you have access to a professional space with WiFi, alongside people like you who are trying to make a living (while drinking a nice big latte). I’d also recommend checking out a café, how busy it is at different times of day and how reliable the WiFi signal is, before you rely on it for an important call or meeting.

2. Deciding what to work on

This shouldn’t be so different to working in a full-time manager role, but the truth is that when you’re in an office you’re always going to have new instructions coming in from the board, an urgent request from your boss, a last-minute meeting, and various other disruptions throughout the day from people who need your help. Working for yourself, at home, you don’t have those disruptions (hurrah!) but you are then left with a whole day stretching out in front of you that you need to fill in a productive way. This can be especially difficult when you have a portfolio career and you’re juggling a lot of different projects and tasks – which one is most urgent or will create the most movement in the business?

Solution:

Setting goals with deadlines and action steps for the next three months, one month, one week will help you to prioritise the most important tasks when you wake up in the morning and will ensure that you move ever forwards, even without someone on your back about when it’s due!

3. Knowing when to stop

Part of the attraction of working for yourself, when you’re looking at it from inside the walls of a full-time job, is the flexibility. You choose when to work, you can work from anywhere, you can take vacation whenever you want. What you don’t see, though, is that this same flexibility can be a curse, with lines becoming blurred between work and play, office and home. In a way, you never have any free time at all, as you can always do more, and it’s difficult to switch off. All this is compounded by the fact that you’re usually very passionate and self-motivated about what you’re doing, given that you’ve chosen and created this business yourself, which makes it even harder to let go at the end of the day.

Solution:

Here too it’s important that you set specific goals and action steps, so that it’s clear when you’ve completed a particular part of your work and you can reward yourself with some time off. Regular breaks while you’re working are also crucial so that you can keep your energy and focus.

4. Having a social life

Yes, it’s very sad, but there are no Christmas parties when you’re a solo entrepreneur – at least, not like the ones we used to have at my old job! Nobody brings in cake to the office, there’s no one to chat with over the coffee machine, and no one asks you if you want to grab a drink after work. When you’re working for yourself, you can go for days without meeting anyone face-to-face and you really have to go out of your way to have some social interaction in your day-to-day life. You’ll also not as easily be making new friends as new people join the company or you have various off-site team-building events (there is no team!).

Solution:

The co-working space can again help to simulate the office environment if that’s what you want, or you can take on contracts where you’re in a client’s office for a longer period; conferences can also be good for meeting like-minded people. Make sure as well that you book friend dates (and romantic dates if appropriate!) so that they’re in the calendar, and make time for your family – after all, that’s usually a big reason for why you’ve chosen to work for yourself in the first place.

5. Making all your decisions alone

Working for yourself means that you have no boss telling you what to do, no annoying colleagues who aren’t delivering on their projects, no office politics at all in fact… You have complete creative control and the final say on everything you do. The other side of this, though, is that you have no one to brainstorm with, no feedback, no second opinion. There’s plenty of free information to be found online but it’s easy to get lost and overwhelmed in all the different advice that’s out there and nothing beats having someone to talk things through with.

Solution:

It’s absolutely vital to your success, and your sanity, that you find some kind of mentor, a coach, or a peer, who you can rely on when you need to. I have a partner and friend on one of my businesses who is always the first person I go to on my other projects as well, and I’ve also had several coaches over the past years; it’s just so valuable to have someone you trust to be there for you. It might be a friend, or a former boss who can serve as a mentor when you’re stuck on something, or else a professional coach or consultant.

What about you? Have you quit your job and discovered some different challenges that come with working for yourself? Share in the comments below!

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

You might also be interested in these articles

“Everything you’ve ever
wanted is one step outside
your comfort zone.”

Book a free consultation

Get on the phone with Anna to discuss your unique goals and situation to determine the best programme for you, so you can start taking action towards creating the business and lifestyle you desire.

Explore a broader definition of success

Download this free assessment to consider what ‘success’ means to you across different areas of your life, evaluate where you are today, and prioritise the right goals to get you to where you want to be.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Explore a broader definition of success

Download this free assessment to consider what ‘success’ means to you across different areas of your life, evaluate where you are today, and prioritise the right goals to get you to where you want to be.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Outside of the 9 to 5

Anna continues the journey in her new book, where she details what’s needed to sustain your initial escape from the 9 to 5 in a guide to designing and building a profitable business that gives you more freedom, flexibility and fulfilment.

We will use and protect your data in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how One Step Outside uses and protects any information that you give One Step Outside when you use this website (https://onestepoutside.com/).

One Step Outside is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

One Step Outside may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

What information we collect and why

We only ever collect the information that we need in order to serve you.

Generally, this just means collecting your first name and email address that you enter, for example, when you request a resource, register for a webinar, or submit a message via a contact form.

If you are a paying customer, we also collect your billing information including your last name and your postal address.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Contact forms

We use Gravity Forms to allow you to contact us via the website. We will use the information you submit for the sole purpose of that specific form and will explicitly ask you to provide your consent to allow us to do so.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Advertising and Analytics

Google

We use Google Analytics to track and optimise performance on this site as well as embedding video content from YouTube, and this means that your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page that you’re visiting and your IP address. Google may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.

Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse and personalise content and ads that you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps. See their Privacy Policy to learn more about how they process data for each of these purposes, and their Advertising page for more about Google ads, how your information is used in the context of advertising and how long Google stores this information.

Facebook

We use the conversion tracking and custom audiences via the Facebook pixel on our website. This allows user behaviour to be tracked after they have been redirected to our website by clicking on a Facebook ad and enables us to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook ads. The data collected in this way is anonymous to us, i.e. we do not see the personal data of individual users. However, this data is stored and processed by Facebook, who may link this information to your Facebook account and also use it for its own promotional purposes, in accordance with Facebook’s Data Usage Policy https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/.

You can allow Facebook and its partners to place ads on and off Facebook. A cookie may also be stored on your computer for these purposes. You can revoke your permission directly on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/?entry_product=ad_settings_screen. For more guidance on opting out you can also consult http://www.aboutads.info/choices.

Who we share your data with

We use a number of third parties to provide us with services which are necessary to run our business or to assist us with running our business and who process your information for us on our behalf. These include a hosting and email provider (Siteground), mailing list provider (GetResponse), and a payment provider (Stripe).

Your information will be shared with these service providers only where necessary to enable us to run our business.

How long we maintain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

The main reason for collecting this information is to be able to send you resources, updates and, sometimes, information and products and services, as well as for internal record keeping.

The rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

How we protect your data

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password that lets you access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential and we ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. Initially created on 18th November 2016, it was last updated on 23rd May 2018 to be compliant with GDPR.

Contact information

If you have any questions or concerns related to your privacy, you can get in touch here >>