The first rule to be successful in self-employment is to offer a high-quality product or service that is a “real need” for your prospective clients.
Over the years, the desire to be self-employed rather than consistently adjusting to the whims and caprices of an employer has increased among citizens on a global basis. However, studies have shown differences in attitudes related to self-employment across countries.
For instance, more people in certain regions and countries prefer to be employed by others while the reverse is the case in some other countries.
For a start, it has been noted that improvements in technology, globalization, and the reach of the internet have made self-employment opportunities more enticing, especially to the younger generation and the male folk as one study suggests.
Though, the tips in this article would work for anyone, whether you are transiting from being an employee to an entrepreneur, starting your very first business, or floating a new one.
Ingredients for Successful Self Employment
The first rule to be successful in self-employment is to offer a high-quality product or service that is a “real need” for the people around your locality or extended society. In the business world, this is referred to as “focusing on value creation”. So, you need to ensure that you have researched your product/service offering and your market very well before you take a leap
In this case, a self-employed person should take into account that he/she should have the good technical equipment to fulfill all tasks. Even such a thing as a disk space plays a very important role since you have to store a great amount of information.
It pays to plan extensively, engage in market research, interview new and established industry practitioners, and carry out surveys to feel the pulse of prospective clients to make a success out of your new venture. After going through this phase and crunching numbers to determine possible sales and profit figures, you will be better positioned to know if you should start right away or delay your start-up for a while.
Handle Self-Employment Opportunities One at a Time
Depending on where your business is located and the opportunities available, self-employed individuals are tempted to engage in so many ventures at the same time. To make a success as an entrepreneur, you need to focus on one venture first, grow it to a very strong position within its market.
Then you can take off a few spare funds to apply to the other ventures, without reducing the level of attention to the first venture. At this point, you can employ someone to handle certain tasks for you. Usually, people in self-employment achieve a very high level of fulfillment cum non-financial satisfaction at this point, because they have employed somebody to work for them.
To determine whether you are in a good position to start a new venture, you can analyze your current business using different metrics available within management literature. One very good tool in this regard is the growth-share matrix developed by the Boston Consulting Group. It helps large companies to allocate and disburse resources to their different business units and can be used by people in self-employment for low-level analysis.
You Never Stop Learning In Self Employment
The two tips outlined above are very great tips to help you stay successful in self-employment if you apply them diligently. Though, it must be noted that there are equally more important tips like:
- Understanding how you can benefit from tax breaks and grants available to people in self employment within your state/country;
- Ensuring that you get paid for product and services offered in good time;
- Hiring help only when you really need it;
- Constantly communicate with current, former and prospective clients;
- Advertise using all means, including word of mouth;
- Ensuring that you know your product and market and feel comfortable talking about it at any point in time.
All the points noted above and more are critical success factors in self-employment. Overall, you have to learn new things every day and apply them to grow your venture.