Knowing What I Know Now As A Business Owner

When I first started working for myself, I was so excited to be my own boss, to set my own hours, to have the flexibility to catch up with a friend during the week for a coffee or to work from a cafe instead of being stuck in the office. It was something I had been wanting to do for so long, so in 2015, I quit my final full time job, making the move to freelancing.

My idea at this time was just that, to be a freelance publicist, to do the same work I had previously been doing (my background was fashion, beauty, lifestyle PR), all while living the dream of setting my own income and hours.

I’ll be honest, the first few years were pretty rough. A combination of it being a spontaneous decision (I left my job but it was very unplanned), the lack of clients or potential clients, the inconsistent income, etc, the list goes on. Looking back, it was really gruelling and often deflating at times. I ended up taking up additional jobs to support my income, while I kept building things up. And it also led me to saying yes to a lot of work that didn’t necessarily light me up.

Fast forward a few years later, and after a move to Europe, things had really begun to pick up. I was working with some dream clients, and I started to have more work than I could manage on my own. So the logical decision was to hire someone.

The thing is, I knew right from the start I didn’t want an agency.

I really enjoyed PR, my clientele was made up of predominantly female entrepreneurs and it was work that was really inspiring for me. I was finally at the stage I had wanted to be for so long, so although I knew I didn’t want to manage a team, I also didn’t want to turn away the work, work that I really enjoyed. Having known the struggle of what it took to build it all up in the first place, I went and hired my first contractor.

Things were busy, I had the work which had been such a relief after so many years of trial and error but then I found myself in this new position. A situation I didn’t really like, that I hadn’t really set out for intentionally.

My whole goal from leaving my job originally was for more freedom, both time and financially, and to be able to take on the work that lit me up. Without realising, I had gotten to a place where I was working more than before, I was feeling super overwhelmed, managing someone else, their workload, as well as my own, I was more stressed and all of this just took the joy out of the work I had once enjoyed.

What happened here was, I didn’t intentionally think about what I actually wanted. I had made very generic goals of “working for myself” and “more freedom.” But at no point did I actually sit down and think, what does this actually look like practically.

I had missed a really crucial step, and I wanted to share this, because I see this come up so much in conversations with clients or people I meet. There is this big general goal of making more money and flexibility, but there are so many layers to this. And as in my experience, you can very easily, without realising, put yourself in a situation that you’ve said yes to all the work, but now that work looks and feels very different to what you had imagined.

If this resonated with you or you’ve been thinking about starting your own business, I encourage you to sit down first and get really specific about how you want this to look.

In five years from now, how does your day look?

This is so personal, this why it’s so important to shut out any external noise or see what others are doing or what works for them. By clarifying what you want, you can map out the key steps you need to take to get there, and this looks different for everyone.

For some they want more flexibility to travel the world, others want to spend more time at home with their kids. Some people thrive managing others, while some want a really lean team with maybe just a VA. Then when it comes to your services, how does this look? Would you be happy with lots of one on ones or meetings and calls, or do you prefer more working alone?

All of these things need to be taken into consideration, so you’re not just throwing yourself into a business without actually thinking about you and how you want to live your daily life.

Some important questions you can ask yourself:

• How many hours would I like to work per day?

• How available do I want to be to clients or customers?

• Do I thrive working with others or working alone?

• What is my reason for doing this?

• If I want to work less, how? Passive income? A team who I oversee?

• Do I like managing people?

• Do I prefer working online, or in person?

• How much money would I like to make? This is so unique to each individual..

Questions like these will help you to get clear on the specifics of what this business should look like.

Had I have done this at the start, I would have realised a lot more earlier on, and would have been able to pivot accordingly. I set out to work for myself because I wanted to work around five hours per day, I also wanted to work with people who inspired me, I didn’t want to manage a team, and my personality is the kind that gets really zapped from lots of calls or client-facing work.

Looking at this now, after experiencing and learning from this, a better strategy, personalised to me, would look like increasing my prices, instead of increasing clients. Integrating passive income that was aligned with my current offers. Implementing automated processes, so that instead of a lot of unnecessary client liaising, I could have either eliminated them or put a tech stack in place so it was automatically actioned for me. I would focus more on the marketing of offers that leveraged my time. So instead of staying in the same hamster wheel, I would continue working while also dedicating a significant amount of time on what is actually going to grow the business.

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