By Kevin M

My friend Jay and I were talking about jobs this past weekend and he pointed out something that I hadn’t thought about: There are no astronauts any more! That may not mean too much if you’re under 30, but when he and I were growing up being an astronaut was the ultimate “hero career”. It was, as the kids say today, “the shit” among careers.

Back then it seemed that all of humanity would eventually be going to space—to find resources, to conquer new worlds or at least to alleviate overpopulation here on earth—and astronauts would lead us there. High minded and exciting, yes, except that it never happened!

If a career as cutting edge as astronauts is no longer secure, what can we say about the far more ordinary fields most of us regular folks work in?

You’ve heard it and read it before, and perhaps you’ve even been a casualty of one of the biggest phenomena of our time–the end of job security.

We have to do something about that, but what? Individually, there’s little any of us can do to create job security, but we can gravitate toward it’s close cousin, income security. If we have income security we might not even notice or care that we no longer have job security.

What is job security? What is income security?

Let’s face it, in order to function everyday and to have some sort of certainty about the future we need some measure of security when it comes to earning a living. For at least the past couple of generations that meant having a stable job, but the times they are a-changin’. Fast.

Job security implies that your job is safe for the foreseeable future and hopefully clean through to retirement. Your job IS your income—as well as your source of health insurance, retirement and other benefits, and even your self esteem and your standing in the community. All is well, and you even have income security, as long as your job is secure.

Most people seek job security because it’s a simpler way to earn a living—your employer has your job and your income “covered” freeing you to go about living your life. The downside is when your job is suddenly in jeopardy, because the entire financial component of your life is also at risk. It’s a classic case of having all of your eggs in one basket.

Income security means your income never comes from a single source. If one source fails, you have others to tap, and you can eventually replace the failed sources with new ones. You’re not overly concerned with any one income source, but with creating and maintaining a portfolio of income streams.

In the economic and employment conditions of our time, I think income security is the logical security to pursue.

Creating income security

Its one thing to know the difference between income security and job security, but ultimately it all comes down to making it happen and that’s not as easy. There are various ways you can begin creating income security and that can include just about any revenue sources you can think of.

Self-employment. This is the obvious first choice for providing an additional (or alternative) income source beyond a job. By its very nature, being self-employed is all about creating new revenue streams. If your business income is derived from several or many clients or customers (which it should), you’ll actually have a portfolio of income streams, and that’s the best income security you can have. Even if your income drops, you can still have at least some income from your business, as opposed to a job where your entire income will cease the day you’re let go.

Fortunately, the internet has made self-employment easier than ever and because it’s here and now and growing, that’s probably the first place you should look. It’s where I’ve decided to camp out and it’s working for me—and I’m not exceptional in any way, believe me.

Investment income. In an era of record low interest rates, this is more about turning small amounts of money into larger ones. There are various ways to do this and you should start investigating them. This is not about plunging into the stock market per se, but about developing the ability to identify under-priced securities that have the potential to grow well beyond conventional rates of return—then having the willingness to wait it out. It has nothing to do with get-rich-quick. It’s a skill, just like business- or job-skills are, and once you master it you’ll have created a whole new way to earn a living.

Forming business partnerships or investing in small businesses. One of the things you can do if you have a business is to partner with other businesses in ways that will enable both entities to grow. There are as many ways to do this as there are small businesses and people who own them. It can also be the middle ground between starting your own business and investing. And you can do this with skills as well as with capital.

Let’s say you have some capital but you’re spooked by the stock market; as an alternative you can invest some money in an existing small business (or several) as a way taking partial ownership of a growing business. Small businesses always need capital, but never more than now when getting a bank loan is harder than ever. Conversely, if you have certain skills needed by a small business, you may be able to join that business as an owner/partner. Marrying capital with management and skills is a time honored way for all parties to make money, and very the foundation of free enterprise.

Lowering your cost of living. Not many people think of this as an income source but it really is. When you lower your living expenses, you’re lowering the amount of income you need to earn—that’s the equivalent of a fresh income source, but it gets even better. The less income you need to live on, the less you need to earn, and the less you’ll need to pay in income taxes. That’s a double benefit. The biggest advantage here will come from lowering your biggest expenses, the ones that represent the biggest drain on your income. Less need for income means more freedom to pursue other income sources.

Jobs. I gotcha on this one, didn’t I? If there’s no job security and we need to pursue income security instead, why discuss jobs? Because jobs are, first and foremost, a source of income! The topic of income security isn’t a self-employment is good/having a job is bad debate—any legal income source is a valid one. That includes jobs. Income from a job is good, it’s the complete reliance on it that creates the problems. If you can keep a job while developing additional revenue streams, you’ll achieve income security in addition to having a job. Your job is then part of the income mix, but not the sole source.

One more point about jobs: if you intend to keep one in an era where there is no job security, it’s important that you emphasize skills over the job itself. Transferability is the key, and only a strong set of skills can give you that.

 
You’re creating income security in your life when you start receiving income from sources other than your employer. That point is important in itself—you shouldn’t quit your job to create income security—you can and should do it while you have a job. In fact it will be easier to do it this way, and your job itself can be part of the security you’re working to build.

At a time where there isn’t much in the way of job security, what steps are you taking to build your income security? Are there any ways I didn’t mention?

Related Posts:

How Blogging Solved My Mid-Life Career Crisis
7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma
7 Reasons Why Self-Employment is More Secure than a Job

By Kevin M

“Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”—Motto of The Christophers

I mostly make my living on the internet these days but I have a confession. I never worked much with computers until three years ago, least of which the internet. Sure, in the preceding 25 years that I worked in mortgages and accounting I used computer applications, lots of them, but most of us understand the not so subtle difference between that and working in an environment in which your primary means of support is coming directly from working on/in computers or somewhere out in cyberspace.

My career as a paper pusher ended unceremoniously at the end of 2008, a time when recycled paper pushers weren’t in very big demand. Where to go, what to do? Damn computers–#%&*@$g internet—they’ll be the end of the world, you watch!

That last line is a fiction (OK, it was a deeply suppressed thought), but I chose to intentionally avoid dwelling on it. Every one who’s ever seen their career crash and burn can point to one or more big picture factors that directly or indirectly greased the wheels of their departure. We can either poison ourselves with bitterness, or find some way to benefit from prevailing changes (hence the Christopher’s quote above). Which route we take will mostly determine our future direction.

Job VS Opportunity

Here’s the thing about computers and the internet—yes, they have been responsible for the permanent elimination of millions of jobs around the world (and almost certainly more to come), but they’ve also created a sea change of opportunity. We should work to take advantage of that opportunity.

Now notice I said “opportunity”, rather than jobs—computers and the internet have created many, many jobs, most of them high paying. But they’ve destroyed more jobs than they’ve created on balance. And let’s face it, unless you’re a highly trained “techie”, getting a high paying job in the computer field is tough.

The opportunities I’m describing won’t be found in a job, but in having your own business.

Scared? Don’t be. I think it’s the wave of the future. Most people who have held jobs all their lives tend to think “job” when it comes to earning a living, but the onslaught of computers and the internet have changed that arrangement. I think that computers and the internet are the 21st Century equivalent of the return to the family farm and shop that provided income for the majority of humanity since the beginning of civilization.

What are some of the ways that computers and the internet are making self-employment more doable?

The entire world is our market

Because of the internet we’re no longer limited to the local community as a business base. Business can be developed throughout the world. The obvious advantage here is a much bigger market, but probably more significant is the niche factor. There are more niches globally than locally, and that heightens the chance of finding business success.

For example, let’s say you’re an art dealer; you can only drum up so much business in your immediate local community. But by selling on the web, you can reach hundreds of larger markets around the world, and many of them may buy proportionately more art than people on your home turf do. Even as a blogger, a significant amount of my income is derived from non-US sources. That’s the nature of the web—a market without borders.

Free and cheap marketing

Every business needs to market, otherwise there is no business. But marketing can be the mortal enemy of a small business, especially a start up. Advertising in the traditional media (TV, radio, mailers and print) is expensive. The big players can and do play this game, and play it well.

Marketing on the internet is far cheaper (and often free) than it is in the traditional media. You can place ads on large websites for less than the cost of advertising in a local newspaper, or you can market for free on the social media, like Facebook and Twitter. Just having and growing your website or blog is a form of advertising.

Networking gets larger—and more important

Networking opportunities are wide open–people are helping people on the web. Most web businesses are small, often one-man or woman shops, so you can market your products through another online business while they market their product through yours. You can also swap business strategies and gain access to valuable information. Networking is the life’s blood of the internet—which is why it’s called the “web”.

More product lines

Product lines are available to us that once were known only to “insiders”. Everything is being sold on the web and that presents some opportunities. Many companies will offer affiliate sales arrangements, in which you get paid a commission to sell their products. And since it’s what they do, the process of signing up and is usually pretty simple. It goes without saying that any sort of import/export business will be easier to build, since it’s all done online.

Online sales are on the rise

Online sales of nearly every product or service you can imagine are rising steadily. What this means is that the resistance to buying online is much lower than it was just a few years ago. More people being more willing to transact business online is a win for the small business. Where you once needed an attractive storefront or office suite to get people to do business with you, now all you need is a good website.

Free, online training

Information on any business you can think of is no farther away than a Google search (YouTube is another excellent source). Most businesses are “seat-of-the-pants” affairs—you learn by trial and error. If you’re tooling along in your business and you hit on a snag, you can usually find the answer somewhere on the web. It’s been said that because of the internet, the average person today has access to more information than kings and business tycoons had 50 or 100 years ago. Use that to your advantage.

Inexpensive staffing

Next to marketing, staffing is usually the most expensive outlay for a small business, but the web can even help you with that. You can find inexpensive outsourcing help with virtual assistants (VAs)—no need to have formal employees. VAs can perform everything from simple administrative tasks to complicated computer applications, and they usually cost no more than a few dollars an hour. There are talented people in less developed countries who are willing to take on some of your work for not a lot of money. That means no W2s, no employee benefits and no employee lawsuits. There out there on the web, waiting for work.

Building a portfolio of businesses

If you can start one business on the web, you can add a second, a third, or as many as you want. You can enter one business and move seamlessly to another—everything just works faster on the web. Web entrepreneurs are a growing phenomenon—once you overcome your apprehension about the web, the sky is truly the limit. This adds an income diversification that a traditional job can never provide. I’d take that over employee benefits and a loose promise of job security any day!

Servicing the online “establishment”

As more businesses develop on the web, so do the opportunities to provide support services for them. If you have computer-, social media-, marketing-, writing- or administrative-skills, there are internet businesses and blogs who could use your services. For example, blogs often use outside services to write articles, manage content, social media marketing and technical support. Any such niche could be the beginning of a new online career if you have such skills.

Start small, grow large

Here’s one of the best parts of working on the web: you can start as a side business until you grow into full-time. That means you can plunge into an internet business without having to quit your job, and you can continue doing so until you’re ready to take it up to full time. This lowers the risk of starting an internet business substantially. This is possible in large part because internet businesses are talent driven, not capital driven as so many bricks and mortar ventures are. You don’t need inventory, employees or even office space, and as discussed above, marketing is incredibly cheap.

All of these advantages make a strong case for the unemployed, under-employed, disenfranchised (that was me three years ago) or even the currently employed to consider some sort of internet-related income generating venture. And because doing it doesn’t require much money, you can try, fail and try again all you like—until you get it right.

This is after all, a new age—the Internet Age.

Have you thought about starting some sort of internet based business?

Related Posts:

7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma
7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business
7 Reasons Why Self-Employment is More Secure than a Job

By Kevin M

Last night my wife learned something disturbing—not for herself but for some of her coworkers. She has a part time job with a company that just announced that fulltime employees are losing their benefits and being converted to part time status.

Now the optimist may say, “it could have been worse—at least they didn’t lose their jobs”. And while there may be a grain of truth to that assumption, the bad news outweighs the good here, and I’d say by a wide margin. First of all, part time isn’t full time—it’s part time. That means even if you keep your hourly rate of pay, there’s no guarantee of 40 hours a week, or even of 30 or 20. That looks an awful lot like a pay cut to me.

Second is suddenly going from a job with benefits to one without—that includes health insurance. Charles Hugh Smith has made a strong case that the middle class isn’t middle class without health insurance coverage, and I think that point is beyond debate. What we’re looking at here, in addition to the pay cut, is the loss of socio-economic class status. They’ve been demoted to “the working poor” without ever losing their jobs. That’s pretty radical.

There ain’t no more job security

The example on my wife’s job isn’t isolated either. More employers are moving toward some variation of this all the time. Here’s the bottom line: from day to day, you can never tell what will happen with your job. A full-time job can turn into semi-employment with a single policy decision by people you don’t even know. It isn’t just layoffs anymore; its hours and schedule, pay cuts, job re-classification, job stagnation, loss of benefits—you name it. I’d even argue that the unemployment rate issued by the government is now mostly irrelevant.

Employment Realty #1 is that employers are figuring out ways to eliminate people and payrolls through a relentless shift to cheaper workers offshore, the latest computer technology or a combination of both. Translation: as much as we want to buy into the economy-is-recovering projections, it’s becoming painfully obvious that if that is happening, it’s fully capable of doing so without employees. The stagnant employment picture has less to do with the state of the economy than it does with the progression of options available to employers.

At least since World War II job security and benefits have always been major reasons why most people prefer to work for someone else rather than for themselves. Job security means insulation from the ups and downs of both the economy and the employers business, and benefits provided the safety net protecting against many of life’s uncertainties. Who wouldn’t want that if they could get it?

Now that neither job security nor benefits are guaranteed through employment, has the playing field been leveled, is there now less risk in being self-employed than there has been in the recent past? I think so.

Job security and self-employment

Here’s why I think that the case for self-employment is growing all the time, and why it may be the ultimate solution to the employment meltdown of the 21st Century:

1. As discussed above, jobs no longer carry the promise of stability or benefits
2. Self-employment was the primary income source of most people for thousands of years prior to the 20th Century—it is entirely possible that after nearly 100 years of large scale employment by large organizations, conditions are now returning to the historic norm of the family farm or shop (though it won’t look that way)
3. The same computer technology that’s putting people out of jobs is also making it easier to start your own business—we’ll spend a bit of time on this one in a minute
4. As the number of people who are self-employed expands, so will networking opportunities. The way you used to job network with people at other companies coverts to networking with those in the same or related businesses
5. The same instability that is making the job market less secure also opens up opportunities for part time, seasonal or contract work that can be used to supplement self-employment income—in the start up phase and later on an “as needed” basis
6. Employers who are reducing staff are often subbing out the work once done by employees—that’s an opportunity for a small business
7. Because you’re smaller and have much greater freedom in a small business you may be in a better position to react to changes in the economy, such as the ones we’re seeing now

This really is a “glass half full” situation—if we recognize what’s really happening and learn to use it to our advantage. Reality is going where reality is going; we can either embrace change as an opportunity, or let it roll over us while we look to the past for answers.

How the internet helps the self-employed

Many might curse computers and the internet for the negative affect they’re having on employment, but that’s the wrong approach.

In #3 above we touched on how computers are making it easier to be self-employed and that’s absolutely true. I’m an example of this. Earlier this week, in How Blogging Solved My Mid-Life Career Crisis, I spilled my guts about being disenfranchised at the age of 50. I was a textbook case of an economic casualty. But I chose to embrace the change rather than fight it.

Here’s the thing…people are making money working from home on their computers, and I decided that I needed to join them. Difficult? Most certainly. Impossible? No way!

Yes, there is more than enough get-rich-quick-on-the-internet snake oil being peddled out there, but beneath the phony claims, thousands of people are making a living (or better) on the internet.

I’m not saying that everyone could or should blog like I and many others are doing. But at a minimum you can use the internet to grow a local “bricks and mortar” business, in a way that wasn’t available even ten years ago. One of my best friends is running a very successful trash hauling business here in my neck of the woods and gets nearly all his business from the web. I believe that’s increasingly possible for most businesses.

If you have any idea for a business, fully investigate how you can use the internet to make it work. And if you don’t have any, look closely into ways you can make money on the web. Some ideas include blogging (my favorite!), freelance blog writing for other sites, and providing marketing, technical and administrative support to the many commercial websites and blogs that are out there on the web.

Because of the internet, nearly any skill you have or can acquire can be converted into some form of self-employment, if only as a side business. And these days, that’s looking a lot more secure than the average job.

Have you considered starting some sort of internet business? If not, what’s stopping you?

Monday’s post: Self-employment in the Internet Age

Related Posts:

7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma
7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business
Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

By Kevin M

Picture this: you’re 50 years old, your career is dying on the vine—your entire industry is on life support—and you need to find a new career to carry you through the rest of your life.

Sadly—and gladly—this situation was not hypothetical. It was my reality. I say “sadly” because it was an incredibly stressful situation to go through, especially having a family to support while it was unfolding. But I also say “gladly” because overcoming crisis is an amazingly empowering experience.

Rising out of the pile of economic statistics

I was one of the millions of career casualties of the financial meltdown that you no doubt heard tell of from the news media and assorted talking heads. In fact, I was at the epicenter of the storm, working many years as a loan originator in the mortgage industry. (When I wrote in the first paragraph that “your entire industry is on life support” I’m sure you can appreciate that I wasn’t exaggerating!)

That was my situation at the tail end of 2008/beginning of 2009. Now at the dawn of 2012 I have a career designation unlike any I ever expected to have in my life: professional blogger. Not a common job description, especially for someone over 50, but I blog and I make money doing it.

How much money? Enough to make a living! That’s plenty—for now—for a guy who based on age and career circumstances could have easily been considered to be “washed up”. But there’s something I’ve learned about blogging—something much more encouraging: it’s one of those fields where the farther you go, the farther you can go. Think of it as “success breading success”. It’s very real in blogging.

Oh, and here’s something else I’ve learned from this experience: you’re only washed up if you think you’re washed up. But let’s get back on topic…

Hundreds, maybe thousands of people are making money blogging—but what IS different in my case is my highly unlikely background. I don’t fit the description of the usual professional blogger, who is typically in his or her 20s or 30s, has grown up with computers the way people my age did with TVs, has few inhibitions in regard to “transparency”, navigates the social media with ease and confidence, and generally has at least some professional connection to the IT universe. I can lay claim to none of that.

For me, entering, continuing, and extending my blogging career has been akin to building a brick wall—one brick at a time. But the take away, I hope, is that you’ll see that you can turn something as casual sounding as blogging into a legitimate career. I’m telling my story in the hopes that it might motivate you if you feel trapped by economic or employment circumstances. There is a way out—there always is.

What do you do when all the doors are closing?

A career crisis is a disaster at any age but once you reach the half century mark all of the problems are magnified. You’re too young to retire, but too old to start a new career.

Going back to school to get a new degree costs time and money you don’t have, and the time horizon to use the new skills learned is too short if you could. Employers in new career fields are unwilling to take a chance hiring you into an entry level position when they can easily hire younger people who are uncorrupted by previous experience and generally willing to work for less money. And that jumping-into-a-parallel-field thing is vastly over-rated, especially in the “worst downturn since the Great Depression”.

And there’s one other thing that any refugee from the mortgage business will tell you: we were widely viewed as “damaged goods”. I even saw ads that said something to the effect of “If you’re coming out of the mortgage industry we don’t want you”. I’m not kidding!

When you’re facing a conundrum like that, you can either cave-in, lose your self-esteem and “settle for what ever you can get” to carry you to the day when you’ll be eligible to collect a meager Social Security check—or you can come out fighting.

I chose to come out fighting. It wasn’t even close. But one of the most difficult things for a suddenly disenfranchised person (a description I never thought would apply to me) to do is to find a way to think long term in a world where your economic underpinnings have been virtually annihilated. The only rational course in that situation is to make an end run around the immediate problem—the very real prospect of permanent un- or under-employment—and to take a chance on something completely new.

I chose blogging. In my world, that’s as new as it gets.

The 21st Century equivalent of the Wild West

Blogging doesn’t top the list of places to find career salvation—I’ll be the first to admit that. More typically teaching, government jobs, IT or “something in the medical field” come to mind when people look to re-tool. Then there are the usual mid-life rest stops: real estate, insurance and car sales, or the various assorted “franchise opportunities”—all of which seldom work for people who have no entrepreneurial background. But blogging has one quality that none of those have: it’s the modern equivalent of the Wild West. It’s a world so undefined that even a complete but determined novice like me has a chance make a go of it.

Chaos—that’s where I chose to cast my lot, but not without reason.

I think it was Ted Turner who said something along the lines of “If you want to make money, find the place where the action is, jump in the middle of it, and money will come to you”. That’s a very loose paraphrase and I might not have it completely right, but it actually makes sense when you don’t know what else to do—and I didn’t. Blogging seemed to be that place.

Being an analytical type, I actually sat down and did T-account analyses to determine what my next “gig” would be—positive qualities to the left, negatives to the right. If a given field seemed to have a much higher number of positives than negatives, it was in contention.

Some of the qualities the new field had to have were easy entry, low or no capital investment, abundant room for growth, ready adaptability to self-employment, geographic mobility, and little or no government regulation—I was coming out of the mortgage business and saw it regulated into oblivion, but that’s a story for a different day. Blogging came up better than any other field I could think of, making it the “logical choice”, if you can believe as much.

The new field also needed to fit my skill set, and that wasn’t as apparent. As I’ve already revealed, I didn’t fit within the blogging “demographic”, didn’t have any IT familiarity and came from a generation where bearing our souls (and personal information) to others was considered out of bounds.

But I did have some skills that I thought would help. Though I’d never made money writing at any time in my life, I always thought of myself as a closet writer. I’m also a deep and generally unrestrained thinker—that fits well in a Wild West environment. And I had business and finance related experience from my mortgage career, and an earlier stint in public accounting. Not a whole lot to go on, but it was a start. I figured that if nothing else, I’d get the content part of blogging down quickly.

And here’s one other seemingly unlikely factor I had in my favor: I literally had no place else to go. That can create a level of dedication that those with more options can never muster.

So I mounted my horse, and rode out into the sunrise of the modern equivalent of the Wild West. God help me in my journey—and I know He did!

The path forward isn’t usually a straight line

Blogging has only been around since roughly the early-2000s, so it’s very much a field that’s still in its infancy. Because of this newness, it’s very much a blank canvass, a place where a novice is free to take chances, and quite literally as many as he wants. You can even mess up, and still move on.

This is very unlike the current employment scene where work flows and procedures are becoming increasingly precise and technocratic, even in the simplest of jobs. That’s the whole reason blogging appealed to me. We all have hidden talents, and blogging looked like the place where I could tap mine.

But chaos has its price too. I read as many blogs and published sources on the business of blogging as I could find, and one thing became clear in the early going: blogging is NOT an exact science. What works for one blogger won’t necessarily work for another. Damn—no road map!

You should gather all the information you can, especially from successful bloggers—some of it WILL work for you, just don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t. Blogging is a work-in-progress and much of it will depend on plain, old trial-and-error.

What DID work for me

Finding success is often a matter of creating order out of chaos, and that seems to be the general rule in blogging. This is not the easiest climb in the business world, but here a few pieces of advice if you’d like to make the trip yourself:

Drop any thoughts of “get-rich-quick”. When you’re down and out there can be a tendency to look for quick solutions and you might begin thinking in terms of rages-to-riches scenarios. Don’t waste your time and your money. Get-rich-quick and building a business are not at all the same thing—especially when it comes to blogging. With that thought fresh in mind…

Adopt a LONG-term view. I didn’t start making even a few hundred dollars a month until I was blogging for at least a year. It took me two years to hit the $1,000 monthly level, but it’s grown quickly since. Some people start making money after just six months, but understand that these are exceptional cases. The vast majority of blogs never make any money at all, and most fail within the first year. I didn’t fail because I didn’t quit!

Find a way to support yourself while you’re building your blog. I was done with the mortgage business, but I took all kinds of temporary and contract jobs while I was building my blog. Some of them interfered with my blogging, but I needed the money. There’s a definite “starving artist” quality to building a blog, but if you think of the outside jobs as supporting the building of your business it can actually turn it into an adventure that also provides you with material for writing content. Footnote: I still work side jobs when I can.

Be open to what ever comes your way. I’ve been describing blogging as chaotic and while that can certainly confuse and even sabotage your efforts to succeed, it also presents opportunities. Once your blog begins to get traffic, others in related businesses begin to notice. Advertising and affiliate deals, partnerships, networking arrangements—you name it—will begin showing up in your email. Many of them will be a complete waste of your time, but some will be serious and profitable.

Carefully consider as many as you can. Because the web is wide open, blogging can take you in all kinds of directions that you never expected. For example, about a year after I started my blog, Paul Van Lierop at Fiscal Geek offered me a paid staff writing position for his site. I accepted, and within a few months I had paid writing gigs on several sites and was making a nice side income. I still do this, but now that most of my income is from my own site, I’m doing less of it than before.

Network, network, network. Part of finding success on the road into the unknown is finding people to make the journey with. One of the greatest blessings of the blogging world is that there are so many people you can team up with. I’ve met dozens, and I’m going to say without reservation that this is the greatest group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. All are succeeding in their own ventures, all are entrepreneurs, and all need one another to make it work. I’m in a networking group now where we think of each other as “co-workers”—with all of the benefits of co-worker support, but none of the burdens. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Be relentless. If I could pick one quality that separates success from failure, it’s definitely this one. You have to become almost single-minded, blocking out and even ignoring distractions. No matter what, keep moving forward! While I was working in contract assignments—and enjoying the money of the moment—I never lost sight of the fact that the assignments were temporary but my blog was permanent! Constant forward motion has a way of getting you to where you want to go, even if it takes longer than you expect.

The Payoff

That may seem like a lot to summon up, especially if you’ve never built your own business in the past. But as difficult as it seems, the payoffs of succeeding are even greater. Here are some of the many benefits I’ve gotten from my blogging venture—you can expect the same if you decide to give it a serious try.

1. I have my own business. An income generating blog is a legitimate business—some are even selling for substantial amounts of money. In today’s economy, being self-employed is more secure than being on someone else’s payroll—especially as you get older.
2. My future is unlimited. I’m making money blogging and I haven’t even ventured into wide areas like affiliate marketing or multiple site ownership. While other people my age are worried about keeping their jobs, I’m working on growing my business. At an age where so many are planning on folding up their tents, I’m contemplating the infinite possibilities…
3. I love what I do. I’ve never been able to say that about any job or career I’ve had in the past. When you love what you do, it doesn’t even feel like work.
4. I don’t have to retire. The whole idea of “putting in your time” to retire at a given point never sat well with me. If I retire I want it to be because I want to, not because I have to.
5. Blogging flows with my life. If another opportunity comes along, I can slow my blogging to a side business—or ramp it back up if the opportunity turns into a bust. I can take time to tend to family or personal matters, and I don’t have to ask HR for permission. All I need to do is pack up my laptop and go.
6. I have geographic mobility. Since I’m no longer job dependent, I can live anywhere in the world that has electricity and an internet connection. No office to report to, no buildings to maintain, no inventory or heavy equipment to keep—my entire business can be “stored” in my head or on a flash drive. And both are portable.

I’m here to tell you that you can make money blogging, even if you don’t have any “prequalifications”. Or even if you think you’re too old. I was 50 when I started and I’m no whiz kid of any kind. But here I am, working through my mid-life career crisis with a plunge into what was—until three years ago—the complete unknown. If I can do this, so can you.

Have you ever thought about blogging as a business? What keeps you from moving forward with it?

Related Posts:

7 Reasons to be Self-Employed
Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them
5 Tips to Go From a Job to Self-Employment
The Perfect Side Hustle: Freelance Blog Writer
7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business
Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

Guest Post

Being good at what your company does is absolutely necessary, but in today’s fast paced, global business world, being good isn’t nearly enough. Your company needs to be able to compete against a far larger field and in various national markets. You need to be able to move products and services from the drawing board to the marketplace as quickly as possible—or someone else will beat you to it. You also need to be able to integrate the most advanced technologies into your business model for maximum efficiency and profits.

How do you do all of that without spending more than it’s worth? By using the services of a business consultancy that’s already doing that with some of the largest and finest companies in the world. This is not the time to reinvent the wheel—you need help reaching your goals, and there are services that can help you get there.

You’re not always in the best position to assess your company’s future

Have you heard the saying “can’t see the forest for the trees”? This is how it is for many businesses! Your company is good at what you do, but for lack of an outside—and objective—view, you’re often unable to see subtle customer issues, deeply imbedded internal weaknesses or to identify the better ways forward.

You can conduct customer surveys, even employee surveys, but sometimes problems that hinder your company’s progress are only visible to the trained eye. The best vantage point is that of the consultant, who can be close enough to see what’s taking place in immediate view, but also brings the objectivity of an outsider who’s had similar experience at other companies.

The right consultancy can mean the difference between success and failure

An outsider’s view of a company’s operations, product lines and market position are more important in the global marketplace of today than ever before. Competitors are arising all over the world, many with lower cost structures or superior geographic locations requiring that your company operates on the cutting edge at all times.

A consultancy such as Bow and Arrrow can be retained in order to keep your company on that edge. Business, technology and markets are changing far too rapidly to go it alone.

A consultancy needs to have a strong, innovative staff, a staff that has worked in and with some of the largest and most successful organizations in the world. That exposure can also mean valuable contacts in and around your industry, which gives an added dimension to the consulting service.

A consultancy must be a full service consultancy, to reduce the cost and inconsistency that would come from using multiple consultants for different functions.

Bow & Arrow meets all of these requirements.

How a truly innovative consultancy can help you grow your business

Some of the services a competent consultancy should be positioned to provide to your company include:

Growth strategies. Developing an innovation roadmap, conducting stakeholder and expert interviews, performing market and competitor analyses, consumer immersion, identifying opportunity and mapping growth, establishing and implementing segmentation and needs analysis, and providing asset and technical capability audits.

Proposition development. Proposition prototyping, both qualitative and quantitative testing, initial visualization, initial commercial, technical and consumer filtering, consumer co-creation and stakeholder workshops.

Commercialization. Opportunity assessments, risk assessment, commercial case, final business plan development, and value proposition, customer segment, channel, cost and revenue models.

Execution and implementation. Steering group management, launch strategies and guidelines, consumer validation, and naming, branding, visual language, web, packaging, and app and retail design.

In an era where cost cutting has become the order of the day, it’s important to consider that the cost of not using the services of an innovative consultancy can be far greater that the fees incurred to pay them.

This article is brought to you by Bow and Arrrow, one of the UK’s leading growth strategy and innovation consultancies.

OOYR NOTE: One of the goals of OutOfYourRut is to promote new and exciting business ideas. We’re all entrepreneurs at heart and one of the biggest challenges we have is in deciding what might be a worthwhile business idea. I believe that Phil Toler has come up with just such a concept, and we’re throwing it out there to see who might see the potential and want to partner on the ground floor. You’ll be given an opportunity to weigh in via email at the end of the post. Give Phil’s proposal a read and see what you think. If nothing else, let us know in the comments section what you think of the idea and give any marketing suggestions you can offer. We’ll welcome any business ideas you have as well. Thanks for stopping by!

By Phil Toler

It seems counterintuitive that a recession is a great time to start a new business, but Kevin makes a convincing case in his article, 7 Reasons to be Self-Employed. But deciding to initiate a start-up and conjuring a viable product or service that can be sold in a down economy are obviously very different matters. Even after one has that Eureka! moment and is boiling over with anticipation to get rolling, the following factors must be considered:

1. Since credit is in virtual lock-down at present, can the venture be funded out-of-pocket or with limited funds?

2. If one is contemplating producing a real product, what facilities and tooling will be required?

3. Is there a well thought out marketing plan that is sufficiently flexible to adapt to market changes or unforeseen challenges?

4. Will the product be seen as a value?

5. Can it honestly be claimed that it will save the buyer money compared to competing products?

If the answers to these questions can be presented to a savvy investor without getting ripped to shreds, then one may take a great deal more confidence into the venture, and possibly more capital.

Are you interested in investing or partnering in a new product?

The purpose of this article is to present a product and it’s attendant business plan in hopes that it will be read by someone with business acumen and access to relatively modest funding, who will be intrigued to the point of getting more information.

Kevin has been kind enough to publish it since one of his original goals for this site was to offer a clearinghouse, of sorts, so that idea people could meet up with business types and start a new venture, and I thank him profusely for giving me this opportunity.

First off, let me emphasize that the product I have in mind is not a pipe dream. In fact, I’ve been using the prototype for almost five years now, four or five days a week. I’ve had a great deal of feedback on it’s efficacy, and it has been uniformly positive.

Further, it has no real competition, and there is a huge, and growing, market for it.

1) Because of safety regulations, competing products can not be used by law. (More on this later)

2) It can be build using basic sheet metal tooling, so an existing fabrication shop needing more business would be ideal.

3) And finally, the marketing plan requires no advertising, and no middle man will be involved to mark up the price of the product.

Home run? I obviously think so.

So what the heck is this miracle product, you ask?

It’s a barbeque pit that grills a steak or smokes a brisket for 18 hours without wood, gas or charcoal fire. It plugs into the wall.

Most people respond to this by indicating complete disbelief. How can you smoke a brisket without fire, people invariably ask. And I respond by pointing out that most companies which produce smoked sausage or other meats don’t hang around a pit keeping the fire going and they don’t use gas or charcoal because of the residual flavor from the unburnt fuel is less than appetizing.

They use large electric smokers that produce smoke from wood chips in a heated container, and the wood chips don’t care how the container is heated. In fact, it’s amazing how quickly wood chips begin to smoke, and how long they continue to do so if the heat source is steady and not too hot.

With a second electric element, or more for larger pits, the cooking heat source can be dialed in so that the food is cooked slowly and evenly, which has two distinct benefits.

First, when meat is cooked at lower temperatures, it remains capable of absorbing smoke flavor for much longer. When the internal temperature of the meat gets beyond two hundred degrees, it shuts down, and further exposure to smoke simply builds up of the exterior of the cut adding a bitterness to the flavor.

Second, it’s virtually a truism that slow-cooked means tender and juicy results.

Comparing ProtoPit with charcoal pits

Now let’s compare the actual cooking experiences.

With charcoal fired pits we begin by buying bags of coal that aren’t exactly cheap, lug it home, use nasty starter fluid, or pollute the air with newspaper smoke in a chimney starter. Then we wait 30 to 45 minutes for the coals to get going and finally are ready to think about placing the food on the grill. But it’s almost impossible to get the temperature low enough to avoid shutting down the meat to smoke flavors, as mentioned above, and keep the coals going for the duration. We have to monitor the fire to give it more or less air, and eventually, it’s time to dine.

With gas—as with charcoal—we have to obtain the fuel, which is much more expensive, and comes in a heavy tank. While starting the fire and getting it to cooking temperature, often a dicey proposition in all but the most expensive pits, takes less time and effort than with charcoal, the price one pays for this advantage is the obvious residual flavors imparted by incomplete combustion of the gas. While there’s no doubt one might “get used” to the off-flavors, what if there were an alternative that eliminates them entirely?

That’s what my ProtoPit does in spades, and with a far more relaxing program. When I’m ready to begin, I flip a switch to the appropriate position for the cut or cuts of meat in question, that is, slow smoke or grill, or something in between. I fill the smoke chip container with one or more flavors of wood, and head to the kitchen to prepare the food to be cooked. By the time I have returned with it, smoke is pouring out of the cooking chamber, and on goes the meat. In most cases, I don’t touch the grill again until the food is done. And this is accomplished with one-sixth the cost of charcoal, and about one-tenth that of gas, and nothing heavy to schlep.

ProtoPit production process

As for facilities and tooling, a whole lot of these pits can be built in a standard double garage using equipment costing well under a thousand dollars, though even half that can get the ball rolling.

While a welding rig would be nice, my pit was riveted and simply by grinding the visible part of the rivet and filling the seams would give the same appearance as a welded product. While having an experienced metal fabricator on staff would be great, I had zero metal working background when I drew the cut and the fold pattern for the shop that produced the pieces, which I took to the house and riveted them together, hung the two electric elements, and wired it all up.

After that, I proceeded to smoke the best brisket I have ever produced, and also a rack of ribs and a pork tenderloin to have in the meantime. This is not rocket science, but I have learned a great deal from my years of using my ProtoPit, as I fondly call it, and many design iterations later, I believe I have virtually perfected it—and now I’m ready to take it to the market!

Marketing the ProtoPit—at least initially

As for the marketing program, it has been shaped by my long experience in the home entertainment business. I began at the retail level and quickly jumped to the manufacturing realm with one of the most famous loudspeaker makers of all time, Advent Corporation. Here I learned about the paramount importance of value, and the ways traditional marketing difficulties can be mastered without spending vast sums on national advertising.

I propose starting with a modified Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) model in which the pits are taken to public events and spaces on a small trailer. Using a generator, or an inverter on the vehicle battery, the pit is powered and the resulting sweet smoke aromas are the draw. Samples of any type of food are handed out, and because the story is reinforced by a delicious bite of food, buyers will easily be found.

These become the top level as they are offered an attractive discount on further purchases that they can resell to friends who experience the results at a backyard gathering for any price they think they can get. For this reason, by not establishing a “list” price on the web site might make sense. Of course the go-getters are rewarded with steeper discounts on greater total purchases. Thus we have eliminated middle men and their onerous mark-up, and advertising altogether.

Taking the ProtoPit to the next level

Finally, I stated that there was a vast, and increasing, market for this product that was off-limits to open-flame barbeque pits, which would be apartment and condo dwellers. For obvious reasons, open-flame pits are disallowed in those types of housing. If they want to cook out, they have to schlep their food to a common grill.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather use my stove, even though I haven’t eaten a piece of meat cooked indoors in well over a couple of decades.

Admittedly, to offer this on a widespread basis would require a waiver from the local fire chief which in turn would be greatly facilitated by obtaining a UL listing. However, this modest expense could be financed out of profits in a very reasonable amount of time, and then the sky becomes the limit.

Well, I hope all my questions posed at the outset are sufficiently answered for a savvy investor to make a wise decision regarding the viability of this program. For those who would like even more information, Kevin will be more than happy to forward your requests.

If the concept of the ProtoPit interests you, and you’d like to get more information, please contact Kevin by email with your comments or questions. Please consider what you can bring to the project in the way of capital (only a few thousand dollars is needed), fabrication and marketing and distribution—you can get involved in one or all. All inquiries are welcome!

By Jessica Wagner

Saving, whether it’s for retirement purposes or otherwise, is tough enough without having that added difficulty of being self-employed. Many people have found the benefits of being their own boss and making their own hours but putting money away isn’t as easy when you don’t have a company with good retirement plans.

It’s important to know that you can do this even if you are self-employed. Small business owners and online entrepreneurs alike have found ways to build up their retirement and savings funds. There are many ways to do this and there isn’t just one savings plan that you can invest in and IRAs have long been one of the most popular avenues for retirement savings.

Tax deferred retirement plans

An IRA is an account held by a custodial institution such as a bank or brokerage firm. Generally, IRA’s are designed for middle-income investors. There are no income restrictions for most middle class taxpayers and an IRA is available to everyone.

With a traditional IRA, you can contribute up to $5,000 per year ($6,000 if you’re over age 50) and the tax deduction of the investment is determined by your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). Depending on your filing status (single, joint, etc.) your contributions can range from fully deductible to completely non-deductible. If you withdraw before 59 ½ then you will be subject to a 10 percent penalty fee. This is subject to exceptions so consult the IRS web site to see if this applies to you.

Traditionally, 401(k)’s are available to those who work for a company that has a plan set in place for their employees, but there are also Self-Employment 401(k)’s available. These plans allow self-employed individuals or business owners to contribute to this plan while receiving tax breaks for the money they put away.

This plan generally allows the participant to contribute up to $16,500 per year, which not only represents a large contribution to retirement savings, but also a substantial tax benefit. Contributions to both and IRA and a 401k are deductible not only for federal income tax, but also for state income taxes. (Neither however results in a deduction for FICA taxes however.)

Creating income streams to fund your savings plans

If you do have your own business and you don’t have the available income to invest larger sums, you might want to consider making extra cash through different opportunities. And some of the best income earning opportunities can be found online so you don’t even need to leave your home or your place of business to make them happen.

Some of these options in fact can prove to be quite lucrative and range anywhere from freelance writing to taking market research surveys. Such opportunities can provide the steady additional cash flow needed to fund savings, and do it in less time than you might think.

Be sure that any income earned from side ventures will in fact be targeted for savings, and not blended with your regular budget. If the extra money is put into retirement savings, there will be little or no income tax on it, which should make your portfolio grow even faster.

Other savings options

You can also choose to set up a savings account or even certificates of deposit (CDs). In this way you can either save money until you’re ready to commit it to long term retirement plans, or build it up separately as a savings source in addition to your retirement investments. It’s always best to have some money in retirement plans and some outside since you never know what can happen between now and the time you retire.

If done wisely, you can start saving for your later years with very little effort. Set aside the extra cash you make and place it directly in various investment alternatives. It doesn’t have to be a savings account or CD. You can choose to invest in the stock market but this option comes with some risk in addition to a return that can be much greater than low interest accounts.

There are many savings choices available for those who are self-employed and these are just a few options. While searching for additional income and investment opportunities—on the internet or elsewhere—be careful of any offers promising huge returns for a nominal investment. There are many scams out there so make sure that any savings plan you invest in and any business opportunity you take on is legitimate.

If you’re self-employed, what are you doing to fund your savings and retirement plans?

Related Posts:

Buy a Business OR Build One From the Ground Up?

Why Most New Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them

A Successful Online Business Requires Realistic Expectations

7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business

The Perfect Side Hustle: Freelance Blog Writer

7 Reasons to be Self-Employed

By William Eve

As a business owner, you should pay attention to every detail and, on top of all, avoid making some basic mistakes because it can cost you more than you expected. In this article you will be presented with some very common marketing mistakes and some possible ways to avoid them.

Not Having a Marketing Plan

As you probably already know, having a strongly developed marketing plan is vital for the survival of every company, especially for smaller ones. However, there are a great number of business owners who realize that they do not have such a plan when they would have needed it and are desperately trying to save their company from a total failure.

There are others who believe that marketing plans should only be developed by big corporations. This is completely false, as it is also very important for smaller companies in order to achieve success. In fact, it is even more important because mistakes can be fixed more easily for big companies, while the small ones are not always able to handle certain situations.

Not Knowing Your Target Audience

Failure to properly define who your exact target audience is for each and every one of the products you offer will undoubtedly lead to a business failure, at least in terms of marketing. You must always take savvy and smart decisions, which are mostly based on adapting the products in order to make them more suitable for the target audience.

Furthermore, it is very important to be very narrow with your definition. Having the smallest number of people possible for your marketing solutions can sometimes represent a very important advantage for your company. Isolate and identify your niche, then market into it.

Marketing Responsibilities

You must always assign a person who is responsible for marketing. If everyone has the same level of responsibility, then no one is responsible for this critical part of your business. As a small business owner, you might not hold the necessary resources for hiring specialized marketing personnel, but you can get the help of a marketing consultant who is specialized in small businesses.

The money spent for this consultant may be the best you’ve ever spent.

Lack of Tracking Mechanisms

Setting up certain mechanisms that can be used for the tracking of your results for each of the marketing campaigns you run is a very important step and you should always consider it. If you lack an efficient way of doing this you will not be able to know if investing in a certain campaign was worth it or not.

No Consistency of Brand Templates

Adding credibility to your branding is one of the most important steps for a successful marketing campaign for your business. In order to be able to achieve this, you should always check parts of your marketing audit, such as invoices, websites, business cards, Yellow Pages and every single component of your advertising.

By doing so, you will be able to decide upon the ideal template for your business in the shortest time possible and gain some extra customers who will appreciate the image of your business. If you fail to think about these aspects from a marketing perspective, then the lack of consistency will probably be obvious to potential customers.

Poor Grammar, Spelling and Copywriting

There are many situations in which you encounter spelling mistakes. Restaurant menus, websites, magazines, newspapers, they are everywhere. And they often they give the impression of a lack of professionalism and poor attention to details. Prospects may assume that the lack of attention to details may be a part of how you operate then take their business elsewhere.

Therefore, it is very important to have someone double check all the texts of your ads and every single document prior to its publishing. Catching and fixing every mistake is very important for every company.

William Eve is the marketing coordinator for the mortgage comparison and application service Home Loan Finder.

Related Posts:

Buy a Business OR Build One from the Ground Up?

Why Most Businesses Fail – And How Not to Become One of Them

7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business

Steady Paycheck VS. Self-Employment – Which is Right for You?

Starting a Side Business – Why Now Is the Time

By Kevin M

Are you thinking about starting your own business? If so, you have a lot of company. According to the Department of Labor, more than one million new businesses are formed each year. Depending on the source quoted, somewhere between 50% and 90% will fail, usually in the first year.

Why do so many businesses fail? And if you’re planning to start a new business, how can you avoid becoming one of them?

Some business ventures fail for bad luck, but probably far more fail for causes that were not only known up front, but could have been prepared for in advance.

Lack of capital

Many new businesses require money up front just to open the doors. Would-be business owners often borrow against their homes, their retirement plans or from their relatives to make it happen.

This presents two problems: 1) debt obligations are created, causing an instant increase in monthly expenses, and 2) no money is available to cover living expenses before the business is generating any serious revenue. The chances that a business will succeed under these circumstances are…questionable!

SOLUTION: Avoid entering any business that will require a large investment up front. Avoid borrowing to make that investment (save that resource for later—you may need it!). Most of what you’re bringing to a new business should be your skills and abilities, not your capital. You don’t want to buy a business, you want to be a business!

Lack of cash flow

Most businesses that fail do so for a lack of cash flow. Maybe some never had it from the beginning, while others had it for a time and lost it. Either way, cash flow IS a business.

SOLUTION: Know where your revenue will come from before you even start a business. Line up clients before you open the doors. If that isn’t possible, develop a large network of reasonable prospects—you should know that a revenue base is there otherwise don’t even start.

Work your business part time to develop revenue while you still have your job for income. Alternatively, work part time (or contract) for as long as it takes to build your business to where it can sustain you financially. This is the one aspect of having a business that you can’t fail at. No cash flow=no business!

Lack of knowledge

People often start businesses they know nothing about. They may start a business because they know someone who’s in it, or they may get into one that’s part of a trending fad. That starts a process of learning in the preverbal “School of Hard Knocks”, and it usually doesn’t end happily.

SOLUTION: Being self-employed is not a time for earn-and-learn; you need to have as much knowledge as possible beforehand. In fact you’re whole basis for becoming self-employed are your abilities as an expert. Consider the following:

• Start a business related to your current occupation
• Learn what you can from published sources
• Work for businesses already in the field
• Start the business as a part time venture so you can make your mistakes while you’re still on someone else’s payroll

Lack of time

Get-rich-quick schemes on TV are so convincing, aren’t they? In six months you’ll be making $50,000 per month(!), sitting all day by a pool or a beach in a warm place with palm trees, surrounded by beautiful people, and a fleet of luxury cars parked nearby–all yours, we’re to presume. Apparently that kind of money will not only buy you all those perks, but it will also leave you with plenty of free time to enjoy them.

But forget all of it! It’s pure fantasy. Most entrepreneurs never get that rich, and few ever have that much free time if they do. Running a business, especially a new one, will require more time than a full time job. Not everyone is willing to work 60, 80 or 100 hours a week to make a business work. Often there are other obligations and interests that make working that many hours undesirable or impossible, and the business withers and dies.

SOLUTION: Be realistic about how much time you’ll need to put into a new business, keeping in mind that you probably won’t be able to afford to pay someone else to do those important-but-not-necessarily-profitable jobs. Clear the decks of as many outside distractions as possible; hobbies may have to be put on hold, and needy friends and family members may have to be held at bay.

You’ll also need to identify the most profitable activities in your business. The ones that generate the most customers, cash flow and profits will be where your first best hours need to be spent. The sooner you can get that going smoothly, the sooner you can hire others for the stuff that doesn’t put money in your pocket. Then you’ll have time for pools and palm trees.

Poor timing

Timing is everything–and nowhere is this more true than starting a business. Many new businesses never get out of the starting gate for no reason more complicated than bad timing.

Sometimes this can be bad timing on your part. Starting a business when you’re unemployed can be really bad timing, and that’s the time many choose to make the move. But cash flow is usually the goal of the unemployed and new business ventures seldom provide this in any abundance, and never quickly.

Sometimes timing issues will be completely beyond your control. Starting a home building business or a mortgage company in 2006 would be stellar examples of bad timing for factors beyond your control. Sometimes you can see that sort of thing coming, sometimes not.

SOLUTION: Starting a business requires a strategic plan. You should do it at a time that’s favorable to you, not at a point of desperation or for a lack of alternatives. Make sure you have your contacts lined up, a tested marketing plan, and your financial house in order before taking the plunge.

Big picture, pay close attention to the economy and to the industry you’re going into. These are the forces that can carry a business one way or another. Better to start a business late in a recession (or early in a recovery) when much of the competition has folded, than when the economy is booming and competitors are on every street corner. Look at developing trends that affect an industry. As an example, consider the affect that direct video rental companies, like Netflix, have had on brick-and-mortar video businesses. New technologies are creating new businesses and destroying others, and the trends can never be ignored.

Choosing the wrong business

Every year thousands of people plunge into businesses they know close to nothing about, and the results are completely predictable. Often this happens through franchising operations or multi-level marketing schemes. Ease of entry is the only reason anyone might consider them, but they can be especially enticing because they carry the notions that…

• other people are doing it (implied: “and so can you”), and
• there’s a company or network to back you up and help you succeed.

Now, both these points may be legitimate, but here’s the thing…as an entrepreneur you’re the point person in any business you’re operating. No matter how many resources you have on the back end, your business will never be any stronger than it is on it’s front line, and that’s you.

SOLUTION: Never pick a business because it seems to be working for others or because of a convincing marketing presentation. Never pick a business that’s completely outside your area of expertise. Pick a business because

1. it’s one where you have demonstrated skills and abilities
2. it’s something you’re genuinely interested in
3. it’s where you have natural connections (networks, affiliate relationships, product sources, etc)
4. you have more than just a casual idea of what it takes to succeed in it
5. it’s one you’re likely to stay with even when the cash drawer isn’t full
6. it’s a business in which you can claim some status as an expert

 
Starting a new business should never be a blind shot in the dark. It should be about calculated risks in which you’re aware of the likely challenges you’ll face, and more importantly, how to overcome them.

Are you in business for yourself? What obstacles did you run into when you started, and how did you work them out?

Related Posts:

Should You Borrow Money to Start a Business?

Starting a Side Business – Why Now is the Time

7 Ways to Improve the Success of Your New Business

Steady Paycheck VS. Self-employment; Which is Right for You?

Pursuing Your Passion Isn’t As Risky As It Used to Be

By Kevin M

Welcome to the 21st Century, where job security is a thing of the past! No one wants to think about this, but because of technology and globalization, the possibility is very real that many jobs and careers that have recently disappeared aren’t coming back.

There may be a temptation to think that you have nothing to worry about because your job or career isn’t immediately threatened. But that’s just what many people in customer service, information technology and many other fields thought just a few years ago before their functions were moved overseas.

There are almost no jobs that can’t be replaced by a machine, a computer software system or a lower wage worker in some other country. The economic landscape is changing and though we may not like it, we have no choice but to adapt. Are you ready?

There is no more job security

It’s time to face a few facts:

Get past the idea of job security. Somewhere in our minds is a vision of a “normal world”—a place where America’s economy is the undisputed world leader, and it’s citizens and workers are fully and comfortably employed in living wage jobs with full benefits. But this isn’t the 1950s any more, or even the 1990s. Today’s reality is that many people don’t have jobs, let alone job security. Begin to replace job security as a priority with employment security,–the ability to earn an income beyond your current job or business.

Loyalty isn’t a lifelong commitment. Many of us have been trained to believe that loyalty is forever, but in today’s uncertain economy that kind of thinking can keep you on a sinking ship long enough for you to go down with it. Do the best job you can in the job you’re in now, but keep your radar up and in high gear, always on the lookout for the next opportunity. Realize that loyalty is a two way street and remember…

…they’ll get rid of you as soon as they don’t need you any more. This is the ultimate reality in today’s job market. You may be up to your eyeballs in work today and even for the foreseeable future, but businesses survive and thrive today by finding ways to cut costs. And that means jobs—maybe yours.

The time to look for a new job is before you need one

It seems to be some sort of cosmic law that the best opportunities in life come upon us when we’re busy with something else. The corollary is that when we’re unemployed and available they just don’t seem to come our way. Recognize this conundrum and prepare for it. That means searching out and pursuing opportunities before you have an immediate need to do so.

Just as important is realizing that many opportunities take longer to hit pay dirt than we typically think. If time may be required to make a job or venture work, starting now will be the most prudent course of action. What ever job or business you have, always look ahead for the next opportunity.

Keep your skills current—develop new ones

When I was growing up it was a mark of a successful career that one could kick back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of a long career. But get too comfortable in your career or business today and you could join the ranks of the unemployed.

Stay on top of your field, procure the skills you need to stay in it, and look to develop new ones that might enable you to move into a parallel field.

Consider maintaining more than one career

If you’ve been in sales the past few years, you might appreciate what I’m about to say here. Since about 2007, many commissioned sales people have experienced dramatic income drops. During recessionary times, this isn’t an uncommon occurrence at all. How great would it have been to have hands-on skills to move into a salaried position or self-employment?

Moral of the story: have a back up career. Money is good insulation from employment uncertainty, but sooner or later it runs out. When it does, you’ll need to have something you can do to bring in more. Having that career, skill or business in the pipeline before it’s needed will make the transition that much quicker when it’s needed.

Never settle in financially!

No matter how optimistic you are about your current job, don’t settle in financially. That means spend less, save more and stay out of debt. The traditional advice of saving a small percentage of your net income over many years—say 10%–doesn’t apply in a world where employment can no longer be relied upon. Try saving 20%, 30%, even 50% of your net income if you can.

And don’t plow it all into retirement savings either. Immediate needs for savings are more pressing now than they were a few years ago. Saving for the near future is now at least as important as doing it for the distant future.

Consider self-employment, even if you’ve never been

If you can’t count on a company to keep you employed, having your own business may be the best security you can have. Though not everyone is cut out to be in their own business, the state of the job market has ironically made doing so less risky than it was just a few years ago.

Even if you’re not in a position to quit your job and start a business, you probably can begin by starting with a side business. Unlike jobs, business ventures need time to develop, to make mistakes, to find a niche and to turn a profit. If you’re currently employed, you have the needed cash flow to take a chance on a business.

We’re told to use diversification in building investment and retirement portfolios, as a way of reducing risk and increasing long term returns. Now is the time to apply the same philosophy to our incomes. Diversify income sources between a full time job, a part time job and/or a side business, and be prepared to roll with the economic punches of our time.

There’s no advantage in agonizing over what appears on the surface to be a reduction in economic opportunities. We need to see this as an economic reorganization, a time when the rules are changing, and the need to seek opportunity has never been more important.

Can you give any advice on how to keep a paycheck coming in this economy? Have you faced long term unemployment and wished you’d taken some of these steps?

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What Career Coaching Can Do For You
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