February 1st, 2009, was a
very memorable day for me. It was the day I arrived back at my family
home in Newcastle, England, to start working for myself full-time.

I had just left a job which for the previous two years saw me working
with companies like Nissan, Hewlett Packard and Land Rover as their
social media manager. My position in the rat race was actually an
awesome one, but it was nothing compared to being my own boss.

Image
from drxiv

As some people here don't care about making their living from the
internet, I understand that this post will not be for everybody.
However, if you've just made the leap to working for yourself, currently
run your own business, or you're looking to make your money online in
the future, this article may be just what you need.

13 Lessons from 18 Months of Self-Employment

Over the last 18 months of working for myself, I've learned a ton of
things on my journey. Not every piece of advice I took on board has
helped, with many ideas quickly being discarded. From reading dozens of
books, speaking with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and living this life
myself for a year and a half, there are a few lessons I would like to
share.

Write a Mission Statement
(But Keep It Private)

If you go to the website of any large company, you'll usually find a
detailed mission statement which cites the main aim of their business
operations. They're usually long, boring, and ignored. THe type of
mission statement I'm talking about here is more of an elevator pitch: A
sentence or two about why you're doing what you're doing, and what you
hope to achieve.

This isn't an elevator pitch you need to tell anyone, or a mission
statement you need to share. Instead, the aim of these sentences is to
help you stay on track. If someone offers you a partnership in a large
project, you simply have to look towards your mission statement to
decide whether it's a good use of your time. If you've heard about a new
way of doing things, you simply have to look at your mission statement
to see if it might be right for you.

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there" –
Lewis Carroll

Decide what you want your core focus to be, and write it down
somewhere. Internalise it. Anytime a situation arises where you're not
sure what to do, look to your statement to help you with the answer.

Focus On Your Glow

Jerry Sternin, who worked for Save the Children, was sent to Vietnam
and asked to "make a difference" with the malnutrition issues the
country faced. He was just given just six months to fulfil his task.
With problems in the water supply, ignorance towards nutrition, and a
countrywide dilemma, he had a big job ahead of him.

Instead of looking to fix one thing, like providing clean water to
the country – something he didn't have the time nor resources to do – he
decided instead to look at what was working. Why are there healthy
children in areas that are full of children who are starving, who have
the same finances and living conditions available to them, and what are
they doing differently?

Sternin found some common factors between the healthy children in
these rural villages, one being that they spread their food intake
throughout the day, rather than just having two large meals like the
children who were struggling with health issues. Their bodies couldn't
absorb the nutrients from such a lot of food each meal.

The advice Sternin gave to struggling families from his findings was
simple, but he certainly made a big difference.

Instead of just looking to your mistakes and hoping to learn from
them or tackling a huge project you want to overcome. Why not look at
what is working for you in other areas of life or on other projects, and
see how you can apply those factors to other endeavors?

You're far more likely to have great results.

Identify the Most
Important Tasks That Will Grow Your Business

When you have all day to work on whatever you want, it's very easy to
get caught up in things which a) aren't helping you grow and b) not as
effective as other tasks. As early in your own business life as
possible, define the most important things you can accomplish each day
and give them utmost priority.

For me, my most important tasks vary, but generally include things
like:

• Writing a blog post


• Researching niches


• Building out current websites


• Marketing current websites

If I spend most of my day doing something other than these things,
then I'm not being as effective as I could be with my time. It will be
hard to stick to this rigid schedule at first, but the more you put
yourself back on track, the more natural it will become to work on the
things which help your business the most.

Just Get Started

I was really not in the mood to write this article today, but I knew
that I had to get what I want to say out to the world. I had the idea
for the post in mind, and I was excited to see the feedback it was going
to bring, but I couldn't bring myself to put my hands to the keyboard.
As I usually do when I'm in this situation, I tell myself I'll just
write around 300 words, and then do the rest another day.

What almost always happens is that I'll get so into the flow of
writing after those 300 words, that I keep going until I've written
thousands. In fact, I've just passed the 2,000 word mark in this article
(I have shuffled the order of the points, since writing this) on the
same day I wasn't in the mood to get going.

Whenever you have a big task ahead, just tell yourself that you'll do
a little bit and stop. There's a good chance that the little bit of
effort you exerted to get started, will turn into a strong push of
energy which helps you get things done. Even if it doesn't, at least you
did something.

Give Yourself Office
Hours

It may seem crazy that I'm suggesting you give yourself office
working hours after finally being able to work whenever you want. After
all, one of the main benefits of this lifestyle is to get to set your
own hours. To take the edge of this idea, I'm not suggesting that you
have to pick a 9-5 schedule, but you should pick something.

The reason I say this is simply because when you work from home,
there is nothing harder than shutting off. While you're eating, you may
just want to check your email quickly. While you're in the shower, you
may have the idea for a blog post and quickly run to your computer to
write it down. The times you start neglecting your normal life for your
business surprisingly, yet quickly, add up.

If your aim is to just work for a few hours per day, whenever you
want, then you can ignore this. If you find yourself working more than a
few hours, or even a lot more than a few hours, then restrict the times
you allow yourself to work. The time you allocate to a task is usually
how long it takes, so working all day won't necessarily help you get
more done.

Only Spend Money on
Essential Items

For all of the people who have no problems making money, many of them
have problems keeping it. When you start working for yourself, it's
very easy to start thinking you need this and that, in order to really
get going. The reality is that you rarely need as much money or material
items as you think you do.

When I built PluginID, my blog which I later sold for a five-figure
fee, I did so on a laptop that was five years old and had no hard drive.
Every single time I booted it up, I would be presented with a
completely fresh operating system. That meant I couldn't install
software or save any files. I saved myself $1,500 by finding workarounds
for my problems, rather than just purchasing a new laptop straight
away.

Before you go buying every item, eBook or software package you think
you need, ask yourself whether you can work without them. The money you
save early on helps you to grow bigger, and enables you to adopt an
ideal mindset which will be invaluable later on in your business life.

Let Others Down, Before
Yourself

One thing I love about being my own boss is that I can spend as much
time with my friends and family as I wont (provided that they aren't at
work). If someone plans a long-weekend away or wants me to help them out
with something during the day, I don't have to ask anyone for time off
to be able to do that.

Something your friends and family might quickly forget though is that
you actually have work to do. Just because you work for yourself (or
from home), it doesn't mean that you can neglect the things you're
working on to spend time with people. Sometimes your business must be
your priority.

I found it hard to get this point across to people but it's important
that you do. I quickly had to put an end to people arriving at my house
just to chill out or expecting me to be able to make any event just
because I set my own hours. Be social, but be serious about your aims as
well.

Be Open About Your
Position

Depending on how you market yourself and make money, this will apply
to people in different ways. When I started freelancing at 17, I had a
company website and would constantly refer to my "team" and our
"enterprise" when I was just a one-man operation. This angle also
entered my communications with potential clients, when I would try to
write in a professional manner and be as "business like" as possible.

You don't have to put up a front. You don't have to pretend you're
behind a huge company. People do business with people. The sooner you
realise that, and put yourself into both your work and engagement with
customers or clients, the better.

View Anything Public, as
Marketing

It used to be that the designers would come up with an idea, the
engineers would turn that idea into something physical, and then
marketers were set with the task of selling that item. This strategy
simply doesn't work anymore. In the age of not only information
overload, but product overload, you need to see that everything you do,
in one way or another, is marketing.

When I leave comments on other blogs, that's marketing. When I write a
blog post, I'm marketing. How I respond to emails, is marketing. When I
buy ads on other websites and pay for product reviews, that's also
marketing, of course.

Old marketing is still marketing, but now you have to realise that
everything else is too. If you don't recognise this you may be left with
a great product that nobody wants, or something that people want, that
doesn't function as it should.

Recognize Your Own
Problems

One of the easiest ways to make money is to solve people's problems.
You can see this online in popular products that teaching people how to
get rid of anxiety, make money, or even just jump higher so they can
slam-dunk. Problems aren't just a great area to find a market, but they
also help you create one.

A software product I'm hoping to launch in the next few weeks, came
about by deciding to solve a problem I've had for a few years. It has to
do with internet marketing, of which there are millions of other people
in this space, so I'm sure it's a problem a lot of other people have as
well. Or, simply a better solution to help them do what they're already
doing.

While you're on your focused path, don't forget to see if there are
hurdles you faced where there wasn't an ideal way to get over them. You
may have just stumbled upon your next big project.

Become a Member of Your
Own Market

The best way to learn what people want is to become a member of the
market that is likely to want whatever you have to offer. Right now I'm
working on software products for internet marketers, because after
thousands of interactions and years in the business, these are the
people that I understand the most.

Through your involvement in the market where you want to launch
something, you'll learn a lot from your audience. Things like:

• What things they would like in a product


• What they don't like about other systems / solutions


• How they expect to be treated as a customer


• What makes them buy something

Of course, sometimes you just have to get something out there (ship)
and learn these things as you go along. You'll save yourself a lot of
guesswork and marketing strategy alterations though if you get involved
in your market, wherever they may be, and find out what makes them tick.

Ship Your Projects

When I worked on Cloud
Living, I literally spent two months on the guide in order to get
it how I wanted, and out there. With about three weeks worth of work
left, I set a launch date for myself, a Monday, which I made sure I
would stick to. The guide was finished on Sunday, the day before, after a
frantic weekend.

There was one mistake in the guide, which I later fixed, but
everything else was perfect. If I had spent a few more days on the
eBook, I'm sure I would have spotted the small issue and had everything
in order before getting the guide out there, but I was determined to
stick to my launch date.

Cloud Living was actually created in response to the hundreds of
questions I had received after releasing a 30-page eBook on the same
topic, yet with much less detail. I used reader feedback to turn an
average product into something I was proud of. If I had never put the
freebie out there, even though it wasn't a "Wow!" product, I would never
have completed Cloud Living.

Making sure you ship your projects (just get them out there!) is not
about putting in half the effort and releasing something you're not
happy with. It's getting something to a stage where it's great, and
letting questions and feedback shape the product so it's both perfect in
your eyes, and in those of the end user. Getting a product that is 90%
finished out there is better than never producing something with no
flaws.

Do Whatever the Hell You
Want

This post was with the aim of offering a guideline, rather than
something you should follow word for word. The whole point of being your
own boss is that you're in control of how you spend your time, and what
you wish to do with it. If you want to try things differently or
completely ignore some things I've mentioned here, feel free.

Something I noticed recently is that the fun and passion we put into a
task can quickly deplete when someone else tells us to do it. Even if
we were going to do it anyway, just having someone say "do this" or
"have it done by X date" takes away your drive to get things finished.

If you direct your own life, you'll have a lot more fun on the way,
and you're far more likely to get things done. So, instead of taking
this post as rules you must follow, view them as steps you can choose to
follow or choose to ignore.

It's the only way they'll have any impact on you.

Original Post ViperChill

The author of this post can be contacted at tips@lifehacker.com

From LifeHacker.com