Many people look up to industry leaders and other influential personalities for their impressive work. And one of the reasons why people would want to be in their shoes is due to the autonomy they have over their career or business. So whether you’re starting a small online store or building a business empire, becoming your own boss is a dream.
Imagine not having to answer to anyone but yourself. However, don’t think it’s all smooth sailing. We’ve jotted down the pros and cons of being your own boss. Plus, we’ll give you 10 simple steps on how to be your own boss.
Being Your Own Boss: Pros and Cons
Before you focus on the advantages of becoming your own boss, it’s essential to weigh the pros and cons.
Pros:
- Relive your passion doing what you love
- Set your own working hours
- Get flexible work locations
- You get a lot of flexibility in your working methods
- Set the prices of your products or services without anyone contesting
- No one micromanages you
- Plan the goals and objectives of your business
- Express your creativity with no holds barred
- Learn a lot about everything as you’ll be doing all the setup yourself
- Hire anyone you want without oppositions
- Give back to the people and community as desired
- Reap a lot of financial rewards
Cons:
- May have to work longer hours when it comes down to it
- Need to learn new things such as accounting, sales, marketing, etc., especially if you’re tight on capital investment
- Set up the taxes and retirement plans yourself
- You have to keep an eye on projects and deadlines
- It will require impressive organizational skills
- It may lead to procrastination sometimes because no one is supervising you
- Need time management skills
- Expect a lot of pressure to complete tasks
- No one is there to give you feedback
- Can become lonely and isolating
How to Be Your Own Boss: 10 Easy Steps
Experiencing failures in business every now and then is quite a common situation when running a new venture. And that’s okay. The essential thing is how you become resilient in the face of adversities.
By creating a system that works, you make challenges easy to tackle. So if you’re wondering how to be your own boss who can establish, manage, and mitigate risks, do these 10 steps.
Related Article: Overcoming Adversity: 10 Powerful Ways To Being More Resilient
1. Know your purpose
Waking up one morning and quitting your nine-to-five to pursue your business dreams, unfortunately, isn’t enough. You have to have a concrete plan on becoming your own boss by internalizing what you want to do. And the most crucial part of establishing a venture that encourages freedom and expression is to know your purpose.
Why go down this road? These could be a few of the reasons:
- Unhappy with your corporate job
- No room for growth
- You want to earn more money
- Live in freedom and attain work flexibility
- Monetize your skill or passion
- Pursue a long-time dream or passion
- Inspired by others
You must determine your purpose, which can quickly transform your mindset from being an “employee” to having autonomy as an “employer.” Evolving your mindset means you’ll have to look at every aspect of your venture. This can include automation, workforce, marketing, production, systems, tools, and more. Read the 5E Scale Engine to learn more about how to evolve and scale your business.
These simple steps may help you identify your purpose:
- Know what problem you’re solving
- Assess whether you’re good at creating solutions for this problem
- Get inspiration and ideas from others in the same niche
2. Assess your current situation
When you know how to be your own boss, you’ll never have to worry about setbacks if you know your place. Before reaching success, you have to know where you are currently in your career. These questions might help:
- Do you currently have a job that pays well?
- What are your living expenses?
- Are you the breadwinner in your family?
- Can you sustain quitting your job to pursue your business goals?
- Do you have a fat bank account that can cover capital and operating expenses?
- Can you allocate a lot of time to the venture while still working a nine-to-five?
- What are your daily and regular responsibilities?
You must be honest with yourself, so you can think of contingency plans in case setbacks feel overwhelmingly impossible to handle.
3. Analyze strengths and weaknesses
Knowing how to be your own boss would require great strength and the ability to improve weaknesses. But first, you have to identify what your strengths and weaknesses are. This way, you’ll know how to set realistic goals and objectives and look for better solutions whenever push comes to shove.
Pinpointing your strengths and weaknesses allows you to nurture what talents and skills you already have and learn from the failures and inabilities you may have. Here’s how:
- Jot down your strengths and weaknesses
- Ask your current colleagues or boss for input
- Revisit former feedback from supervisors
- Imagine that you’re “hiring” yourself for a job and jot down what makes you suitable for the job
- Foster your strengths and see if you can modify them to make them more specific
Here are some questions you can ask yourself when identifying your strengths:
- What am I extremely good at?
- What are your skills at home and at work?
- What compliments or feedback have I received from colleagues?
- What things or projects have I asked for help from friends, family, or colleagues?
- What things or projects do I enjoy doing?
- What sports and hobbies do I like, and why do I enjoy doing them?
- What things or projects seem to keep my energy low?
Take a personality test if it’s still a challenge to list your strengths and weaknesses. The two most common personality tests are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and DISC Personality Testing.
4. Find a viable market
Once you know you’re up for being your own boss, check if your business idea has a viable market. Without a lucrative market, you won’t achieve financial rewards. So do market research and check if there’s a considerable demand for the products or services you intend to offer.
You can start by identifying your target customer. Who are the people who will likely be interested in your products and services? This means you’ll have to fill in the blanks in customer demographics and psychographics. These would involve their age, gender, employment, income, lifestyle, interests, etc. Here’s a guide.
5. Analyze your competitors
If you don’t have a novel business idea, expect that some brands are already offering similar products. But don’t be scared of a little competition. If anything, a challenge will only push you to do better and grow as an individual and entrepreneur. Moreover, having competitors around will encourage you to be more creative and innovative in production and marketing.
You can check out companies or brands selling similar products and services. Visit each of their websites and check out what their customers are saying. Better yet, find gold on your competitors’ social media pages. Jot down some negative and positive feedback and comments and make your offer more valuable.
6. Choose a business model
There are various ways to be your own boss out there. But every entrepreneur who broke the nine-to-five habit and chased after their business dreams started with mapping out a business model.
Do you want to do consulting and cater to individuals or businesses? Are you looking to supply materials for corporations or small-time sole proprietorship businesses? Choose from these four common types of business models:
- B2C (Business to consumer) – Selling your products or services to end-users
- B2B (Business to business) – Selling your products or services to other businesses
- C2B (Consumer to business) – Individuals selling their products or services to companies
- C2C (Consumer to consumer) – Consumers connect to exchange goods such as online marketplaces
7. Estimate a working capital
Now comes the crucial part of this “how to be your own boss” list. It all boils down to how much your capital investment is to enable the business to stay afloat for the first few months. Capital investment is the company’s power to siege any physical assets that allow the business to operate. Ways you can get capital investment are:
- Your own savings
- Seed funding
- Angel investors
- Bank loans
- Venture capital firms
The capital investment will also depend on what type of business venture you’re planning to establish. Let’s say you’re planning to offer your professional services as a freelancer. This might only require minimal costs for a website, online and offline tools, graphic designers, and branding materials.
Anticipate the overhead expenses if you’re planning to sell a product or service from a physical startup location. These might include the building’s rent, staffing upkeep, and costs to cover the listing price of the items from your suppliers. Finally, if you’re inventing a new product or service, you’ll have to cover some patent and hiring costs.
8. Create a solid business plan
A business plan is a fundamental necessity when establishing a business. It contains the business’s strategies, goals, objectives, business models, market, competitors, estimated costs and revenues, and more. Creating a solid business plan provides guidance and a clear vision for your business. It puts you back on track and tells you what definite steps to take to succeed.
These are the common components of a business plan:
- Executive summary
- Business description
- Market analysis and strategy
- Marketing and sales plan
- Competitive analysis
- Management and organization description
- Products and services description
- Operating plan
- Financial projection and needs
- Exhibits and appendices
9. Create your brand identity
This is the most exciting part of your journey to becoming your own boss — shaping your brand identity. Your brand identity is what makes your brand stand out from the competition and how your target audience can relate to you. You won’t have that “edge” over other brands without brand identity.
Your brand identity is also how you want your target audience to perceive you. Here’s how you can shape your brand identity:
- Identify who your target audience is
- List down all your competitors
- Think of what products or services you’re offering
- What problems are you trying to solve with your offers?
- Think of the best three characteristics that describe your brand
- What do people say about your brand (Ask your friends and family if it’s a startup)
- Think about how you want people to see your brand
Once you have a good grasp of your brand identity, create your branding assets such as:
- Logo
- Website
- App
- Business cards
- Brochures
- Billboards
- Flyers
- Online ads
- Social media channels, etc.
10. Market your business
Once you set up your website, don’t expect people to find your new venture magically. If you want to know how to be your own boss, expect to do extensive marketing yourself. You can choose between online and offline marketing tactics. The best part about online advertising is that it only takes a bit of a learning curve, with many learning resources online.
Here are some marketing methods you can try.
Online:
- Social media marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Paid advertising
- SEO
- Content marketing
- Outreach programs
Offline:
- Guerilla marketing
- Outdoor advertising (Billboards, flyers, posters, vehicles, etc.)
- Broadcasting (TV, radio, etc.)
- Print (Newspapers, magazine, etc.)
- Window signs and displays
- Telemarketing (Text messages, phone calls, etc.)
- Direct mail
Conclusion
Knowing how to be your own boss brings you a step closer to attaining autonomy and freedom. In addition, running your own empire brings fulfillment and monetary benefits. However, it’s important to note that a well-thought-out assessment of your skills, current employment, and financial status will spell success for your venture. So tread lightly.
Make Growing Your Business Fun Again
Are you tired of feeling like you’re growing your business all by yourself? Even Elon Musk sought guidance from Larry Page.
If you’re like many entrepreneurs, you may be stuck and don’t know where to turn to. Or you may be working on the wrong things (and may not even know it!).
Let us help you take back ownership of your business and achieve the success you deserve with our free Launchpad community for entrepreneurs just like yourself.
✅ Get free resources for you to scale up your business
✅ Support from 100s of other entrepreneurs just like yourself
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Sign up today and start making progress! Oh, and did we mention that this is completely free? You just need to be an existing business owner because this is a specially curated community.
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