How’s business? Maybe you’re excelling in a huge company, hitting those targets and personally responsible for enviable revenue levels yet undervalued by your boss. Perhaps you’ve found yourself trapped in a smaller business where there’s no opportunity to progress and you have to watch on helplessly as the management make mistake after mistake.
Whatever your situation, if you’re ambitious and free-spirited you have probably daydreamed about the possibility of going it alone – putting your skills on the open market as a freelancer, or establishing your own start-up to put all you’ve learned into action. But you haven’t made the leap yet. You’re somehow not sure whether this is the move for you.
And you are wise to hesitate.
Don’t quit on your job just yet!
For some people, quitting their job is the decision of a lifetime. While few will leap from success to success, many with truly relish the challenge and struggle, the necessary setbacks dotted among the triumphs.
Working for yourself is replete with advantages: you manage your own time, dictate your own working environment, you make the decisions and sense the pride when they pay off, and earn according to what you do rather than the arbitrary wage structure of a bigger concern.
But these advantages all have flipsides. Planning your own working day and keeping to it, without the rhythms and interactions of a bigger office, can be difficult – and frustrating when outside forces bend it askew.
Working from home means investing in equipment, paying for repairs, and struggling to get by when the infrastructure of a well-established business is not there to back you up. You have to clear up after your own mistakes, and take the consequences on your own shoulders.
And getting paid is an unpredictable and unstable prospect.
Test the water first
So before you cut yourself off from the security of regular employment, you may want to test the waters without making a full commitment. If you’re thinking to start a business, try to do it on a small scale on the weekends – see if your idea works, and if you are able to be as self-sufficient as you need.
A guide for you
If you want to freelance, try cutting down your regular work hours and taking on work on the side, to see how you manage it and to build up a client base before you rely on them entirely. It’s an exciting time, but if you’re still not sure what to do, it’s worth running your eyes over this infographic by Business Backer which guides you through the decision making process and potential exit strategies, so that your career can progress to the next level in as healthy a manner as possible.
