Making the move from being employed to being self-employed can mean having to come to terms with a whole variety of issues that you may never have had to think about before. The vagaries of the tax system and healthcare packages were probably things that you left in the capable hands of your employer and so may still be areas in which you have no specialist knowledge. Unless you were previously employed in a position which directly required financial or legal skills, these too might be areas where could find yourself scratching your head.
Coming up with a revolutionary new product or offering a service which the population simply can’t live without is a great start in terms of getting a business off the ground, but of course running a successful venture, even a small one, does mean having to invest some time and effort in getting your head around some rather annoying ‘administrative’ issues. If self-employment is the direction that you want to head in though, there’s no need to feel as though you are out there on your own.
SCORE, which promotes its goal as helping you ‘to live your dream’, offers an unlimited free and confidential advice service to small businesses via face-to-face and online counselling and online workshops. With access to volunteer experts and mentors, you can ask about any aspect of business 24/7 and so needn’t struggle with those thorny problems alone.
At a cost of $15 per month for the silver membership and $45 per month for the gold membership, you might also consider joining NASE, the National Association for the Self-Employed. As well as benefitting from various discounts on everything from office products to medical services and life insurance (depending upon the membership level selected), members get access to a range of ‘how to’ educational resources on subjects such as healthcare, tax, accounting and finance, as well as to a variety of small business specialists. As well as all of this, the Association also acts as a voice for small business owners, helping to address publicly some of the issues which affect them in particular.
It seems hard to imagine how the entrepreneurs of old ever managed to acquire the knowledge needed to get their businesses up and running, but they did it nevertheless. With such a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips these days, there’s no excuse for not taking the plunge into self-employment if it’s in your heart to do so!
Leave a Reply