Tips to Becoming Your Own Boss

Tired of working a nine-to-five job? Do you wish to free yourself from being dictated and controlled in your professional life? If you want to spend your energy growing your own business, you need to learn the tips to becoming your own boss.

Having the right motivation and passion for becoming your own boss is only the first step. Before establishing your own business, there are a few things you must keep in mind so that you can transition from an employee to a successful business owner.

Why Do You Want to Be Your Own Boss?

Being your own boss means you have to deal with every aspect of your business by yourself. From attracting customers to managing resources and providing services, every major and minor task is your responsibility.

Before getting started with your own business, you need to identify why you want to be your own boss. There can be multiple motivations for you to start your own business. It can be that:

You wish to earn your own money
You desire to have creative space and freedom in your work
You prefer having flexible working hours
You do not wish to follow a monotonous work life
You have a passion you wish to pursue

Once you have your goal clear in your mind, it will become easier for you to carve out your business plan and work towards your goals.

Tips To Becoming Your Own Boss

Given the thrill and the responsibilities that owning your own business brings, you must have a strong understanding of what it means to be your own boss and how to manage your business.

Establishing your own business is a long and tiring process, and the fruits of your efforts are not always immediate. What matters the most is to keep going until you reach your desired financial freedom.

1. Know Your Skills and Interests

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses before starting your own business is the most critical step. Without having an understanding of what you are good at and what areas you need to work on, you can never succeed in becoming your own boss.

Before anything else, you must find out your answers to these questions:

What is my passion in life?
Do I have what it takes to be a leader?
Am I good at handling pressure?
Am I a procrastinator, or do I have enough self-discipline to run my business?
Am I organized enough to handle every aspect of my business?

These questions will help you realize your strengths and weaknesses. This way, you can do a thorough self-assessment and start developing your business plan.

2. Evaluate Your Current Financial Situation

After knowing your personal strengths, interests, and weaknesses, the next step is to evaluate your current financial situation. Evaluate your resources beforehand to make sure you are making a wise decision by leaving your job and transitioning towards becoming your own boss.

Here are some questions to help you evaluate the impact of your decision on your financial situation:

Do I have enough savings to get started with my business?
Do I have financial reserves to support my children and family?
Will my decision put my family in any form of financial trouble?
Do I have enough resources to manage my monthly expenses?
How much time can I give to my own business?

It is essential to make sure you start out with a strong foundation. Having minimum financial reserves with maximum financial responsibilities is only going to cost you your time, energy, and efforts with zero output.

3. Plan Your Transition

Quitting your job to start your own business is an overwhelming idea. Similarly, transitioning from being a student to getting started with your own work might seem a little intimidating. That said, with the right planning and career choice, you can turn the tables and gain financial freedom in no time.

There are two potential ways to easily transition into owning your own business:

Save enough to last you for six months, quit your job, and go all in.
Start a side hustle, equate your side income with your current income, and quit your day job to start your own business.

Brainstorming and planning is the key to getting started with a successful business setup. Without a proper vision, critical leadership skills, and adequate resources, you cannot build a solid business structure.

4. Research Business Ideas and Develop Your Business Plan

Entrepreneurship is a broad field with countless domains you can explore and make a career out of. Just like any other activity or venture, there are some do’s and don’ts to starting your own business that you must be considerate about.

Do’s

Make sure your business structure aligns with your interests and skills.
Ensure that your chosen business option has enough customer market.
Go for a tried-and-tested business model in the beginning.
Make your planning process as elaborate as possible.

Don’ts

Do not start out with a business that demands heavy capital investment.
Do not sideline your personal expense while investing.
Do not make abrupt choices and decisions. Remember to analyze, plan, and then execute.

What You Can Do

With these do’s and don’ts in mind, choose the most suitable niche for yourself. Here are some of the tried-and-tested domains where you can get yourself started with zero or minimum investment:

Freelancing

Freelancing is one of the most suitable business models to get started with becoming your own boss. Studies show that the freelancing industry is expected to increase by 43% in the coming years.

There are numerous freelancing platforms, like Upwork Inc., PeoplePerHour, and Fiverr, where you can set up a professional profile and start looking for projects. As a freelancer, you can focus on doing the kind of work you like, minus the stress of office politics.

Coaching and Consulting Services

Are you an expert on a topic? If you have the confidence to share your expertise with the world in an engaging and intriguing way, offering coaching and consulting services is a viable option for you.

You can start out as a coach in any niche you want; you could be a personal trainer, tutor, or influencer. All you need is faith in yourself and the courage to get started. As Steve Jobs famously stated, “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”

eCommerce

If you want a business focused on selling physical products, starting out with eCommerce is the most suitable solution. You do not need a physical shop, warehouse, or elaborate storage facilities to manage your goods.

Platforms like Shopify, Amazon, and eBay are some of the most suitable choices to get started with your affordable business idea.

5. Determine Your Target Market

You cannot be your own boss without customers. Determining your target market and identifying an ideal customer base is important for a successful business. More than anything, it is important to offer your customers something different and unique from what’s already available in the market.

As Christopher Murray, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, stated, “Understand why you are different and how you help, recognize your target market, and give them something they might not even realize they are missing.”

You can conduct a customer survey in your target market to analyze and understand your customers’ needs as well as the existing gaps in your target market. Remember that an ideal customer is the one whose interest you can successfully pique with your offered products.

Offer your customers products that they want to use. More importantly, make them realize why they should use it and what unique qualities your product has compared to your competitors.

6. Refine Your Business Structure

After finding your customer base and deciding what services or products you wish to offer, the next step is to make your plan more business savvy. By this point, you need to start narrowing down your resources and construct a formal business plan.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What is going to be my business location?
Do I have plenty of resources to manage my business? How am I going to collect additional resources?
Do I need to look for an investor or need some business loan to collect some finance?
How am I going to present my business plan?
How am I going to manage my business expenses?
How am I going to reach out to my client base?
What is the expected client turnover?

If you are struggling with organizing your business plan, there are numerous business development centers and consultants available who can help you get started with the business life.

7. Establish Your Business Identity

Once your business structure is finalized, the next step is to brand your business. Distinguishing your business from your competitors will give you an edge in building your reputation.

The first and foremost step in developing your business identity is designing your business logo. You can either design a free business logo by yourself or pay for design branding.

Your logo is your brand’s identity. In a way, it is your brand’s voice, while your products and services are souvenirs. Your logo goes onto your brand products, website, business cards, and social media channels. Therefore, it has to be compact yet catchy enough to attract customers’ attention.

Make sure that your logo aligns with your target market. Also, keep in mind that you are just starting out with your business; there is no need to make elaborate logos in the beginning. Once you attract enough customers, you can evolve your logo accordingly.

Digital outreach at present is as important as establishing your ground sales. It is easy to attract customers via social media platforms with effective advertising and marketing. Some of the ways you can use social media to establish your market presence include:

Advertising your products: You can utilize social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube for paid advertising of your brand.
Social media marketing: You can also attract your target audience by generating engaging and creative content via social media marketing.
Influencer marketing: Another rising trend in the marketing field is advertising your products via social media influencers. You can partner with these influencers to promote your products to their followers.
Increasing web reviews: You can reach out to your followers and customers on social media channels to review your products. Make sure your products get reviewed by as many people as possible to build your brand credibility.

9. Keep Growing and Learning

By this point, you must have developed a sound understanding of how you can become your own boss. That said, keep in mind that establishing a successful business is not the end. The business market is continuously evolving. Keeping up with the recent trends in terms of marketing, managing, and growing your business is equally important.

10. Choose from the Many Careers To Become Your Own Boss

LinkedIn is a favorable professional space for you to learn and keep up with the recent trends in the business sector. If you wish to get more formal education to manage your business, you can enroll yourself in business programs to further excel in the business sector.

That said, here are careers you can venture into and realize your dream of becoming your own boss:

Freelance Writer

Writing is one of the most expandable and adaptable niches out there. You can start out by writing blog posts to polish your writing skills.

Once you get accustomed to writing, you can start providing your services as a freelance writer to different organizations, publications, and agencies that hire freelance writers for their projects.

As a freelance writer, you can become a copywriter, editor, blogger, and essay writer and start earning your money. You can also later expand your services within the editing niche and start working as a content editor, copy editor, and more.

Real-Estate Agent

Another great start that you can opt for to become your own boss is to join the real estate industry. A real estate agent is usually a broker who contracts, sells, and shows properties to potential buyers on behalf of your clients.

Once you gain enough experience as a real estate agent, you can also start your own firm and join the race. Remember, being a real estate agent demands confidence as well as strong persuasive skills to convince your customers.

To polish your skills as a real estate agent, there are numerous real estate marketing strategies available that you can learn. This way, you can become a lead competitor in the industry.

Web Developer

Web development is among the lead freelance careers that can bring you good money. As a web developer, you can start out with as much as $100,000 per year. According to recent reports, web developers made an average salary of $77,200 in 2020.

To become a web developer, all you need is a master grip over technology and target programming languages. You can build your profile as a freelance web developer at any freelancing platform and start putting your skills to use.

Tutor

Do you hold enough expertise in academics and have sufficient knowledge of particular subjects, such as maths, history, and science? If so, becoming a tutor is the best option for you.

You can also provide your tutor services via online platforms. There are a number of platforms like Tutor.com, Tutorme.com, and Preply.com where you can sign up as an online tutor.

In addition, you can develop and sell your courses online. There are a number of individuals looking to learn computer skills, foreign languages, business strategies, and more. You can make elaborate courses teaching these skills and generate revenue for yourself.

Event Planner

If you hold a creative vision, love to decorate, and have impeccable organizing skills, working as an event planner is your way of becoming your own boss. Being an event planner means you will be responsible for everything happening at the event, from organizing the event furniture to decorating the venue and managing caterers.

You can start out as a wedding planner and can later expand your services to planning events for the corporate sector. As an event planner, you need to be always vigilant and organized. Building a strong network is also important for an event planner to keep getting new gigs.

Motivational Speaker

Do you have what it takes to captivate the attention of the audience for long durations and share your message in an impactful way? Becoming a motivational speaker requires compelling your audience to keep their eyes and ears trained on you and your words.

If you believe you have a compelling story to share and can keep your audience engaged, you can make a career out of this skill by becoming a motivational speaker. By becoming one, you not only get to make good money but also earn fame and respect in society.

Every business needs a strong marketing strategy for their social media platforms to promote their products. You can fill that position by offering your services as a social media marketer.

Social media marketing includes promoting the products as well as the business agenda of your customers in an engaging manner. To start out as a social media marketer, you can either freelance with the target organization or utilize an online freelancing marketplace to land a gig.

Childcare Provider

Childcare services are also a thriving sector at present. If you are good with children, you can start out by working as a nanny. You can, later on, expand your services by opening a day-care or an after-school program once you have gathered enough finance.

Becoming Your Own Boss FAQs

1. How to quit my job and become self-employed?

Start with saving funds. Have enough financial reserves to last you for at least six months. Be sure of your potential and how you want to channel it for starting your business. Moreover, it is also important to be very focused and determined.

Once you have all these set up and ready, you can quit your job and start building your business.

2. Is it worth being your own boss?

Yes. Becoming your own boss not only allows you to have flexibility in terms of your working hours and creative freedom. You also get to enjoy the maximum profit. In turn, it will bring you financial freedom as well as the power to create an encouraging work environment for like-minded people.

By becoming your own boss, you not only benefit yourself but also get to contribute to the national economy and the local community by creating new jobs and opportunities.

3. What are some of the limitations of becoming your own boss?

Becoming your own boss has countless perks and some limitations. The first limitation is that there is no fixed pay rate, which means that sometimes you can also end up in loss.

Secondly, there are no fixed working hours. You have to look out for your customers 24/7. In addition, managing your business (managing inventory, finances, complicated taxes, and dealing with customers) can become exhausting at times.

4. What are some of the most profitable sectors for small businesses?

Some of the most profitable sectors for small businesses include IT services, taxation services, consultant agencies, real estate, auto repair shops, childcare services, and cleaning services.

These services are comparatively cheaper to establish compared to other businesses but can generate a handsome turnover.

5. What business can I start with minimum finance?

Becoming your own boss is not as difficult as you think. All you need is to have a strong skill set that you can market. You can start out by working as a personal trainer, tutor, freelance writer, consultant, and the like. These services require zero investment but can generate considerable income.

Carving Your Own Path

Do understand that there are no definite tips to becoming your own boss. Every journey is different, with unique actions to be taken as you carve your own path. However, by having the right motivation, determination, and flexibility, you can have a smooth journey towards becoming your own boss.