5 Ways to Make The Successful Leap to Self Employment

The real headline should be 5 Proven And Remarkably Easy Ways To Prepare For A Successful Leap To Self Employment This Year but a bit of research tells me that LinkedIn wouldn't like something that long!

**Firstly, to those of you who asked me to publish this post: I’m sorry it has taken me so long to get around to writing it. I hope that it’s a case of ‘better late than never’ and that it’s been worth the wait. To those of you who don’t know the background, this article comes off the back of the following LinkedIn post which I published back in June: **

Introduction - AKA “Why should I listen to you, Russ?”

Great question! Well done for your healthy dose of skepticism. There are way too many Internet know-it-alls out there who tell you how to live your life and “Earn 7 figures in 12 seconds while sitting on the toilet”. That’s not me. Here’s a very brief blurb about my own successful leap to self-employment and why I think I am in the position to offer up some friendly advice...

I left my job as the Marketing Director for a London-based sustainability consultancy in April 2018. I started on Day 1 with six clients; I earned more in my first year than I have ever earned before; I am still going strong 2.5 years in with no signs of slowing down; the pandemic and lockdown hasn't affected my business at all, in fact I got busier; I have since set up various side hustles and have now founded and co-founded three additional businesses, all of which are doing well; and, most importantly, I am happier and more fulfilled than I have ever been.

Have you got an open mind and are you willing to read some real world advice from someone who has successfully made the leap to self employment? Great! Let's do this...

1. Start Building Your Personal Brand - NOW!

You already have a personal brand. It’s your reputation. It’s the you that is out there for the world to see, both online and off. So although you might have never really given your personal brand any thought, you still have one regardless. And now it’s time to start paying it some serious attention and invest some time to grow it.

Why? Because your personal brand is your ultimate differentiator. It’s the one thing which truly differentiates you from your competitors and anyone else.

I didn’t even know it at the time, but I started building my personal brand properly in 2010 when I worked for a small ocean conservation charity called SeaWeb. It was while working at SeaWeb that I got really into social media and blogging. I set up my own blog called Cool Footprint where I started writing about environmental issues. I would write reviews of environmental TV shows and films, like Rob Stewart’s Sharkwater. Cool Footprint didn’t take off or anything, but I had a small loyal readership and all of the posts had my name attached to them. This is personal branding. I also set up a Twitter account called Squid Rock, where I would share news and articles related to ocean conservation. The account grew to a few thousand followers and it had my name on it. This is personal branding.

After SeaWeb, I became the Marketing & Communications Manager for a corporate sustainability consultancy. I would write dozens of blog posts for the company website, which would be disseminated to our wide audience of targets and prospects. This is personal branding. I would do video case study interviews with our clients and these videos would be uploaded to our YouTube channel and sent out to our contact database. This is personal branding. Four years later, I became the Marketing Director for another corporate sustainability consultancy. I would attribute my strong personal brand I had built to one of the reasons I got that job in the first place. I then invested in more personal branding activities at that job, including getting into LinkedIn more seriously. More on that below.

So, you get the idea. By the time I left my job in April 2018 to start my own business, I had eight years of solid personal brand building behind me, which I attribute greatly to not only making the successful leap to self employment, but also to the continued success I’m achieving now that I’m almost two-and-a-half years in.

Take Action On Your Personal Brand Now

Ok, so you already have a personal brand, but now it’s time to make sure you’re the one in control of it. And I need you to get excited about this if you’re serious about making the successful leap to self employment!

First up - LinkedIn

LinkedIn is my favourite platform - by a long way - for building my personal brand. That’s why I’m so active on the platform, publishing new content almost daily. Because the return on investment is real, tangible, and consistent. Sure, there are other channels, and Instagram might be better for some people and brands. But I’d bet good money that if you’re reading this post then you’re probably someone who is looking to set up a B2B business, not a B2C consumer brand, in which case you need to start taking LinkedIn seriously. Please trust me on this. If you want an actual figure, I have tallied up all the revenue I’ve won as a direct result of my LinkedIn activity alone since April 2018; that figure is ￡105,265. And that number his increasing all the time, as some of the clients I’ve won through LinkedIn are retainer clients who I’ll be working with for the next six months at least. If that sounds good to you, you can absolutely achieve the same results or better.

Start here: Sort out your profile. Get a decent headshot. Update your professional headline - make sure it doesn’t just say “Your job title” e.g. “Director” or “Manager”. That tells people absolutely nothing about who you are, what you do, or what sector you’re in. Make sure your industry and location are both up to date. Write a killer Summary / About section. Update your entire Experience section - make sure you write something for each position you’ve held over the years. Tell people what you achieved at each role. Personalise your profile URL so that it’s “/yourname” not “/yourname1736jfnsk7309js662539” - mine is https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/russavery/

Then do this: Once your LinkedIn profile is optimised, it’s time to dive into the platform. Start publishing content. Regularly. Use the different content types available - text, photo, video, articles, PDF uploads. Start engaging with other people’s content. Start actively building your network of relevant connections (please note that I am NOT saying connect with anyone and everyone). Start a proactive connection strategy. If your mindset is still to only ever connect with people you have met in real life, sorry, but you are missing the entire point of the platform and you will never see the real benefit of it.

This is obviously just a teaser of getting started with personal branding and LinkedIn. If you’d like to learn how you - and your entire team - can make the most out of LinkedIn to grow your personal brand and your business, please drop me a line. Tim and I deliver training regularly throughout the UK and I have also delivered the training to a company of 20 people in Germany as well.

Next up - get your personal domain

I would highly recommend you buy “yourname.com” - e.g. russavery.com. (Yes, I’m updating mine at the moment, hence why it's just a landing page!) Seriously, even if you aren’t going to use it right away, then still think about buying the domain so that you own it before someone else gets it. When you’ve got it, even if you just put up a single landing page with your photo and a bit of blurb on it (like my current holding page), then that is better than nothing and it’s great for your personal brand and instantly makes you seem more legit and professional. Obviously, if you can start writing blog posts on your website in addition to the content you’re now publishing on LinkedIn, then definitely go for it. The more content - sorry, the more quality content - you’re putting out into the world, the better.

People Google you. You do it. I do it. We all do it. Make sure they find an awesome, optimised LinkedIn profile, and a result at “yourname.com” even if it’s just a simple landing page. These things matter. You’ve got to make an awesome first impression. It could literally be worth thousands of pounds in revenue to you in your first year alone.

2. Start Researching Your Competitors and Your Market - NOW!

Ok so this might seem an obvious one, but we’ve all seen the Dragon’s Den / Shark Tank episodes where the entrepreneur has fallen at the first hurdle because they simply hadn’t done their market research. At this point, Deborah Meaden points out to them with a pained expression on her face that their product or service already exists, and that it’s higher quality and at a more competitive price point. D’oh!

"I’m out!"

Please don’t be one of these people. Do. Your. Research. It doesn’t take long and it’s not difficult. Start with these questions and build from there:

• Who’s already doing what you want to do? Who’s already providing the same products and services?
• Where are they based?
• How much are they charging? Get an idea of the market rate for your services.
• What ideas can they give you?
• What do they seem to be doing well?
• What do they seem to be doing badly, which you could improve upon right away?

Remember guys, competition isn’t a bad thing! It’s a sign of a healthy market and that there’s a demand for what you’re offering. Obviously you don’t typically want to enter a saturated market, but don’t be at all worried about a bit of competition; it can be a great thing.

2.5 BONUS! Establish Your Niche - NOW!

That’s right, people, it’s actually ‘5.5 Ways…’! Welcome to Bonus Section number 2.5! Super Mario Power Up!

I really want you to think about what your niche is. Or what you could make it. Because having a niche is brilliant.

If I was just Russ Avery - The Marketing Guy, I would be competing with thousands of other independent marketers in the UK alone. Things would be a lot more difficult. But I’m not. I’m Russ Avery - The Sustainability Marketing Guy. And staying niche to the sector I’d worked in for the previous eight years when I decide to make the leap is the best decision I could have ever made. I mean, it was a no-brainer for me, because I’m purpose-driven and I knew I wanted to keep working for sustainability-focused brands, but still. I might have thought that spreading my wings more widely would be easier. But not so.

I want you to give this some serious thought. For example, are you going to be an independent financial advisor, or are you going to be an independent financial advisor for a specific sector or group of people? Let’s take another example. Are you going to become a freelance videographer, or are you going to become a freelance videographer for charities and NGOs in the south east of England?

Seriously, think about nicheing down! I can’t recommend it highly enough.

At Entrepreneur Business Live London in July 2019, I gave a presentation all about this, titled 'Stay Small, Go Big! How creating your niche can lead to incredible personal and professional growth'. If you’d like me to send you a copy, please leave a comment below to tell me and I will send it to you via DM!

3. Start Looking for the Quick Wins - NOW!

Another easy thing to do is identify your quick wins. Where are your first clients and revenue going to come from?

I want you to go through your entire network and identify who would be worth reaching out to. Do this now! Do it before you’ve left your job so that you have paying clients from Day 1. Don’t wait until you’ve actually left to do it - it might take a while for the conversations to close into paid work.

My first clients came from:

• Two former colleagues who had since moved on to new companies, and who got me in to sort out their marketing at their new companies
• A couple of mates who hired me to do some small one-off projects - but it was still paid work from Day 1
• Competitors of my former employers. This was a big one, worth a lot of revenue. When I had handed in my notice, I put a LinkedIn post up saying that I was leaving to go solo and that I would be available in 3 months time (my notice period). Three competitors of my previous two companies saw this post and got in touch on that same day saying they’d love to meet me for a chat. They had seen what I’d achieved for my previous two companies (hello, personal branding!) and wanted to know what I could do for them. One of them turned into a retainer client I’m still working with today.

So go ahead and literally scrape your entire network and think who you could reach out to where it’ll already be a warm conversation because it’s someone you know. Do this now. You won’t regret it!

4. Start Your Own Side Hustle - NOW!

“Wait, what? You’re telling me to start a side hustle when I haven’t even set up my main business yet?”

Haha, yes, bear with me…

Think about setting up something extra, on the side, which won’t necessarily take up too much extra time, and which will support your main new business that you’re setting up.

Maybe you could set up a new networking group in your town, like LinkedIn Local Farnham, which I set up in January 2019, and which I’m still running today, now with Tim. We have over 180 members and it has been worth some valuable new business to us and is great for both of our personal brands in the local area. It’s one of the best things I’ve done since going solo.

I also set up Renewabilitee, which is fun, linked to my purpose, and has resulted in some awesome PR features, which in turn have been amazing for my personal brand.

(Can you see how so many things end up linking back to your personal brand, and therefore your business, and how the whole thing can just become a cycle of awesome opportunities and business growth?)

Maybe you’ll set up a podcast, or a YouTube channel and start vlogging...

Just have a think about it, that’s all I’m asking.

5. Adopt My “You Never Know…” Mindset - NOW!

I’ve saved my favourite one 'til last.

In the year or so before I left to go it alone, I completely changed my mindset to one of growth, abundance, and what I now call my “You never know…” mindset. I guess it’s a kind of variation of the “Say yes more” mentality, which you might know from the book and film of the same name 'Yes Man' written by Danny Wallace and starring Jim Carrey.

Here’s how my “You never know…” mindset looks...

• I’m going to go to that event, even though I don’t really feel like it, because you never know who I might meet there…
• I’m going to connect with that person, because even though they aren’t based in the right sector, you never know who they might know and who they might be able to introduce me to
• You never know where this could lead in the future…
• You never know…

You get the idea.

Honestly, this has been an absolute game-changer for me. I have met great people from all over the world who are now close friends. I have won new clients because of it. I have been a guest on multiple podcasts because of it. I have travelled to new countries because of it.

And it's a simple mindset shift. Which anyone can make right now.

Okay, let’s make like a fajita and wrap this up!

(Okay, those are actually Greek gyros, not fajitas, but I know you'll forgive me...)

Remember what I said at the beginning of this article? About how all of these things are easy to do? Told you!

Yes, they all require your time and your commitment, but none of them are difficult things to do. If I can do them, so can you.

If you’ve read this far, can I ask a favour?

If you have found any of the material in this post to be valuable, please can you like it so others can find it too, maybe even let me know with a comment below, and also please share it with any friends who you know have been thinking about making the leap to self employment. This post could really help them to not just make the leap successfully, but also to have a successful first year and beyond which they might never have thought possible. These 5.5 things have worked wonders for me and I want to share them with others so they can find the same happiness and satisfaction of self employment that I have.

Thanks so much for reading!

Russ

All epic personal brand shoot photos of me and the one of me and Tim were taken by the brilliant Alex Smutko! https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/alexsmutko/