Fire Your Boss | Start Your Own Business

Fire Your Boss (if you still have one) and Start Your Own Business

Do you ever feel like you're stuck in a rut? You wake up each morning and go to the same dead end job, driving on the same highways, walking on the same sidewalks, and doing the same thing day after day, month after month and year after year thinking to yourself, "is this all there is?"

Do you feel unappreciated, underpaid and overworked? You're a hard worker but never get true recognition or have been passed over for advancement opportunities and your boss says "next time" with a trite pat on the back. The time to advance never seems to meet you half way and you're tired of the excuses and lame reasons why it's not happening yet again. After all, you're intelligent, educated, experienced and contribute to the success of the company. Your clients love you as evidenced by all the rave reviews they have submitted, so why would you not advance?

If this describes you, it may be time to fire your boss and venture out on your own. Although this may seem like an overwhelming move, it may not be as hard as you think. You may have already given this some thought especially if you recently experienced a layoff or have been searching for a new job more than a few months.

Before you take this leap of faith, make sure you have prepared adequately to meet all your basic needs; housing, food, clothing, etc. Depending on what business you launch, it may be a few months before you begin to make earnings from your new business.

Consider taking advantage of options like

these:

Become a Virtual Assistant. Hear me out. I know this one is often suggested and not everyone has the skill set or desire to be a VA, but I have a twist on it, so bear with me. Being a Virtual Assistant allows you the flexibility of staying at home while managing tasks for other companies.This is a great option if you have small children at home or care for an elderly family member, or are the type of person who enjoys autonomy and managing tasks, paperwork, or customer service. Though it may take a bit of time to get your VA business off the ground, virtual assistants can command a high price for their services, especially if they have technical skills and type at warp speeds, which is where a lot of people fall short. It often requires typing speeds most people have not achieved. But, it is a viable option to give some thought to and it is fully remote.

If your typing speed is not up to par and your data entry skills are lacking, you may want to consider becoming a creative virtual assistant. This is someone who offers their creative talents for a fee. For example, I recently came across a posting in a Google search where someone was promoting their creative services offering to create thumbnails for YouTube content creators. This is such a great idea. If you knew how much time content creators such as myself spend on thumbnails, you would agree. You can use Canva to create the thumbnails to YouTube's specifications by using one of their thumbnail templates and voila, you're in business. For me, the part that takes the longest is editing my videos, but I would welcome having a creative virtual assistant making thumbnails for my videos because that's one less thing I have to do and it frees up my time to make more videos.

Make and sell your own crafts. Are your friends envious about the beautiful things you can make with your own two hands? Then this may be the business you're looking for. With websites such as eBay and Etsy, as well as local arts and craft shows, many people are making a substantial living selling their homemade creations. Unique or one-of-a-kind items always sell at higher prices than the common ones.

Candles are a hot item and so are bath bombs, bath salts and milk baths. You can also make natural hair care products for a niche market that you believe is under-served or under represented. Launch your business on Instagram or YouTube depending on the type of business you choose. Post consistently to build a following and serve people at the same time. Once you get it going, consider implementing a subscription box to reach and serve a broader audience, and ultimately increase your earnings.

The bath bomb business I started with my mom in 2016 was promoted on Instagram and Facebook and in 2018, a larger company made an offer to purchase our small business. We accepted their offer. I still make bath bombs for personal use because I love them, they're easy enough to make and I prefer to use all natural ingredients.

Now, if you are not crafty or not interested in making items from scratch, you can purchase wholesale items, private label them and sell them online. Etsy may have some special rules about private labeling items purchased and not hand created by you, so do your due diligence in researching this before you spend money. Also, with wholesale minimum purchase requirements, you may have to spend more up front versus the cost of making your own by hand. Start with whatever your budget will allow.

When I got started, I purchased a small kit from Amazon that came with everything I needed to make bath bombs. I wanted to first try it to see if I could do it, and if I enjoyed it before I committed to buying ingredients in bulk. I then watched a bunch of YouTube videos and got busy making them and posting images to social media. In the beginning, many of the batches flopped for being too dry and crumbling or too wet and activating before they were ready for use, so this is something that will take a little practice. You can't rush this process.

Become a Life Coach. This business opens up a realm of possibilities. If you enjoy listening to people and providing advice, becoming a life coach may intrigue you. A life coach provides good, solid advice to individuals relating to a particular area in their life.

A life coach can specialize in many different areas. For example, some coaches only work with stay at home moms, while others help those wanting to make more money, boost their confidence, become more outgoing or lose weight. The options are absolutely endless. You can go for training and become a certified coach at your local college or online, but you don't have to. You can coach someone in an area you have expertise in, such as resume writing, interviewing, or starting a business which is what I do. Coaching is mostly unregulated so you can get started today and research certifications as you begin to market your services and build your clientele.

As a career coach myself, it was fairly easy to get started, and now that I write this blog and create YouTube videos to help people advance their careers and find work they need, the hardest part for me has been the prep. I spend an unreasonable amount of time concerned about my appearance on camera, but I'm working on defining a presentable look that's easy to achieve so I can keep it moving.

You must promote and market yourself strongly because it may take awhile to get the business off the ground. But if this is something that you truly hold a passion for, it can turn into an extremely lucrative career, so don't wait to get started. If you are interested in this line of work and have a natural knack for it, but aren't sure how to market this skill or where to find clients, you can start a YouTube channel. Post consistently and the clients will eventually find you. In the meantime, you'll be perfecting your delivery, building your online presence and when you reach the minimum subscriptions and watch hours to become monetized, you may earn from partnerships that could prove to be lucrative. You have to share your knowledge, the more unique the better and post on a regular schedule so your account meets monetization requirements.

Become a caterer or baker. Does everyone say that no one can cook like you do? Do you get request after request for your recipes? Do you find spending time in the kitchen relaxing? I bake cakes and for me it is like therapy. It calms me and in the end, I get to enjoy and share the treats. Starting a catering business may be something you'll want to explore further.

As in any business, it may take a bit of patience and energy to get it started, but the benefits will be well worth the energy. Make sure to call your friends and family and tell them to spread the word about your new catering business, but don't stop there. My experience has been while family and friends can encourage you, they offer little long term support.

What I mean by this is that you will not make a lucrative career from catering or baking by selling your goods only to those in your immediate circle. Often times, friends and family want things for free or at a discount and that's not helpful. Also, you must get a business license, possibly a vendor license and register your business as well as market publicly. You can do this for free on Instagram. Be sure to use everything social media offers, not just regular feed posts, but use its other features such as stories, reels and shorts depending on the platform you choose. And remember, you don't have to post on all social media sites, just begin using one regularly and gradually expand to the others as you grow your business.

Once you can secure your first party or event, you'll have word of mouth recommendations marketing your business for you. If cooking is your passion and you learn how to manage food costs and market your business, you'll have no problem succeeding in this lucrative industry. A friend of mine held regular corporate events for her growing company and had the genius idea of hiring a food truck to serve tacos at each event. Who doesn't love tacos? She paid for everything and her guests enjoyed tacos and drinks as they socialized and met the other investors. A former co-worker sold her cakes by special order and baked out of her home "cottage bakery" (license required), making lots of sales by word of mouth.

Here is a list of some easy ways (you probably heard of already) to start a business (independently contracted) and make money fast:

• Taskrabbit; to offer services such as painting, packing, putting together furniture

• Rover or Wag; to walk dogs or pet sit

• Instacart; to shop for others

• Spark (Walmart partner); to shop for others

• VipKid or Magic Ears; teach English online to children in China (note time difference)

• iTalkie; for English language conversational practice with learners

• Cottage bakery; making pastries in your home (regulated, so you'll need a permit)

• Cosmetics you can buy in bulk; hair, eyelashes, lip gloss - Check out Alibaba

I'm not going to go into further details about those, but I did want to list them as a reminder in case you needed a review or maybe haven't heard of or tried any of them and you'd like to.

So let's talk about where the real money is at, shall we. The real money is in creating a product and selling it. A lot of people will scoff at this because they don't think they can do it, or think no one will buy from them or they don't want to put in the effort. Trust me when I say creating something from what you already know, even if you think it's not marketable, will yield the greatest results for your lifetime, not just in the meantime. Create it once, and sell it forever.

Creating something is not easy, but it's certainly not as hard as you may think. There's a secret to it's success though. You have to find the common denominator of what you know (or can learn) and what other people need. When you figure out what that is, and it can be just about anything so don't think too long and hard, and from that create a product to help other people and therein lies your success and riches.

If you want to learn more about advancing your career or building your own business, take a look at my new YouTube Channel here.

Your next step is to decide where your passion lies. Once you know, get started on making your dream job happen. Launching your own business is not easy, but it's also not as hard as you may think and startup cost can be low to zero depending on what you choose to do. Stop making excuses and start today. The sooner you do, the faster you'll get to where you want to be financially and the sooner you'll be able to fire your boss.

I hope this information was helpful, and as always I wish you all the best in your career.