Actual Things People Say When You're Self Employed

Reflecting on a conversation with my mum last week - who has a habit of calling me in the middle of the working week - I realised, I'm frequently on the receiving end of well-meaning comments because I'm self-employed.

Not that I'm keeping track, but these are some actual things people have said to me in the two years I've been self-employed. 

Many of these comments have come from close family members (not just my mum!).

Anyone who isn't self-employed, and never has been, generally has no idea what it means to run your own business. 

Even people who have been self-employed don't really understand what you do because you don't have a shop front, employ other people or rent an office somewhere - therefore it's not a real business...



There's some absolute classics here...

• "What do you do at home all day?" (Mum said this last week on a Tuesday afternoon phone call!)

• "I don't know what you do, but I'm sure you're very good at it."

• "Oh, I assumed you had kids and you were doing this to stay busy while they're at school?"

• "You just drink coffee with your friends all day."

• "But you don't work many hours, you're not employed full time, are you?"

• Because I do consultancy work to help businesses improve their writing... "Have you given up writing books now then?"

• "But you don't sell enough books, do you? No one makes money from selling books."

• "You mean, people have actually bought your books?"

• "Why don't you get yourself a nice little part time job?"

• "So, you're unemployed then?"

• A caller comes to the door... "Day off today, then?"

• "It's nice that your husband supports you while you pursue your hobbies."

My answer to all these is usually an incredulous look, quickly corrected into a polite smile and an, "Erm, well I run a business!"

What about you? 

 

Recognise any of these?

 

If you're self-employed; what well meaning, ignorant or just plain patronising things have people said to you? 

                                                          

 

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22 Way to Harness The Power of Networking

The internet is a great place to make connections, but there is no substitute for physically meeting people.


The people most interested in you on social media and most likely to happily share your content are those that have actually met you.


The key to social media is ‘social’. It’s far better to have a small following of interested and active people than thousands of faceless followers.

Quality is always better than quantity on social media (tweet this). 


So how do you get to meet new people?


By networking.

It’s a horrible word isn’t it; networking, it feels so corporate and jargony!

On my shiny new website, I talk in more detail about the power of networking...

Read the full feature here on Amy's shiny new website

But here's a quick snapshot of my 22 Tips:

1)  Say yes to every invitation

2)  When you want something, broadcast it - But always be generous with our own knowledge and connections

3)  Show up and often

4)  Fear comes from uncertainty. Improve your chances by being prepared, you’ll feel more in control

5)  Think ahead of the meeting  about what you’d like to achieve. Jot your ideas down or do a mind map to get the thoughts out of your head and committed to paper, then they can start to become tangible goals

6)  Have a goal – for example: ‘I’d like 1 warm lead’ or a small step: ‘I will start a conversation’

7)  Make sure you have plenty of business cards. A notepad and pen is also handy so you can take notes if there is a speaker offering handy tips or so you can jot down the details of someone you meet who doesn’t have any business cards

8)  Prepare a spiel for yourself. Sum up what you do in a short sentence and have answers prepared for any questions that may follow

9)  Make notes on the back of business cards to remind yourself where you met a person. It could be weeks or months before you re-connect with that person and putting them in context is much easier when it comes to getting in touch i.e.: ‘Hi we met at such and such event…’

10)  The best piece of advice my mum ever gave me was, treat others as you’d wish them to treat you. Always be friendly and respectful, you never know when you may bump into that person again

11)  If you go to an event with someone you know make a conscious effort not to just speak to that person the whole time

12)  Look for people with open body language to strike up a conversation

13)  Look for people who are on their own. The chances are they are just as scared, if not more so, than you and they’ll appreciate your company

14)  Joining an existing conversation and listening for a wile is a good way to start to get involved and get to know people

15)  Be yourself. You don’t have to be formal, in fact people are more likely to warm to you if you’re friendly and genuine

16)  No one goes to a networking event to buy things, so don’t behave like a sales person. Ask lots of questions of the people you speak to and listen, don’t just wait for your turn to speak

17)  Enjoy it! You never know what fascinating people you might meet, be bold, behave confidently, you might just surprise yourself.

And after the event...

18)  When you make a new connection, reinforce it by connecting with them online through; Linked In, Twitter, Facebook etc.

19)  Publicly acknowledge on social media that you enjoyed meeting them

20)  Regularly share their content and join in with or start conversations with them online

21)  Arrange future meetings over a coffee to catch up and possibly do business with them or pass on referrals to people you think could help them.

22)  If they are not local to you, make use of tools such as Skype to ‘virtually meet’. Even when you are behind a keyboard, seeing a face is a far more human and real experience than just exchanging emails. It’s good to hear each others voices and look each other in the eye

  
  

What's you number 1 networking tip?

So you've published a book... now what?

One of the biggest challenges creatives face is viewing what they do as a business. It's hard to separate ourselves from the things we create, but as soon as you release your book into the wild, hoping that it will be picked up and appreciated, preferably in exchange for money - you have become a business, but does that make you an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneur = [ahn-truh-pruh-nur, -noo r] A person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.

Author = [aw-ther] A person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc.; the composer of a literary work, as distinguished from a compiler, translator, editor, or copyist.

Author + Entrepreneur = Authorpreneur

 

 2015 is Authorpreneur Almanac year. 

Join me in my 365 Adventures in Writing and Entrepreneurship...

Test how authorpreneurial you are by taking this quiz:

http://ideaism.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/are-you-scribbler-dabbler-or-wrangler.html


 

For the past few years I've been working with people curious about self employment, people in the early stages of turning their ideas into businesses and small businesses who have recently set up. One of the lessons I share with them, one I learned the hard way, is the importance of taking yourself seriously as a small business.

Viewing our creations can seem somehow cold or disrespectful. 

This is the first mistake; being too precious about it. If you created it to sell it you need to be prepared to give it up. 

The second mistake is to aim for perfection. Perfection is a fallacy. Your work can only ever be good enough at that time in your life. Inevitably your work will improve over time, but it will only improve if you get feedback and continue to work at it. It won’t be perfect, perfection is impossible - but that’s OK. Accept it. Move on.

I argue that it isn’t disrespectful to think of your book as a product. Quite the opposite in fact. Surely all the hard work you’ve put in deserves to be rewarded? Surely it’s more disrespectful to let your work gather dust in a drawer or languish somewhere in the bottom of the internet undiscovered?

When I published my first book, The Bronze Box, I started to put into practice the advice I have been giving to other entrepreneurs and this time, I won't fail because I'm not treating it as a business.  

I admit, I'm not great at following my own advice - I did, however set myself a measure of success, at which point I could feel that I had done what I set out to do. I set myself a goal of selling 1,000 books in three years. 18 months in, I had doubled this target. 

 

I now have two books available and I'm working on the final installment in the Sheridan and Blake Adventure Series, Gabriel's Game.

My day jobs have always revolved around enabling others. In fact, it's taken me a while to realise this, but there are really only three things I can do:

Writing. Speaking and Enabling others and at the heart of this is my love of stories.

There is no magic formula to being successful in business, but there are logical, practical, sensible steps that apply to every business. 

These key functions within the life of your business are universal, the difference is in the scale. I call these processes the Business Life-cycle and here's the flow chart to put it into context that I have developed when working with small businesses of all persuasions.

If you are a regular follower of this blog, you'll know that I'm passionate about supporting others to follow their dreams and that I enjoy sharing the tips, tricks, actions and inspiration I've collected on my own journey into self employment and also what I've learned from the experiences of the people I've supported on their journeys.

A number of colleagues, friends and business associates have suggested I compile my knowledge into a book and I'm currently in the process of writing my first non-fiction book.

In 2014 I completed a 365 day project: 'Operation Author: 365 Actions to Becoming a Successful Author' where each week I shared seven actions I had completed to further my writing career. 

It seemed natural to turn the lessons learned from this process into a series of books. The first of which will be out in the summer of 2015:

Operation Author: So you've published a book... now what?

So what's it all about? Well, here's the blurb:

  
To come up with this blurb, I conducted some research on similar business books to get some ideas. 

Here are some of the books that inspired me to write my own and helped me with my research. I've read some of these and bits of others, but they are a neat benchmark for where I see my first venture into non-fiction book writing going.  


   

I've used some of the tips from this really useful book in my own marketing. It's simple to use and gives a good overview of the characteristics of the main social media channels.



 

This is a great reference guide that I dip in and out of regularly.






I've been reading content on Joanna Penn's excellent The Creative Penn site for a while and pinning stuff from it frequently

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/blog/

Visit Amy Morse - Authorpreneur's profile on Pinterest.

What business books would you recommend to writers?