Making the decision to leave the world of conventional office work and become an entrepreneur can be a bit daunting at first. Of course, there are many benefits to becoming a self-employed entrepreneur — autonomy, the ability to chart your own course through life and be your own boss, the potential to hold onto a much higher proportion of your earnings, and so on.
At the same time, though, there’s the uncertainty that always comes with trying a new venture and placing your bets on an uncertain thing.
Perhaps most of all, though, it can be difficult to know where to even begin.
Here is a checklist of sorts, detailing some of the key things that every new entrepreneur needs to do in order to enhance their likelihood of success to the greatest possible extent.
SEO is essentially the cornerstone art of all forms of digital marketing. Even if you are reaching out to prospects via cold email, it will be due to their SEO proficiency that you were even able to locate their websites of business info online in the first place.
SEO — or Search Engine Optimisation — is all about knowing how to satisfy Google’s algorithms, so that you can get your webpage ranked as favourably as possible on the Google search results.
Notice how there’s a lot of talk about Google, here? In the not-so-distant past, SEO had to account for the various active search engines of the web. Today, Google represents virtually all of what’s on offer in terms of the search engine market, is the most used by such an enormous margin that most people probably couldn’t name more than one other search engine if their lives depended on it.
Hiring a professional SEO expert agency is one way of boosting your website’s rankings — and it may be that using such an agency becomes a necessity at some point during your career.
To start with, however, you need to acquaint yourself with the basics of SEO, not least of all so that you can begin developing your web presence along SEO-savvy lines from the get-go, and so that you and any future SEO experts or digital marketers who you bring on board are speaking the same language.
There are many online resources for learning about the basics of SEO, and many of them cost nothing to use. Get started doing your research as soon as possible.
They say that only two things are inevitable; death and taxes. While establishing yourself as an entrepreneur might give you some favourable tax breaks, at least in the early days of your business, you will nonetheless need to thoroughly research your new tax situation and file the necessary paperwork, or else fall foul of the tax man.
Generally, at the very least, you will need to register yourself as self-employed and fill in whatever tax exemption forms might be required, based on your projected income for the first year, as well the particular industry you’re operating in, and so on.
To avoid any potential legal mishaps, it is essential that you deal with this step early in your entrepreneurial career — certainly by the time you first begin to make anything more than token money off your endeavours.
Even a fairly uneventful and standard day job, and a relatively mellow and uncomplicated lifestyle are bound to present you with an absolute abundance of tasks and projects that must be dealt with, simply to keep the basic elements of life and career in proper harmony.
When you’re working as an entrepreneur, however, the tasks and projects you will need to attend to are bound to increase exponentially. No longer are you just required to handle the responsibilities of your particular role as part of a team, now you’re the person in charge, the shot caller, and in many cases, every member of the “team” simultaneously.
Your role will involve marketing duties, performing the actual work required for clients, website maintenance, research, supply chain management, creative brainstorming, invoicing and accounts management, and whatever else you can think of.
To stay on top of all this potential chaos, it is imperative that you adopt an effective and productive project management system.
Project management systems come in all shapes and sizes. You can create your own, using a Moleskine notebook or old-school Filofax and a pen, listing out your general goals and projects, and creating daily checklists to keep you on track to achieving said goals and completing said projects.
It may, however, be a good deal easier and more effective to use an already tried and tested project management system, such as the GTD methodology, and to take advice from highly-acclaimed productivity books such as “Eat That Frog” and “The One Thing”.
Even if your business exists entirely in the physical world, as a traditional brick-and-mortar business, you will need a professional website if you want to maximise your chances of being successful and optimally productive, at any stage of your career.
For better or worse we now live in the height of the digital era, and a huge amount of all research and business decisions are made using the aid of the internet. If a prospective client can’t find you online, you do not exist, for all intents and purposes.
Creating a professional looking website is one of the most powerful shortcuts for presenting an overall air of professionalism and trustworthiness to your clients. A shoddily done website, on the other hand, makes you look amateurish and behind the times, and is likely to put people off more rather than impress upon them the desire to use your services.
Whether you hire a professional website designer to create your site, or are able (or willing to learn how) to create your own, the key principle is that you must have a slick, modern, accessible and informative website in order to thrive as a modern entrepreneur.
If you’re operating as an independent contractor, rather than a seller of goods, you absolutely must not, under any circumstances, perform work for a client without a contract being in place to safeguard you from potential exploitation.
The most professional and trustworthy clients you’ll work with will likely already have a contract in place that they can present you with when you begin your working arrangement. Nonetheless, it’s all but certain that you will end up working with clients who have no such contract on hand.
In these cases, it’s your responsibility to present them with your own contract. Various online business communities and informative websites will have contract templates you can use as the basis for your own. The key requirement is to provide a legally binding shield whereby you have it in writing that you are promised payment for your services, and detail just which services are being provided, and in exchange for what payment.
Once you have a template to work with, structuring contracts for individual clients is usually just a matter of tweaking a few words here and there, and asking the client to agree to the terms via email.
If you encounter a client, who doesn’t have a contract, and refuses to accept one you offer, turn and run. There are few better signs in business that someone is looking to scam you.
At the same time, though, there’s the uncertainty that always comes with trying a new venture and placing your bets on an uncertain thing.
Perhaps most of all, though, it can be difficult to know where to even begin.
Here is a checklist of sorts, detailing some of the key things that every new entrepreneur needs to do in order to enhance their likelihood of success to the greatest possible extent.
Develop an understanding of SEO basics
SEO is essentially the cornerstone art of all forms of digital marketing. Even if you are reaching out to prospects via cold email, it will be due to their SEO proficiency that you were even able to locate their websites of business info online in the first place.
SEO — or Search Engine Optimisation — is all about knowing how to satisfy Google’s algorithms, so that you can get your webpage ranked as favourably as possible on the Google search results.
Notice how there’s a lot of talk about Google, here? In the not-so-distant past, SEO had to account for the various active search engines of the web. Today, Google represents virtually all of what’s on offer in terms of the search engine market, is the most used by such an enormous margin that most people probably couldn’t name more than one other search engine if their lives depended on it.
Hiring a professional SEO expert agency is one way of boosting your website’s rankings — and it may be that using such an agency becomes a necessity at some point during your career.
To start with, however, you need to acquaint yourself with the basics of SEO, not least of all so that you can begin developing your web presence along SEO-savvy lines from the get-go, and so that you and any future SEO experts or digital marketers who you bring on board are speaking the same language.
There are many online resources for learning about the basics of SEO, and many of them cost nothing to use. Get started doing your research as soon as possible.
Determine and sort out your tax situation
They say that only two things are inevitable; death and taxes. While establishing yourself as an entrepreneur might give you some favourable tax breaks, at least in the early days of your business, you will nonetheless need to thoroughly research your new tax situation and file the necessary paperwork, or else fall foul of the tax man.
Generally, at the very least, you will need to register yourself as self-employed and fill in whatever tax exemption forms might be required, based on your projected income for the first year, as well the particular industry you’re operating in, and so on.
To avoid any potential legal mishaps, it is essential that you deal with this step early in your entrepreneurial career — certainly by the time you first begin to make anything more than token money off your endeavours.
Adopt an effective project management system
Even a fairly uneventful and standard day job, and a relatively mellow and uncomplicated lifestyle are bound to present you with an absolute abundance of tasks and projects that must be dealt with, simply to keep the basic elements of life and career in proper harmony.
When you’re working as an entrepreneur, however, the tasks and projects you will need to attend to are bound to increase exponentially. No longer are you just required to handle the responsibilities of your particular role as part of a team, now you’re the person in charge, the shot caller, and in many cases, every member of the “team” simultaneously.
Your role will involve marketing duties, performing the actual work required for clients, website maintenance, research, supply chain management, creative brainstorming, invoicing and accounts management, and whatever else you can think of.
To stay on top of all this potential chaos, it is imperative that you adopt an effective and productive project management system.
Project management systems come in all shapes and sizes. You can create your own, using a Moleskine notebook or old-school Filofax and a pen, listing out your general goals and projects, and creating daily checklists to keep you on track to achieving said goals and completing said projects.
It may, however, be a good deal easier and more effective to use an already tried and tested project management system, such as the GTD methodology, and to take advice from highly-acclaimed productivity books such as “Eat That Frog” and “The One Thing”.
Create a professional website
Even if your business exists entirely in the physical world, as a traditional brick-and-mortar business, you will need a professional website if you want to maximise your chances of being successful and optimally productive, at any stage of your career.
For better or worse we now live in the height of the digital era, and a huge amount of all research and business decisions are made using the aid of the internet. If a prospective client can’t find you online, you do not exist, for all intents and purposes.
Creating a professional looking website is one of the most powerful shortcuts for presenting an overall air of professionalism and trustworthiness to your clients. A shoddily done website, on the other hand, makes you look amateurish and behind the times, and is likely to put people off more rather than impress upon them the desire to use your services.
Whether you hire a professional website designer to create your site, or are able (or willing to learn how) to create your own, the key principle is that you must have a slick, modern, accessible and informative website in order to thrive as a modern entrepreneur.
Draft a contract for work with your clients
If you’re operating as an independent contractor, rather than a seller of goods, you absolutely must not, under any circumstances, perform work for a client without a contract being in place to safeguard you from potential exploitation.
The most professional and trustworthy clients you’ll work with will likely already have a contract in place that they can present you with when you begin your working arrangement. Nonetheless, it’s all but certain that you will end up working with clients who have no such contract on hand.
In these cases, it’s your responsibility to present them with your own contract. Various online business communities and informative websites will have contract templates you can use as the basis for your own. The key requirement is to provide a legally binding shield whereby you have it in writing that you are promised payment for your services, and detail just which services are being provided, and in exchange for what payment.
Once you have a template to work with, structuring contracts for individual clients is usually just a matter of tweaking a few words here and there, and asking the client to agree to the terms via email.
If you encounter a client, who doesn’t have a contract, and refuses to accept one you offer, turn and run. There are few better signs in business that someone is looking to scam you.
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