Are you ready for self-employment?

Going self-employed is a real achievement! Launching your own business and not working for another person brings a lot of stress but a lot of reward and enjoyment. There is nothing more enjoyable than receiving your first invoice and knowing you get to keep it all (well, everything after taxes are saved). That and never having to ask for holiday or work set hours. 

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-grey-jacket-sits-on-bed-uses-grey-laptop-935743/ 

How to Prepare for Self-Employment

Before you go self-employed, there are a few things you want to get ready to put you in the best possible position to succeed. Having bookkeeping software sorted will help you as well as getting your social media channels sorted and your marketing materials – you’ll need flyers, brochures, business cards, etc. 

Below we look more into getting yourself prepared to go self-employed. 

Looking after your finances 

As you can imagine one of the first things to have organised before going self-employed is your finances. You should have an accounting software set up, which you can use to invoice, keep track of your income, organise your expenses and run profit and loss reports. A lot of the time, you can reach out to your accountant (which you should also organise) as they will be able to recommend the best finance systems to use. 

Setting up your social media channels 

Social media is key to growing your business. Using different social media channels, you can reach out to new customers and communicate with your current ones. You can create video content to share on TikTok and YouTube. Images can be shared on Instagram and blog articles can be shared on Facebook or X. Having good photos of your offering and services is very important as this will show you care about what you put out and invest in your marketing. When setting up your social media channels, remember you don’t need to sign up for every one. Choose the channels that you think represent your brand best and that the content you are going to create suits more. If you are signed up for too many, you may find it hard to keep all of them updated consistently. You should try and post once or twice each week, as this will help you stay consistent and reach your customers more frequently. 

Preparing your marketing materials 

Talking about marketing, you should be preparing your marketing materials as far in advance as possible. Depending on your offering, you may require flyers to be printed out, brochures and business cards. You should work with a branding expert as they will be able to assist with what colours to use on your marketing materials as well as create a logo etc. Your logo will be used on your social media channels as well as any presentations that you create. 

Are you planning on going self-employed and what will you be doing? What preparations have you already taken? Is there anything missing in our guide on preparing yourself to go self-employed that you think we should be adding? Let us know in the comment box below, we look forward to hearing from you.