Start Your Own Home Business After 50. Robert W. Bly
if you do jump in and get rolling with clients right away, the business side of your business must be tended to fairly quickly, including creating nuts-and-bolts items such as the first invoice or written agreement. At the very least, start with the basics of your business and a solid marketing plan; you will be developing these more fully over time. Look for more information about developing business and marketing plans in chapters 10 and 12 of this book, and check out my 2010 book, The Marketing Plan Handbook from Entrepreneur Press, for even more details.
As a freelancer and your own boss, you are totally responsible for your business—its success or failure—and for your self-motivation to that end. If you have enough operational structure set up in advance, it’s easier to create goals and motivate yourself on a daily basis because your foundation is already set. So start building your foundation by first determining what you want to do. Knowing what kind of business you want to run can help you determine what steps to take next to build on that foundation.
DECIDING WHAT BUSINESS YOU WANT
So now you know you want to freelance, but you’re not sure exactly what it is you want to do. Start first by making a list (or go through your résumé) of what jobs you have held, and what responsibilities you have had, and think about whether you might want to offer your services on a freelance basis to former bosses or if you just want to start out fresh looking for new clients. Generally, it’s easier to start by working with former bosses who know you and who respect the work you’ve done in the past. They, in turn, can pass you on to some of their associates or clients, or perhaps provide referrals to other people who might be interested in your services. This is word-of-mouth marketing and public relations at its best and cheapest.
WORD TO THE WISE
Don’t burn your bridges with former bosses, even ones you didn’t particularly enjoy working with. You may have hated working for them at the office, but they might be much easier to deal with if you are a freelance consultant instead of their employee. Who knows? One of your least-favorite bosses just might turn out to be your golden ticket to fast-track freelancing.
Back to that list you made of jobs you’ve held: There may be a job or two on the list that you really enjoyed but don’t feel you could perform well as a freelancer; however, perhaps some small aspect of even those jobs could be developed as an outsource opportunity for you. Let’s consider two small ideas.
PROJECT SUMMARIES
Let’s say you spent years as a market researcher and analyst for a large company. Now, you could use that experience to write project summaries. You could set up an arrangement with your former employer—or a new client—so that they send their data to you with a summary of the desired project and pay you to write a report, summary, or analysis based on the information. Not only could you write reports, but you could also create tables, spreadsheets with pivot tables and analysis, graphs, and whatever else you need to show your interpretation of the data. Just be sure that any analysis and macros you create for such projects have been double- or even triple-checked and tested thoroughly. Numbers and statistics must be accurate.
All information pertaining to that client is confidential, and you can never show it to anyone else unless it’s years later and the company has closed down. Even then, think twice about it. If you want to present a sample of your work, you can re-create a presentation with a fictional product and revised data throughout the report. Remove company logos and names, of course, and make the examples all your own.
ONLINE SURVEYS
You can also think about creating online surveys for companies, especially those in your specialty area, who want to know more about what their customers think about the products they buy or services they use. There are many online survey companies you can use to develop specialized surveys for just about any kind of business that needs your help. Once the survey is done, you can collect the data and, depending on the objective of the survey, create a presentation report based on that information.
You can do this kind of work for just about any type of business, but you definitely need a good consultation with a client company contact who has a definitive idea about what the company wants to find out from this survey. You may need to do several revisions as the survey is developed. Also, be sure that you have only one established contact for the survey information. Trying to put together a survey while consulting with four or five people who each call you with their own ideas about how it should be done is a royal nightmare. Nip that situation in the bud and establish one contact only, and put the goals of the project in writing.
Survey Monkey (at www.SurveyMonkey.com) is one place to start looking at how surveys are created and how the data is presented to you at the close of the survey. You can sign up for free just to get an idea of how things work, but be aware that the free version limits the amount of questions per survey and how many users can take the survey. Still, it is a good way to start.
If you get into surveys as part of your business services, either through surveying your own clients, or creating them for other businesses and their products and services, definitely consider using the upgrades at Survey Monkey that allow many more options for you to work with and also give your work a more professional look. Once you have an understanding of online surveys, you can look at other survey companies to see what services they provide and whether they can offer you a better deal, based on what kind of returns you want to get.
HOW BOB DOES IT
Anyone who is setting up a freelance business has to figure out how to find clients. When I started freelancing full-time in February 1982, there was no Internet, and “networking” was something you did face-to-face.
My main way of getting clients back then was to send out postal mail—sales letters promoting my copywriting services. It worked incredibly well. Then I started to add other marketing tools, such as writing articles and giving talks, which also worked well.
Today, a lot of my clients come from the Internet, specifically from my search-optimized copywriting website, www.bly.com, and from my e-newsletter, which has 65,000 subscribers. I also still give talks, which are another effective way of drumming up business.
If a person who contacts me doesn’t have a company name or her own website, I dismiss the inquiry as not serious. I also turn away anyone who says something like, “We have a small budget.” If they can’t afford me, they can’t have me.
For many more tips, read my book Selling Your Services: Proven Strategies for Getting Clients to Hire You (or Your Firm) (Henry Holt, 1992).
PLANNING IS KEY
Of course, writing reports or creating surveys are not the only ways you can turn your past jobs into a freelance career. But you get the idea. Examine your jobs and the skills you gained in your years at work to see how you can turn that experience into your very own freelance business, one which you enjoy and find fulfilling. Obviously, if you didn’t enjoy a particular type of work, don’t try to do it as a freelancer. Believe me, your clients will know it when they see the work you provide them.
That’s the key to planning what you want to do as a freelance business: Do something you’re good at and that you enjoy doing. Your enthusiasm will impress potential clients when they are first trying to decide whether to hire you. Make sure that your enthusiasm is geared to your clients and their needs. It’s not about you; it’s about what’s in it for them if they hire you. Therefore, to get a clear idea about what you want to do, make that list of each previous job and what skills you learned during the course of each job.
HAVING A VISION
Once you have an idea of what you want to do, spend some time thinking about how