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STOP SIGNS EVERYWHERE
What can you do when everything is on hold?
Shutdowns, lockdowns, adjustments, cancellations, opening, closing—every time you scroll or swipe you learn there’s some new THING to accommodate while you figure out how to carry on in these odd times. Around every corner there’s a dead end, or so it seems.
All of this is fraught with the added challenges of sorting the truth from the fiction (if you even can), loving your neighbors as well as you can in the midst of it, and making decisions as best you can with the resources you have available. Not such an easy puzzle to sort out for most of us.
I can’t solve all the difficulties you face in this very odd time. I can’t even solve all the difficulties I face—let me tell you, there are plenty. What I can do is point you, with big pointy fingers, to one way you can use this crazy season to start something. Something that depends more on YOU and the work you’re willing to put in than any other factor. Something which isn’t dependent on the arrival of Phase 2 or 3 or 4 of reopening…or closing…or opening.
What am I talking about already?
GRANDMA KNOWS WHAT ZOOM IS
I am talking about remote work and starting your own freelance service business. Now is the time if there ever was one. The whole world is getting acquainted with remote work, like it or not. People are being forced to accommodate modes of communication and methods of work they never would have considered before. When grandma knows what Zoom is, you can be sure the video conference has come fully mainstream. Does your grandma know what Zoom is?
What used to be unusual is now normal. It may have even zipped past normal at some point when we blinked and has now taken up residence as the preferred thing for many people. Whether you agree or disagree with all the factors that are making this the case, it’s still today’s reality, and one that presents us with certain opportunities if we will see them.
FREELANCERS AREN’T SCARY
Remote working freelancers doing business from their kitchen counters aren’t scary, untrustworthy, free spirits anymore, they’re just regular people doing business through one of the few doors left wide open right now. There are good freelancers and bad ones of course, but that’s true of brick and mortar businesses as well, and the business world is beginning to recognize this as they learn to trust their own employees to work from home.
3 Ways You Can START Today
The thought of starting your own business, if you’ve never done it before, can be daunting. But be assured, you don’t have to figure everything out on day one, I sure didn’t. That doesn’t mean you can’t start. When everything else around you is stopped, you can start. Call it a side hustle for now.
1. Assess your skills
Everyone has skills. They may be highly sought-after skills that took you many years to learn which can garner premium prices right out of the gate. They may be basic skills that took much less time to learn and will bring in lower rates. Maybe you need to take an online course to develop a skill that businesses need.
The good news is that in the freelance biz, no one cares about your degrees, they care about your skills, your work ethic, and what you can accomplish for their business. This means that as long as you are willing to push yourself to learn, you can always be improving your prospects and increasing the value you offer to clients.
2. Find a mentor, community, or course
You don’t have to do everything from scratch. There are tons of people out there who have paved the way for you to get started and who are more than happy to help you learn from their mistakes. Find a course or community online that will answer your questions or give you an outline to follow so you aren’t reinventing the wheel.
I started my biz with the help of the 30 Days or Less to Virtual Assistant Success course, now called the #FullyBookedVA System from Horkey HandBook. The practical help I received from that course in assessing and packaging my skills and the encouragement from the community connected to it were invaluable to keeping me on track when I felt overwhelmed with the magnitude of what I had decided to do. Day-by-day I charted a path that works for me, and two and a half years later I’m still here. You can read more about my journey with getting started as a noob in the online business world in this post on the Horkey HandBook blog.
3. Start
Just start. You can’t do it all at once and it won’t bear fruit overnight. There will be ups and downs. You will try some things that fail, that’s part of the deal. It’s true that if you never start something it can’t fail, but it also can’t succeed. You will learn a lot either way.
I can’t tell you how everything will play out in the coming months, but I say with a fair level of confidence that you won’t regret investing your time in starting something. You will certainly learn some things about yourself and the possibilities of what you can do.
The future needs people in it who are willing to start things even when starting is difficult. Maybe you’re one of those people, and if you are there is no time like the present to START.
