Shifting to Self Employment
Advice, Marketing and Implementation - helping professional women and creative men make the shift to self supporting productive work: a blending of entrepreneur and specialist.
Some have taken retirement to set up their business, others are still employed in their current jobs. I help them set themselves up as service providers/consultants/trainers/online trainers using their capability and know-how.
I work with them to focus on their unique niche, develop a business model that works for them, help organise the marketing and provide the practical know-who to get things done. I also help with the marketing services they require including building their website, coaching and helping them with their day to day marketing (creation of blog posts and other marketing assets including online training materials, podcasts, videos etc) and sales.
As the owner of a marketing services company I've worked with a range of clients over the last 15 years providing a range of marketing services from print to digital.
My expertise is on getting things done across the digital landscape using a range of specialist marketing providers. Clients often work with me on a retainer basis from 18 months to over 5 years now and continuing.
Entrepreneurship
Shifting to Self Employment
I've now been working with small business owners in Australia for over 15 years on their marketing implementation, but I've also had the benefit of a gifted mentor who works with business simulations and we have consulted on a number of projects together. Within the context of starting a business there are a whole lot of variables at work, while I take a simple approach, there is an appreciation of the complexity involved. To start you need a product, you'll need to be able to sell it, then deliver it to get paid. Then to be able to collect that money and to do that profitably ie. get paid more than it cost you to make or buy. Obviously this is what I mean by simple, but you know there's way more than that involved: How big do you want to get - just yourself to make a living, or to scale up? The product for a start, this could be a service or a physical product - does it solve a problem and will someone be willing to pay you for it. Is it a commodity product/service, or unique? How much can you sell it for, and how much do you need to sell to make a decent living? Commodities have to be sold in volumes to make decent revenue, whereas a unique product or service attracts a premium. These are just some of the ideas to consider. As I mentioned, complexity is part and parcel, but needs to be navigated. I've compiled a few videos on YouTube that you might find helpful, I will add some on business models at a future date: https://www.youtube.com/wisepreneursaustralia Also a very good read: https://hbr.org/1994/03/how-entrepreneurs-craft-strategies-that-work Plus the book Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson I hope this helps add a bit more clarity to the question you have. https://clarity.fm/nigelrawlins
Start-ups
Shifting to Self Employment
There are many experts out there vying for attention. If they don't have deep knowledge; all they are offering is a quick fix. They are just hustlers. To me this is just 'desperate for a buck web marketing.' Don't go there. To set yourself apart you do need deep knowledge and experience in your field. If it is relationships, then focus on relationships. However, I would hope that you have qualifications and experience in that field. I have worked with a social worker who had extended her studies into relationship counselling. She was in her early 60's and had spent many years counselling families and couples. I worked with her on her target market and how best to reach out to them. It wasn't hard to put together a website of her writings specifically answering the problems couples faced, both gay and heterosexual. She knew stuff, could write clearly and knew how to help people. I even used her for relationship counselling myself when I recently got married and wanted to work on a few things with my partner. I also worked with an alternative health practitioner who wanted to target women with fertility treatments. I knew he had no deep knowledge or any experience in that field. I couldn't help him. Nobody was going to believe him, unless desperate. I have since worked with a Gynaecologist with deep knowledge, experience and know-how of in-vitro fertility treatments. The difference between these two was huge, one a wanna-be the other an expert. Guess who gets all the fertility work in their target areas? To set yourself apart from the competition is to get out there and do the work, write about it and keep at it. This takes time, often many years. If you have that expertise, then what you are asking for is how to reach your target audience. That is down to marketing and choosing channels to reach them. I think a WordPress website is the way to go for creating the articles that people area searching for to solve their problems. They are looking for answers. You may be able to solve their problem. Do read widely in your topic, practice, and check out some Cal Newport's writings or videos on deep work. I think it is better to take small steps and build up a long term proposition in something you are really good at helping people with. cheers Nigel Rawlins wisepreneurs
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