Oct
22
Money and Home Business – Have a Back-Up Plan That Doesn’t Suck
“Do you want to be homeless and live in the gutter?” Apparently, this is the biggest fear among would-be home business owners. It also seems to be the biggest fear of people who know and love would-be entrepreneurs. When I was about a week away from launching Itty Bitty Marketing, somebody very close to me (thankfully, not Jamie) asked me that exact question. Verbatim. What do you say to that? “Yes, actually, that’s exactly what I’d like. In fact, why don’t you just take my house and my car and I’ll do it right now?”
Many advice types suggest having something like seven gazillion months worth of savings before you make the leap, thus mitigating your risk of poverty and ridicule. While I’m sure that is a nice, safe plan for many people, in our case we would have shot ourselves had we waited that long. Instead, we decided to go with the Back-Up Plan method of small business management.
How To Make a Back-Up Plan
There are two key elements to a successful back-up plan. One, it has to be tolerable. Two, it has to be doable.
First, let’s look at tolerable.
Back when I was still attempting to be employable, I used to temp as an administrative assistant. I was pretty good at it, but I hated it. I mean, I really hated it. I hated getting dressed up. I hated acting like I gave a crap about their mediocre, random company. I hated having to pretend like I wanted, more than anything else in the world, to stay with said random company for the rest of my working life. Not cool.
Therefore, temping isn’t a good back-up plan for me. The key here is for me to analyze what sucks about temping (working in an office) and what isn’t too bad about temping (typing, administrative work). Once I’ve figured that out what works for me, I can identify a tolerable alternative to whipping on the pantyhose and kissing ass all day.
In Jamie’s case, he’s a pretty wicked photographer. While I doubt we’re going to retire off the income from his photography, it’s a viable back-up plan in case we’re ever on the verge of the poorhouse. I have no doubt there are plenty of lovely babies out there just dying to have him make them laugh on film. For my mother, she types about 95 words per minute. She can always get freelance work as a voice transcriber, which I gather pays pretty well for sitting at your computer all day in your underwear. Not that she would do that or anything.
Some other options you can consider are:
* freelance writing
* graphic design
* web design
* computer programming
* tutoring
* resume writing
* editing (essays, copy)
* babysitting
* seasonal work
* part-time jobs
* dog walking
* pet sitting
* house cleaning
* note-taking
This is not a comprehensive or exhaustive list. I just hear from so many entrepreneurs that they can’t think of any other ways of making money. If you have any level of skill whatsoever, there is something you can do that people will pay you for that does not necessitate going back to work full time. Nothing this list is supposed to make you millions. It’s supposed to get you through your rough patches.
Now what about doable?
The second requirement of a successful back-up plan is that it needs to easily and quickly executable. The whole point of this plan is to be able to implement it immediately if you need money. Starting a mail-order cheese business, while admirable and potentially very fulfilling, does not fit the bill.
If you want to be a freelance writer, you can start making money this week. The same is true for many other marketable skills. Through services like Elance, Guru, and GetAFreelancer, you can find work almost instantly. The key is to have an infrastructure already in place before your situation becomes urgent. When you’re ready to start working from home on a full time basis, spend a little bit of money to get a membership for your site of choice. If your plan is to take in kids for babysitting or do some tutoring on the side, have flyers printed and ready so there’s nothing stopping you from starting right away.
When you realize that there’s a very good chance you won’t make this month’s mortgage payment, that’s not the time to start thinking about writing your flyer copy. Get everything ready beforehand, and the stress of not knowing what to do next virtually disappears.
What about you guys? Do you have a back-up plan? Do you end up using it? How’s it working out? Talk to me!
Related: Aaron over at the Shane and Peter Blog has a great post about making the leap to freelancing today. It was nice to read someone actually talking about the good sides of freelancing for once.
In other yummy acts of linky love, Genesis over at At Home Mom did an interview with me that’s live on her blog today. It’s fun for the whole family. Except the members of the family who don’t like the word “sex”. Them, it’s not so fun for.
If you want to catch the remaining three weeks of our as-requested-by-you tutorial, subscribe to the feed. To quote everyone’s favorite purple dinosaur, it’s super-dee-duper.
It amazes me that no matter how well I do as a small business owner someone is always there to question my ways. Usually relatives.
Even if they haven’t seen me in 3 years. And I tell them that I make more then they do. And I tell them I’m having fun and learning a lot along the way.
They still tell me I’m going about things the wrong way, and it’s too risky, and (thank you Naomi) I’m going to be homeless and living in the gutter.
So, congrats to all small business owners who are still with it despite the nay sayers. Just don’t listen to them—listen to Naomi instead : )
I hear you naomi. I made the jump while my wife was still in graduate school. Between the two of us we had little income, but we also has little expenses. My income increased as I got my act together and within about a year I was stabilized. Frankly we have been blessed in business. For every struggle we have had a gift. Our team, our spouses, our clients have been amazing. I once heard a talk about the difference between faith and fear.
Faith: Believing something will happen in the future that you cannot see.
Fear: Believing something will happen in the future that you cannot see.
The only difference is whether or not you think that thing is good. If you keep in mind that about half of everything we worry about already happened in the past, and since we can’t change the past, is a waste of time, another 30% of the things we worry about will never come true, the next 13% of those will come true but wont be as bad as we imagined, which leaves us with about 7%. Of that 7% half of them will kill you, meaning you’re worries are over. So about 3.5% of all the things you spend your time thinking negatively about are real worries.
Meaning you expend a lot of energy pointlessly.
I sympathize as I have the same issue. The stats are kind of made up from memory, since I can’t find my original source.
Naomi! I love your style of writing! I was literally laughing out loud reading this post – I love it and can TOTALLY relate. When I jumped off the corporate chuck wagon I had NO savings. I started freelance writing because I needed money TOMORROW and it ended up turning into something quite profitable that will fund my big, life-shattering idea as soon as I come up with it.
This is great advice. Being somewhat of a risk taker, I have actually ended up homeless (though I was among the upper echelon of the homeless, possessing a tent vs. the lower class in the cardboard boxes). And you know what – even that is better than squeezing into panty hose and having to pretend like you care about some random company.
I got to see the country from coast to coast on foot and meet some amazing people with completely different perspectives. And then when I was done with that, I moved on and moved up – anything is possible. So even if you fail miserably (which I don’t think anyone needs to if they take the advice here in this post) it’s still not that bad. :)
Naomi:
Wow! What an incredible amount of content you’re cranking out. In my view, the backup plan is…start another company ;)
There’s always ways of making money, day 1. Consider pre-selling a product that’s not yet made, offer related consulting services, etc.
Marc Andreessen sums it up nicely:
If your startup fails, try another one. If that one fails, get back into a high-growth company to reset your resume and get more skills and experiences. Then start another company. Repeat as necessary until you change the world.
(http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/the-pmarca-gu-1.html)
And as a fellow copy edit stickler, I thought I’d point out the extraneous apostrophe in your post title. Regardless, keep up the great work!
Best,
Matt
Yowza, people! WP normally notifies me if I have comments and today it decided not to. We have a strained relationship, WP and I.
@ Mason – Thank you! Relatives can be brutal when it comes to starting a business. My (much nicer than I am) husband says it’s because they love you and don’t want you to get hurt. I won’t even say what I think it is. This isn’t a family blog, but it is PG-13.
@ Shane – Awesome! I love the Faith/Fear thing and I will ruthlessly steal it as need be. I’ll give credit to you and then you can deal with giving credit to whoever said it first.
@ Christine – Um… how cool is that?! I was reading somewhere today (eMoms? Freelance Folder? I don’t know) and a commenter said that you spend 80 hours a week working for yourself so you don’t have to spend 40 hours a week working for someone else. Good enough for me!
@ Matt – Thanks for coming to IttyBiz! It’s great to see you. I love your back-up plan. I find when people ask me what I do for a living, I don’t know what to say. It feels like the better question would be, “What don’t you do?” And thanks for pointing out the typo – in the headline, no less! Had I seen your comment earlier, my mother wouldn’t have had to call me to point it out. Is there a smiley for “blushing with shame”?
“There are two key elements to a successful back-up plan. One, it has to be tolerable. Two, it has to be doable.”
Words to live by. As a coach, I know that doability is key to follow-through.
Keep the good stuff coming!
Naomi, this is fabulous. Just fabulous. I’m glad I have found your blog and look forward to future posts. :)
Talk about a timely post! I am sitting in my living room right now, torn between accepting a part-time receptionist job (ick!) to help supplement my income or just giving myself a few more cash-poor months to get my freelance business really settled. You have just helped me to make the decision to not sell out and do something that will make me unhappy. I can’t thank you enough for that.
Wow, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I said yes to design a blog for Naomi. This thing is really taking off – and so deserved too. Congrats!
I hope to become a full-time freelancer someday too. Its just such a huge (and scary) decision to think of right now… Maybe, umm… later….
@ Dave – Thanks for coming! You’re right – I could have loads of perfectly valid backup plans, except for the tiny detail that I wouldn’t wish myself on anyone as an employee. Keep coming back! We love you!
@ Rebecca – I just checked out your site and it’s awesome! A quarter life crisis IS so last year. Or maybe that was just MY last year.
@ Tamara – I don’t want to have your success or failure on my head, and I could get into the whole “do what you feel comfortable with” thing, but I won’t. You’re so good at what you do and so close to something major. Just keep that in mind, okay?
@ Chris… You get a pass on my “get off your ass and quit your day job” rant. For now. You have a very small baby and health care in the States sucks. And by the way, another person emailed me about your web design services today. Told you so. :)
For now my back-up plan is keeping a day job. As you mentioned, the health insurance situation in the U.S. is really dire.
Is it exhausting? You bet! But it’s stimulating too (and will be more so when I find a better day job fit), and I can pay my mortgage, and the three of us have health insurance. Could be a lot worse.
Sonia, I think you’re right on. Your day job is in marketing/pr, right? And hubby stays home with the gorgeous one? I think (like it’s any of my business at all) that you’re in the perfect situation to do that. I think you’re being smart and thinking about it, though, without just staying in a crappy job in a field you don’t love for some arbitrary reason.
We’re fortunate in that health care isn’t an issue, we have modified rent control, and we don’t have a car. Those three things combined eliminate a whole lot of risk.
@ Tamara – that is really cool. You have to keep us updated and let us know how everything turns out. If there is anything we can do let us know.
@ Everyone- seriously, congrats to you all. I am not sure how you do it; it’s probably come out in Naomi’s posts that I tend to lean towards the “work for a company you hate for 6 years” direction. Not that I’ve actually done that :) It’s really encouraging to see all of you taking the opportunity to do something meaningful and create your own jobs,
@ Chris- I will not give you a pass. You are an awesome website designer and you should not waste your time doing anything else. :)