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.
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