Self Employed Ideas - Need to escape the rat race!

ricardinho88

Well here's the story - I'm bored. I work in a sales job and I'm sick and tired of it. It's really well paid, but the pressure of monthly sales targets and the monotony of doing exactly the same thing all day every day is really getting me down. The problem is, sales and customer service are all I've got on my CV and I don't currently drive, so it's really hard to change my career path.

So I've come to the conclusion that setting up a little business doing what I actually want to do would be a good option to take, but I'm really struggling for idea's. I'm not interested in going down the self employed courier/delivery driver route that a lot of people take nowadays because the market is too saturated with them so it'd be too hard to make a good living.

So far I've come up with an errand service (I live in a town full of old folk, so I could pick up prescriptions etc), a CV writing service and a Social Media Consultant. For the latter, I'd approach local business and offer to get their businesses online via social networks to increase interest.

Apart from those, I'm pretty stuck. Anyone have any good idea's? And do mine sound ok?

[Deleted User]

Starting your own business is hard work and while the rewards can be great, the risks are high.


I would suggest thinking about the kind of work you want to do then see if you can find a paid job doing it. The job market is pretty good at the moment so think about what transferable skills you have then tailor your CV to suit.


Good luck!

BigAunty

Learn how to drive. You can do intensive courses.

Make sure you do a business plan - plenty of advice out there on how to do this.

Princes Trust help people of a certain age/education into self employment.

Dog walking, pet sitting, animal grooming,cleaning, window cleaning, locksmith, tutoring, taxi driver.

There should be plenty of websites which list ideas for self employment.

ricardinho88

I did consider Taxi driving, but I have read some horror stories online and the fact that I live in a small town is a problem too. There's already too many taxi companies here, so it'd be impossible to make a good living in my opinion.

I am very close to passing my driving test (I am taking my last lesson on tuesday, booking my test straight afterwards) so that'll open up a lot of oppertunities for me. I honestly think my location is a massive hindrance for me.

DKLS

You don't need to have an original idea, you can always borrow an existing business model and do it better, cheaper or faster.

PasturesNew

If you're good at sales then you just need to pick "whatever you fancy doing" because you can sell the product/service .... and/or you can find somebody to do the 'work' and you can concentrate on just bringing in the sales for them to satisfy.

You've really got the best skillset because that's the hard bit: actually selling something.

So, just pick something that gets you excited.

'Anybody' can be a worker ..... but work's no good without somebody having a sale for the end result.

Pennywise

You need a skill or an interest in something to be successfully self employed. Something that the average Joe Public can't do or doesn't know about.

If you do something that any Tom, !!!! or Sally can do, then you'll never get any decent earnings. You'll just be scrabbling around for work alongside loads of other people as the money gets less and less due to competition.

Things like do walking spring to mind. Brilliant if you want to just earn pocket money and like exercise, but realistically, not going to replace a half decent wage unless you scale it up, employ people etc., but even then, you need a lot of people to earn decent money.

One of my most successful clients started a business on the back of her hobby. Her hobby wasn't niche or extreme - literally a day to day activity which she enjoyed and spent a lot of time doing. She was frustrated that she couldn't buy the things she wanted, but she knew such products were available, so she found out where to buy in bulk, and started selling on ebay. The business grew, and she continued to source new products and then started her own website, which just grew and grew.

Or, as said above, copy an existing business model with low entry barriers and do it better. However, contrary to the above, I wouldn't go down the road of doing it cheaper - anyone can do that, so you're not protecting yourself against competition.

Flyonthewall

BigAunty wrote: »

Dog walking, pet sitting, animal grooming,cleaning, window cleaning, locksmith, tutoring, taxi driver.

While most these are all common things that people suggest they're not all as straightforward as they sound and there's usually high competition.

Dog walking seems very very popular right now, but it also means you are responsible for another life, there's a lot of walking, not all dogs like other dogs, some dogs are strong and will pull etc.

So whatever you do it needs to be completely thought through, even if it seems an easy thing to do to start with.

camelot1971 wrote: »

Starting your own business is hard work and while the rewards can be great, the risks are high.

I would suggest thinking about the kind of work you want to do then see if you can find a paid job doing it. The job market is pretty good at the moment so think about what transferable skills you have then tailor your CV to suit.

This. Another option is don't give up your job, but start doing the self employed stuff on the side and then if it is starting to do well consider giving up your job.

Otherwise the risks are high and you may find you aren't making much.

ricardinho88 wrote: »

I am very close to passing my driving test (I am taking my last lesson on tuesday, booking my test straight afterwards) so that'll open up a lot of oppertunities for me. I honestly think my location is a massive hindrance for me.

If you're taking your last lesson I would expect that you'd have your test booked for within the next week. Most instructors also book you in for a lesson the hour before the test.

I don't know what the wait time is for tests now, but it used to be weeks at least, unless you happen to find one where it's been cancelled but they can go fast.

Ideally you want to be practicing right up until your test. Doesn't have to be lessons if you have a car, L plates and someone who can be with you, but if not then I'd be booking more lessons.

As for the idea in your OP, you need to research if anyone else does that. Pharmacies often have people who deliver prescriptions, CV writing you can find online and their are numerous companies who do that and for social media consultant you'd need to see if any companies want that in the area. You may find there are errands you can do for people, but you may find you end up doing things more like gardening/mowing the lawn.

If you started to taxi people around you may find you'd have to go through all the official stuff to be a taxi driver and at the very least you'd need to make sure your car insurance covers you for business. Things like dog walking, you need to think about what I said earlier on in the post. If you do general labour you need to make sure you actually have the skills to do it properly as people aren't going to thank you if you make a mess of things or someone ends up seriously hurt.

BucksLady

How about looking at Franchise Sites for ideas? There might be a few ideas there which will inspire you

Here's a link to one of them : http://www.franchisedirect.co.uk/

DKLS

One huge feather in your cap op is your sales knowledge and experience. I understand your sick of it now, but how about using those skills for yourself?

I often find that sme's are very good at what they know and do, e.g making stuff. providing a service or coding etc but they don't have the admin, management, channels, presentation and sales skills or the time to learn.

There could be an opportunity there to provide a sales consultancy service, setting up sales models, training and on going support. Also If you create strategic partnerships with people like web designers you could upset other services to your customers.


Just an idea and observation of mine.

ElefantEd

Perhaps you could set up a service proofreading grocers' signs?