Anyone who opts for self-employment quickly learns that succeeding as your own boss is no walk in the park. While professional freedom has many, many joys, it also involves significant risks. If you're considering self-employment, or you're already self-employed, The Self-Employment Survival Guide: Proven Strategies to Succeed as Your Own Boss alerts you to the challenges involved and provides proven strategies for surmounting these obstacles and succeeding. You'll also learn what you need to put in place before taking the leap to being your own boss to help assure your success. Working for yourself offers personal freedoms and rewards, but the road can curve or travel uphill at times. Here, Jeanne Yocum shares eight key behaviors that impede success and provides proven solutions for the various obstacles that might cross your path, including unreasonable client demands, slow payers, unexpected client defections, daily schedules, health and financial planning, and the feelings of isolation that can sometimes accompany working on your own. Unlike many books that provide only a rose-colored view of self-employment, this book gives a full, realistic view of what being your own boss is actually like. By learning about the ups and downs that come with being in charge of your own livelihood, you will be better able to handle the demands of self-employment and succeed on your own terms.
Part I: Now That You Work for Yourself 1. You're the Boss Now 2. Make Working from Home Work 3. Don't Sell Yourself Short 4. Managing Your Time 5. Keeping Up With New Skills 6. Trying to Be All Things to All People 7. Becoming Overconfident 8. Core Elements of Your Success Part II: Clients and Workloads 9. Having Too Many Eggs in One Client Basket 10. When Clients Are Unreasonable 11. Fluctuating Workloads 12. Clients Who Don't Hold Up Their End of the Bargain 13. Handling Competing Client Crises 14. Sudden, Unexpected Client Defections 15. When Vendors Let You Down 16. Self-Employment Lessons I Learned from My Father Part III: Financial Expectations 17. Being Financially Self-Sufficient 18. Saving for Retirement 19. The Taxman Cometh 20. Deadbeat Clients 21. Surviving Cash Flow Ebbs 22. Six Things That Make Self-employment Worthwhile Part IV: Potential Roadblocks to Success 23. The Double Whammy of Health Issues 24. Alliances Gone Wrong 25. Avoiding Burnout 26. Falling into the Doldrums 27. Getting Discouraged 28. Feeling All Alone 29. Secondhand Stress 30. Dealing with Insecurity 31. Bonus Section: Eight Behaviors to Avoid If You're Self-employed 32. So, What's Stopping You?
