What do you self employed types do then?

Hattigol

I chase ambulances. Well, that's the public's perception of it anyway and I'd hate to disagree with the populist viewpoint. 

Set up on my own two years ago after 24 years at it - WildWood Legal. A shameless plug and a big clue as to my Weller adulation.

Brilliant working for myself but tough at times. I have a few links with the scooter-riding community as I've ridden them for years and set up and ran a helmet company for a few years. Plus I do the legal Q & A for Scootering magazine. 

Couldn't go back to being an employee in a million years...

gordiji

After being politely asked to leave my Bsc at the end of the 1st yr i ended up being a tree surgeon for 20yrs or more. Started with an older mate who encouraged me to do a formal course near Guildford in what turned out to be the year of the great storm '87.

Stayed down south doing reasonably well especially when gigging as well. Spent 6 months climbing (trees) in Cali which paid my stay & some.

Still self employed as a gardener/guardian of a manor house in France (belonging to an old client from Sussex).

Always enjoyed the liberty. Probably managed a 4 day week averaged over last 35 yrs.Spent a year in a Meditation Centre & another in India. Rarely known stress & never overdrawn ! (apart from the diminishing mortgage).

 

midlifecrisis

left college and worked for 1 year at an old photography studio then went self employed freelance and been doing that for the last 37 years. Worked at many types of photography. had many good and bad times. had studios and worked from home. Still enjoy it but not with a passion that i used to. Despite covid this year hasnt been too bad,   very quiet summer but busier now than this time last year.  I got into it as i loved photography. Being self employed because no one would employ me.

axisus

@WiresDreamDisasters Yours was a rather interesting read! 

JohnS37

I have had many different types of work, mostly self-employed, but including shopkeeper, product designer, inventor, computer software sales, perfumery, wholesaler, gift shop,kitchen shop, lingerie, ‘world domination’ internet software project, printing industry, advertising, to name a few.  I am retired now, and my breadth of experience led me into mentoring for a charity that helps young entrepreneurs.
My advice is to choose something that you find satisfying and work out how you can make an income from it.  Not necessarily a living, but an income.  Make sure there is a market for what you choose to make or do, even it is a small niche.  Then set up a website and/or social media to promote it.  That suggests self-employment, which I would recommend from the independence point of view, but you could also look for an employed position.
Convince yourself that you are good at it before trying to sell to others - if you can’t persuade yourself then you might be in the wrong place.
Good luck, and keep us posted.  Don’t be afraid to ask for help!

RaymondLin

Wedding Photography, although I am taking a forced sabbatical!

ManWithoutSkin

I'm an airline pilot.  

Apart from some pocket money jobs, I've been self employed pretty much since leaving university in 2002.  I played in a signed band for ten years and then worked as a flight instructor for two. Last year I started my current job and enjoyed all of the benefits of being employed until moving base and being made a contractor in January.

Lestratcaster

Got my own guitar tuition business going for 12 years now. Have steadily built up my profile and just before covid hit I was doing pretty well, fully equipped studio and nice guitars to play. Since then its been a bit ropey with dropouts and lower numbers but I am hoping I can get through this and not have to close down.

RaymondLin

Long story.

Went to uni to Study Architecture.  Got my degree, work for a year in practice, loved it, went back to do post-grad and RIBA Part 2.  Hated it.  Quit and went and did a Law Conversion, also known as the Common Professional Exam.

Done the CPE, then did the LPC after that.  I think altogether I spent about 6 years across 3 different universities.

After the LPC I went to work for a small high street firm and then the department I was in, who had a contract with Norwich Union (now Aviva) who handled defendant road traffic accidents. 2 years passed, that department got TUPE into a much much larger international law firm.  But my commute went from 45mins on the train to 90mins on the train.  It was in the middle of this I started my own Wedding Photography business on the side in my own time.  Taking annual leave and using them to shoot weddings.  On the weekend, if I am not doing that, i am helping my parents out in their Take Away.  So basically I work 7 days a week either in the office doing law, shooting weddings or serving takeaway orders.

When I moved to the larger firm, I stayed for 5 1/2 years, got sick of all of it towards the end.  Around the same time my mum had a cancer scare so I want to work closer to home so took any job, found a credit control job 5mins from home.  Applied and got it.  Did that for 2 years until one day the director of the UK division asked if i want to do the graphic design/photography for the UK division as he heard about my photography stuff.  I said Okay.

That was 3 years ago.  I still shooting weddings throughout it all, and help my parents on the weekend.

thecolourbox

I don't think I have much opportunity to do anything music related, though I've huge respect for you guys who do as I know what the work involves just to do the actual business side let alone the playing teaching or making etc.

I am a piano player who messes with guitar rather than the other way around but gigging on keys is beyond me really I think, obviously with covid but in general also due to the commitment a band requires. I don't think I'd have the support of my other half for this, as she's not really someone who will go and watch live music so whenever I'm doing that she'd be stuck in by herself I guess. Who knows

hywelg

Left Uni with a 2:2 in Mining Engineering in '75. Was eased out of British Coal in '93 and started my own business making and repairing stained glass windows, domestic only almost zero ecclesiastical. I had dabbled fairly extensively as a hobby for 8 years or so prior to being made redundant so it wasn't starting from scratch. 

My business has grown and now employs my younger son full-time and my elder son part time. I'm trying to retire but failing, we have never had so much work on the books. 

Jason

I used to run The Guitar Show...

I'm lucky to have what I believe is now called a portfolio career, 50% of my week I am a Course leader for BIMM, (before the promotion, I was a one day a week, 25 weeks a year, lecturer). The rest of my week is/was running The Guitar Show.

When I went self employed a mate of mine said to me, don't expect to see any money for the first 3-4 years, he was right, my first year I earned a massive £4500, second year £9000, not much for a 40+ man with a mortgage and 2 kids.

Being self-employed means working harder than I ever did when I had a full time job, never really having a holiday, even when we are away I slope off for an hour to answer emails because no one else is there to. It means a lot of sleepless nights aligned with a bloodymindedness to just carry on. Its learning a load of new skills that you never thought you would need, I now have a solicitor, never thought I would need one of those, then a large publishing company starting stealing my ideas etc, I've had to learn about taxes (personal and coporate) VAT returns / EU VAT returns, learning how to build websites, use photoshop, training courses on social media etc etc

I'm lucky that the BIMM stuff has kept going and not all my eggs are in one basket, otherwise this year would have been terrifying rather than set back.

Saying all that, I've never been happier at work, I wasn't a very good employee, when something was shit I would just say it was shit and not sugar coat it, this gets (poor) bosses backs up, I'm happier plowing my own furrow.

Just do what you love, the government job re-training thing said I should be a teacher or work in events, I've ended up where I should be, doing both.

DamianP

I make guitars.

Snags

thecolourbox said:

I don't think I have much opportunity to do anything music related, though I've huge respect for you guys who do as I know what the work involves just to do the actual business side let alone the playing teaching or making etc.

I am a piano player who messes with guitar rather than the other way around but gigging on keys is beyond me really I think, obviously with covid but in general also due to the commitment a band requires. I don't think I'd have the support of my other half for this, as she's not really someone who will go and watch live music so whenever I'm doing that she'd be stuck in by herself I guess. Who knows

It may not lead to a career, but it could lead to a second string, or an opportunity to do something you enjoy that helps ease the pain of moving to something else. Subject to the end of Covid (or the restrictions assocaited with it).

I have a good friend who's piano man. He doesn't really do bands, because he gets too stressed by it all, although he has always had a duo project on the go with a friend over the years, and in the last couple of years has ended up in a local ska band, because he's very much "out of sight" there. He also plays (played ) in a local pub every Saturday night - he can play pretty much anything, particularly if it's acceptable to turn it a bit honky-tonk or music hall, so just plays what he wants and weaves in requests on the night. Off the back of that he got various private engagements. Before that lot he used to play for then MD panto and other productions for the local am-dram lot.

None of that is his career, but it has supported him doing a day job for the local council, which he can leave behind at the end of the day, and indulge the musical side in ways that he is comfortable with.

Also, he didn't do any of it overnight, and whilst being intensely capable on the piano has really had to be pushed, cajoled, and encouraged by friends to do each different stage, because he lacks the confidence to step into it, despite kind of wanting to. Once he has, he settles in and is happy as larry, and just refuses to do the next thing

Not easy to push those doors at the moment, but when the world allows, baby steps mght lead to bigger insights.

Cranky

VimFuego said:

thecolourbox said:

Interesting, thanks chaps. I suppose already the common theme is adaptability then as you're both doing some quite unrelated jobs at the same time by the looks of it. 

The Mrs is obsessed with me somehow becoming a bread baker though every time she mentions it she has forgotten two things - 1, that i'm not that good at it and 2, that in order to make a decent wage I'd have to sell an absolute tonne of bread products haha. Reason I mention that, is that it seems that maybe a combination of things adds up rather than relying solely on one thing that could fail and leave you up the creek, I suppose

I went through a period of growing fruit and veg to sell. The main issue I found was judging how much to grow to sell at any one time. I usually ended up growing far more than I could sell and having to throw away a lot of produce, or occasionally not growing enough. Whilst there are possibly fewer variables to baking bread (not many bakers I know have to contend with fooking deer eating they product in the night) it's still, to me, the biggest issue. I'm sure with experience I could've over come that, but illness, death etc. got in the way.

I hate deer so much

Budgie

thecolourbox said:

Budgie said:

Mainly as an artist

Do you have a link to your art? Quite interested to see it

No worries, I’ll PM you a link to one of the galleries. 

LuttiS

thecolourbox said:

Cheers chaps this is interesting stuff.

Whatever happens I can't really afford to drop down much unless I'm 100% certain it'll get better, as I'm already on lower than average wage and have a mortgage and wedding and future children to pay for.

But I've never known what I want to do because i don't know what other jobs there are and what they involve. A bit like if I said I'm a Property Management surveyor, what would that sound like I did to you? I bet it doesn't conjure up spreadsheets and writing shitty updates on dodgy Dave not paying his rent on time, or arguing with an internatiomal pension investor about whether they should pay £500 to cover a sky light with a hole in it to stop a leak. The job title bears no significance to what you actually do day to day so I'm just trying to learn what others do

When you put it like that it sounds like a perfectly reasonable skill set. My job title is Commercial sales and marketing something or other (it changes quite a lot...). Basically I'm in charge of selling stuff, it's a small business.

It involves a lot of spreadsheets, compiling shitty reports, arguing with people who are wrong, and a bit of web stuff, photography and graphic design. 

Point is if you reword your skills and with a bit of creativity you could fit my job description. 

Like me, you clearly don't know what you want to do, so maybe just find something else that you can do. Look on the job pages and read the spec, not the titles. 

thecolourbox

LuttiS said:

thecolourbox said:

Cheers chaps this is interesting stuff.

Whatever happens I can't really afford to drop down much unless I'm 100% certain it'll get better, as I'm already on lower than average wage and have a mortgage and wedding and future children to pay for.

But I've never known what I want to do because i don't know what other jobs there are and what they involve. A bit like if I said I'm a Property Management surveyor, what would that sound like I did to you? I bet it doesn't conjure up spreadsheets and writing shitty updates on dodgy Dave not paying his rent on time, or arguing with an internatiomal pension investor about whether they should pay £500 to cover a sky light with a hole in it to stop a leak. The job title bears no significance to what you actually do day to day so I'm just trying to learn what others do

When you put it like that it sounds like a perfectly reasonable skill set. My job title is Commercial sales and marketing something or other (it changes quite a lot...). Basically I'm in charge of selling stuff, it's a small business.

It involves a lot of spreadsheets, compiling shitty reports, arguing with people who are wrong, and a bit of web stuff, photography and graphic design. 

Point is if you reword your skills and with a bit of creativity you could fit my job description. 

Like me, you clearly don't know what you want to do, so maybe just find something else that you can do. Look on the job pages and read the spec, not the titles. 

I didn't say anything about skills! The fact that I'm rubbish at my job suggests exactly the opposite even. The job spec for my job does not reflect what I have to do, hence the problem of not knowing what people actually do for their job as I don't know that the job spec is actually reflective of it

WiresDreamDisasters

axisus said:

@WiresDreamDisasters Yours was a rather interesting read! 

Thanks man. There's loads of good advice/viewpoints in this thread!

@thecolourbox with experience like that, sounds to me like you already have the foundations of getting out of bed and having a list of things to do. Very important for anyone self employed or self-guided, to have a process to follow. I'm a fan of lists. We use JIRA to organise our workloads. It used to be Trello and Mantis. Same sort of thing though - spend a chunk of each morning just organising work.

That way you know what you're avoiding when you're posting on here!

JerkMoans

I spread Peace and Harmony.  In the dispute resolution business  

Sometimes I even sport a really rather far out white hat to do it