Many would-be entrepreneurs, when faced with the reality of
escaping the rat race and going it alone in a solo
enterprise, raise a multitude of questions regarding their
employees. They worry about how many staff they will need,
the best time in the company's life to start looking for
extra hands, how to manage payroll, taxation, benefits and
staff illness. Before you know it the budding small
business owner has wound himself up to the point of inertia
and decides to stay put, trapped in the shackles of office
life.
However, good news is never far away. Here's some for you:
you can start a business and make a success of it without
ever having to take on a single employee. Back in 2006, an
article by Jim Hopkins in USA Today talked about the rise
of the microbusiness, which at the time, numbered 20
million in the US alone. That's 20 million people making it
in business without the headache of employing anyone else.
How do they manage it? Here are a few ideas to get you
thinking like a solopreneur.
Strategic partnerships
Bringing in a partner is a resource often overlooked by the
first-time entrepreneur. Take the example of a Bob the
Baker who makes the most wonderful cakes in the world. Bob
knows his cakes would be a hit all over the country and
needs to work out how to sell effectively on line. So, he
teams up with a Winston the Webmaster who also happens to
know how to use the internet to market very effectively.
This partnership works quite simply because two people, who
each need the skill the other possesses, have come together
to produce an income. Bob cannot sell the cakes without the
skills of Winston and vice versa. Any employees? Not
necessary. It's a straight partnership, the income split is
worked out according to workload (or however else they
choose to work it out). Is it not better to have half a
successful business than own a failure in its entirety?
Outsourcing
The baking business is booming now, Bob is busy making all
those lovely cakes and Winston equally so updating the
website and promoting them. Orders are pouring in from all
over with as many as 20 emails a day. Is it now time to
take on an office administrator to deal with this? What
about someone to help bake the cakes? How about someone who
can upload pictures onto the website and manage simple
order fulfilment? That makes three new employees, right?
Wrong. All of these jobs can be outsourced or, in other
words, contracted out. A VA (virtual assistant) can take on
the job of taking in and responding to the emails, another
baking firm could be contracted to make the fillings for
the cakes, yet another VA could be used to manage parts of
the website.
Franchising/licensing
The business has grown phenomenally in its first year and
the cakes are amazingly popular. There are now no fewer
than 6 contractors involved, all looking after various
aspects of the day to day running of the company and still
nobody is employed. Bob and Winston, however, are feeling
the burn and would like to take a little more of a back
seat. But how do they start doing less without having to
take on staff to manage the business? Sell licences for
people to take on an identikit business of their own,
running it in exactly the same way as they do. By creating
a licence or a franchise for the business the owners not
only create substantially higher revenues from their
original idea but do so by stepping out of the business to
manage the franchise operation, still without employing
anyone!
It sounds so simple, does it not? Business really can be as
simple as this with some thought and planning. Obviously
there is hard work, talent and determination involved in
getting through each of the steps but the end product
really is achievable without the need to wade through the
red tape associated with taking on permanent staff. Any
more excuses to not go for it?
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Want to learn more about escaping the rat race at a normal
pace?
Go to http://www.RatRaceEscapeArtist.com
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