Facing The 5 Fears I Had Before Becoming Self-Employed

I’m a spreadsheet guy. For almost three years I tinkered with my Excel file that I called “Freedom.xls” to see if I could ever become self-employed.

I created the spreadsheet to face my fears and to come up with a plan before I faced them. That way, I could prepare in advance. But as Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Fear #1: Can I Make Enough Money?

Even though I was making about 20% of my income while I was doing my web design on the side, I was hesitant to give up my weekly paycheck.

I wanted to generate positive cash flow as quickly as possible even though I had 3-6 months of living expenses to use if I needed.

Having a cash reserve helped me face and overcome that fear.

Fear #2: Can I Manage It (the business and all that it entails)

I knew that I could code a website. What I was unsure of was how I would generate leads, close business, file my business taxes, open up a business checking account, and manage the invoicing process.

Since I went full-time self-employed in the middle of 2012, I just put everything in a folder and brought it to my accountant (that I found through a networking group). He helped me get things set up for the next year and every year since.

I talked with my local credit union about opening a sole proprietor savings account. Since my County/State did not require a business license, I had an easier time getting that account opened.

I flubbed my way through the first 3-4 leads and closed the business. It was awkward but nearly as much as I imagined.

Fear #3: Can I Compete?

There are a number of web design companies in my area. There was no way I could directly compete with them.

What I did was to niche down to an audience that could not afford these agencies, people like me. People that were self-employed or had 3-5 employees.

There is a large number of people that need websites but couldn’t afford agency prices.

So by niching down, I was able to compete.

Fear #4: Can I Find Paying Clients?

Since I had been working on the side as a web designer for five years, I knew that there were paying clients. What I didn’t know was if I could find enough paying clients.

Finding 3 or 4 clients a year was fun as a side gig. But could I find 12 a year? Could I increase the 20% of what may web design was paying to cover 100% of my income with enough paying clients?

To find clients, I decided that the best was to get my name out there was to SEO my website for my services, but more importantly, in my area. Search Engine Optimization for “web design” is tough to place in the top 3. But if I did my SEO for “web design Bel Air MD,” I could get on the first page of Google.

Back then my site was set up to find people looking for web design in my area. But staying there was hard.

I joined multiple networking groups to develop relationships with local business owners.

Guess what, in the 8 years I have been full-time at web design, more than 95% of my work has come from referrals. From people, I developed in real-life relationships with. So a let my SEO strategy drop and doubled down on getting to know more people.

The adage is true, “people buy from those they know, like, and trust.”

Fear #5: What If I Fail?

If I failed to make enough money to support my family in the first 3-6 months, I could use the savings that we had stored up.

We had no debt but what we owed on the house, so financially we were able to have a longer time to get up to speed.

If I couldn’t generate enough income, the worst thing that would happen is that I would have to go back and take another corporate job. Maybe we would have to live off of our home equity line a bit.

But I didn’t rely just on my web design to bring in income early on. I taught karate to kids in various homeschool co-ops for close to 18 months. I took a part-time job as the night watchman at my church. I wrote and published Bible studies based on Star Wars on Amazon.

I did what I needed to in order to keep my family afloat.

You can too.

This is a modified version of a post that was originally posted on my previous blog, FaceYourGoliaths.com