An Income Strategy to Smooth the Transition from Employed to Self Employed

Moving from employed to self-employed so that you can continue to care for your child or children with additional needs is by no means the easy choice, but it can be a game changer in helping you to maintain your financial independence (and dare I say it? Your sanity!).

A recent report carried out in NI by Carers UK, found that 1 in 3 unpaid women carers had to leave work to care for someone, while a further 1 in 4 had to reduce their hours and a further 1 in 6, had to take a demotion or a lower paid job in order to make working and caring, work!

At one time or another since my eldest son was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy in 2012, I've fallen into all of these scenarios: first I went part time (massive dint to income)! Then, I held back from applying for roles that paid more because I couldn't bring myself to apply for roles when I knew that I might not be able to fully give myself to the role (the whole 'I can't in case...' scenario). Then eventually in 2019, after years of feeling like I was taking the proverbial P, I left work as the 9-5 had become untenable.

All of these options had their own, less than positive impact:

Reducing my hours gave me more time to do the important things at home, but carried a huge financial impact, which then impacted on my sense of self-worth, created feelings of self disappointment and meant that I wasn't able to do the things I wanted to do with the boys.

Holding back from roles impacted my sense of self-value to any organisation, including the one I was working in. It created a complex around my 'enoughness' and the thing about that, is that once you begin to question your 'enoughness' in one area of your life, you begin to question it in all areas of your life. When you're not a good enough employee, suddenly you're feeling like not a good enough mum, or carer, or friend...

Going self-employed gave me a life-line, an opportunity to feel 'enough', to earn around caring, to build flexibility while also continuing to develop my skills rather than letting them get outdated in an ever changing world of work. It wasn't easy either though and it took time to build systems, processes, and a business model that worked for me, and that would work for others too.

Here, I'd like to share with you a 3-tiered approach to income streams that has worked well for me and might help you to manage your transition from employed to self employed.

It goes like this:

1 - Bread & Butter

2 - Tomorrow Money

3 - Long Term Plan

Income stream 1. Bread & Butter

If you're making a transition from employed to self-employed, then here is a good place to start, and it could work well if you're still employed.

This is a source of income that makes up your bread & butter (i.e. pays essential bills) but takes little background effort from you. This could be a part time contract that you secure, a small side hustle like Tropic, or doing some self-employed work for your current employer if they are open to that. 

It usually requires you to simply do the work without having to consider any of the infrastructure e.g. things like background systems, marketing or operational activities.

For me, I created the bread & butter work by using my connections in the enterprise space. As a long-time business advisor involved in delivering on many of the government funded enterprise programmes in NI, I used my connections to secure training delivery opportunities on some programmes. It's not a long-term solution, but it provided me with just less (sometimes much more if I take on more work), than my part time paid role. I just deliver the training and don't get involved in programme management. It's the bread and butter that pays the essential bills. I could have way more work in this space, but it's a time for money option and doesn't work for me long term as my son's condition is progressive and he'll need me. more as he grows.

The bread and butter can be directly related to your ultimate business idea, but it can also be something different e.g. a quick and easy side hustle.

Income Stream 2. Tomorrow Money

This is where you consider how you can create a super simple offer, something that, if all of your income dried up tomorrow, you could get out there straight away with. Ask. yourself: 'if I absolutely had to start a business tomorrow and start earning straight away, what's the simplest thing I could do?'. Then create a minimum offer based off the back of that.

This works really well for knowledge based businesses as there are so many online & offline methods for packaging your knowledge and getting paid for it in a way that is profitable - think consultancy, mentoring, courses. The aim here is to create simple, yet profitable ways to earn an income.

For me, these are a mix of my strategy days and my mentoring programmes. I've been long enough in my industry to be able to do this type of work with my eyes closed and I know that I have knowledge that is really useful to others starting or growing a business. I run a limited number of strategy days per month (they're full days and working full days isn't really conducive to my life circumstances, but if I run only a few per month, I can get my boys' Dad to take the time off since I get well paid for them). The mentoring programmes are also high profit because, again it's based completely on my knowledge base and these are done via Zoom, meaning I can be totally flexible with times.

If you absolutely had to make money tomorrow, what could you do?

Income Stream 3 - The Long-Term Plan

There's no such thing as an over night success, if you want to create a business that no longer trades time for money, then. you have to be willing to put in the work. This is why this 3-tiered system works.

When you have established a bread & butter income (one that sees you work less than in your job but brings in an income not too far off your salary), and created a minimum viable product as part of your tomorrow money, then you buy yourself time to work on building your audience for your long-term plan.

As a parent carer, you'll want your long-term plan to either provide recurring revenue e.g. a subscription based business model, or to be a scalable offer i.e. an offer whereby you can increase sales without increasing the number of hours your have to be physically available e.g. evergreen courses, programmes, digital downloads etc. 

My long-term plan is the development of my social enterprise, Carers at Work, trading as Carer Mums in Business. Through it, I plan to develop a range of online services and products geared towards individual parent carers and organisations who support them. The role will provide the flexibility I need. to work around my son, will support me financially and will help me to live into one of my highest values - supporting others.

When you see yourself thriving in 5 years time, what type of work do you see yourself doing?

So to recap...

If you want to go from employed to self-employed with an independent business that you have full control over, then follow the 3-tiered income stream strategy to get you moving:

1 - Bread & butter - just delivery or sales of a single product without the need to set up the background infrastructure of invest huge amounts of time & money in marketing.

2 - Tomorrow money - create the simplest form of your business idea you can and start selling.

3 - Long-Term plan - now that you have secured the cash to pay your main bills, work on building your audience, systems and processes for your long. term income plan.

If you'd like support to move from employed to self employed as a parent carer, hop over and join our free Carer Mums in Business Facebook group for peer-to-peer support and if you'd like more 1-2-1 mentoring support email claire@carersatwork.com to learn more about how you can work with me.