Читать книгу The Freelance Mum: A flexible career guide for better work-life balance - Annie Ridout - Страница 11

My dad is an optician and ran a small chain of his own shops when I was growing up, but before that he tested people’s eyes from the bedroom of his and my mum’s flat in the evenings, while working for an established optician in the daytime. He knew that he needed customers if he was going to start his own business. In time, he was able to open his first shop, round the corner from that flat. All the customers whose eyes he’d tested in his bedroom joined him at his new opticians. He did the building work and painting himself, and called in favours from friends. My dad didn’t have start-up funds so he had to keep everything as cheap as possible. Once he was making a profit, he was able to re-design the shop then buy a second one. He grew that business, too, and a few years later he bought a third shop.

He told me about an old friend of his who had also decided to start a business. This guy wanted to be his own boss. My dad advised him to be frugal, at least at the start, and perhaps to even stick with his existing job while trialling the new line of work. Get some clients before you commit to an office space. But this guy didn’t want to hear it; he invested in a fancy central London office and bought a nice car to impress clients. Only, he never got any clients, so the business failed and that was the end of his dream to work for himself.

When you’re finding your feet, keep your spending to a minimum. Whether you’re starting out as a freelancer or launching a new business, if you’re able to set it up from your kitchen table (or sofa/bed), do. I’m now earning enough to pay for a shared workspace, but for me, it’s more important that I keep building my business and freelance career, so I’m still working from a corner of the kitchen table and spending that money in different areas. If I get bored and need a change of scenery, or if my husband’s looking after the kids and I don’t want them to distract me, I pop to a local coffee shop that has wifi.

You might be tempted to spend money on smart clothes when meeting potential new clients. Of course presentation is important, but don’t get carried away; you can look smart without blowing a month’s income on a designer jumpsuit. If you keep your hair washed, your shoes clean and your clothes ironed, that’s probably enough. It’s more important that your personality shines through with your clothes than your income. You’re no more likely to get the pitch in an Armani suit than I am in my £35 Lucy & Yak dungarees. In fact, spending a small fortune on clothes when you have young kids is a waste of money; I bought a lovely pastel-pink cashmere jumper for a talk I was doing and it was soon destroyed by my children’s mucky hands and tugging. So now I’m back in my high-street clothes and affordable ethical brands.

Put simply: don’t spend all your money before you’ve made it.

Holly Tucker MBE, founder of Holly & Co, co-founder of Not on the High Street, launched the now multi-million-pound business from her kitchen table in 2006. I asked how she managed childcare in the early days. ‘He was with me, sleeping under the table!’ she says. ‘I look back on those days with such fondness, because he grew with me and my business in those early years. It was funny, because with launching Holly & Co came more years of hard days and late nights, and Harry was there again, sleeping under the table. My biggest supporter.’

Ask any entrepreneur or superstar freelancer and you’ll hear the same thing: think big but start small.