Self Employment - The One-Person Business

THE ONE PERSON BUSINESS

Making a living as a self-employed person can be an adventure. If you don’t know what you are doing, it can also be a disaster both financially and personally. The objective of this site is to help you to have the adventure and avoid the disaster.

There are many topics on this site. You will find bookmarks on this first page and links at the top of each page to help you navigate the entire site. The first section covers the most important question you will ask yourself. I call it the big question because it determines if you even start a one-person business. Your success in any business depends on being brutally honest with yourself. This first section will help you make certain that your answers are the absolute truth. It is critical to read the next page carefully before starting any business.
The Big Question.

Next I deal with security. So many people are obsessed with security and believe they have it with good solid jobs. It is good to have a job that you enjoy and that challenges you each day but it’s not a guarantee of a secure future. If you are certain of your security because you work for a good company, remember the thousands of Enron, Worldcom, Ford and GM employees and the employees of many other large corporations that believed the same thing. Most of them lost their jobs and many of them lost their retirement savings. This is not to say that having a good solid job is not a positive thing, just that nothing guarantees security. There are no guarantees with employment or self-employment. Security.

Self-motivation and discipline are critical for successful self-employment. One of the pages in this site explains the importance of self-motivation and the critical role that discipline plays in getting your business started and attaining long-term financial success. Self Motivation and Discipline.

Those first steps while getting started are critical and many people falter before they ever get going. You must know what to do and how to do it right from the start. Those critical first steps are covered in detail on this site.
Getting Started.

When people start a business they promptly realize that advertising is of critical importance. Without it, potential customers will not know that you exist. On the other hand, it is easy to spend excessive amounts on worthless advertising and wind up in debt and with few if any customers. This site will help you to make advertising choices that you can afford while still attracting customers.
Advertising.

Once you make contact with prospects, the critical step is to convert them to paying customers. Many people hate the thought of selling but if you plan to be self-employed you will have to get accustomed to the idea of selling everyday. If the sales person does not produce results, there will be no income and without it a company cannot survive. In a one-person business, you are the sales person. You must do the selling of every job and this site will help you to make selling easy and enjoyable. Selling.

If your business succeeds, you will have many customers. You will find valuable information on this site about how to deal with your customers on a daily basis. This information will help you to stay in business and cover the best and most productive and efficient ways to deal with complaints when they occur. It will also cover how to create and maintain your own policies and procedures so you will remain consistent in your dealings with all your customers.
Complaints.

Keeping customers is essential to continued success in any business. It cost ten times as much to get a new customer than to keep an old one. On this site you will learn how to keep customers coming back for years. Plus, you will find that some of your customers will be willing to pay you more than it would cost them to go elsewhere. This is the importance of good customer service and this site will help you keep your customers happy and spending money.
Keeping Customers.

Probably the single most important and difficult to answer question relates to how much one should charge. There are no quick or easy answers for this but on this site you will find a formula that will make certain you profit from all your business activities. It will also give you a clear understanding of when and how to increase your prices. How Much To Charge.

Keeping good records is critically important to any business. The Internal Revenue Service insists that you have good records if they ever decide to audit your taxes. This alone is a good reason to keep clear and concise records of your business activities. Record keeping goes much deeper than this. If you want to succeed and grow you must keep track of all your activities to help you decide what works well and what does not. You also need records to keep track of your customers and the products they purchase and to keep track of all your expenses. Complete details on record keeping are included on this site. Staying In Business.

You must guarantee your products so customers will be comfortable dealing with you. This site details the best way to handle guarantees so your customers will be satisfied and you will not be financially abused. Guarantees.

You must decide exactly what you want to do with your business. This site is written for those who want to run a successful one-person business. The only help it will give you if you decide to expand beyond that level is to warn you of the potential consequences. The information on this site will still be of significant help but it will not directly address the many new issues that arise when you begin to hire employees and deal with payroll deductions.
Expansion.

Directly related to the issue of expansion is dealing with subcontractors. This is an excellent way, if handled carefully, to do additional work without hiring employees. All the facts and potential problems regarding the use of subcontractors are covered in detail on this site. Subcontractors.

Because fitness is so important, I have included a page on the subject. It may seem that a section on fitness is out of place on this site, but it is a very important topic. Self-employment can have its stressful moments and dealing with them requires physical, emotional and mental fitness and this site will help you stay fit and ready for anything. Fitness.

The last section includes final notes that have come to me as I created this site.. Some of them you may have already read and they simply need repeating and some will be completely new. All of them are intended to help you succeed financially in any one-person business. Final Notes.

All the information on this site is based solely on my first-hand experience. It has all been tried and proven in actual practice and there is no reason it can’t work for you. To learn more about my background as a one-person business owner click HERE. I hope you will jump right in and give it a try. When you get started please email me and let me know. Send your emails to billbenitez@mail2bill.com . Good Luck.