Seth Godin has been sending me some zingers lately. Ok, not to me personally, but to his blog followers. However, they might as well have started out with “Dear Mandy.” Yesterday’s zinger came via a post from 2010 as part of our altMBA readings. It started like this…
“Dear Mandy,
The world’s worst boss – That would be you!
…Your pal, Seth”
He's right! I need to do a better job of managing my career and how I sell myself.
Seth Godin has been telling me to get my crap together all year. It all started with his book What To Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn) and it led me to altMBA.
In the four weeks since I embarked on this journey, I have started on the path to becoming a better boss of myself. It’s perfect timing as I look to move forward in my career where being self-directed will be crucial.
I see potential for several changes on the horizon. For this project I decided to return to my first project, Conquering Self Doubt One Goal At A Time. (Goal: Earn $300 in extra monthly income by freelancing on the side. My focus will be on photo retouching and creating photo books.) Generating some extra income on my own terms has been a change I’ve wanted to make happen for a while. I’ve been willfully ignoring this opportunity and now that I’ve carved out all of this time for altMBA, I will need something constructive to fill it with! In these four weeks, my goal hasn’t really changed, but it’s filled with a lot less self-doubt.
Next week I begin to work toward launch with the goal of having 1-2 projects ready to start on November 1st.
Tasks, Skills & Questions
Tasks I need done, but am not skilled enough to do myself: Because this is a side-hustle goal and one that I don’t intend to turn into a full-time opportunity, I have not identified when I’ll need outside help yet. However, future needs may include logo designer, website designer, attorney, and accountant.
Skills I need to learn and can learn: The only self-employment I have ever embarked on is babysitting as a teen. As a tax-paying adult, I have no idea what sort of income tracking will be required and how much income I need to bring in before the IRS even cares. Is that $5 or $5000 or ??? I could also learn to build my own website. I have the basic skills and there are a lot of online tools that simplify it, but it may be more effective to outsource it.
The questions I need to be asking: In my original post, several of my fellow altMBA’ers encouraged me to think bigger than my goal of $300/month of extra income. I kept that number small on purpose since I really just want this to be a side business.
With that said, what if this takes off? What if I have more work than I can do on my own? Where could I bring in someone to help me? Would it be someone to help create the photobooks? Or do I have them help with the file management and client communication?
With the launch right before Christmas, the first two months could be very busy, how do I maintain that momentum after the holidays? How do I target husbands to create photobooks for their wives for Mother’s Day?
This exercise hasn’t really changed my immediate launch goal from project 1, but it does have me thinking what if…
I am so glad that I made the leap into the altMBA program when I did. The costs of standing still were adding up. I’m on my way to becoming my own “world’s best boss.”