How I left my full time job to go full time offline.

A few people have asked me how I went from being full time employed to full time self employed...

I'm going to share with you all in the hope that it may help some of you with the leap... and maybe some others decide they want to stay employed.

Here we go...

I did the usual GCSE's and A-levels at school. Half way through my A-levels I decided that I wasn't academic in any way and I just wanted to get stuck into working. I wanted to be a designer, so I booked onto a graphic design course and pretty much gave up on my A-levels. I think I finished with half of one in maths.

Straight from design college, I was snapped up by a small design agency near to me. It was awesome, I got to design all day long every day.

But there came a time a few years later when I suddenly realised that I could be getting my own clients. I worked out in my head that I could make more money and have more freedom... or so it seemed.

Now, to set the scene at this point. I am getting paid pretty well, I am just about to get married and we are looking having kids at some point and moving house. So not a great time to start a business, but at the time I thought ... let's just do it.

Getting ready to jump in.

I wanted to get going right away, but I also realised that I couldn't live on the hope of being paid for my first job.

I also didn't want to wait until I had an abundance of clients because I knew that I would never get started that way.

So I found a mid way point which suited me.

Building a client base whilst being employed.

I'll admit it. This was tricky. When you work hard 9 - 5, you have to be really dedicated to your vision of going solo to put the extra hours in.

I was... and so I did.

I found out that the best way for me to do this was to ask my friends if they had dads that had businesses. One of them did and I met him to see if he needed a website, or brochure ... or anything for that matter.

I'm still not sure to this day if he felt sorry for me or he did need a website, but he commissioned me and I got onto it straight away.

I'll admit I was really excited at this point that someone would pay me as an individual to do some work for them.

This happened a few times over and then I found that these people started recommending me to people they knew that ran businesses.

JUMP !!!!

This took about three months and at that point I knew this would work. It was still a risk, but it's gonna work. My wife was supporting me and I knew I had the guts to make the sales and get the work done.

So I handed my notice in, we parted on great terms and I thanked him a great deal for teaching me all that he did.

Quickly learning to get clients.

Once I got started and set up my bedroom office, my tactic early on was to network. I went to breakfast meetings, night time meetings and anything going on to get my name out.

My offer at that time was really simple "i'll create you a better brand and a better website".

I didn't have any clever marketing skills at the time, just raw determination and a knowledge that "I am good at this"...

I became well known locally over a period of time and also quickly adopted some networking online. This is about 8 years ago, so it was more about business forums. There was no facebook and linkedIn

In a nutshell... Good work gets you more good work. Create a great experience for the client. Over deliver where you can. Pester people for referrals...

...

there's a TON more that I could tell you, but for those that asked me, I hope that is enough for now.