Unfortunately, huge numbers of people have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic. Yet, losing a job often opens the door to self-employment and the entrepreneurial spirit.
Many of those people — from millennials to senior executives — have started working for themselves, whether in high-skilled gig positions such as computer engineering, solo entrepreneurs launching one person businesses, or freelance workers offering specific services like data analytics or digital marketing. Blue collar workers may offer driving, lawn care, snow shoveling or other manual labor.
Covid has accelerated companies’ use of gig workers and legitimized it more, says Joseph Fuller, a Harvard Business School professor. The pandemic has forced many companies to ignore some of their previously held concerns about distance work and acclimated them to the use of distance workers and third parties in ways they had not anticipated.
Regardless of the type of product or service, the biggest challenge of those doing what’s now called “in-demand” work is likely to be marketing.
When the new entrepreneur was working for his/her previous employer, it was the employer who found the work and assigned it to each employee. The employee was simply tasked with doing the work. Now as an entrepreneur, it is up to the employee to generate the work AND to accomplish it. In fact, many entrepreneurs — especially new ones — find that they are spending a lot more time on marketing than on actually accomplishing the work. Marketing is a whole new set of skills which the new entrepreneur must master.
The best way to begin marketing your work is to talk to people who are in your field. Perhaps people with whom you worked in your previous company or who were vendors or customers of yours. Of course you’re not going to ask for work directly, but you can certainly connect with them, tell them about your new venture and ask for suggestions. Networking is a very good strategy even in the pandemic.
In addition, there are many on line platforms which match independent workers with companies looking to assign work contracts, such as Braintrust, Catalant, Fiverr, Toptal and Upwork, in addition to broader sites like Linkedin.
I, myself, have been successfully self-employed for over 30 years. If you’d like some coaching about starting your own business, please contact me at jlansky@lanskycareerconsultants.com or visit my Contact page.
