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Karen Steede Terry tells a story I'm sure many of us can relate to:
In 1996, I quit my job, married, and moved from Houston, Texas, to Austin...appropriately named "Silicon Hills"...at first I worked for a small consulting company on a contract basis. After a few months, the company went through a difficult financial period and consequently laid off a good portion of its staff, including all contractors. Not having a full-time job, I decided to eplore what I could do out on my own "for a little while."
Perhaps you've been laid off, and you've emerged from the experience wishing your career didn't progress at the whim of the economy. Or maybe you got married or had kids, and found yourself wishing there were more alternatives.
For Terry, being self-employed for "a little while" became permanent. Now, as a teacher, writer, and tech consultant earning "ample income" and having time to raise her daughter, she's got the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, the ability to truly have it all--what some of even the most successful businesswomen want for themselves but have not been able to achieve. Success without sacrifice.
Terry could rename her book, Full-Time Woman, Part-Time Career to Have a Life AND Make Money, No Seriously. I opened it skeptically, wondering if I would read for the umpteenth time, if I just believed in myself I could have whatever I wanted. Of course, self-esteem is a required prerequisite to running your own business. All of the external barometers of your "worth"--salary, title, and job reviews--are now gone. You need your own North Star telling you, "you're doing great ... you're not going crazy ... you DESERVE to make more than you did at your crappy full-time job."
Financial institutions which once solicited your business now look upon you as a questionable bet: What? Give this woman short-term credit? She doesn't even have a JOB! You need to envision yourself becoming so damned successful that they issue a branded small business credit card for all women entrepreneurs in your name.
While of course we must be mentally prepared to leap into self-employment, we could also use some straight pointers. While much of Terry's book was familiar to me, her practical, straightforward approach wasn't. She commits to numbers and guidelines that you don't normally see in a career how-to. For instance, she offers fee ranges for consulting, writing for trade publications, teaching seminars that are real, not for people who negotiate through agents. She interviews women who are willing to offer normally confidential numbers, not as a means of gloating over their success, but as a means of showing very real, doable outcomes:
Leita Hart, CPA and fellow instructor, talks about setting rates, "Decide what you need to live off of as a bare minimum. My very first contract gave me $20,000 per year, and, using that as a base, I built up my income. My first year I made $30,000, and the most I ever made is $120,000 gross. I don't have one single client that gives me enough money to live on, but I have enough different clients to be able to earn a living. Today I have seven steady clients tho each give me $7,000 annually. After that, the rest is gravy."
I love one of my all-time favorite books on being self-employed, Soloing, by Harriett Rubin, for the same reason. Along with her Annie Dillardesque exploration into the psychology of changing one's employment status, and thus, one's identity, she breaks out the nitty gritty numbers and shows how to achieve a diversity of clients. But, having been a very senior executive before making her leap, she loses mid-level women who aren't being offered Board positions and negotiating their options packages, or who don't have a $5,000 conference and schmoozing budget, or who would be all-too happy to get what Rubin pulled in her first, experimental year out: well into six figures.
That ain't beginner's luck, nor is it a realistic expectation for 99 percent of the women who make the leap for more practical reasons than their jobs weren't challenging them anymore. Terry's book is for the highly-competent go-getter who's been laid off, or for someone who wants more flexibility in her work day to raise kids/focus on other pursuits while maintaining a paycheck. She doesn't address starting a small business; but rather starting a consultancy--a You, Inc. She also veers into specifics for IT professionals, which, being the quintessential English major, I skipped. Regardless of
