Be Your Own Boss: The Practical Self-Employment Handbook

Be Your Own Boss: The Practical Self-Employment Handbook is a short practical guide for the growing number of people working as independent contractors selling their own skilled labor services. You could be a self-employed tradie, contractor, consultant, freelancer, professional type person or any other kind of individual service provider. Being self-employed means you are running your own service-based business. This convenient handy guide explains simply, without jargon, how to successfully start and run your own business - whatever the services you offer. The book also covers looking after your most valuable business asset - YOU. Relevant issues to know about working on your own in self-employment are identified and you are shown how to handle them. The book recognizes you are busy and do not want lots to read. A standard key point summarizes each section. There are plenty of suggestions, tips and techniques on how to deal with the various aspects of self-employment easily and effectively. Key sections are:
- determining personal suitability
- finding opportunities
- starting out (getting approvals, insurances, records, startup costs)
- working from home
- managing risks
- servicing clients
- pricing and promoting services
- managing yourself (attitudes, time management, stress control)
- finances (cash budgeting)
- legals (services contracts, debt recovery, new consumer rights)
- taxes (income tax, deductions, PAYG, GST)
- setting and achieving goals
- super to retire
- exiting (what's the business worth). Technological advances in communications and use of the internet has made many more micro-size businesses, like home-based ones, viable. But self-employment is not for everyone. This book helps you determine whether you are personally suited to working for yourself. The biggest appeal of self-employment is the freedom and flexibility it gives you to work. If you provide services online, you can choose what to do, how to do it, when to do it and where to do it. If you decide self-employment is for you, then you should read this book. When you run a successful business and work smarter in it, the self-employment lifestyle can be a very personally satisfying and rewarding one. Table of contents: Chapter 1 - About self-employment; Chapter 2 - Checking your idea; Chapter 3 - Starting out; Chapter 4 - Making it work; Chapter 5 - Legals, taxes and you; Chapter 6 - Your business plan; Chapter 7 - Cashing your chips; Glossary of terms