Welcome to day 5 of Blogmas 2022! Today we are continuing day 2’s blogmas post “from full-time employee to full-time entrepreneur” – catch up with part 1 here.
Following on from starting to think about becoming fully self-employed in the summer of 2021 I started working with a personal and business development coach who really helped me not only start to map out what a successful business could look like but also to have the confidence to make my ideas a reality!
I launched my first online live workshop on Facebook live in September 2021 – Clerking with Confidence – for just £9.99 per delegate. Following a positive reception, I decided to continue and create a range of live workshops for people to sign up to. I started giving out freebie resources to get people’s attention and building a community and email list.
Those early days were very much “learning by doing” and I made a lot of mistakes or found better ways of doing things along the way. For example, for my live workshops I changed from Facebook Live to Zoom and bought a domain name and website for people to be able to easily make purchases (using a 1 year free package with GoDaddy). That first year, in all honesty, I completely winged it! I decided on what workshops to run based on what people asked for and what I felt would be most helpful at the time.
I continued to work 2 days a week for my employer plus my other couple of clerking clients. I was then contacted about becoming a trainer for a Local Authority and started delivering training sessions on their behalf. Around the same time, I connected with an online governance platform provider (GVO) who I have now been activity collaborating with for over a year! I was starting to build networks and Pro Clerking was starting to get noticed not only locally but also nationally (plus I had one lady join me from Qatar so technically you could say internationally…..)
By the end of 2021 I started conversations with additional potential clients including my current employer who I asked if they’d consider taking me on as a self-employed clerk. I also took the leap and started putting feelers out for a physical Governance Professional’s Annual Planner which was then launched in June 2022 ready for the 2022-23 academic year.
By the end of the 2021-22 academic year I was set up to go fully self-employed. My employer had agreed to a contract with Pro Clerking for independent clerking services and I had another four clients lined up in addition to those already under contract.
I took the whole 6 weeks of summer off, just dabbling in a bit of background setting things up here and there, and felt like the world was at my feet heading into 2022-23 as a full-time entrepreneur with my own business. That was my pinch-me moment – to be honest I don’t think sunk in!
4 months later and the steep learning curves continue – from managing multiple clients, to financial bookkeeping and everything in between but I can confidently say that however hard it can be at times – this has been one of the best things I’ve ever done – from being my own boss and having the opportunity to more than double my income while working flexibly around my family – Pro Clerking has quite literally been life changing. And there’s lots of exciting things to come……
And you know what? You can absolutely do it too 🙂
Are you interested in finding out more about what being a clerk in UK schools looks like? Contact me at contact@proclerking.co.uk for more information!
Ellie x
www.businesshealthandhome.co.uk
Ellie
Business Health and Home 