Escape the corporate cage and live life on your terms.

You’re a people person. You don’t want to be holed up at home everyday, with only a mewling cat for company. You don’t want to trade in office social life for watching Judge Judy at lunchtime.

You’d quite like to throw in the commute, go free-range and get the chance to CREATE a perfect career (rather than fruitlessly waiting for it to be handed to you in the form of a job)… but being self employed just sounds too lonely.

You may know other self-employed people who have that lonely solo-lifestyle, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact…

Working for myself has been the most social time of my life. Here’s why:

1. Once you’ve gone free-range (self employed), you choose who you spend time with.

Unlike employed life, your ‘people’ are not just those who work in your office building. They are incredible people you meet in more places than you can currently imagine.

You’re not saddled with people who you wouldn’t otherwise spend 40+ hours a week with – think about it, you already choose your friends, in free-range life you get to choose who you see, and you get to choose that every day.

2. When you enter the world of free-ranging you have a huge new community – online and face to face.

More and more self employed people are coming together, and they are easier to find than ever before. It’s just up to you to get things going

When I started working for myself all my friends were in regular employment. I knew no one who was free to be where they chose during the day (except a few journalist friends with odd schedules). Now, most people I spend time with are office-free. We meet for coffee, we chat, and we meet more people.

I’ve made more amazing contacts and friends that I’d ever have met stuck in an office 9-5

3. You choose your colleagues (how to make competitors into collaborators)

It’s not all about just having coffee while others are stuck in regular jobs – you can also make up informal ‘teams’ to come together for different projects you work on. Meaning you have colleagues without the hassle of hiring people, or the hassle of forming official ‘partnerships’ or companies.

For example, I have an informal team with two other out-of-the-box-careers coaches. We work on each other’s projects, support each others’ work, and come together to run workshops and courses.

That ‘team’ wasn’t planned in advance, it was played out. Our new little team was born after informally meeting up every week, because we enjoyed each others’ company and views – within months we went from being each others’ BIGGEST COMPETITORS to colleagues who spur each other on in the up-times, troubleshoot any down days, and love to play with new projects together. Best of all, we chose each other, so we know we get on and can draw on each others’ strengths.

Where can you find your new colleagues? Places to start are:

• Twitter (FULL of people working for themselves who’d love to chat or meet up),
• Your local Jelly (an informal working group where people meet up to work for a day at someone’s house or a café), or
• A co-working space: for example I am a member of the Hub in King’s Cross, London, where members can pop in with our laptops, and work (and chat) alongside others anytime.
• You can also email another solo free-ranger whose business you admire, someone you just think ‘I bet they’d be interesting to chat with’.
  • Be as friendly and sincere as you really are, and you’ll find the person behind the brand is not an anonymous competitor, but someone in a similar situation to you who (if they have any sense!) would most likely love to chat to another free-ranger who understands their world.

Soon, the old idea of spending your day only with people who happen to work in your office building will seem really restrictive. In your new life, the possibilities are endless for having people around you, supporting you, making your days even brighter than before.

BIGGEST TIP:

Don’t get hung up on finding your new colleagues before you start – start first, then when you have something going, you have something to talk about, and you can more easily find like-minded people.

The difference from employment is that your new social work life doesn’t come to you until you build it – but once you’ve built it, you’ll have more people around than ever before… and the satisfaction of knowing you chose them and they chose you.

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