The Self-Employment Survival Guide

March 5, 2018
PR consultant and ghostwriter Yocum (coauthor of New Product Launch) offers straightforward advice and coping strategies in this helpful guide to self-employment. It’s the right choice for many, she writes: in 2015, 15 million Americans were self-employed. It’s also a choice to make with “eyes wide open,” and Yocum begins by sharing challenges she faced and straightforward suggestions for dealing with them. Throughout, Yocum’s guidance is simple but useful: “discipline is required,” “set expectations with clients,” and “be willing to listen.” Yocum addresses financial matters, from tips for adequate preparation when starting out to getting the inevitable “deadbeat clients” to pay up. Readers will be most eagerly interested in the section on retirement, but it unfortunately lacks substance. Still, Yocum doesn’t shy away from exposing some of the challenges of self-employment—paying for health insurance, avoiding burnout, and dodging common behavioral traps such as perfectionism and “clinging to your comfort zone.” Salaried employees wondering about taking the leap and becoming their own bosses will find answers to many of their questions, and plenty of encouragement, in this well-written primer.

March 1, 2018
Yocum's guide is practical, intuitive, and based on her decades of experience as a solopreneur, a self-employed professional. She has been there, seen it, done that. A PR expert and ghostwriter-coauthor of other business books, she lays bare the inner and outer souls of those 10-plus million people working for themselves, with good insights and remedies to solve almost any issue. Short chapters focused on one singular aspect of the business?selling, time management, continual learning?describe the situation, then provide coping strategies, while other voices chime in from sidebars to confirm the solution. One example that plagues many self-workers: fluctuating workloads. As Yocum admits, it's either too heavy or too light?and never just right. Sound familiar? No remedies here. Instead, she advises: What you need to focus on during slow times is not painting the spare bedroom but rather new business activities that will bring in more work. Misery might love company; then again, company prefers success.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)