7 Key Characteristics of Successful Self-Employed Workers

Self-employed people don’t have a boss to keep them accountable to a boring work routine, no fixed schedule, and no commute. But does this mean their lives are perfect and that everyone should follow their lead?

While being self-employed has plenty of benefits and cuts down the problems that employed people have, it also comes with a series of new challenges you may not be ready for. Being a freelancer or an entrepreneur is not for everyone, and if you romanticize the lifestyle, you’re up for a rough awakening.

In today’s piece, we’ll list some of the traits that help self-employed people succeed and thrive in this lifestyle. 

1. Dealing with Failure

The best way to test if self-employment is for you is to assess how you deal with failure. If things don’t go your way, do you declare defeat, abandon the project, or wait for someone else to solve your problem? If your answer is yes, you’re better off as an employee.

When you are on your own, failure needs to be treated as a lesson, not the end of the road. You learn from it and move on, looking for a better solution.

If you ask any successful entrepreneur about how they got to where they are, they’ll most likely start with a story of their multiple failures and how each one motivated them to try harder and refine their product or service.

2. A Proactive Attitude

Successful entrepreneurs and freelancers see a problem and start thinking about solutions. This proactive attitude keeps them determined to move forward even when things get tough or their plans fail.

In all fairness, most businesses nowadays will encourage you to be proactive as an employee, but things are completely different when you don’t have a manager to push you in the right direction.

3. Flexibility and Creativity

Self-employed people wear a lot of hats since they have to take care of the entire business (at least at first). This includes marketing products and/or services, finding customers, making deals, closing contracts, and ensuring all the business processes are well-documented and working (among others).

So, you need to be creative and flexible in your thinking in order to go through this phase. Plus, it’s essential to know how to establish proper business goals and how to bring them to fruition without anyone supervising your progress. In fact, you also need to know how to measure progress!

4. Capacity for Personal Growth

You learn a lot about yourself when you are on your own, and most often than not, you learn you’re not as prepared as you had previously thought. For instance, many self-employed people find it difficult to establish a work schedule that supports their business goals.

Without a predetermined work schedule (the 9 to 5 employees hate so much), it’s easy to either overwork yourself or fall into the trap of procrastination. When this happens, you’ll learn to appreciate the benefits of having a work schedule and establishing boundaries between your work and your personal life.

The entrepreneurship journey is full of humbling lessons, and you’ll improve and grow as you continue learning. The secret is to be open to learning new things and accepting that your way of thinking is not always the best.

5. Good Organization (Especially Regarding Taxes)

Entrepreneurs pay their own taxes and the taxes of their employees (if they have any), and if you’re not used to navigating the tax system, it’s easy to feel confused and frustrated. Thus, the best thing you can do before diving into the self-employed life is to make sure you understand what self-employment taxes are and when you have to pay them.

As an employee, your taxes are taken care of by your employer. This means that if something goes wrong, you won’t be the one responsible for the mess. As a self-employed taxpayer, it’s up to you to keep track of expenses, monitor income, make sure the cash flow is alive, and keep all the files in order.

6. Openness to Learning

The best way to grow as a person and a professional is through learning. However, if you want to stay relevant in business, you have to dedicate time and effort to educating yourself on various areas that are relevant to your field.

As an entrepreneur, it’s essential to have expertise and practice in a wide range of areas, such as business administration, accountancy, management, marketing, sales, business technology, finance, and more.

You can do this by making sure you are subscribed to topic-related trade journals and newsletters and following proven experts in your field. Also, if you have the opportunity, find one or two mentors and learn as much as possible from them.

Today’s online communication and connection level allows us to find the people and resources we need to grow. We just have to stay curious and open to learning.

7. Networking and Communication

You can’t grow a business without customers or collaborators. Also, you may want to form partnerships or partake in mergers as things start to improve. However, none of these are possible if you can’t form connections with other businesses and people on a similar journey.

This is why some of the most successful entrepreneurs are masters of communication (or hire a team of highly qualified PR representatives). But when you’re just starting, you have to figure out how to sell your business to the world.

Takeaway

In summary, self-employed workers need to be proactive, flexible, creative, and open to learning. They also need to understand that most successes come from failure(s) and that there is a lot of personal growth to do down the road.

However, this doesn’t mean that you are not cut out to be an entrepreneur if you don’t have some (or any) of these traits. It just means you have a lot to grow and learn before you can be confident about it. So don’t give up on your dream to become an entrepreneur; find a way to develop these traits and open the doors you want.