You’re thinking of turning your skills into a business.
It’s the type of thought you’d have if you have a lot of skills. Who do I mean by this? You, reading!
You might be a therapist, a coach or a teacher or an instructor. You may also be somebody who has skills taking care of children or dogs or any other valuable skill set.
As people who have a lot of skills, who have invested in ourselves and have spent hundreds of hours training - it takes an enormous amount of time and experience to become professional therapists or coaches or teachers or whatever it might be. There are oftentimes a lot of licenses involved, and it costs money before you've even begun. For myself, being English, up until today, I have north of £100,000 (GBP) of student debt. And that's not even mentioning the courses that I've paid for in cash when I could no longer take out student loans. The point being - it costs a lot of money to get these skills in the first place.
And just to make things even more problematic, there comes the struggle of getting employed. It is rough out there to get employed. It's not easy! I know skilled professionals from all walks of life, no matter what their skills are, they graduate, they complete their training and then they turn out to the world and try to get employed and they can't. This is the frustrating, almost gut-wrenching, slap-in-the-face problem we have!
It's no surprise that eventually people like us will turn to setting up your own businesses - of course you do, because business is absolutely fantastic! I'm not joking. But on a serious note, there's a lot to be done and it's not easy. Being a business owner is certainly not for the faint hearted.
Understandably, you will turn to the option of business because you get to be your own boss, you get to take control of finances and create value for the other person, for your clients. Which was the purpose all along! You wanted to be able to meet your client or your customer or your student, whoever they may be, and then provide your skills!
If people don't have a job or they don't have a business, then those skills become redundant, which is the ultimate frustration. After years of training and hundreds of thousands of pounds invested!
So, you’re interested in business. Now the question becomes: how will we do it?
How do we turn skills into a business?
My thoughts, as a business coach on this subject, are that people have and need different skill sets. The skills of delivering value (that you are trained in like therapy, coaching, teaching, whatever else your wonderful skills may be) are skills completely separate to the skills of having and running and growing a business.
I can't stress this enough! I may be half stating the obvious but I actually think I don't - because the skills that are needed to run a business are so often overlooked and taken for granted. Treat them as completely two separate departments in your mind, two skills sets. You will have your business skills that will be developed, which require lots of know-how. Business skills are separate from the skills that were more formalised in which you are educated and trained with education.
The first thing to turning skills into a business is becoming skilled once more.
This may not be easy to hear. I know that this may feel like it creates a whole new set of work and learning to do. I get it, I get the frustration. It's square one again. It's going back, back into the classroom, back into the library, studying once more, gaining more experience in business.
You may be the person who's excited to hear this or you may be not. I think that's totally understandable.
As well as learning more about business, turning skills into a business requires understanding the reality of having a business!
One important place to start when setting out to knowing that your employer is now yourself! Let me explain what I mean by this.
When you are employed, really, when there is actually an employed job out there, you have a boss, somebody whose job it is to employ us, to manage, to be that boss. Their job is to help generate the work, generate clients, make sure that we are paid and paid on time, that we're safe, that there's insurance and that our futures and pensions are taken care of.
When we turn our skills into a business and running a business, that employer becomes ourselves.
This may be big news, or it may be not. I might state the obvious, I might be not. I find in my experience being a business coach that this is something that is also overlooked and also something to me that is really, really fundamental. In this sense, we employ ourselves generating our own work, paying ourselves, making sure the clients pay us (so that we are paid!). We've got insurance, pension, etc. The list goes on.
The absolute first step in this journey ahead is getting the knowledge about business. Business skills are needed. Then the actual reality of having a business, turning skills into a business, is essential to grasp as soon as possible. Fundamentally, the employer is now out of the picture and this is our role now as business owners.
Turning skills into a business is a really exciting, exciting, rewarding journey ahead.
I'm here for it.
If you're ready to turn your skills into a business, generate an income for yourself and also provide a really outstanding business and service for your clients, be in touch.
Providing your skills, in order to provide for your clients and yourself, for me, is what this is all about.
Written by Lily Llewellyn, a therapist and family business coach
January 20th 2025
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