Jul 8, 2013

Leap of Faith: Self Employment

As of Friday, I'll be entirely self-employed!

Since probably the beginning of our marriage, Ross and I have talked about me working as an independent contractor once we had kiddos. When Cade arrived in March we started talking about it more seriously. And when I started thinking about the logistics of working out-of-the-house, 45-hours-per-week motherhood, I started to act seriously.

After months of discussion and prep, I'm ready to take the leap. I turned in my 2 weeks notice at Blackbaud on July 1 and my last day will be this Thursday. After that, I'm officially on my own.

I set up an LLC and am now the sole member of Cheryl Black Consulting LLC. I purchased a domain, whipped together a very simple website, subscribed to Google's business applications, got a professional headshot and set up a biz bank account. I'm frighteningly official.

Now I'm in the thick of business development. Emails, coffee dates, lunch dates, phone calls, LinkedIn updates and messages. Posting on my personal blog making sure everyone I know knows.

What exactly am I doing? A smorgasbord of marketing communication activities. Social media marketing of course, but also copy writing and editing, event marketing, public relations, project management and a bit of fundraising.

So tell everyone you know! Tell them only nice things about me and then to contact me. Because baby, my shingle's hung and I'm in business.

1 comment:

Sally Heaven said...

Good luck, Cheryl!