Supporting Your Child When They Want to Go Self-Employed: 5 Things to Consider

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When our children are in school, we can feel like they're in a safe space where they can start to nurture their creativity and get the skills they need to survive later in life. But before you know it, the years have whizzed by and now they need to think about things like careers. We can find it's a very tough thing to talk to our children about, because maybe we had hopes and dreams but found that life got in the way. It's so important for us all to stick to our ambitions, especially when it comes to our careers, and this is why so many people go self-employed. If your child is now at an age where they are getting inspired from those self-made entrepreneurs and feel like self-employment is the right route for them, that’s great, but what do they need to know so they can do it right?

Start With Their Passions

It might sound incredibly simple, but if our children want a self-employed life, we have to begin by determining their passions, but we also have to arm them with a sense of fortitude at this stage. It may be tough to try and break into a specific sector when you have no experience, which is why a calling card website might be an invaluable approach, especially if they want to become a self-employed creative.

Whether they want to work as an actor or a blogger, a website can be the perfect tool because they can start to promote themselves. One of the biggest oversights many people make when they go self-employed is not understanding how to promote themselves properly, but people learn over the years they have to get that grit and determination, which is why following their passions will serve them well because it gives them that inbuilt motivation.

A website can be a great place for them to create content and give potential employers an insight into who they are. We have to remember that while being self-employed is an amazing way to gain some freedom, not everybody is built for it, so if we can encourage our children to have a tool to promote themselves this can be a good failsafe option. 

Teach Them How to Look for Opportunities Properly

An 18-year-old may be young and hungry, but if they have no real concept of looking for work up to this point, we need to give them the tools to do it properly. While an internet search can bring up new opportunities for bloggers or other creatives, we also need to help them nurture other methods of looking for opportunities, including networking.

Networking is a tough skill that can prove difficult to learn if your child is a shrinking violet, but while there are many resources that can get people started, it is something they need to practise. Something like an elevator pitch, where they have to distil who they are or what they're trying to promote into a few sentences, will help them refine that skill. Opportunities come in many different ways beyond a Google search; it's also about them realising anybody they have interactions with could yield more opportunities in the future.

Networking is important, but it's also vital at this stage to teach our children how to be, very simply, themselves. We can all encounter people that may be looking for an opportunity, but so many freelancers have encountered someone who isn’t really speaking to them, just in case there’s someone more important over their shoulder. The most important tool to teach your child when it comes to looking for opportunities is to be authentic. This doesn't just mean that they are always being truthful, but it also saves a lot of stress. Trying to be someone you're not can create a lot of entrepreneurial anxieties.

Helping Them Manage Their Money

It's something that many beginner self-employed people fall foul of every single time. People get paid, so they think the entire amount is theirs, but earning more than the £12,570 threshold in the UK and having to pay tax on their earnings is when they make a big mistake. Learning how to manage your money is important, not just by putting 20% aside on everything that you earn, but there is another tripwire that self-employed people fall foul of. That is the payment on account.

The payment on account is an advanced payment towards your tax bill and national insurance. Self-employed people have to make two payments on the account every year in addition to their tax bill. The payment on account is typically higher for those doing their tax return for the first time, which is why anybody in their first year of self-employment should not make the mistake of thinking that everything they earn is theirs. Every subsequent payment is half of the previous year's tax bill. While you want your child to start earning for themselves, that first year is partly about ensuring they have a better understanding of managing their money.

The great thing about being self-employed is that you can claim expenses. It's always worth pointing them towards an accountant that is worth their salt, but also there's plenty of resources on the HMRC website.

Help Them Build a Working Structure

Being self-employed is partly about learning your rhythms. It can be so easy to fall into the trap of waking up at midday and getting the laptop out while having a coffee, but if your child wants to do the self-employment thing properly, they've got to learn a solid structure. This means doing an actual working day. Many people soon realise that, after a year of being self-employed, they have to put a structure in place which might be very similar to a working day.

Being self-employed is a very tough thing to endure, but the more you work, the more you get paid, which means you have to put motivation into a higher gear. Many parents struggle to motivate their children or even to get them out of bed on the weekend, and while being self-employed or working from home can, on the surface, look like an easier option over going to an office, the reality is that you will get more out of what you put in. They will need a working structure to ensure that they are earning enough.

They need to ask themselves what they want to earn, but they then need to determine how to earn that amount. Being self-employed means promoting yourself and potentially only having a job come out of it a few months later. There are certainly many opportunities available through freelancer websites, but they are rife with competition. Your child needs to start understanding the value of competing for that work which may actually be tougher than applying for a “proper job.”

Helping Them Deal With Self-Employed Stress

Perhaps after a while, your child is now earning a decent amount and has fine-tuned their skills, but what is left to learn? Being self-employed is a unique type of pressure. Many people go into self-employment because they absolutely need that freedom, but there is a trade-off with that freedom, namely not having a safety net. This can, over time, cause a very unique type of stress.

When your child is living under your roof, this could mitigate some of the stress, but what happens as they get older and they've got other people to look after? This is where mastering stress becomes invaluable. Many younger children are finding themselves under pressure because of the need to perform in life and to do more than the other person, and being self-employed is, for many people, exactly that, but magnified by a thousand. Having to do more than the other person and having to fight tooth and nail for a job that may pay pittance when you work it out per hour can be very demoralising.

Incorporating stress management techniques can help but also make them understand why they want to do this in the first place. Because people go down the route of self-employment for more freedom and to do what they want, the peaks and troughs that come with it can be too much to bear, but this is where having a number of other methods of earning money becomes invaluable. If your child wants to be a creative, it's about having many different skills, rather than just one. Many people are now having to diversify themselves for that very reason, and this can go a long way to mitigate stress because they are earning a regular amount.

The other problem that occurs with self-employment is when they don't know how to switch off, but this goes back to having a structure in place. The moment they turn the laptop off or step away is when they should be done for the day. At such an early age, it can be invaluable to embed some of these winning habits, not just for being self-employed, but to be happier and healthier in life.

It's tougher than ever to make a living, and many people are now having to carve out a self-employed life for themselves. It's a tough slog, but with the right support, they can achieve so much.

K Elizabeth xoxox

*Collaborative Post