Are you looking to get out of the daily 9-5 grind that you’re stuck in? Maybe you’re not but better ideas have crossed your mind? Or the idea of being your own boss is simply too tempting to pass up?
Luckily, in a world where tech is at the forefront of a lot of industries, it’s easier than ever to go your own way. You don’t need a premises to open a shop, just the products and a website. You don’t need an office space to be a secretary, just a reliable Wi-Fi connection. You don’t need to move to LA to make music friends, just your home set up.
As the saying goes, restrictions breed creativity, which was proven in the lockdowns. A lot of good ideas came about, and the best stuck. We’re running down a few ideas that could prompt you to get out there on your own and make something of yourself. Read on for all the details of the best industry ideas that came out of lockdown.
Influencer
Don’t scoff. Depending on how you do it, there is a lot of skill and a lot of money in influencing. It’s likely that you are only seeing one side of things, which is usually a well-lit photo of a coffee cup taken in the golden hour. But what if I told you that a lot of skills – creative and business – went into taking that shot. It might feature a product placement for a coffee company, it might be used as a networking opportunity to catch the eye of a brand or generate buzz. It might simply be used to market their own business.
And then there is the content itself, which encompasses everything from capture to edit. Filming, photography, editing, music, graphic design, and presentational skills are all part of making quality content. There are a lot of transferable skills in both.
You can use influencing to market your own business, or even start your own affiliate blog, which serves as a site where you can showcase your favourite items for commission. A couple of hours’ worth of work a week can gain you a full-time employment salary.
Either way, getting the basics of the role of an influencer down will ensure that you can market just about anything else on your agenda, such as…
Hospitality
The hospitality industry had to go through a lot of changes through lockdown. Closing entirely soon gave way to take-out services, which eventually gave way to social distanced dining, but in that time, a lot of new ideas hit the table on how the food service industry could shake things up.
The most common idea was food through a window. A collection/delivery service where restaurants and cafes couldn’t serve food inside their premises so instead handed them over through a window. When things opened up again, the idea stuck. The roads are full of delivery drivers and cyclists for everything from the mom-and-pop café to the nearest fast-food supplier. It means less of premises and therefore less rent, or you can even do it directly from your home kitchen, making the gap between beginner and business a lot closer.
And then there is the idea of food trucks. You’d be surprised how much a food truck is making during the lunch hour alone. There was a class bias there once, where a food truck meant low quality, “junk” food, but street food is on the rise. It’s usually very high quality, tastes like nothing you’ve tried before since they don’t have to convince investors the masses will eat it, and they go wherever is most popular in the moment. You’ll see food trucks at the park, at festivals, outside clubs, etc. It’s also appealing to the customer because it’s usually more affordable. If you’re worried about menu pricing, take a look at this guide.
Freelancer
When the doors to offices started opening up again, the response was a resounding, “Do we have to?” Middle managers were surprised to find that employees all around the world where in fact enjoying working from home. There was more freedom, whether to work around external obligations like childcare or an exercise regime, or to simply stop for five minutes for a breather without worrying that your boss thinks your slacking off. And we’d be remised to mention that workers were reporting getting more work done at their own pace, because we know managers love productivity.
So, it only makes sense that, while working from home, some employees started wondering why they needed the middleman at all, and suddenly freelance became a viable option again. You can work at your own pace, avoiding all the money spending and polluting that comes with commuting, and be your own boss on top of that.
And it’s easy to apply a freelancing role to almost any skillset. To start, take a look at the role you’re in at the moment. If you can do it from a computer, is there anything stopping you doing it for yourself rather than a company? Think about applying a freelance position to the role you have for an easy transition.
However, if you’re trying to get out of the job, you’re in, there are a lot of options there too. It’s all about matching your skillset to the right freelance job. If you have skills in numbers, you can look into accounting. If you’re handy, you can get a van and get into trades like plumbing, carpentry, DIY, etc. If you have organizational skills, you can look into being a personal assistant to various clients. If you have writing skills you can look into ghost writing, copywriting, journalism, etc.
Teacher
And there is another option if you have all these skills that you can use: teaching. Teaching comes in many capacities. The traditional means of teaching in a school takes a lot of education and internships before you are there in the room, but lockdown has unveiled a lot of ways it can be easier.
If that doesn’t appeal to you, you can use the best lesson of business life in lockdown: use video calls. Sure, traditional teachers and lecturers had to adapt to Zoom, and some didn’t do well there, but you’ve been using Zoom for at least a couple of years now, and you can use it to teach all around the world. Get hired as a personal tutor or put university study groups together to give more personal tutoring to those who are willing to pay for a helping hand.
And, going back to the influencer’s …influence, a lot of online courses are popping up on big social media accounts. You can record a curriculum of your chosen topic and sell access to it for anyone who is interested.
The best part about this is that you can sell courses on just about anything, be it fitness regimes, makeup tutorials, cooking, DIY, or university subjects like social sciences and literature analysis.
If you can market yourself as a reliable source in your field of study, you can record everything you know in some simple, easy to digest content, and put it behind a paywall like Patreon.