Karren Brady’s career advice on taking a big risk to start working for yourself | The Sun

Apprentice star and West Ham United vice-chair Karren Brady answers your careers questions and meets an inspirational CEO.

Here she gives a reader advice on what she should do if she wants to take a risk and leave her job to work for herself in the new year.

Q) With the start of the new year, I really want to push my career forward and leave my job as a recruitment consultant to work for myself.

But every time I think I’ve talked myself into handing in my notice, I chicken out at the last minute.

My partner is supportive, but also points out how unstable being freelance or setting up on your own can be, and keeps quoting stats at me about how many businesses fail within the first 12 months.

I know he’s right, especially in the current cost of living crisis, but I also want to move forward.

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What should I do?

Jenny, via email

A) There is never a good time to do something risky, so you just have to do everything you can to take as much risk as possible out of the situation before you jump in feet first.

You should get everything lined up for your new business
while you are still in your job and have a steady income – register your new business with HMRC, set up your website, plan how you will attract clients, forecast how much money you need to make each month in order to pay
your household bills etc.

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Once you have everything ready, go through it all with your partner.

Discuss how it will impact your lives for the first year or so,
until you are making a stable income, and show him how this is a planned and conscious decision, not a spur-of-the-moment one.

Also be clear what you need from him – his support will be important.

The main benefit of being your own boss is the control you have over your company decisions, and flexibility over
your working schedule.

Be smart, resilient and ambitious – and most of all, enjoy it!

• Got a careers question for Karren? Email [email protected]

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF….

Abi Selby, 44, is the founder of Spabreaks.com and lives in Newbury, Berkshire, with her marketing boss husband Matt, 41, and their children Freddie, 15, Aver, 12, and Oscar, seven.

I wake up at… 6.30am. I check sales reports from the day before, ensure the website is working and orders are coming through.

Then I sort out the kids, plus our two dogs, three cats and bearded dragon.

I have a nanny three and a half days a week, so when she’s around, I go for a 5km run, which sets me up for the day. 

A normal day involves…After a banana for breakfast, I’m online for 8.30am and in back-to-back calls with my team, journalists and hotel and spa management.

I head up marketing and product, and all spa orders come into my inbox because, even 15 years after launching the business, I want to be across what’s selling.

Some days I’m on the road, visiting spas around the country, and once a week I leave home at 5.30am to travel two hours to our Brighton office.

I’m in London one day a week for meetings with board members and co-founders, Andrew and Ross.

As a board member for the UK Spa Association – a voluntary role that takes up a few hours a month – I run industry networking events and encourage the government to recognise the importance of wellbeing to the economy.

I identify groups that are often alienated from spa and wellbeing facilities, including people with cancer, physical or mental disabilities, and work to make spas accessible to them.

When I’m working from home, I have soup for lunch and turn off the laptop at 5.30pm.

Then I’m Mum again – cooking dinner, helping with homework or talking to my 15 year old till 10pm.

Children’s emotional demands grow as they get older.

The best part of my job is… Seeing women who work for us leave to create their own businesses, working with charities in Africa that help women become entrepreneurs, and creating such a beautiful product.

And the worst… I’ve visited most of the 550-plus spas in our portfolio for meetings, but I don’t get the chance to sample many of them.

I wind down by… Lighting a fire, pouring a glass of wine and relaxing with the dogs in front of me on the rug. It’s so therapeutic.

• Visit Spabreaks.com.

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