Ner­is­sa Gold­en

Whether you've been toy­ing with the idea of step­ping out on your own or wor­ried about job cuts at your work­place, here are sev­en things to do now be­fore you go so­lo.

1. Up­date you re­sume. A mod­ern re­sume needs to clear­ly show the re­sults that your years of work have de­liv­ered. "Man­aged a sales team which brought in $20 mil­lion in sales in 2013." "Over­saw the man­age­ment of $175 mil­lion in­fra­struc­ture project." If your on­ly ed­u­ca­tion list­ing is that of sec­ondary school from 20 years ago, it should not be giv­en promi­nence. Rather, high­light what you've achieved in the role with the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

2. Cre­ate a web pres­ence. Even if you do not know what type of busi­ness you want to run, be­gin to po­si­tion your­self as an ex­pert in your ar­eas of in­ter­est. Pur­chase a do­main name with your name such as ner­is­sagold­en.com. Your web­site should in­clude a blog in or­der to share ar­ti­cles about the is­sues that mat­ter to you and which you are qual­i­fied towrite on.

3. Get on so­cial me­dia. LinkedIn is es­sen­tial for those leav­ing a cor­po­rate en­vi­ron­ment and go­ing in­to con­sult­ing or oth­er project-based work. Twit­ter is a good way to share short tips that can be retweet­ed and linked back to your web­site. Face­book and In­sta­gram are es­sen­tial if your work is very vi­su­al such as fash­ion or graph­ic de­sign, pho­tog­ra­phy or tourism based.

4. Gath­er tes­ti­mo­ni­als. Get a few clients and com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives to speak to your pro­fes­sion­al­ism and skill in your area of spe­cial­ty. These can be used on your web­site and on LinkedIn to show that you are not new to the field.

5. Write opin­ion pieces for lo­cal and re­gion­al me­dia on cur­rent is­sues that you have knowl­edge of and can of­fer so­lu­tions about. Of­fer to col­lab­o­rate on spe­cial ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­grammes which will help to in­crease your pub­lic and pro­fes­sion­al pro­file.

6. Com­pile pre­sen­ta­tions you've cre­at­ed in­to view­able for­mats such as in a down­load­able PDF or with slideshare. If you are plan­ning to be a pro­fes­sion­al speak­er or train­er, look at how the pre­sen­ta­tions can be made more ap­peal­ing, repack­aged for dif­fer­ent au­di­ences or be­come the ba­sis for a whitepa­per or book.

7. Save. It is rec­om­mend­ed that you have be­tween six months to a year of funds to live on un­til your busi­ness takes off. Hav­ing a fi­nan­cial cush­ion will re­duce your stress lev­el and al­low you to fo­cus on plan­ning and pro­mot­ing your busi­ness.

Prepar­ing for life changes puts you in the pow­er po­si­tion and helps to build your con­fi­dence in the fu­ture. It will en­able you to be more se­lec­tive of the projects you can take on when you step out on your own.

Ner­is­sa Gold­en is an award-win­ning Me­dia Strate­gist, Busi­ness Coach who helps her clients ac­cel­er­ate their busi­ness growth by lever­ag­ing high im­pact com­mu­ni­ca­tions so­lu­tions and in­come gen­er­at­ing strate­gies. She is the au­thor of Like Fol­low Lead: Mas­ter­ing So­cial Me­dia for Small Busi­ness and The Mak­ing of a Caribbean­pre­neur: Strate­gies for Over­com­ing Fear and Build­ing Wealth. Get tips on start­ing and grow­ing a busi­ness at www.tru­ly­caribbean.net. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @tru­ly­gold­en.