Turbo boost your CV: Start your own business

Just recently I calculated my hourly pay based upon the total time that I spend on and in my business [on average 60hrs per week - I'm working now you know!]. This rate includes the little extra that I earn from employing a few sub-consultants on my projects too.

I won't give the exact total but after expenses my salary amounts to a little under an engineering graduate +2/3 years of experience.

It doesn't sound a lot; and that's because it isn't.


Turns out that I am working on fee earning projects for about 40% of my time durning the week.

The remaining 60%? Marketing, dealing with business teething troubles, bookkeeping, planning, learning, optimising, networking, blogging.

No one ever said it was going to be easy, to begin with.

Many times, during the wee small hours of the night, when my motivation has taken yet another pounding, I do surf for engineering jobs on the web. I size myself up against who the potential candidates might be, you know; just out of interest. It was then I noticed something quite astonishing...

Feeling ultra confident, I began pitching myself higher, waaaay higher than I would have done perhaps one year ago.

The new skills which I have been banking by building a business have been stretching me in ways I didn't think possible.

OK, so I realised that I would need to 'skill up' and 'brace-brace-brace' for impact when I eventually turned business owner...but I didn't expect this.

When leaving my last employer, a passing comment was made "once you begin working for yourself, you will never want to work for anybody else, ever again."

Infact it was Lord Alan Sugar who was once quoted for saying "Once you decide to work for yourself, you never go back to work for someone else."

I have only toyed with the idea... but what if you had planned to return to full time employment all along?

How enticing would you look to a potential employer?

I would argue that you are a bit of a catch. Suits you sir!

• Mega confident
• Able to deliver and build relationships
• Cool under pressure
• Priority driven
• Plethora of potential business contacts and references
• Self motivated
• Inspiring
• Lover of all things engineering
• Social media savvy. 

The list could go on.

The question is though, even if you had planned to go back to a senior associate job in the city, after a year of hyper-training in business... would you want to follow through with it?

50% of small businesses fail in he first year. 95% fail in the first 5 years. So, some of us don't even get to make that choice ourselves.


Engine[er]