Explore Working for Yourself as a Career Option
Eric Byrd
Entrepreneurship Educator & Advisor
What will you do if change knocks on your door?
AI automation, layoffs, and changes in the workplace are causing many experienced professionals to wonder what the future holds.
You may be wondering if consulting, freelancing, or owning a business could be what's next. But you're unsure where to start.
Most people ask: “What business could I start?”
But, it's not that simple.
There's more to consider. What do you need financially? What would fit your lifestyle? What skills, knowledge, and experience do you need? What can you offer that people will buy?
In this live, hands-on workshop, you'll work through those questions using your own experience, needs, and circumstances.
You'll identify potential opportunities, work through financial requirements, consider customer's needs, think about how to create value to actually get customers to buy.
This workshop is designed for experienced professionals who are seriously considering working for themselves but don't yet know whether it's the right choice or what form it might take.
You'll leave with tools you can use to make decisions, so you're better prepared if you're faced with change.
The goal isn't to start a business in 30 days. It's to know what steps to take to find out if that's a fit.
What you’ll learn
Move from wondering if you could work for yourself to knowing what to do next.
Identify the income a business would need to provide to meet your financial needs.
Define the lifestyle, time, flexibility, and other requirements a business needs to fit.
Leave with clear criteria you can use to evaluate potential business opportunities.
Inventory skills, knowledge, and experience that could become building blocks for a business.
Look beyond your current job and résumé to identify capabilities and resources you may have overlooked.
Identify assets you can connect with customer problems and needs to generate new possibilities.
Identify real problems, needs, and desired outcomes that could point to potential opportunities.
Connect what people want with your own skills, experience, and resources to generate business ideas.
Leave with several potential business ideas you can evaluate and explore further.
Apply five practical business models to see different ways you could turn an opportunity into a business.
Compare different ways to deliver value instead of assuming an idea has only one business model.
Leave with potential business models you can evaluate for the opportunities you're considering.
Work backward from your income needs to estimate the revenue, expenses, and customers a business could require.
Evaluate personal, capability, market, financial, and operating fit before deciding what deserves more attention.
Select a promising possibility to pursue further based on what you've discovered during the workshop.
Turn your biggest assumptions into questions you can answer with better information and real-world evidence.
Identify specific actions to research, talk, observe, and calculate during the 30 days after the workshop.
Leave knowing what you'll do first and what evidence you need to decide whether to continue, change direction, or stop.
Workshop agenda
Personal Fit
Identify the financial, lifestyle, time, flexibility, and other requirements an opportunity would need to meet to realistically fit your life.
Your Building Blocks
Look beyond your current job and resume to uncover skills, knowledge, experience, relationships, interests, and other assets that could become building blocks.
Opportunity Discovery
Look at what people need, want, struggle with, and already pay to solve. Connect those observations with your assets to generate potential business opportunities.
Creating Customer Value
Take potential opportunities and consider different business models for turning them into something customers could value and buy.
Financial Feasibility
Estimate the revenue, expenses, customer volume, and workload a possibility might require to provide the income you need.
Opportunity Fit
Compare personal, capability, market, financial, and operating fit. Choose a possibility to investigate further, not a business you're committing to start.
30-Day Action Plan
Turn assumptions into questions and identify what to research, who to talk with, what to observe, and what to calculate so you know what to do next.
30-Day Progress Review Call (included)
After your 30-day investigation, meet again as a group to review your progress. Share what you learned, get input, and decide whether to continue, change direction, explore something else, or stop.
Learn directly from Eric
Eric Byrd
Helping people evaluate ideas, test assumptions, and make better decisions.
Who this workshop is for
Experienced professionals concerned about how AI, layoffs, or workplace and industry changes could affect their future.
Professionals considering consulting, freelancing, or owning a business but unsure which options could realistically fit them.
Professionals who aren't ready to leave their job but want to explore working for themselves before they're forced to make a change.
What's included
Live sessions
Learn directly from Eric Byrd in a real-time, interactive format.
A clear place to start
Follow a structured, step-by-step process instead of piecing together advice on your own. Guided exercises help you work through the important questions in a logical order so you can focus your effort on what matters.
Expert guidance when you need it
Work the process live, with guidance, so you don't get stuck as questions come up. Get help clarifying your thinking and applying the tools to your situation instead of being frustrated trying to interpret everything on your own.
Better questions for better decisions
The defined process lets you look beyond what might work for someone else, but not you. Examine why an opportunity might fit for you. Define what assumptions you're making, and what evidence you need before investing significant time, money, or energy on a new direction.
Dedicated time to turn curiosity into action
Put a date on the calendar to stop wondering and start exploring. A full-day working session gives you focused time to examine your options, without distractions. Do the exercises, and make meaningful progress toward deciding what comes next in a supportive environment.
Work with like-minded peers
Small-group discussions and activities let you explore ideas with others asking similar questions. Gain feedback, new perspectives, and connections that can support you during the workshop and beyond.
A process you can use again
Leave with tools and a repeatable process for evaluating possibilities as your circumstances change. If one idea doesn't fit, you can apply the same process to another opportunity instead of starting over from scratch.
30-day action plan that keeps you moving
Turn what you discover during the workshop into specific next steps. Your 30-day plan identifies what to research, who to talk with, what to observe, and what to calculate so you can keep making progress after the live session.
Continued guidance after the workshop
Includes a one month review call. You won't just leave with a list and a "good luck." Rejoin the group after 30 days to share what you did and learned, get input, and decide whether to continue, change direction, explore something else, or stop.
Accountability that helps you build momentum
Create milestones that make it easier to follow through. Your workshop date gets you started, the working session moves you forward, and your 30-day plan and the follow-up call give you deadlines for taking the next steps.
Explore without committing to a business
Explore working for yourself without pressure to decide or commit. The workshop helps you evaluate possibilities, test assumptions, and gather better information so you can decide whether to continue, change direction, explore something else, or stop.
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