CREATING YOUR OWN JOB

If you find that you can no longer work for your current employer or are frustrated by the effort required to get a suitable job with a new employer, you may prefer to set up your own business and work for yourself. That is the choice which Ronnie and Terry made. Terry's experience, in particular, illustrates vividly both the difficulties of getting accepted for a suitable job as a deafened employee and the challenges involved in setting up on your own.

The obvious attraction of self-employment is the scope for developing your business to suit your own skills and to control your means of communication with other people such as customers and suppliers. However, to succeed you will need to satisfy at least four requirements:

· you must be able to devise a product or service for which there is a market;

· you must have the marketing skills to promote your product or service successfully or find someone else who can promote it for you;

· you must find the money to establish the business and have the financial skills to make and keep the business profitable; and

· you must find a satisfactory way of communicating with your suppliers and customers despite your deafness.

Devising a marketable product or service

Deciding on what product or service to offer may be straightforward if you already have skills or experience in a particular field from your previous employment (as Ronnie had in

food wholesaling and retailing) or from a leisure activity (e.g. an interest in computers, painting/decorating, carpentry or gardening). But you also need to be confident that there is a market for your product or service at a price which earns you a profit. So you may need advice on how to market test your product or service before committing funds to it. You will then need to advertise your product or service successfully to generate sales. Both Ronnie and Terry had experience of marketing and sales before they became self-employed.

Funding your business

You are likely to need funds to launch the business and maintain it in the early stages of its development as well as some financial know-how to keep the accounts and manage the cash flow. So you may need some training and information about sources of grants and cheap loans.

Communicating with suppliers and customers

Even if the product or service you provide is largely a matter of personal performance (such as painting/decorating, making pottery, framing pictures) you will still need to communicate with potential and actual customers and possibly with suppliers. With a little ingenuity you can reduce the need for telephone calls and meetings to a minimum, as Terry's experience shows. The Internet now makes it possible to give a great deal of information about your product or service on a website and to deal with customers and suppliers largely by email. Nevertheless, customers still like to make immediate contact by telephone as Terry found. So you may want to consider whether you could pay for a hearing employee to answer telephone calls and perhaps deal with other aspects of your administration.

Sources of help and advice

Altogether, setting up in business is a major undertaking which requires careful planning, particularly if you are unemployed and have limited funds of your own to commit to the business. Fortunately there are several sources of advice and of funding.

First and foremost, there is a national network of government funded but locally based advice centres in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland which can refer enquirers to business consultants who have practical experience of running businesses and local knowledge of funds available for start-ups in their area. These consultants give free advice to would-be entrepreneurs (e.g. on how to assess demand for particular products and services and the level of funding required to provide them, and on the preparation of detailed business plans).

Secondly, the Government's New Deal programme includes a self-employment option for participants aged 18-24 who have been unemployed for six months, and offers an Employment Credit of £60 a week to help people aged over 50 who have been unemployed for six months to set up their own businesses.

Finally, there is training available on how to set up and manage your own business and information about a variety of local and national organisations which provide grants or loans for new businesses. (For more details of the organisations mentioned see Organisations for Business Start-ups).