Entering the Freelancer market with a comprehensive set of solutions, Businessmentals, an e-commerce business venture led by Steve Ashby, promises a new level of professional support to this largely disorganised sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Offering business know-how by world-class experts, templates and advice that will give freelancers a much stronger foundation for their businesses, \u201cBusinessMentals is designed to give Freelancers the confidence run their \u201cBusiness of One efficiently and profitably,\u201d says Ashby, who realizes that the time is now to focus on the Freelancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than 34% of US workers in 2017 are engaged in some form of freelance work, according to Forbes magazine, with this number predicted to reach 43% of the entire workforce by 2020. Over one third of UK workers will be freelancing by 2022. In the UAE, numbers are harder to come by, but companies in the business licensing and set-up sector estimate that there are over 100,000 licensed freelancers. Add the growing horde of \u201cFreelancer Incognitos\u201d who have jobs but also have their \u201cside hustles\u201d, and the real number of full and part-time Freelancers is probably closer to 250,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ashby quotes a recent World Bank study that showed the single largest reason why 85% of freelance start ups collapse within 30 months is because of \u2018business incompetence\u201d. Changing that statistic is the main reason he launched Businessmentals. \u201cYou cannot be consistently profitable if you\u2019re not competent at running a business. You might get lucky a few times, but that\u2019s not sustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The freelancer types he\u2019s identified are Freelancer Classic, Freelancer Incognito (someone who has a day job and a \u201cside hustle\u201d) and Freelancer and Friends (the Freelancer who has won bigger jobs than they can handle themselves and thus needs to hire other Freelancers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is also a fact that the freelance sector is totally unregulated. Standards of performance, reliability, and ethical behaviour vary wildly. At the same time as the segment is growing, the push-back from the clients of freelancers is growing too. Dissatisfaction with work ethic, concerns about poaching both work and clients are just a few of the many reasons given by clients,\u201c he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut like most things this cuts both ways. Freelancers often battle to get paid, or have impossible deadlines placed on them at the last moment, or find the client simply refuses to deal with them after they have done the work. For every egg there is a chicken and vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ashby\u2019s lighthearted approach to the issue belies how serious he is about creating the proper work environment for this segment and making it more productive. In his view, working out who to blame is futile. It\u2019s much better to establish good working practices, and ethical standards of behaviour by both parties and to build relationships based on mutual respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With a varied career spanning 35 years in HR, training, consulting, business ownership and specialist contracting services, Ashby brings to bear his experience combined with a practical understanding of the needs of freelancers and small business owners. He\u2019s very aware of the mistakes that cause business coronaries, having made most of them himself. His somewhat quirky sense of humour ensures that Businessmentals is engaging and entertaining to deal with, as well as providing easy to use, reliable solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Ashby says \u201cWhy and What without the HOW of action is just a dream. At Businessmentals we show you HOW in a smart, fresh way. We keep things simple, and practical. And we look at Freelancers holistically when planning what support to provide. Their environment, their personal circumstances, their personality \u2013 all these things have a bearing on success. You don\u2019t have to be a particular \u201cType\u201d of person to succeed, but you do need to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, and have persistence and resilience. It\u2019s a tough world out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To emphasise the need for being better organised, he reports, \u201cAccording to a survey In the UK in 2016, Freelancers and small businesses left \u00a33.4Bn in the wrong pockets because they \u201cforgot\u201d to invoice their clients. That\u2019s staggering, and provides another good reason to use our very practical business templates. It\u2019s happening here in the UAE too. One of our clients was owed AED5,000 but hadn\u2019t invoiced for it. She bought our Quote to Cash templates and process pack for AED 150 and within 3 days she achieved a 3,300% return on her investment! It\u2019s hard to go wrong with numbers like that!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The website address is www.businessmentals.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Entering the Freelancer market with a comprehensive set of solutions, Businessmentals, an e-commerce business venture led by Steve Ashby, promises a new level of professional support to this largely disorganised sector. Offering business know-how by world-class experts, templates and advice that will give freelancers a much stronger foundation for their businesses, \u201cBusinessMentals is designed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14068,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9.jpg",882,648,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9.jpg",882,648,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9.jpg",882,648,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9-300x220.jpg",300,220,true],"large":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9.jpg",882,648,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9.jpg",882,648,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9.jpg",882,648,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9.jpg",572,420,false],"graptor-sq-xs":["https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/ecommerce9.jpg",100,73,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/author\/admin\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Entering the Freelancer market with a comprehensive set of solutions, Businessmentals, an e-commerce business venture led by Steve Ashby, promises a new level of professional support to this largely disorganised sector. Offering business know-how by world-class experts, templates and advice that will give freelancers a much stronger foundation for their businesses, \u201cBusinessMentals is designed to…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14571,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14569\/revisions\/14571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web3unplugged.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}