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Realities of Foreign Service Life Vol. 1

Realities of Foreign Service Life Vol. 2

Realities of Foreign Service Life, Volumes 1 and 2: Writers from the Foreign Service community share their first-hand experiences and insights through essays on Foreign Service life. A great gift for newcomers or veterans of the Foreign Service and especially useful for anyone considering a Foreign Service career! Read more about Realities of Foreign Service Life here and order your copy!

 

Be Your Own Boss

Build a solid foundation for any business anywhere

By Debra Thompson, Local Employment Adviser (LEA) Canada

Working overseas, much less maintaining a career, can be very challenging for Foreign Service spouses. While not a solution for all, many have found personal and professional rewards in running their own businesses. Regardless of the type of business you would like to start-up, you need to do extensive planning.

Business plan

Most important is developing a business plan, which is a written description of your business' future. The time and thought that you invest before writing it forces you to take an objective, critical, and unemotional look at the entire proposal. The finished plan provides you with an operational tool that will help you manage your business. The plan also provides you with a communication device for discussing your business and its financing with investors, partners, family, etc. Statistics show that a well-thought-out business plan increases your chances of making your business a success. There are seven major sections in a business plan:

  1. Executive summary: Synopsis of your entire business plan, including your business concept, financial features and requirements, current business position, and major achievements, all in under a page.
  2. Business description: Description of your business, including its structure, legal form, business systems, and products or services, as well as description of the current industry and its outlook. If looking for investors, include a description of how your business will be profitable.
  3. Market strategies: Clear definition of target market achieved through painstaking market analysis, which forces you to become familiar with all aspects of the market.
  4. Analysis of competition: Should also include strategies to gain the advantage.
  5. Development plan: Information for investors on product/service development, market development, and organizational development needed to enable the company to reach its quantifiable goals.
  6. Operations and management plans: Logistics of the organization, including the various responsibilities of the management team, the tasks assigned to each division within the company, and capital and expense requirements related to the operations of the business.
  7. Financial components: Income statement, cash-flow statement, and balance sheet.

For the average home-based business this business plan format may seem like a great deal of work, but it will make you organize your thoughts and will give you a much better chance at success. For more on business plans, try these resources:

Marketing plan

Once you have completed your business plan and are ready to do business, you must implement your marketing plan. There is a tremendous amount of assistance available to you at this point, but there are a couple of basic but valuable tips to keep in mind.

First, develop a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). This takes the place of a logo but clearly identifies your company. The USP should consist of a few words that will help people to remember you. The USP should not be longer than one line of type. A good example is VISA's slogan, "Everywhere you want to be."

Next you will need a one-minute presentation prepared and practiced to present at every possible opportunity. In this presentation you say who you are, what you do, and why anyone should bother to use your business. Be sure to include what you want them to remember most, your unique Selling Proposition (USP), what would add credibility to you, and what benefits you can offer this person(s). Be careful to avoid jargon and do not talk about the process but rather tell them how you do business. Avoid talking about prices or costs unless it works to your benefit or it is part of your positioning. And finally, never sell yourself short with qualifiers.

Other marketing tools and ideas include business cards, brochures, media coverage, bulletin boards, classified ads, portfolio, shows and displays, local organizations, and networking. For more on marketing strategies, visit these sites:

With a great deal of planning and preparation, Foreign Service spouses can maintain a career through self-employment. Although the frequent moves encountered by the Foreign Service lifestyle will continue to be disruptive, spousal employment does not have to cease. Most businesses developed by the Foreign Service spouse can be restarted in each new post of assignment. Once you have proven to yourself that you can operate a business, restarting it will not be quite as daunting as the original start-up. Remember, you have valuable skills to market and you can be successful if you are willing to take some risks and work very hard.

First-hand experience

Helen Long, AAFSW member, Foreign Service spouse, and founder of Long Solutions (http://www.longsolutions.org), believes writing a business plan and marketing strategy have been critical to her success. "Taking the time to create these documents before setting up a new business can save headaches down the road when you are overwhelmed with the everyday tasks and excitement of new business, new clients, and new horizons."

AAFSW member and Foreign Service spouse, Christy Grimste, wrote a business plan for an importing business that she ultimately decided not to develop. She says, "…putting the whole things down on paper made me consider issues and questions I had not thought of before, despite reading all about entrepreneurial ventures and majoring in business in college. Rather than plunging into it and finding out midstream that the costs would outweigh the benefits, the business plan showed me that what I had thought was a foolproof venture would actually not work as I envisioned. Someday, if I ever try to pursue this particular venture again, I will approach it differently thanks to the insight the business plan gave me."

Jan Fischer Bachman, AAFSW member and self-employed Foreign Service spouse, says, "I highly recommend creating a business plan for anyone who wants to go beyond 'just working.' It is easy to get a bit of freelance work. It is harder to develop that into a career or an ongoing business. A well-thought-out business plan will help you do just that.!"

AAFSW also features "Working Overseas: Be Your Own Boss" by Debra Thompson, which highlights the ins and outs of State Department and local government regulations pertaining to self-employment while overseas.

AAFSW member Debra Thompson lives in Montreal and is the Local Employment Adviser in Canada. She is one of the main architects of FLO's SNAP program. As a career consultant, educator, and Foreign Service spouse, she has experienced local economy employment and home-based business ownership on three continents. She is the Local Employment Adviser in Canada and can be contacted at ThompsonD3@state.gov.