According to the Telegraph (2/1/12) here are 8 ways to help get you out of the slump and to boost your career in 2012.  Which ones do you think work best for you?



1. Moonlight


Use the skills and experience that you dedicate to making someone else rich to boost your own situation. “There are thousands of employers looking for freelancers to work with them on a finite project,” explains Saif Bonar, UK country manager of Freelancer.co.uk. “The great thing is they usually don’t mind when you do it – you can design their website or work on their new brochure in the evenings or over the weekend – as long as your work is good and delivered on time. And with a few good reviews you’ll find yourself winning more and more work.”


2. Turn your hobby into a job


“I knew there had to be a better way to buy wine when I tried a £20 bottle from a supermarket that promised to be rich and mellow but was so acidic it nearly took the enamel off my teeth,” says John Cristal, who launched Wine Simplicity.com in November. Doing something you love can be a big motivator, but you still need to be rigorous in planning your business. “We spent a lot of time carrying out market research to find out what’s important to people when they buy wine to help us devise our business model and get the structure right,” says Cristal. “I knew I was unhappy with the wine I was buying from supermarkets, but I had to make sure it was a lot more than just a personal bug bear.”




3. Don't blame others


“We like to blame everything else when where we are isn’t where we want to be: our boss, the Euro crisis, Jack from accounts, our partner, the kids. But very often the biggest barrier to us achieving what we really want is ourselves,” says Riana Avis, a transition conversation skills consultant. “To get what we want we have to start being honest, and that often involves having some tough conversations. And usually the toughest of them all is the one with ourselves. But until you have that tough conversation, all the obstacles that you allow to be in your way will still be there. It’s only by having that tough conversation with yourself that you can truly dispel the mental barriers that are holding you back and stopping you from seeing yourself, your situation, your ambitions, your skills and your opportunities from the fresh perspective that you need to take yourself in a new direction.”




4. Become a muti-national from your front room


“You may think you haven’t got the time or the funds to start your own business, but it’s never been easier,” urges Saif Bonar. “From your front room you can access all the expertise you need for a fraction of the price that you think you’re going to have to pay. There’s a flexible, fluid, highly skilled, global workforce just one click of the mouse away that can help you with anything from creating a website or designing a logo to astrophysics and biotechnology.” “By outsourcing the website programming for my business idea I was able to leave my 9-5 desk job and set up my own online business,” says James Wigby of GardeningEssentials.co.uk.




5. Be open minded


“It was a chance comment that led to a completely new career for me,” says Sharon Brogden of The Great British Voice Company. “Someone messaged me to say they could listen to my voice all day and had I thought of recording audio books? I had no idea I had what other people thought was a nice voice, but I started looking into it and realised I could do it. To begin with I had to trawl around to get work for myself, but now I have nearly 40 other voice-over artists on my books and have been approached to find the voice of the London Olympics!”


6. Work full time on your salary and part time on your fortune


You may not be in a position to give up your day job just yet, but working on your own business out of hours not only creates the cushion of a second income stream but also enables you to build up a clientele and a reputation to put you in a position to sack the boss in the future. “Our business partners can build a very good income with us in their spare time. It could be as little as an hour or two a month or as much as a few hours a day,” says Charles Wigoder, Executive Chairman of Telecom Plus, which has an army of 35,000 self-employed distributors building up their second income stream in their own time.


7. Find alternative funding


Banks still aren’t meeting government targets for lending to small- and medium-businesses. But the bank manager’s failure to see the brilliance of your business plan doesn’t have to be the end of your dream. “Crowd sourcing is a great alternative way to raise funds for a new business or to expand a going concern,” says Saif Bonar, one of the first people ever to crowd-fund a business by auctioning revenue shares in an Internet Cafe on Ebay in 2005. “People who may not be able to bankroll an entire project can invest as much as they feel comfortable with, the risk is shared, plus the kind of people who are getting behind crowd sourcing are more open to new ways of thinking so they’re more likely to see the potential in your new idea.”


8. Reach out


“One-man bands don’t work,” says Brad Burton. “If you try and be your own accountant, copy writer and postman you’ll have no time left to do the things that are going to get you to where you want to be. You might think you can’t afford to pay people to do these things for you, but you can’t afford not to. But if the money really isn’t there, start networking to meet other small business owners and trade skills. Perhaps you can design that accountant’s new website in return for him doing your books? Do a good job and you’ll have a positive client testimonial, referrals and more time to focus on your core activities – the ones that are going to make you a success.”