Choosing The Right Self-Employment Option For You

When you’re considering self-employment, keeping an open mind and your options open is key to finding a situation that works for you.

Just ask Peggy Hill, a native New Yorker who spent decades as a corporate marketing strategist, working for a range of Fortune 100 companies. Work for Yourself @50+ helped her figure out her next step after a long career.

As the proprietor of Yoga with Peggy H™, she understands that yoga can help relieve exactly the kind of stress we’re all facing these days. “Yoga makes a difference in productivity, in creativity, in office camaraderie,” Peggy says — an assertion supported by more than a decade’s worth of research. “I have the data,” she adds. “It’s more than just ‘Let’s do cardio’ or ‘Let’s just move’; it’s yoga in particular.”

And yet, teaching yoga wasn’t the path Peggy saw herself taking when she set out to explore self-employment. Her initial aim was to build on her background by launching a corporate marketing consultancy.

At an event for entrepreneurs, she heard a representative from the Harlem Business Alliance mention Work for Yourself@50+, an AARP Foundation program that makes it easy for older adults with limited income to explore options for self-employment and increase their financial stability.

As part of the program, she attended a workshop where she received a copy of Work for Yourself@50+: Five Simple Steps to Get You Started, a toolkit filled with practical guidance, helpful worksheets, and go-to resources for becoming self-employed.

Peggy took the program seriously and used the toolkit to her full advantage. “I went through every chapter, went to every workshop session. I answered the questions and really thought through them. I went through the worksheets. That’s when I realized that consulting might not be the answer for the long term.”

Work for Yourself@50+ encourages participants to think about what they enjoy doing to identify a passion they might turn into a business. For Peggy, that passion was yoga.

“The Five Simple Steps to Get You Started toolkit is why I’m teaching yoga,” she says. When considering entrepreneurship, she realized that yoga was where she could bring greater value. “I like to teach, I’ll enjoy myself, and I may bring hope to someone. That’s how it evolved. The worksheets helped me formulate what it is I should be doing.”

Now “over 50,” Peggy teaches at various community centers in New York City and is looking to expand her business into workplace wellness programs, thanks to the learnings she gained during the program.

The program also helped her realize how her unique skills, life experience, and even her health issues gave her business a unique edge in the marketplace. “I’m not a 20-year-old trying to teach older adults to make modifications to the movements,” she says. “I’ve been diagnosed with musculoskeletal issues, but I can still do and teach yoga!”

She adds, “It doesn’t have to stop you from building strength, from living your life. I have experienced the change in one’s body, so I’m able to explain it better. I’ve lived it.”

Using her newfound knowledge and confidence, Peggy launched Yoga with Peggy H, and her business has been able to grow — despite a crowded playing field — because of the Work for Yourself@50+ guidance she received.

She speaks frankly about having to adjust both her business plan and her expectations and credits the tools provided by Work for Yourself@50+ with helping her refine and refocus.

“I kept going back to the plan. It was so useful. I’d say, ‘OK, where was I wrong, how do I bring value to this?’ I had to just keep changing what I had on paper: priorities, targets, break-even and profit and loss assessments.” She adds, “That’s where the work of launching your own business comes in.”

It hasn’t been easy, she admits, but Peggy is optimistic about the future of her business. “It’s an exciting journey for me because I didn’t know I could have that much of an impact on individuals. That’s what is most satisfying about the work.”