Self-Employment: Dream vs. Reality
How we imagine it. How it really is.
I’ll be honest with you: my opinion about working as an employee isn’t a very good one. I have had jobs with 6 different companies and/or institutions and I didn’t like almost all of these jobs.
I hate…
… having no real sense of control over what I am doing.
… being limited in my actions.
… being forced to do stuff I don’t enjoy
The answer to this problem seemed to be an obvious one for me. I needed to become self-employed. I needed to become the creator of my own work conditions.
So that’s what I did.
I tried to build different start ups. I teamed up with people. I worked on other projects alone. But most of all, I focused on my blog, because that was what I really enjoyed doing.
Over the years I figured out that the info-marketing business is where my heart really lies.
And yet, like most people, I certainly haven’t been able to build a business that comes even close to my imagination. In fact, my work life is defined more by overwork, stress and anxiety than anything else.
But I know that I am not the only one.
Beginning entrepreneurs (and that includes people who have been on the journey for many years) all over the world are struggling with similar problems. And that’s what this article is all about.
Imagination #1:
The freedom to design your own schedule.
We imagine not to be bound by a schedule anymore, that is forced upon us. In regular periods, we take time off and do all those things we always wanted to do. See all those places we wanted to see.
The reality?
We work more than we ever have. We feel like there is an endless amount of things to be done and not enough time to finish them all.
Unfortunately, most beginning entrepreneurs are unable to set up a proper business system that makes their own involvement unnecessary or at least limits it to a bare minimum.
The business is built around the founders themselves and thus requires their constant attention and micro-management.
Why?
Because instead of being designed to be an entity separate from the founder, the business is designed to be an extension of the founder.
The result is that there is a constant pressure felt by the founder. There are bills to be paid. Customers to be kept happy. Opportunities not to be missed.
And everything needs to be managed by you.
Imagination #2:
The potential for a sheer unlimited amount of income.
We all know it: as an employee, you are trading your own time for money. As a business owner, however, there is the potential that you will make a an uncapped amount of money.
It might be more risky. But if you succeed, you will be rewarded with true financial freedom.
The kind of financial freedom, that employees (unless they make it to the very top of the chain such as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies) will never experience.
The reality?
For the same amount of work, we often earn significantly less as freelancers or business owners. Sometimes we might earn nothing at all, depending on how far we have come in our development.
We work. And work. And work.
But we are not rewarded at all for it.
Whereas we previously felt like the slaves of our bosses, we now feel like the slaves of a new and even more terrifying boss — money.
More and more, we do everything we can to get a little bit more cash-flow going. The more we work, the more we lose track of our original business plan.
Our days become more and more filled with stuff that we neither want to be doing nor that we should be doing.
But we don’t see a way out of it. After all, bills need to be paid.
Imagination #3:
The ability to do what you love.
You might be a game developer who wants to have creative freedom to build the kind of game the kind of game that you always wanted to play. Or an architect who wants to test out innovative approaches in their field. Or a marketing consultant who has discovered a lack of something in your field.
Most people who go into business come from the background of a specific craft.
They are craftsmen turned founders.
In their previous jobs, they might have felt restricted by all the policies, the expectations of their bosses and/or the slow development due to bureaucratic hurdles.
What these people are looking for is the freedom to work on their projects with full control over how it is developing. They think that in this way, they can focus all their energy onto the thing they really want to do.
Often, the opposite is true.
Once we get into business, we often tend to spend a large majority of our time doing stuff that we absolutely don’t like doing.
Whether it is accounting, hiring people, setting up business processes, engaging in marketing activities or whatever, we often are forced to spend a majority of our energy on fields that we neither have experience with, nor are particularly interested in learning.
In fact, the moment your business starts taking off, you might not be doing any of what you actually love doing.
Instead, you need to spend your time thinking about the strategic vision of the business and the supervision of its implementation.
This is not something that many craftsmen particularly enjoy.
Imagination #4:
The fulfilment of your desire to make an impact.
Many people are going into business out of a desire to make an impact on society. They want to make a positive contribution and use their business as an outlet for doing so.
Quickly, however, you realize how limited you are in your ability of doing so and how hard it will be to put that into reality.
Perhaps, your desire is to do something as ‘small’ as being a better employer than the one who has hassled you for all this time until now. To give a few people the chance to work in a nice and fulfilling environment.
Even that often proves to be incredibly difficult.
What we tend to forget is that our previous bosses probably go into business with pretty much the same dreams as we do. They themselves probably have the best of intentions.
But then reality hits them.
Running a business proves to be a much harder exercise, than you or them have ever expected.
Before you know it, you are facing all kinds of problems.
Your business is running out of cash. Employees are making huge and costly mistakes. Customers complain about your service. You just can’t seem to find the right marketing approach to attract new clients.
As a result, every day you become more and more stressed. Your ability to make the right decisions becomes weaker. You can’t sleep properly anymore. Your health situation is declining. Overall, your life seems to become a mess.
Now, all that is on your mind is how you can save yourself from this prison that you have put yourself into.
How you can get rid off this business without going completely broke.
Conclusion:
Obviously, not everything about going into business is bad. All these dreams which you have about running your own business can become a reality. It’s just that for most new business owners, that’s not the case.
If running a business was easy, then everybody would do it.
Until somebody builds a business that actually fits with their imagination, many years might pass. Perhaps, it is going to take you 5, 10 or even 20 years until you get what you were looking for.
Perhaps, you will never succeed at it.
There are no guarantees about ever building a successful business. The only thing that is clear is that it requires a period of struggle, learning and slow progress every single day.
How long this takes depends on many factors such as:
- which background you came from
- what choices you make along the way
- how willing you are to: get external help
- how capable you are to learn
- how quickly you can change your mind-set from that of a craftsman to that of an entrepreneur
At the end of the day, if you are really sure that you want to be an entrepreneur, then you will have to accept the fact that the reality is going to look quite differently for a while, compared to what you have imagined.
You will have to be willing to make the necessary sacrifices and keep pushing forward. Every single day.
To do that, I recommend some further reading:
- Building a business that can exist without you rather than a business that is an extension of you: The E-Myth Revisited
- Developing a mindset that will allow you to navigate through the inevitable period of struggle: Struggling Forward (my own book)
- Building a sales funnel that will allow you to measure- and automate the sales and marketing process: DotCom Secrets
- Bootstrapping a business without dependency on investment money: The $100 Startup
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