Stuck in a mind-numbing career, recently redundant or ready to work after study or childbirth? You might be leery of the job market but worried that setting up a business is beyond you. Perhaps you don’t think you’ll be able to raise enough capital. But did you know that most things you need to run a business are now available in monthly installments on the internet? Accountants, project management, web hosting, even entire call centres (thanks to web hosted telephony and dialler systems that can be run remotely) – so you might not need as much cash up front as you think. And there’s always Kickstarter…
Anyway, if you’re stuck on the fence, see if our reasons can’t give you a little shove…
1. It’s better than being unemployed. Many people are facing – or have already endured – redundancy over the past few years of economic uncertainty. And they weren’t the first ones. Going to the Jobcentre, relying on state (or, indeed, anyone else’s) handouts for your income (which equals safety, food and well-being, when it boils down to it) is depressing. Money for nothing sounds all very well but you don’t get much of it, and not actually earning it is not great for self-esteem.
2. It gives you a more personal sense of security. This may seem counterintuitive, since you’ll be fending for yourself. But you’ll be relying on you. Not the whims of shareholders or the narrow confines of an employer’s market. If work dries up in one area, you can go and find a new motherlode somewhere else. You will have to save up an emergency fund that can tide you over if times get tough, but otherwise you’ll be free to develop yourself and your business in whatever direction feels most rewarding – financially and personally.
3. You get to make the decisions – creatively & financially. Sure, you might make the WRONG decisions sometimes, but that is pretty much a core mechanic to actually learning anything, ever. Wrong decisions teach you how to rebound, adapt, and try again. But imagine working for someone else who frequently makes bad decisions and you have barely any control over that – over the decisions themselves, or how they’re dealt with afterwards. That’s pretty frustrating. Running your own business puts you in control.
4. You learn a lot. There’ll be all that research you do to make sure you know what you’re doing, and the people you speak to will all have something to teach you, if you’re observant. And those decisions – the ones that don’t work out and the ones that give you satisfying glow – will all stack up in your “experience and insights” hopper for retrieval next time you’re weighing something up.
5. Bragging rights – or more importantly, self-confidence. When you take all those lessons you’ve learnt, make some good decisions and things go well, you’ll receive several valuable assets: a strong indicator of what you should do more of, in order to keep succeeding; a blend of security and gratitude for proving to yourself that you’ve got your own back; and far better Facebook updates than “look what I had for lunch again”.
6. You may get to create jobs for people. If you can expand enough to become an employer, you can provide work and income for someone else. This feels really, really good.
7. It’s liberating. Becoming self-employed makes the world look like one big opportunity – to meet people, have new ideas and explore emerging trends. Reading newspapers, looking out of train windows – they all become opportunities for Having Creative Thoughts, which is a nice sensation and may lead to the next stage of your career.
Good luck!
