Self-Employed All Glitz & Glamour?

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Being self-employed can be a wonderful experience. Many of us look at our daily grind and wonder what it would be like to be our own bosses, to make our own schedules and to get out of the rat race. We often think being self-employed means freedom from all that we have grown weary of. Being self-employed can be wonderful, but is it really all glitz and glamour?

The sense of freedom that we all associate with being self-employed comes with major responsibility! It may seem as if self-employed people no longer have a boss, but the reality is they have a new boss all the time. Their customers are their boss! Being self-employed means providing the best of the best in quality, customer service and consistently doing all you can to make new and keep existing customers. If a customer needs your product or service by a certain date, everything else in your life stops, while you focus on meeting this customer’s needs.

Meanwhile you are seeking out new customers, finding ways to advertise your product or service, doing all of the bookkeeping, scheduling, and all of the things that in a traditional job would not be your responsibility. In a traditional career, you focus on your particular job. There are other people to handle all of the other business needs. Self-employed people have to do it all! Sure they can hire others to help, if they are making enough income to justify the added expense. Even at that, the self-employed have to be diligent to ensure that everything is being done properly, legally and in a timely manner.

In a traditional career you have set hours, you start at 8 am and finish the day at 5 pm (for example). Being self-employed means you have no pre-determined hours, you live your job. Even if you open a store that has set hours, being the owner you work way after the doors are closed. The myth that being self-employed means that you get to set your own hours is just that, a myth! You don’t set your hours, because your work day is 24/7. Even if you aren’t actually performing any work at the moment, you are thinking about your next customer, your current customer, improving the business and finding new ways to be successful.

Whether you are performing a service or selling a product, being self-employed means not only taking your job home with you, but being willing and ready to work as many hours as required to get the job done correctly. That could mean putting in 15 hour days or more, 7 days a week.

The self-employed have the ability to take their financial security and future into their own hands, but it is no easy chore! Being a business owner isn’t for everyone. Think long and hard before you jump in with both feet. It can be extremely rewarding and give you the sense of truly accomplishing something, knowing that you are working for YOU, that doesn’t mean it is glamorous or easy, but it can be rewarding.