Self-employment is not freedom. The myth of the happy life of an entrepreneur

Talking with some of the founders of the companies I met in the last six months, I found that the overwhelming majority wanted to start their own business in order to achieve freedom and balance between work and personal life. The idea is that, it seems, if you become your own boss, then life will be much easier. It will be easier. She will be less tense.

I can understand the appeal of this. This is the lifestyle that many entrepreneurs are persistently promoting, posting their photos on the Instagram with the post "my office today" - and this is always the office in Thailand.

However, entrepreneurship - in my own experience - is not at all like this picture. Easy free lifestyle - from another opera. Entrepreneurship is very far from the beach relaxation. And in him it is impossible to just go and leave, saying to the boss that he is a complete moron. This does not pass. Because the work on yourself - the most difficult career that could be chosen.

If you are lucky and your business grows to the desired size and you give away the years of your life, doing hard unpleasant daily work, then you have a chance to achieve freedom and happiness. Then you can sit on the beach with your laptop and enjoy a carefree life. But it will take a lot of time.

But if you start your startup, because you want to get a balance between work and personal life, and complete freedom, and vacation at any time, then I have bad news for you. It will not happen.

Let's start with the money.

When you do most other jobs, you get paid. You can sit down at the beginning of the month and paint your budget - everything you are going to do with your money. You have a fairly clear idea of ​​what you will get, and you can make some decisions based on that.

If you worked X hours, then you get Y. The simplest equation. But it is incredibly far from business. Because when you start your own business and rely on it as your main source of income, the equation becomes much more complicated.

If you act on your own, you look into customer relationship management (CRM), determine how much money is on the way, which directions you can close and how things are going with cash flow. You are counting the final result. And only then you try to determine how much money can be safely withdrawn to pay for your lifestyle.

This is what I do in my consulting company and in the company Creatomic .

At the beginning of their journey, a startup that develops independently lives quite poorly. You must be prepared for this. Difficulties arise because it means that it becomes rather difficult to plan a way of life, the quality of life will increase and decrease depending on your income. This is inevitable. You will be forced to start thinking through your decisions about spending money.

At this point, you will begin to look for ways to save either on your own life to finance a business, or on your business to finance a life. The first possibility is correct, but it is difficult to fulfill. The second possibility is easy. But she will bury your case.

If you run a funded startup, the situation is a bit different. You are not trying to collect enough money for your salary, because you know where they come from. What you are trying to do is to give your business enough overclocking, and this is a completely different headache.

A margin note. If you start a startup by attracting investors, then you are no longer the boss over yourself. You will quickly see this when you begin to disagree with the distribution of money.

I know it looks pretty depressing. If you want to feel good, go straight ahead and skip the material to the end of the post. But I promise that everything is not so gloomy.

Well, still with me? Let's talk about time. I often hear from those who dream of entrepreneurship that in this way they want to manage their time and manage it much more intelligently. And again, I apologize, but this is not what will happen when you start your business.

For most people running a company, time is their main resource. It is a risky asset, because it is never as long as it takes, and it may disappear tomorrow. But that's all you have. In the first few years of your business, you will spend many hours promoting your company.

When you stop wasting time and try to disconnect, you are acutely aware that a lot of things stop. You remember unfinished tasks, clients that you didn’t call, products that aren’t finalized. Regardless of how you try to “turn off” your head, this is rarely possible.

Since this is the only resource you can give, no matter how much money it brings, you have a constant concern that you don’t give enough.

Seriously, keep reading, and you will feel better, considering options for choosing a life path. I am almost done.

Have you given up yet? Sumptuously! There is one more thing. It is “to be your own boss.” If you think that being your own boss is better than working for someone, you will be very disappointed.

Everyone who worked for someone faced at one point in their life one of two types of bad bosses:

1. The boss is a fool. You know this type. They stand with a notebook at the elevator and record the time when you come to the office. They pull down a bunch of papers on your table at exactly 5:00 pm on Friday. They do not raise your salary or promote you, and they never remember your birthday.

   
   
2. A boss who doesn't give you any trouble. They do not cause you, they allow you to come late, they never give you information about quality, and you never learn anything. Most of the time you feel that they, it seems, do not particularly care if you came to work at all. And this, accordingly, makes you think that your work does not make sense.

You are going to be one of those two types of superiors. When you work for yourself, there is no middle ground between them. You either give yourself too much weakness and you will never have any control, or you will chase and drive yourself to mental distress.

You will learn to treat yourself as you would never treat your employees. You will shout at yourself and criticize yourself to such an extreme that it could be the basis for a lawsuit on the fact of oppression, if it were applied to any third party. When I launched my information firm , I caught myself hearing what I heard in my head talking about an impending failure.

This is detrimental to health and, in general, is not a very good thing, but more than anyone else in your startup, you will know about the merciless pressure and the ticking of the clock and the need to resist. But what about the team? They do their paid work. And you risk your life.

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If you have broken through everything written above and are still reading, then accept my congratulations. I have good news for you. Although it is difficult, but being an entrepreneur is not bad. Creating your own business is worth it. Startup promotion is a wonderful thing. You have the opportunity to create something incredible, something unique that only you can.

You have the opportunity to take their own career in their own hands and take responsibility for their own destiny. Failure, hard work or difficult times will not take away such an opportunity from you. When you do something for yourself - believe me - the sensations that arise in doing so are much better than when working for someone else.

I have been in this race for many years and do not regret it. I could do something else, but I still want to be an entrepreneur, in order to try to raise my business and create something new with everyday work.

If you enter entrepreneurship, fully understanding that it will be difficult, that it will take years of your time and there will be many hard nights, that this is the most difficult thing you will ever do, then everything will be fine with you. You can go through difficult areas and evaluate the benefits.

And maybe - just maybe - if you move far enough and work hard enough, then you can walk to the beach with a laptop and a cocktail, leading your business the way you want.

But if you go there, expecting to immediately get a lifestyle drawn by your dream, and live freely, then you will have a quick and rude awakening.