Читать книгу Entrepreneurial Itch - David Trahair - Страница 13

I am not going to say that being your own boss is perfect — it most definitely is not — but there are more than a few reasons why I love it:

• Flexibility and variety. You are in control — you can decide what type of business you want to get into, how many hours you’ll work, and when you’ll put in those hours. The time before you start your business is a key point in your life because you have the power to decide what you would like to spend the rest of your working days doing. It doesn’t necessarily have to be what you are doing now. There are many success stories involving people who started businesses totally unrelated to the work they had been doing to that point: an engineer who started a lawn-and-garden maintenance business, for example, or an executive who opened a hair-salon franchise, a lawyer who set up a daycare business, or an insurance agent who established a bed-and-breakfast.

Even if you like what you currently do for a living, being self-employed in the same field can free you from the shackles of reporting to a boss. There is no one telling you that you will write a report on subject A and that the conclusion should be X. That’s probably what I like best — the variety of work and the fact that I can come to my own unbiased conclusions.

You are also free to change the focus of your business along the way. For example, I started off in my business as an accountant, but I do much less accounting work than I used to because I find writing and speaking on small business and other financial matters more rewarding.

• Work less, make more. Okay, I admit I like this as much as the flexibility. Let’s look at Lindsay Lawyer’s case as an example. If she were self-employed and billed less than the $250 per hour she does now, say $195 per hour, she’d only have to work 641 hours to bill what she is earning now — $125,000.

Of course, if she were self-employed, she’d have costs associated with running her own practice. She’d need a computer, software, office supplies, and an office, among other things. Let’s say she works out of her home and keeps her first-year costs to $30,000. She’d need to bill clients $155,000 to be left with $125,000 profit. How many hours would she have to bill at her hourly rate of $195? Only 795. So she’d be able to work 1,205 hours less than the 2,000 she is now doing to earn her current salary. That’s an amazing 60 percent reduction in the hours she’d need to put in.

That’s oversimplifying things a bit — she’d need to find clients first, for one thing — but I think you get the idea. (By the way, we’ll look at how to attract clients in Chapter 4.)

• Time off. When you are self-employed, you have a large degree of control over when you work. If you are a consultant and do your best work late at night, you can take the mornings off. If your five-year-old is performing in a play on Friday afternoon, you can take the time off and finish your work on the weekend.

This is especially important for me. My wife and I have a nine-year-old daughter, Cassidy, and a 13-year-old son, Kyle. It’s important for me to spend time with my kids before they are too old to want their old man around.

I have many special memories of seeing my kids grow up. When Kyle was in second grade, he went with his class on his first ski trip, and I was able to accompany them. Kyle was just learning to ski and had problems negotiating a T-bar (who didn’t at first?). I’ll never forget the sight of his gym teacher, Mr. Thompson, running up the hill by his side to make sure he got to the top safely. How do you put a price tag on that memory? You can’t. Sometimes the benefits of self-employment can’t be measured.