Note: I’m on my emergency vacation. Hooray for emergency vacation! So anything posted this week might not make sense. There. That’s my disclaimer. Carry on.
Right. Yesterday when I was ranting incoherently making my point that one of the hidden benefits of being self-employed is that no one can force you to move to Denver, I hinted that none of the drawbacks are what you think they are either.
So today I want to talk about that. And about what actually happens when you start your own business.
Which varies, depending on how seriously you take the pamphlets of doom.
Beware the pamphlets of doom!
Doom! Doom!
I mean, they were probably written by very kind, well-meaning parental sorts of people who are just worried about you. But they kind of end up sounding like my monster.
They tell you about how hard it is to run your own business and how most of them fail and how you’re doomed (doomed!) without a certain kind of plan and blah blah etcetera.
Then when you’re a. completely panicked and b. have no money and c. are searching for help in the middle of the night, you go online and find the exact same depressing stuff about the supposed pros and cons of being self-employed.
Let’s talk about this.
The supposed cons of being self-employed.
The two biggest things everyone seems to worry about happening to you are:
1. Oh no, you don’t have anyone to make you do the work, so you’ll probably just sit around in your underwear all day, staring at the wall and picking lint from your belly button.
… and …
2. You’ll get lonely not having anyone to talk to at the water cooler. Because talking to people at a water cooler is one of the stupendous joys of being alive and is also the only thing that keeps human beings from slowly going crazy.
Let’s talk about #1: not doing any actual work ever.
Okay. I know exactly one person this has ever happened to.
And it doesn’t even count, because she was so destroyed from years in corporate hell that after she quit her job, she needed some serious “having my emotional breakdown now, if you don’t mind” time.
Every other entrepreneur I know has the exact opposite problem. We’re all insane workaholics.
Not that we don’t procrastinate or mess around online or whatever, because we do. But mostly we just. can’t. stop.
In fact, for the first few years, we don’t ever stop working because, you know, no one tells us to.
I cannot remember who said this incredibly brilliant thing, but it’s something along the lines of:
“My boss is a jerk. And crazy. And treats me bad. Yes, I’m self-employed.”
Exactly.
If the hundreds of people that I know are any indication of anything, it is far more likely that your problems will be related to over-work rather than the slackerism everyone warns you about.
Let’s talk about thing #2: isolation.
Okay, this one might be a real thing. It does happen to some people. Then they get on Twitter and everything works out just fine.
And anyway, turns out you do end up meeting plenty of people in real life.
But here’s the thing. I’ve been running my own business for nearly four years and have not once wished I had someone to talk to at a water cooler.
Hello, introvert here. Sensitive freaking flower.
For me, not seeing people and not talking to people is like, the highlight of my life.
As disastrous past experience has shown, I cannot work in an office. I would shrivel up and die for any number of reasons. But one of them would be having to be in a room with other people that I did not choose to share this space with.
Also, meetings. I do not like them. Also small talk. I do not like it.
No, isolation has not been a problem for me. And anyway, I have the blog. I have Twitter. I have a gazillion internet friends, with whom I don’t have to actually share space and energy.
And this isn’t just me. I also know plenty of especially talk-ey connect-ey extroverts, and they also seem to be doing okay. So I think we can stop worrying about this and move on to the things you really should be thinking about.
Okay, here it is. This is what sucks about working for yourself.
Well, you already know what it is. Because I told you.
No one tells you to stop.
Add to that the fact that you have the most relentless boss in the world. And that if you try to delegate and outsource, you end up spending a lot of time managing.
And that you have to learn how to do stuff you don’t like. Like the dreaded “M” word.
(Though you know what? No one tells you the good part which is that all that “marketing” stuff is just a means, not an end.)
But really the main hard is Not Stopping — especially when combined with self-doubt. And, more often than not, one fuels the other.
Your stucknesses (guilt and fear and various internal blocks and monsters) push push push you to keep working. Until you’re exhausted. And then your exhaustion feeds the stucknesses.
Lovely.
The good news. There’s good news, right?
You learn.
About three years ago my gentleman friend and I instituted a strict no-working after dinner policy. Which we have been known to break occasionally for “work emergencies”, but we’re pretty clear on what counts as an emergency and what doesn’t.
Then we started our hour of yoga before dinner thing, which makes us stop working even earlier.
We also have cleaning the house every Friday morning. And we’re getting a lot better about weekends. We’ll do some writing, but not work-work (whatever that means at the moment).
Not to say that this always works because hi, I’m on emergency vacation. But my own personal emergency right now is more about my own internal stuff in reaction to external circumstances than it is about said circumstances.
You learn — and you keep trying.
You try to be a bit more conscious and aware of taking that time to actively not-do.
You try to be a little more patient with yourself when it’s not working. And not treat yourself in a way that no one else would ever put up with.
Because if one of the great joys of self-employment is no one gets to treat you like crap and not appreciate you anymore … then it kind of sucks if you become that person who treats you like crap and doesn’t appreciate you.
You might as well be appreciated. Because the rest of us need you.
And … now I’m going to try and follow my own advice for once and take a nap.
postscript.
I just want to point out how incredibly lucky it is that there is so much more good information about self-employment available online than when I started.
Seriously, this situation has improved tremendously since I was that person freaking out in the middle of the night, thanks to genius people like Itty Biz and Sonia Simone and Chris Guillebeau who are out there making sure you get actually helpful help.
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Havi, I love that you’re on vacation. And writing, so we don’t all go into withdrawal here at your blog. 🙂
There’s so much to be grateful for, when you work for yourself. Permission to make mistakes, and to correct course. Room to try things and then try other things until you find what works for you.
Being a highly sensitive introvert myself, I love working from home, being able to shape my day to my own internal rhythms. It’s the most loving, supportive work environment ever, and I’m so grateful for it.
Thanks for this post, and for demonstrating what conscious working-for-yourself looks like. Yay for naps! 🙂
Much love, Hiro
Hiro Bogas last blog post..When I grow up I want to be me . . .
So true.
I now have two jobs. One where I’m in an office and rapidly vascillating between bored and stressed out, and one at home, where I’m doing stuff that’s really really cool, and I work myself to death.
Yay! Oh. Working on this.
Hope the emergency vacation is doing you good. Really happy you’re still blogging for entirely selfish reasons. 🙂
My favorite quote: “The great thing about being self employed is that you only have to work half time. And you get to choose which 12 hours of the day that is.”
Yeah. I actually do have tendencies to not mind not having a water cooler. But this means that sometimes (not all the time, but sometimes) – I have to be sure I’m scheduling some “get out amongst the people” time too. Because otherwise…..ouch. It gets ugly.
(Just as I have to schedule ‘quitting time’. And having an actual ‘place’ where I do the work. That helped a lot. Rather than when it was just all over my house.)
Yep.
All the best!
deb
Deb Owens last blog post..the heart of the matter (forgiving ourselves)
I always thought the biggest block to self-employment was health insurance. It’s certainly the biggest block for all the people I know. (USA, obviously.)
Barbara J Carters last blog post..Ambling in Ojai
@Willie – I hear you! Me too.
@Barbara – Yes, health insurance is one of my primary (and really, really huge) concerns. It’s one thing if you’re healthy and don’t generally need doctors–you can just start a “health savings account” and draw from it when you have medical expenditures, and probably save money vs. buying insurance. But for those of us who do need frequent medical care, and/or who have conditions which truly need to be covered or treating them would be insanely and impossibly expensive, that’s one of the real benefits of traditional employment.
(NOte: I say that with a tremendous amount of cynicism for the current state of health care in the U.S., which is flawed on so many levels, but manages to get away with it because for many, it’s still better than having no coverage at all.)
Michelle Russells last blog post..Celebrating the Cracks and Crevices
One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned is health insurance. I have been both employed by corporations as well as self-employed (10 years). I am currently employed by a university. I have weird things in my medical history that make getting a policy on my own very expensive. And many years ago, I worked for a small company and was denied coverage by their group policy (less than 10 employees allows them to pick and choose who they accept).
When I was self-employed, my husband provided the health insurance. But he is no longer employed, so I was very nervous while we were still on COBRA about being able to find a job with insurance. Fortunately, an odd sort of position got created for me and I have great benefits. But given that it is an odd position, I admit to fear that it will someday disappear due to budget or political reasons.
That darn FEAR!!!
I will admit when I worked for myself I loved the flexibility in my hours. I will also confess that I worked myself HARDER than any boss ever did. I had a terrible time with setting boundaries on my time as well as learning to say “NO”.
I don’t miss trying to get clients to pay up on past due bills nor the occasional being stiffed on payment for work done. I do miss the money I made.
But, overall, I’m pretty happy with where I’m at. I do work that I love, the people I interact with daily are great and I am working on a plan to get myself the credentials I need to move into a more secure and better paying position.
While I was writing my reply (got interrupted), I see others brought up health insurance!
So is part of the not stopping thing entrepreneurs have troubles with writing while on vacation or is this a prescheduled post? 😉
Alex Fayle | Someday Syndromes last blog post..3 Ways to Break Procrastination’s Hold Over Us
For me, not seeing people and not talking to people is like, the highlight of my life.
Hello, you are me, and I claim my five pounds 🙂
This bit reminded me of the #1 thing people say when they hear we’re planning to home educate our children: “but what about socialisation?” – as if the only place where children could meet and interact with each other were school. I’m kind of amused that the same misconceived assumption applies to “work” (as in, a Proper Job) – it is, after all, pretty much the institutional continuation of school.
Thanks for another thought-provoking post!
For the past few months, it may have looked like I wasn’t doing any actual work, but I’ve started considering that what I do in order to dissolve my stucknesses was part of my work too. After all, if I don’t do it, everything else will suffer and I will really end up not doing any work. And the destuckification is giving results: I’ve slowly started doing some “actual” work again. I wish things would happen a bit faster, but it’s ok – it’s already good to feel that things are moving a little, and to know that I’m working towards getting my Thing out into the world.
Oh, and you can count me among the ones who don’t mind at all the absence of water cooler from their life!
Josianes last blog post..Exposing some flesh
Thank you.
I remembered reading things about self-employment that suggested you had to be willing to work all the hours god sends and being put off by that. I think it triggered some weird thing about laziness (being accused of) and me not being much of a workaholic and thinking I could never do this.
But actually when you get into it, you do find yourself working at odd times or too much, even if you aren’t prone to that sort of thing.
Also, this kind of fear-mongering turns up around school, too. All the worries about unschooling. If you don’t use a structured curriculum will your kids learn anything or just play video games all day. And in those circles there is a term for the “let me have my breakdown” or whatever kind of recovery from school is — deschooling.
Maybe we need a term like that for the period in which you recover from employment and figure out how to be self-employed. you know, like where you figure out that your regular work hours can start at noon if that works for you (it does for my graphic design guy). Or that your desk can be a chaise longue. Or whatever.
de-jobbing? de-jobbifying? Ack, help.
JoVEs last blog post..From Conference Presentation to Journal Article
Most small businesses do fail. But I wonder what the long-term statistics are. Once someone has decided to try working for themselves, it seems to me, they will keep trying till they succeed. I know I will.
Kaushiks last blog post..“Cease to Cherish Opinion” – 6th Awakening is Simple book excerpt
“Hello, introvert here. Sensitive freaking flower.
For me, not seeing people and not talking to people is like, the highlight of my life.”
YES, YES, YES!!! And thankyou for pointing out to the rest of the world that not everyone likes being around other people all the time. Enforced interaction. Having to be polite. Bleugh.
Lock me in solitary confinement please and let me get on with it. 18 hours a day of pure focus – bring it on!
Fis last blog post..Entering the SoFoBoMo Challenge
Here, here. I’d add that working on your own business is great for learning every day. If you hit a rut you quickly snap out of it (or your work will shrivel and die) and you constantly add to your mix of offers, colleagues/partners, approaches, and percolating ideas.
Buy hey, if you’re on vacation, why don’t you role model vacation?! Truly immersing in the moment and not having goals, needy readers (children, in-laws, bosses)? It’s a different kind of discovery and renewal. (I especially liked a home exchange vacation in Umbria, Italy, where we had to make searches for Internet Points that were open at odd hours. We definitely reconnected as a family by cooking, drinking wine, playing cards, exploring towns, etc.)
Different strokes for different folks, but I love being out on my own. It really boils down to what you are willing to sacrifice. Cash flow and insurance security sacrificed for independence and control over your own destiny? Tough teeter-totter to ride.
Fred Ss last blog post..Parking Meters
Hi Havi,
I’ve been reading your blog for a couple of months now and just wanted to thank you. I love your message, your style, and your humor.
I’m having an emergency vacation/mental health day myself to day.
Debbie
Great post.
Here’s the story I always tell about why I love working for myself:
Before starting my own little fair trade import business, I worked inside-the-beltway, inside-an-office-or-cubicle labor union jobs. I would be forced to go to meetings with various muckety-mucks, and never say anything, but just be there as an institutional presence.
Last year, I was at a meeting of female fair trade importers, at a cultural institution inside-the-very-same-beltway. It was the type of meeting where people passed business cards around the conference table. And, guess what? I talked! It was liberating. And, I figured that hey, I’m the institution now, and can say what I want, since it’s all me.
I had rarely felt so free.
you are my new hero…..
The not-stopping thing is big. So is the not getting paid for everything you’re doing when you’re not stopping.
How bizarre is it that I’m going to have to use your Procrastination Dissolve O Matic to stop putting off consistent break times? And I’m sick. I’m having adrenal problems. Hmm. Any connection, do you think?
Darling sensitive freaking flowers all.
Mahala Mazerovs last blog post..Suffering By Desire
When I was self-employed, I was happy, and I earned a lot of money. Unfortunately, as many others, I did´nt know when to stop, either. As a courier, I met a lot of people, but I didn´t have to stay with them for long, which was up to my liking.
Now, I am in a position I passionately love. Being on half-time old-age employment as a teacher gives me the time to care for my family and trying out new methods with my students. It helps me tolerate the sometimes useless decisions of the educational authorities, and it gives me the time for doing the things I like.
Employed or self-employed? I am not allowed to start up any self-employed activities at the moment and earn money by that, but so much is sure: Being on full-time old-age-pension, I won´t hesitate to start up something new…
Ralphs last blog post..The benefits of civil aviation
“For me, not seeing people and not talking to people is like, the highlight of my life. ”
ME TOO!! It’s so nice to know other people who feel that way. All the people around me kind of look at me funny when I attempt to sing the praises of Getting To Be Alone.
Jenny Ryans last blog post..When Crankiness And Pop Music Meet
I’ve been “retired” for a little over 2 years now and I’m miserable.
I am so qualified at what I do, it seems a waste sitting around with nothing to do.
I am financially secure so I don’t have to work, but I want to.
I have a distaste for marketing of my services (design) and I’m trying to decide what the best method is to let people know of my availability. I’ve considered advertising in a local newspaper and using direct mail to certain people who may need my services. I’m not into using a blog as a means of “getting my message out there”. I don’t have a website and discount whether it would actually bring business my way.
I don’t ever again want a structured schedule – 8 to 12, 1 to 5 – obligation like I had when working for someone else. I expect I will have a 9 to 9 schedule when working on my own because I love what I know how to do. It invigorates me. It is an additional reward to see my designs actually get constructed.
Not having been in the selling end of the business where I toiled for 40 years leaves me a little nervous about how successful I will be. But I’m going to give it a try.
I really like your comments and the manner in which they are presented. Have you ever thought about elaborating on them further and publishing them as a self help book?