What Is It Really Like To Be Self-Employed?

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney

Walt Disney’s advice may seem simplistic, but in today’s world of impressive technology giving everyone the chance to be their own boss and run their own business, it is now truer than ever. If you have an idea and want to become self-employed to see that idea come to fruition, now is the best time to do it.

Yes, being self-employed is not as simple as you might think. There are many challenges that will need to be faced, and without going into this new way of working (and living) knowing what they are, you could be setting yourself up for failure, or at least making things a lot more difficult than they need to be.

Read on to find out more about what it is really like to be self-employed so that you can prepare for the big changes it is going to make in your life.

Work Hours

For many, the dream of being self-employed revolves a lot around the freedom that it will offer in terms of the flexibility of working hours. In many cases this is true; working for yourself means that you can take time off whenever you need to, and you can attend all of those important family functions such as your children’s school plays and sports games.

However, when you take time off from your own business, at least at the very start when you are just beginning to get yourself known and established, it is likely that you will have to make up for those missing hours at another time. So you could take half a day to take the kids to the park, but then you might have to work late into the night, or across the weekend, so ensure everything is done. It is likely you will even work on vacation, at least answering emails and keeping in touch with important clients and customers.

The freedom of being self-employed is a true fact to a point, but you need to know that the number of hours actually worked are often more than you would work if you were employed by someone else. The payoff is that because it is your own business, you are happier working those hours, and it doesn’t feel like work a lot of the time.

Finances

When it comes to being self-employed, finances will constantly take an important role in your life, not just at work by in your personal life too. When you are working for someone else, you won’t have to worry about the company’s finances (unless you work in the accounts department, that is). You do your job and you get paid the right amount at the end of every week or month. That’s not necessarily the case when you are self-employed. You might have a good month one month where you can pay yourself more than usual, but that could be tempered by a bad month the next, where you have to pay yourself less.

Because being self-employed means that you may not have a regular income anymore, it’s good to have some kind of contingency fund in place for those months when money is harder to come by. You should have at least three months’ worth of finances in place in your savings, or another way to finance your day to day needs if your business struggles. This could include investments like cannabis penny stocks, for example, or loans that you can access (as long as you know you can pay them back).

You’ll Take A Lot Of Knocks

Being self-employed is exciting. It’s an adventure. It is the reason many business people get up in the morning because they love the idea of making something out of nothing, and creating a business that works for them. Being self-employed is not, however, something that is for the faint-hearted. You will take a lot of knocks and set-backs. People will say no to you on more occasions than they say yet, at least at the start, and potentially going forwards too.

You will come across challenges that you had never even considered before, and if you are self-employed with no team behind you, trying to work out how to deal with those challenges is going to be a lot harder.

That’s not to say being self-employed is a bad idea; for a lot of people (a growing number, in fact), being self-employed is the ideal way to make a living. It’s simply that you need to understand that it will not be an easy journey. That’s part of what makes it exciting, but it can also make it difficult. If this is what you really want, don’t give up; keep going and you will reach a point when everything is less of a challenge.

You’ll Get To Know Yourself

Many people go through life not really knowing who they actually are. They never take a good look at themselves and their own personalities because there is no need to. That’s not the case when you are self-employed. When you work for yourself, you need to know exactly where your strengths and weaknesses lie, and how to use them to your advantage in business. This means you need to assess your own personality and look at it in fine detail.

Everyone has weaknesses, and knowing what they are will help you to build your business just as much as knowing what your strengths are. You will know what you need to outsource and what you can do yourself, and you’ll know which direction to move the business in depending on what you are particularly good at. In fact, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and what you enjoy doing most before you start will help you to determine what kind of business you want to set up in the first place.

You’ll Have To Say No

Saying no to people is something we’re all to some extent uncomfortable with. Humans like to please other people, and saying yes to something we are asked to do is the easiest way to do that. When we agree to something, the other people feels good, and that pleases us.

Yet saying yes to everything is not a good thing. There will be some times when you just don’t have the capacity within your business to take on any additional work, and if that is the case you will need to say no. It might not please the potential customer, but at least you won’t become overwhelmed with work and miss deadlines or produce substandard goods or services. You also need to say no if you are asked to do something you are uncomfortable with, or that you don’t have the skills for. Keeping your own peace of mind is crucial and saying no can help you immensely with that.