Yesterday, I made a tweet about how everyone keeps asking me the same question about life after my MBA. “Will you stay in your same position or apply at new companies?” I have been asked this by multiple people online, and ALL of my friends, family and those that I had my MBA classes with.
My plan is to stay at my current position. This also led to the next question that a couple of other people asked me (Such as 20s Finances), which was “Why don't you go the self employed route?”
Below are a couple of tweets that others said. There are some tweets missing, so they don't really go in order just if you're confused.
The girls over at So Over This and Savvy Financial Latina are on opposite ends of the self employment debate as you can see above. I'm still not really sure where I fall. I do think being self employed would be great, but I do like the stability of a constant paycheck.
I think one common misunderstanding is that self employed life would be easier. However, I think it's the exact opposite of that. You will be taking on all types of roles and doing all types of tasks, which, especially in the beginning, will be very time consuming.
Self discipline is also another big factor when it comes to being able to be successful in your own business. Since you will be your own boss, and you will most likely control your hours and the work that you do take on (and the clients you chose), you have to be able to follow some sort of schedule in order to stay on task. No one will be there to tell you to hurry up or give you a deadline.
Below are benefits of either choice, and yes I do realize that not all are positively true for each situation.
Benefits of being self employed:
1. You get to be your own boss. Don't like working for other people? Well then be your own boss!
2. Your company might be your passion, or something you enjoy doing. I'm assuming that if you start your own business, that it's not something that you completely hate. It's either something you like doing, or that you are really good at.
3. You get to set your own hours. I don't know about you, but I am NOT a morning person at all. Being able to set my own hours or start a couple of hours later would be wonderful.
4. You are in control. This goes hand in hand with the other 3 reasons above, but it's the truth. You are in control of what you decide to sell, make, market, advertising, and everything else.
Benefits of being an employee:
1. You will not bring work home with you. Yes, some jobs require you to bring your work phone and work home, but if you are self employed, you will most likely dedicate much more time.
2. You want steady paychecks. If you are self employed, there might be months (especially when you are first starting out) where your income might not be the greatest. Maybe they'll never get up to the point where you would like them. With being an employee of someone else, for the most part, you will have stable paychecks.
3. Vacation, health insurance and other benefits. Yes you have benefits if you are self employed, but the costs will be high. With a position at a company, it will most likely be paid for, or at least some of it will be.
4. You enjoy working with other people. If you're self employed, you will most likely be working by yourself (at least in the beginning). Maybe you like making friends at work and interacting with others. Not saying that you can't do this when you're self employed, but you won't be surrounded by as many people.
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Some people want to be their own boss, but for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of people underestimate how big of a transition it will be to make the transition from Employee to Self-employed.
There are definitely pros and cons to each as you have listed above.
Personally I want to be my own boss by having my biz generate passive income. At the same time I only take on full time jobs that give me a degree of entrepreneurial freedom. So it’s a win win – My 9-5 allows me to work from home and set my own hours AND my side business allows me to make passive income.
So why not have both? 🙂
I’m trying to be my own boss right now. You’re totally right about the pros and cons. My other job, tutoring ESL online, is something that I do without interacting directly with coworkers. It’s crazy how much I miss just having someone to chat with while I have my lunch. But for me, the pros far outweigh the cons.
Hi Michelle, I’ve been going through your articles past few days and they are amazing. Thank you for sharing. Btw, a few months back, I read ‘Cashflow Quadrant’ by Robert Kiyosaki where he explained different work quadrants including employee and self-employed. I believe being self-employed is slightly better than employees, however, in both these options, people trade their time with money. The best case scenario would be to have a business and start investing. Once again, great read. Cheers!!