Archive for March, 2007

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Showdown 7: Challenges

Friday, March 30th, 2007

This is part seven of a series exploring factors in self-employment and traditional employment. For more about this series, read the opening article.

Challenges

How difficult your work is and your influence over it

Self Boss
Pros Cons Pros Cons
  • You choose your work, so you can choose the challenges you wish to take
  • Self-employment is a challenge itself
  • As with the independence showdown, you have the ability to try new things and push the limits
  • You may not have external factors to keep challenging you
  • It’s easy to go the easy route - keeping motivated to push yourself can be tiring
  • Motivation can come from the outside and have more immediate payoffs
  • If you’re not being challenged by your employer, you may have little recourse other than to change jobs

Conclusions

I consider “challenging” to be a good thing. Entrepreneurs have to be open to new challenges and difficult work - that’s a lot of what self-employment involves. A regular job can also provide challenges, but if your particular situation doesn’t lend itself to that, you will find yourself frustrated and bored. And as any 1st grade teacher can tell you, bored kids are not happy, productive kids.

Winner: Self-Employment

Posted in Small Business | 2 Comments »

Showdown 6: Independence

Thursday, March 29th, 2007

This is part six of a series exploring factors in self-employment and traditional employment. For more about this series, read the opening article.

Independence

Your freedom in what you do and how you do it

Self Boss
Pros Cons Pros Cons
  • Few outside influences on your methods
  • Flexibility means you can try and change course easily
  • Entrepreneurship is all about creating new things
  • Clients often make demands on your methodology, and it can be hard to say no
  • Investing in new methods or technologies often means money and time that you may not have
  • May not have mentors to assist you in exploring new ways
  • Resources to try new things without risking as much
  • Difficult to get buy-in for “risky” ideas
  • “Let’s just do what we’ve always done”

Conclusions

If you’re an independent contractor, it’s pretty obvious who wins the independence battle. But for small businesses in a more traditional sense, independence is challenged by resources and circumstances. However, many (too many) businesses seek stability and fear risky changes. Stability is just another word for inertia. Big businesses are particularly concerned about this. But as Seth Godin says, “safe is risky.” Adapting to change is one of the smartest things a business can do, and small businesses have a major advantage. With little history and low impact on the organization, changing on the fly isn’t a calculated decision for most small enterprises - it’s what they do.

Winner: Self-Employment

Posted in Small Business | 1 Comment »

Showdown 5: Career Potential

Monday, March 26th, 2007

This is part five of a series exploring factors in self-employment and traditional employment. For more about this series, read the opening article.

Career Potential

What the future could hold for you in terms of work

Self Boss
Pros Cons Pros Cons
  • Success is great exposure
  • Acquisition can lead to huge career boosts
  • Pave your own way - choose your work
  • Small business ownership provides a wide range of experience
  • Challenge yourself and develop the skills you want
  • Some employers may view self-employment as a euphemism for unemployment
  • Building equity in your business can make it difficult to leave behind
  • Promotions and career development may come faster
  • There’s budget for training
  • Opportunities to learn from a mentor
  • You’re limited to the opportunities within your environment
  • Promotions may rely on seniority, which could slow your ascent
  • Some employers are threatened by ambitious employees

Conclusions

If you want to change what you do or how you work, self-employment gives you the freedom to make those choices. Self-employment also has the wonderful benefit of providing experiences well outside of the normal candidate. That’s a major advantage. Working for someone else gives you access to a lot of resources - people, funds, and experiences - but many of those are available in your own business.

Winner: Self-Employment

Posted in Small Business | 1 Comment »

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