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Most people believe that you have only two choices: you can be an employee of someone else, or you can start a business and have others working for you.
As an employee, you have to perform up to the expectations of others: your bosses. That means working the hours they set, doing the work they give you, in the way they tell you to do it. In exchange, you get the security of a regular paycheck and benefits. Of course, we’ve all seen in the last several years that there is nothing secure about anyone’s paycheck.
Entrepreneurs work on their terms, but that doesn’t mean they have it easy. Launching a business requires a commitment of time and money, and may take all of both that the entrepreneur can scrape together. Often, the entrepreneur has not gone from slave to master, but has merely traded one master (the boss) for another (the business).
That brings us to an alternative: the Solo-preneur. The Solo-preneur chooses the work he wants to do. She decides how much or how little to work. He is not faced with the pressures of having to make a payroll, nor is he faced with the prospect of dragging himself to an office, day after day, to do the same old job. Most importantly, the Solo-preneur controls her own destiny. No one person can decide that the Solo-preneur will lose her livelihood. [Read more…]
First off, why should you outsource some tasks? You may not be a webmaster, graphic artist, coder, publicist, etc. You are an author, coach, consultant or other professional. And so isn’t the best use of your time to focus on marketing and growing your business and let others “sweat the small stuff”? (Okay, some of that stuff is not so small, but it is still fine to let someone else (someone more qualified for that task) do it.)
Starting a business can mean putting in lots of hours, working nights and weekends, and making sacrifices to get your business off the ground. But at some point, that needs to stop. What is the point of having your own business if the business ends up owning you?
Recently, a client told me that she is worried her husband will lose his job. Although her business is profitable, they depend on both incomes and couldn’t get by on her current income alone.