The Flip Side of Freedom
Entrepreneurship offers undeniable freedom, but it also comes with unique challenges. While being your own boss is a huge perk, many entrepreneurs face issues like lack of support, isolation from friends with traditional jobs, and managing crises without a safety net. It’s essential to balance flexibility with structure to stay productive, continuously move forward, and avoid becoming a full-time crisis manager. Freedom is great, but building solid systems is key to long-term success.
I was recently introduced to chrisguillebeau.com and found some great content that I just had to share. One of the articles that struck me was about the flip side of being an entrepreneur. So many people see entrepreneurship as the ticket to freedom and have that as their ultimate focus. While that is definitely a huge perk, there are other factors that need to be taken into consideration.
Entrepreneurs are a diverse bunch of people, but when you ask them to tell you the greatest benefit of being self-employed, you’ll usually hear the same answer over and over. That answer is FREEDOM, and rightly so. When you work for yourself, no one tells you what to do—at least not in the same way a boss would.
Even if you freelance or have clients or customers, those people don’t usually set your hours for you, tell you what to wear, approve your vacations, or any of the other hassles you deal with at a “real” job.There’s no time sheet to fill out, and no H.R. department hounding you for staff reviews. Presumably, there are a lot less useless meetings too. (If you set your own useless meetings with staff, suppliers, or clients, that’s your fault!)
It is absolutely true that freedom is the greatest thing about self-employment. Make no mistake—I personally wouldn’t trade this benefit for just about anything.
However—you’ve probably guessed this was coming—there is another side to the freedom that successful self-employment brings. Here are several problems many entrepreneurs encounter as they step out of traditional employment and into their own vision of work.
- Your friends and family members who work at traditional jobs won’t understand. They see only the benefits of your entrepreneurial life and none of the costs and risks.They may expect you to be available all the time. If you don’t take personal calls or use Instant Messenger during the day so you can focus on your work, they may get annoyed and wonder “what else you could be doing.”Once you achieve initial success, it’s tempting to coast for a while. If you freelance and just had a big project last month, you may feel worn down and need to take it easy for a while. The key lesson is not to let this down time go on forever. Business markets, especially markets dependent on Internet services, can often change rapidly. You need to find a way to keep advancing, even if the pace is slow.There’s no time sheet, but there’s also no IT department to fix your computer problems. When the network stops working, it’s your problem. If your emails aren’t being sent or the web site goes down, at the very least you have to get the process in motion to fix it. In fact, virtually none of the support structure you are used to at a traditional job will not be there when you are on your own. You have to figure out health insurance, which is no small problem. Even if an accountant prepares your tax return, you usually have to think about taxes more than you would probably like to.The crises are all yours for the managing. Ideally, you should minimize the crisis management and focus on important work that builds your business, but this is easier said than done. When you are responsible, there is no one else to turn to. If you’re not careful and don’t build good systems for your business, you can easily become a full-time crisis manager. Even if you’re a great crisis manager, crises don’t usually pay very well compared to the normal activities of a business. When no one else is doing the sales and marketing and you spend your time putting out fires, income will go down and stress will go up.Too much flexibility in scheduling will kill your productivity. Some entrepreneurs are uncomfortable with the idea of structure because they are naturally opposed to traditional models of work. But structure that
- enables you to excel
- is a good thing. Figure out what this is—when do you do your best work, and what do you need to do it?—and set up your own time schedule. You can always adjust it to meet changing needs, but don’t throw it out entirely.
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