This is a question for the worker bees ... would you ever consider starting your own business, freelancing, or otherwise dropping out of the corporate world and doing your own thing?

I have never thought this would be something I'd like to do, but it's starting to sound tantilising. I've always thought I could never be disciplined enough to really work for myself, and I also thought I'd miss being with lots of other people too much, but would the benefits of avoiding office politics and idiotic managers off-set this?

So, have you done it? How is it out there? Would you recommend it? Or, like me, have you always thought it wouldn't be for you?

Answers on the back of a postcard, please!

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

Answers

Hi, Jackie -

Some things to think about self-employment:
You need to have a high tolerance, at least in the beginning, for insecurity about where the next check's coming from. Some money in the bank, or a signficant other with a regular paycheck, are probably going to be necessary.
While you will not be dealing with "office politics" and "idiotic managers," you will deal instead with your clients' politics and idiocies.
You will probably work much harder when you work for yourself. However, if you *love* what you're doing, it doesn't seem like work.

I tried it for a while, last year. Didn't work, for various reasons (I can e-mail you separately about it, if you're interested). I *might* try it again someday, in other circumstances.

Bottom line (running out of space on the postcard, here): if you have the right type of personality, working for yourself can be a joy. However, it's not a move to be made lightly, and the grass is not necessarily greener outside of the corporate world.

Best of luck.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

In a heartbeat--with the caveat of having a spouse with a good-sized steady paycheck. I've been that spouse for about 5 years now and hope it's time to switch soon. Being the one with the paycheck has made me more concerned about the income variability though. I'm spoiled!

Also, I feel that having parents who were/are independent professionals or small business owners helps a LOT. My parents own their own small business and growing up in that environment makes me much more tolerant of the up-and-down nature of being on your own.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

Sounds like two different options to me, Jackie! Starting your own business is something that eats your time right up. You don't get holidays, you're the last one to get paid and the first to get the snash if anything goes wrong. It's not something I've tried or fancy trying myself.

But I was freelance for four years, working in radio production. In fact this is only my second contract I'm on at the minute. I loved being freelance. I could choose what work to take (although in theory I said 'yes' to pretty much everything) and when to do it...I could go for a swim or go shopping in the middle of the afternoon, I could go on holiday whenever and for however long I wanted. I didn't have the office politics thing to deal with. All very good things. On the other hand, there was a lot of insecurity about where the next bit of work was coming from and a hell of a lot of paperwork and taxes to think about.

For me, although I love having a salary, I'm still shy of signing a contract for anything longer than six months, and I still miss going swimming at 3pm.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

I was self employed for a few years while I was in law school, and I nearly starved to death. That was a special circumstance: I worked for a lawyer but my checks came from the court, and the court was really, really slow about processing them. "Slow" as in sometimes it took six months or more.

I've been leary about self employment ever since.

I do want to do it, though. It does take discipline, but you can have the freedom of being able to do your work at the time of day that best suits you. I think it's a fair trade off myself.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

I've freelanced for years (writer/researcher/editor) and once did it full time for about a year. I got a lot of good experience and every day was different and exciting, but it was a financial disaster.

Good: You can say "no" to jobs you don't like. You can buy lots of nice office toys and tax deduct them. You can work in your pajamas. You can go to matinee movies or equivalent. (I used to go to the lunchtime talks at the university across the street, from which I had just gotten a degree.)

Bad: You won't be able to afford to say "no" to anyone for quite a while. You won't be able to deduct all your toys if you don't stick with it for a while (office equipment is normally depreciated over several years). You can write at night but you still have to do your phone calling during the day. You'll spend a lot of unpaid hours running around and going to meetings and invoicing people and figuring out if you've gotten paid and remembering how much you have to save for the tax man (most clients won't do the work of taking out taxes for small freelance jobs). You'll have to arrange your own health insurance. You'll realize just how much you depend on the infrastructure of free equipment/coffee/colleagues at your job.

I decided I prefer a steady situation with freelancing on the side, but maybe I just wasn't patient enough at building a business.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

I worked for someone else for one year and have been self employed for almost nine years now. I would never work for someone else again! But previous posts mentioning uncertain hours, salary, vacations, etc are all too true and if you have a business with employees you have all their headaches as well as your own. That said, I am at home now letting the dogs out to play for a bit before I go back to the clinic at my own speed and I will bring one of them with me. I took last Friday off to go to a dog show and I know that when I have a child I will be able to bring her to work with me if that becomes necessary (illness, childcare mix up, etc). It's hard work to start a business from nothing, but the feelings of accomplishment and independence are well worth it in my opinion... like raising a child I would think.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

Dear Jackie,

You didn't say exactly what sort of business you were going into in your post and everyone seems to be assuming it's some sort of at-home freelance work. Is it?

I've been my own boss for 18 years and there's good points and bad points to it, like everything else. If you have problems with authority and you're self-motivated, it's a good thing. However, there are lots of things that will come up that you could never have anticipated.

A few months ago I stumbled across an article about opening your own business. I think it was on MSN. I wish I'd saved it. Anyway, this article made the important point that when you start a business there can be a big difference between the job you THINK you will be doing and the job you'll REALLY be doing.

The example the gave was of a woman who loved food and loved to cook and wanted to open a restaurant. The fact is that owning a restaurant is only a LITTLE BIT about food and cooking. Mostly it's about business stuff (location, supply and demand) and about dealing with people (cranky customers, flakey wait-staff, health inspectors)

For myself, I own a comic/magazine store and truth be told it's only about 30% about comics. The rest of it is about running a retail business and the problems involved with that.

I could go on and on, but I'm trying to keep this postcard-size.

Good luck!

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

There is nothing better than owning your own business. Starting a business from your house, moving out into your own building, then being able to support yourself and actually have extra money after all the bills are paid each month truly makes a person feel wonderful. Yes, I had this before I owned my own business, but it is even better when you know that the money came from "your baby."

Eight months ago, I started my own computer consulting and graphic design business. It is thriving now, but there were some bumps along the road as anyone would expect.

If starting your own business is something that you have always wanted to do, fasten your seatbelt and take the dive into the world of self-employment! I have always been a self-disciplined person who functioned much better on my own without office politics or anything along those lines. Here are some things that I would like to suggest to you if you decide to start your own company:

Save enough money ahead of time to support yourself for 6 months

Keep in mind that things can be slow at first. Paychecks can take time to start coming in regularly. Be patient, but be realistic.

Keep a detailed budget from the beginning; include loan payments and make sure to have enough money saved in the bank to pay for the first 3-6 months of that loan incase business is slow at first.

If you're starting with something small out of your house, keep flexable hours during the daytime, be willing to work late evenings or early mornings, and be willing to travel around a lot.

The benefits of working by yourself are the flexable hours, the extra income that you have once your business takes off, the satisfaction of knowing that you started from the bottom and worked up to the top (that is, after it becomes successful) as well as knowing that you don't have to answer to a CEO, President, Vice President or any other schmuck within the office. *Hehe*

Owning my own business has given me a lot of pleasure. I look back at my life before I had to work so hard and I decided that if I had it to do all over again, I would still have chosen self-employment. While starting out was difficult (because I had not a single cent to invest) to building a business that is successful, nothing gives me greater satisfaction than that.

Good luck with your future endeavors!

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

I probably would do it if I had the slightest idea of what business to go into. As I get older I get increasingly more unemployable, as my minimal work experience depreciates in proportion to my age. Consequently, since very few employers are likely to take me on, I'm probably about the only one who'd give me a job, if only I knew what job to give myself. At present I'm working with someone on a website, and he's under the impression that somewhere down the track we can probably licence the content to one of the search engines like Looksmart and so make money from it because it'll be running like a small business. Don't know if I quite share his confidence but it's a nice idea

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2000

Im really sorry I didnt write more yesterday, to let you all know exactly what Im going on about! Thank you very much for all your responses  its really interesting to hear from people who have gone it alone, and its not at all surprising to hear how many people like the prospect of working for themselves. Ive printed all the responses out and will be paying a lot of notice. So thanks again.

The actual situation is kind of two-fold, and involves my husband, Tristan, and his plans as well, so this wont be on the back of postcard, but in the words of the fantastic Stee grab a stick of gum, some angel dust, and put your beautifully tanned and toned legs up and Ill give you the low-down 

Tristan - is currently working for a sports travel company, sending teams on tour and spectators to watch events. Hes been there for nearly 4 years, and loves the work itself, but not the petty bullshit that goes on in the office (its a family-owned company, and the managers are all crazy). Hes just heard that a salary increase hed been told had been approved has in fact fallen through. Very grumpy Tristan. Hes been offered a couple of other jobs over the last three months, but has decided he really wants to stay in his current field. Hes always wanted to have his own company, and has hit upon an idea for combining the two. It gets better and better  were planning to move to NZ or Australia in the next three or four years, and this business would travel well  it will be an international concern from the start anyway. Hes also got a potential backer with pots of money, just itching to see a business plan and sign his life away. So its all looking pretty good in Tristans world.

Jackie - is currently working for a TV and multimedia company. Ive been there for nearly three years, and have just changed jobs. I was PA to the Finance Director, going insane with boredom and taking over projects on a regular basis as a way of supplementing my meagre workload. A role was created for me as Project Co-ordinator, working for our VP of Business Development on new deals and joint ventures. It all sounds good, and its not too bad at all, but my manager is a bit of a pain and doesnt really seem to have much in store for me to do  I want to develop my role and learn as much as possible, because I fully intend on running the world one day soon, but hes got me doing pointless research into things he already knows about, and its hard to keep interested.

However, one joint venture Ive been working on has been with a very well known American dot.com which is looking to expand into the UK and then the rest of the world. Ive been doing lots of stuff with them, working with the new heads of the UK version, and getting on swimmingly. So swimmingly, in fact, that theyve offered me a job  theyve basically said they want me however they can get me  even if it means I stay put to keep job continuity, but change roles to work with the joint venture full time, with them paying my salary. Theyve asked me to email them my dream role so they can find a space for me  as far as theyre concerned theyll make room. How cool is that! (I shouldnt really say who they are, but theyre big, and cater for a female demographic, so I bet you can make some educated guesses).

But theres an option no. 3  the backer wanting to work with Tristan has also bought up lots of Southern Hemisphere-related domain names and wants to launch dot.coms. Tristan showed him some of my writing (I dabble, people), and he wants me involved.

So the problem is this. Ive never really thought about doing my own thing before, but the idea of combining options 2 and 3 in a freelance kind of deal is sounding really interesting. However, as Tristan really does want to go it alone, I feel I should be the steady income-earner in the marriage, and choose either option 1 or 2.

Im so confused. I know it's a good position to be in, but I'm scared of either taking too many risks, or taking a safe choice and later resenting it. And as an aside, do you think I should aim quite high with option 2? I have big aspirations - I'm studying a business studies degree while I work, and want to go on to possibly do an MBA in organisational management, and work in General Management - hopefully to Managing Director level eventually. Tristan reckons an offer like theirs is not the kind that's made if they want you to be opening the mail ... so should I push for a fairly senior role, or play it safe?

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2000