Reality of Self-employed

Have you seen the REALITY OF SELF-EMPLOYED?

Since the Asia Financial Crisis, companies have been downsizing and downscoping, which leads to shrinking of demand for manpower. Many have lost their jobs. Fresh graduates cannot find enough companies to hire their talents. This creates an awareness of the importance of entrepreneurship.

Some has followed the right path, other look into get-rich-quick schemes that ultimately fails their lives. It is important to understand what entrepreneurship is and what the costs of being an entrepreneur are.

The lure of becoming your own boss
Becoming your own boss has been used as a lure to attract public into believing it is so much easier to work for yourself. People get the idea that once you are your own boss, you can rest whenever you want, enjoy vacation whenever you like, have good income, live big house, drive big cars, retire early…. Illusions!

This is not the case.
Becoming your own boss has its costs, and usually larger than getting employed. This is not to discourage entrepreneur spirit, but to further enforce the reality of being your own boss.

Reality of Self-employed

- More challenging
Statistics shows that an entrepreneur becomes successful only after 5 years of failure. Statistics also shows that 95 percent of new businesses fail. Those that survive, 95 percent of them fail in the next 5 years. This is the truth, and the truth is always cruel. Fear not. Understanding the truth and take courage to follow it is always better than believing in the illusion. That said, if you were thinking of starting your own business and be your own boss, take courage to challenge the 5 years of failure. Expect to taste little success only after the 5 years of failure. Take it as a 5 years business degree course. The best part is, after the 5 years, you might graduate with a REAL business.

- More responsibility
When you are running your own business, you are managing a few operations altogether. You are the boss of your company, which means you are the head of the human resource, finance, accounting, procurement, marketing, production, sales team….. You name it.

You have the power to influence every part in your company, and with power come responsibility. You are held fully responsible of all your decisions.

- More work
As an entrepreneur, you may ask: “what is my working time?”
I would answer: “You have to work 7 days a week, but you only work half-day.”
And I continue: “There are 24 hours in a day; you only have to work half-day, which is 12 hours a day.”

Get the picture? Yes, that is the reality of self-employed. If you do not want your business to fail, put every of your effort into making it succeed. You cannot afford too many failures, but you definitely can afford losing some sleep.

- More areas of skills and knowledge in your repertoire
To be successful in business, you need to be “Jack of all trades”. In the industrial age, if you want to be successful, you need to be very professional in terms that you need to know in-depth of what you specialize in. This is information age. In order to be successful, you have to be “Jack of all trades”. You need to know a broad area of knowledge with a little bit that is enough for you to control your business. You need to know how to communicate, how to market your product, how to comply with the law, how to report your taxes, how to protect your intellectual property, how to manage your subordinates, how to deal with banks to get funds, how to evaluate projects or capital budgeting, how to stand, how to talk, how to walk…

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“You need to learn how to swim, how to drive, what makes you think you don’t have to learn how to stand, how to walk, how to talk, how to smile…?” Start from the basic.
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Now that you understand how tough it is to be a successful entrepreneur. The most important spirit you must have is the willingness to take on the training in the 5 years of failures. The 5 years basically trains you to be wholemanly ready to manage a business successfully. Building a successful business is something books can never teach. You can only learn them through failures.

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“If you are not successful yet, that means your speed of failure is not fast enough!”
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With every failure, learn something. That means you have completed a paper with flying colors. If you have not have failures: that means you have not sat for exams. Do not simply fail, strive your best not to fail. If you do fail, find out why. That will show you the “crack” in you that prevent you from building a successful business. Amend the crack.

Challenge the 5 years of training, take courage! The rewards are worth all your efforts.

Thanks for reading and see you next time!