Charlie Wade's Job Hunting and Employment FAQs

"You know, I think I want to start my own business instead of working for someone else."

If you earn money that comes out of someone else's pocket or checkbook, then you always work for someone else. You might not have a formal 'boss' per se. But you always have to answer to someone else, namely clients and customers, the ones who actually pay you. And unlike a formal boss you answer to while working for someone else, there aren't any formal rules of behavior in how your clients can and cannot treat you. If you need clients, you can't just tell the worst ones to bite you.

Lots of business owners will tell you that they have to tolerate other people's churlish behavior because they need their business to survive and that it's one of the bad things about owning your own business. If you want to leave working for someone else precisely because you don't like the way your bosses have treated you, you're probably not a real good candidate to be in such a situation.

In many ways, owning your own business is not a dream. That isn't to say people shouldn't do it because few of us would have jobs if that didn't happen. But there are a lot of other downers about owning your own business. The hours can be VERY long, vacations can be difficult to come by. Start up costs can be enormous and it might be years before you actually make any money for yourself. You have huge responsibilities to manage, including those to your customers, your clients, your employees, and to your investors. Failure is always a possibility you have to worry about (something like 80% of all new businesses fail within the first year and 85-90% within five).

Again, that isn't to say that people shouldn't at least look into it if they are interested. But if you are thinking about starting your own business simply because you (1) don't like answering to a boss and (2) think that owning your own business will eliminate that, you're simply wrong. Don't believe that owning your own business is for everyone or a panacea for having bad bosses because that is simply not true.

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