Self-employment Week: 72
I don’t ever break down how I managed to work for myself because I don’t know how else to say “I went on Upwork & got a client”.
Working for yourself can be either the simplest or the most complicated process ever. It really depends on what you value.
And thankfully, I value very few things.
I want to work from home.
I want to make a certain amount of money.
I don’t want to work every day.
Even though I’m not asking for much, you see how a traditional 9-5 can’t give me 3/3 of these at all times.
Now, it might be easier to arrive at what we want but it’s equally important to list out what you don’t want. For eg:
I don’t need my income to be stable or certain because I have a partner who has a predictable income which helps us pay our bills on time.
I don’t need a team to take over when I’m off on vacation because frankly, I don’t see myself travelling that much.
I don’t need an online audience to be able to sell to because I’m not interested in creating any type of product.
I don’t need passive income (lol)
Hence I don’t need to aim high enough to run my own business to be able to have the 3 things I want.
So, for me - working in a small async team of contractors for a business based in the US for a long period of time has been my end goal up to now. And I reached it very quickly because I knew what my ‘enough’ was.
I know it doesn’t sound very cool & might even sound very very similar to a job.
Because yes I get paid a fairly similar amount of money at the end of every month.
Yes, I have weekly team meetings to give updates.
Yes, I have to inform people when I go on vacation.
It doesn’t sound like the sexy lines they add to an online course landing page that’s trying to sell you on the idea of being your own boss.
But if I take the ego out of answering ‘yes’ to “Oh, so you only have 1 client?”
I can realize this is still self-employment & it’s worked for me till now.
Self-employment has been a big lesson in understanding that all you need is ‘enough’ & another lesson that your ‘enough’ is actually super attainable.
Whenever someone online asks me to help them with advice on how they too can work for themselves, they’re usually confused about aspects such as:
How do I position myself?
Which course do I take?
How do I set up payment pages?
Who do I sell my online course to?
Because in the attempt to make self-employment sexy & aspirational, we have also made it complicated which it actually isn’t.
If you’re okay with your journey to being self-employed being super dull or boring, you can be self-employed right now.
The simplest way to quit your job & work for yourself is to continue do what you do at your job, for someone who acknowledges that you don’t work for them.
When someone doesn’t believe you work for them, you automatically gain a ton of freedom.
They can’t expect you to reply to Slack messages instantly.
No one can add things to your calendar without running it by you.
There is no guilt if you take time off to travel every single month.
You can wake up and decide you want to be paid more.
Self-employement doesn’t look like any one thing. For me, it’s just a technacility.
The world came up with a whole bunch of rules for what employment looks like & the power employers have over employees.
I believe self-employment just breaks that & let’s you take that power from your employer, back to your own hands.
That’s the fundamentals. That’s as much as I will assume about someone who say’s they’re self-employed.
Over & above that, you can desgin your work to look as different from your 9-5 or as similar to it as you wish.
You can either place your goal post very far away or you can realise it’s one email away.
Didn't realize how uncomplicated it can be. Helped me realize how I've been complicating stuff in my own head unnecessarily. Needed this. Brb, figuring out what is my 'enough'!