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American Politics  » Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other

Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other

You've read many articles I'm sure about the advantages and

disadvantages of working for yourself from your own home.

Many of them I've written myself, in fact. But how many

articles have you read that give equal time to the advantages

of working for someone else compared to working for yourself?

This article seeks to redress the imbalance by comparing and

contrasting the respective pros and cons of running your own

home-based business and working for someone else.

COMMUTING

When you work for yourself from home, your commute is,

at most, a few steps from one end of the house to the other.

When you work in a traditional paid "job" your commute may

be a five minute drive or it may be an hour and a half or worse.

Both ways. That can add up to a substantial chunk of time

over the course of a week, a month or a year.

CHILDREN

If you work from home, you can be around for your kids. If

you work outside the home, you may be spending a fortune

on childcare if your kids are too young for school and worrying

about what they're up to between the end of the school day

and when you get home if they're not.

On the other hand, having kids around while trying to run a

professional business from home can be a major distraction

and constant source of interruption. You may find you need

to use childminding services occasionally to take care of

business undisturbed.

INDEPENDENCE AND AUTONOMY

When you work for yourself, you call the shots, you make the

decisions and you do it without anyone looking over your

shoulder and breathing down your neck. When you work

outside the home, you are subject to the decisions (good and

bad), whims and control of your boss. Your boss dictates your

regimen.

On the other hand, along with decision-making autonomy

comes an awful burden. If you get it wrong, you may not make

any money this week.

WORKING HOURS

When you work for yourself, you can set your own hours -

both the actual hours you work and the number. When you

work for a boss, you work when and for how long you're told

(within limits, obviously).

Although setting your own hours may sound like freedom

to you, all too often working your own hours translates into

working all hours so you need to be able to set limits for

yourself.

Also, when your boss dictates your hours, that may or may

not fit in with your body clock. One of the real advantages

of working for yourself is that you can choose to work during

your peak concentration time and not at all during your

sluggish times of the day. If your peak time is 5:00 am

through to 10:00 am, you can work those hours and another

couple sometime in the afternoon catching up on brainless

type tasks. If you work for someone else, you work when

you're told and if that doesn't work with your body clock, too

bad.

STATUS

If you're a professional in the paid workforce, you may enjoy

a certain status and prestige, if that's important to you. On

the other hand, working for yourself you may find it difficult

to be taken seriously at all. Again, whether that's a relevant

factor depends on how important things like "status", "image"

etc. are to you. If they are important, take this seriously.

Although it may sound shallow, if it's going to be a thorn in

your side, give it some serious thought.

BOUNDARIES

When you work for someone else, you have a ready-made

structure. There is a time for work, and there is a time to go

home. When you work for yourself, these boundaries can

become blurred over time, so much so that you may find

you have difficulty turning work off since you are, after all,

living in your work environment and vice versa.

PERSONAL DISCIPLINE

If you're a personally disciplined person, working from home

will probably suit you very well. But if you find it difficult

to motivate yourself to do what has to be done and you

find yourself procrastinating over starting a particular work-

related task, you may find the distractions of being at home

particularly difficult to resist. If you find yourself doing laundry

and gardening when you should be working, this may be a

problem for you.

CASH FLOW

This is one of the biggies. THE big advantage of working

for someone else is that you have a regular paycheck coming

in. Leaving aside any worry of downsizing, assuming you do

your job competently, you can reasonably expect to receive

a certain, known amount of money at regular intervals. When

you work for yourself, however, the amount of money you make

and when you receive it can be, at best, spasmodic.

On the other hand, the money you make from working from

someone else is limited to your salary. When you work for

yourself, the sky's the limit provided you are successful at

what you do.

EXPENSES

When you work for someone else, your boss is responsible

for capital expenditure and day to day expenses and you

don't have to worry about it or even think about it, for that

matter. When you work for yourself, however, you're responsible

for buying your capital equipment (computer, photocopier, fax

machine) and paying for repairs as needed. You're responsible

for paying your own electricity and phone bills, printing costs and

advertising expenses ... you name it, it falls on you.

BENEFITS

Similarly, when you work for someone else you get to participate

in your employer's pension plan, you get paid health insurance

and vacations as well as numerous other benefits. When you

work for yourself, to get any of these things you have to pay for

them out of your own pocket.

RISK MANAGEMENT

Your employer pays for various insurances to protect the

business unit from risk. The types of insurance taken out will

depend on the nature of the business but will include, at a

minimum, products liability, business interruption and the like.

Again, as a home business owner, you must foot the bill for

this expenditure.

LICENSES

Your employer is responsible for ensuring that the business

obtains and maintains all necessary business licenses. If

you're the boss, this is your responsibility.

VACATIONS

When you're an employee, you get paid vacations. When

you're self-employed you don't. And even if you decide to

take a couple of weeks off, who's going to run the business

in your absence? Can you really just walk away for two

weeks? In reality, when you work for yourself, true vacations

are a thing of the past.

TAX

As an employee, the most you have worry about is paying

your state and federal income tax and claiming whatever

credits you're entitled to. When you're an employer

you have to think about all of that as well as self-employment

tax and a myriad of other business-related tax issues. An

accountant becomes an absolute necessity. Also, as a self-

employed person, no-one's withholding tax from your checks.

Make sure you put enough aside to pay the tax bill!

SECURITY

Security is relative. For some, security comes only from

working for someone else. For others, this is merely an

illusory form of "security" since none of us really knows

what's around the corner. We could be next to be laid off.

For some, real security can only come from being in control

of their own destiny and that means working for oneself.

SKILL SET

As a self-employed person you need a broad skill set. Not

only must you be able to perform the main skills inherent

in the business you have chosen for yourself, you must also

be able to handle the myriad other jobs around the office

that your secretary would otherwise do for you if you were

in the paid workforce. This forces you to be something of

a generalist which in turn dissipates your focus from the

central core of your business. When you work for someone

else, you are generally more able to specialize in a particular

area and, over time, develop something of an expert status,

increasing your marketability in the workforce.

WARDROBE

In the corporate work-world, you have a certain professional

image to uphold. When you work for yourself, at least

on days when you don't have to meet with clients, you can

wear what you want, even your rattiest sweats, if that's what

you feel most comfortable in.

HARD WORK

Some people think that leaving the paid workforce to work

for themselves from home means they will work less hard

and fewer hours. The reality is usually the opposite. In the

early days of a home business you will probably find you

need to work harder and longer, only to make less money

than you did in your paid job. This will get easier over time

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but in the early days, expect to have your nose to the

grindstone.

RETIREMENT PLAN

Who's going to provide for your retirement when you work

for yourself? You've got it, you! No more employer-funded

pension plans for you.

GETTING PAID

When you work for someone else you get paid like clockwork,

even if your employer hasn't yet been paid what he or she

is owed from clients. When you work for yourself, whether

your client pays often determines whether YOU get paid. So

you need to be diligent in following up slow payers and take

appropriate action in response to non-payers.

OFFICE POLITICS

When you work for yourself you can kiss goodbye the

endless office politics that used to drive you crazy. On the

other hand, you're also out of the loop.

ISOLATION AND LONELINESS

Along with being out of the loop comes the isolation monster.

Although the early days of your home business may be an

absolute luxury compared to the rigors of your corporate work-

life, over time you may find you start missing the office

politics and lunches with colleagues.

OUT OF THE LOOP

Once you leave the corporate life for home-business

entrepreneurship you may find it hard to get back in, if that's

what you decide to do. Many employers will label you as

"not corporate enough" if you've been out of the workforce for

any length of time. They may also, however unfairly, figure

that you couldn't make it in the corporate world which is

why you left to start your own home business and now that's

failed too.

These are just a few of the issues you need to think about

when deciding whether working for yourself or working for

someone else is right for you. It's crucial to be brutally

honest with yourself about your particular strengths and

weaknesses, as well as your emotional and mental make-up.

A good way to dip your toe in is to consider moonlighting -

starting a home business on the side while you continue to

work your full-time job.

Sure, this will mean some both-ends candle burning but better

that than making the break and then finding out you made a

mistake. Another alternative that may work well for some is

to telecommute. Work for someone else out of the comfort

of your own home. These types of positions are pretty rare

and usually can only be negotiated by long-term employees

in positions that lend themselves to individual, as opposed to

team, projects. But don't let that discourage you. If you

have particular expertise in a field that lends itself well to

telecommuting and your boss won't go for it, start looking

around for companies that will hire you on this basis.

FURTHER READING

This article touches on some of the major areas that you

need to think about when deciding whether the self-

employed or employed option is best for you. For a more

detailed treatment of these and other issues, check out

the following articles at http://www.ahbbo.com/articles.html :

=> And Never the Twain Should Meet

=> Checklist for the New Home-Based Business

=> Entrepreneurship: Do You Have What It Takes?

=> Flipping the Switch: How to Turn Off Your Business and

and Turn On Your Life

=> Focus Your Light

=> Getting Paid ... Minimizing Bad Debts in Your Home Business

=> How the 9 to 5 Grind Could Be Costing You More Than You

Earn

=> Look Before You Leap ... Is a Home-Based Business REALLY

For You?

=> Moonlighting's Greatest Challenge ... How to Beat the Time

Crunch

=> One Foot in Each Camp

=> Overcoming Isolation in Your Home Business

=> Overcoming Procrastination in Your Home Business

=> Putting Theory Into Practice ... A Personal Perspective

=> So You Want to Be a Freelancer

=> The 9 to 5 Home-Business Tug O'War

=> The Telecommuting Alternative.

About the Author

Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based Business Online ... practical

home business ideas, resources and strategies for the

work-from-home entrepreneur.

http://www.ahbbo.com