Self Employment

Ever since I can remember I wanted to run my own company, I would as a child pretend to be running various businesses, Post Offices, a garage, an office etc every day.

It was always my dream to run my own company. I used to tell my teachers every day in fact as well as anyone else who would listen. I don't quite remember when but somewhere along the line I remember proudly standing and stating my intentions to my teacher in front of the class one day, only to be quite harshly shot down. "You need lots of money and common sense to start a business and you have neither".

The whole class laughed at me and I stood red faced, staring at the ground.

I don't remember ever proudly uttering those words again after that. From then on I was going to work for someone else’s big company, if I worked hard in school, worked hard in University and was extremely lucky...

Sound familiar?

From that point at the age of I'd say 10 I never once remember receiving any mentoring, lecturing, books or anything on being an entrepreneur in school. Except when we were given those type of articles that simply existed to inflate someone’s ego, you know the type, some rich guy saying look what I have and you don't.

Four years of university studying business and I was always thought from the perspective that I would be working for companies not running them. Why is this? I'm working for a company that I only learned about because I was told by my lecturers that they supposedly have a great Graduate programme, every graduate magazine had an article about them and they advertised everywhere. The fact that I really don't care for the work they do didn't matter because, "everyone loves it there" and then the friend of a friend who works there stories get told. 

I was lulled here by promises of rising fast and working in a 'Diverse, modern {insert any buzzword here} company.' I'm actually gutted that it's not all it's cracked up to be. It doesn't pass the Martian test. If a Martian came to earth today and looked at this process what would they say? Well depending on their own social situation they would either say well done folks you've got an army of young bright sparks who are willing to burn themselves out for no other reason than you've told them that's the way things are done.

On the other hand he might say, folks what are you doing? You've allowed yourselves to become wage slaves. You do work you get paid for it and that's it. How is that an existence? It's not an existence when you look at it as a process and break it down into logical chunks.

Imagine the first large expense you have in your life is your University education. Your parents can't afford to help you because they're crippled with debt from your education to date. So you get a loan and for arguments sake we'll say the fee is €15,000 over 5 years at such and such a percent and you end up paying back €294 a month. Great your thinking, my course is only 4 years long I have a year where I'll be working and I'll clear the bulk of the debt then.

But of course, by year five you haven't cleared the debt, instead you've accrued more. That car you had to have, the insane cost of accommodation. Not to worry you're 'great' job will fix that!

Well actually no... You're going to be taxed on all that you earn and the more you earn the more you pay. As well as that you'll pay VAT on everything you buy. Your savings and pension will be taxed and any contributions you decide to make to a medical plan will be taxed.

If you have your own company however, your tax bill is reduced to the corporate tax rate which is significantly lower in most cases, you'll be able to claim back your VAT and anything that is necessary for your business is a business expense.

Sound interesting?

I thought so, want to learn more? Of course you do. Here's what I needed to start. An idea (in my case a website). A plan (in my case I found a good plan online and copied the format and adapted it to my business). Some capital (this depends on what you’re going to do (I only needed the money to host the website). Time; this is by far the hardest resource to come by especially if you were like me and working full time with a lot of overtime.

You'll need to sit down and research the market, who are your competitors, how many are they, what do they charge, how long are they there, what happened the last new entrant to the market?

Still interested? Good because you should be, provided you do your research, you work at it and you plan plan plan you could stand to make a nice income. There is a gargantuan amount of money floating around out there and all you need is to tap into a portion of that money each month.

Ok so that sounds too easy... Well you’re going to need to do another thing. Free your mind. If you have the time and the patience all the knowledge you need is out there, whether it be on the internet, on the other end of the phone or in a meeting with someone. You just need the initiative to go get it. However all this will never work if you don't free your mind. You need to let go of all the baggage you pick up about working for yourself. Most people will give you a long list of reasons not to do it yet these are the same people who have never done and are simply projecting their own fears onto you. In truth they may not want you to do it in case you do succeed. So choose your advisors wisely.

When it actually comes time to stepping out on your own in the world you'll find it a terrifying experience and you'll absolutely love it. Every decision you make impacts your business, you pull all the strings, you'll learn more in year running your own business than you would in a decade working as a name badge for some generic company 'with great perks' in an office filing meaningless reports.

Best of all you reap the benefits of all your hard work. If you make the sale you get the cash, it's your name above the door after all. 

If you’re young, free and single you can work until all hours building your empire. If you’re married with a family you can be the parent who drops the kids to school every day comes home helps with the house and then works all the hours that suit you not those that suit your boss.