Why you will never be happy working for someone else, and what you can do about it!
1.) Someone else is profiting off of your hard work instead of you!
2.) Your time is valuable and you only have so much of it in your lifetime!
3.) You don't control your schedule, so you miss functions with family and friends!
4.) Often you spend most of what you earn just to go to work!
5.) Ultimately you are often limited in your true potential and growth by policies and politics!
6.) There is no guarantee you will have a job indefinitely!
7.) Typically any great ideas you bring to your job are not yours, but used by the company to make money!
8.) Most employers don't offer benefits like medical and 401K, and those who do are usually limited!
9.) Rising costs in life don't come with a pay raise!
10.) Often you will never receive any recognition for years of loyalty to a company or corporation!
So how do I know this you ask? Well I am speaking from a position of experience! I have worked since I was 14, and am now 42. In that time I have had every job from paper routs to sales positions, that never afforded me a good lifestyle, even though I was promised the world! What I discovered was that I was like most of you, in that I had a great work ethic, but never seemed to hit it big! I mean I would work hard, always on time, take extra shifts, work 3 jobs at a time, and still only had a basic life! It was not until I fired all my bosses and took control of my own destiny did I ever get ahead, and feel valuable! Unfortunately now at 42 I have only recently discovered this, and have lost a lot of time floundering in the pool of hopefulness. I never had anyone tell me that there was a much better life on the other side if I just took control and did it on my own. I never knew how happy I could be not taking orders from someone who likely new much less than I did about life! The joy in being self employed was unlike anything I could have imagined!
Now I grew up very poor, and never had the opportunity to get a good education. So I had to learn everything the hard way. And believe me, there has been times I was even homeless and hungry! But these times actually taught me what I know now, and made me question why I was in this situation. Bottom line, I was not happy working for someone else! Often I was overworked and underpaid, all while still having to pay the same bills as those with degrees and making a good living! You see bills don't care if your rich or poor! You still have to pay them or you don't have water, electricity, food, housing or transportation! And not to mention your family and friends don't usually want to be around someone who is struggling just to get by, especially when they are leading happy and productive lives!
So I finally decided one day after reading some great books like the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, and listening to many, many hours of Cd's on self help by Tony Robbins, to take a chance! So the first thing I had to decide was what it was that I was going to do as a new entrepreneur! This is the key! I spent a lot of time thinking of all the things I wanted to do, jotting down lists on paper, and organizing my thoughts. After all there were many thing I always wanted to try, so why not? But soon I realized as much as I wanted to try something new, I didn't really have the skills necessary to do a lot of these things, and before long I became discouraged again! So I went back to my mentors and did more reading and research. I would sit in Barnes & Noble book store or the library reading for hours and hours racking my brain to come up with a solution. All this while being unemployed, and not having any income, I was finally forced to make a decision. Go back to work for someone else, or pick a profession and get on with it.
Now I was getting desperate, and I had very little resources to put towards my new venture. I mean like a couple hundred bucks literally! And what I finally realized after being in a state of panic at this time was that I had many skills already that I was ignoring! Why, because I had used these skills, that I was very good at, making someone else money, and it made me not want to use them anymore. This is why I bring this up, is because I finally realized I could take these skills and use them for my own benefit to make just as much as my previous employers had! And I did't have to have a nice building, fancy car, or a huge advertising budget to do it! It finally hit me, I could market my own skills to make just as much or more working for myself! Bingo, and so it began! I would take my skills, of which I was passionate and turn them into a good living. And lucky for me my skills didn't require any special certifications or licencing!
Now don't get me wrong, you may have some skills you would like to use that may require some sort of certification or licensing. But don't let this get you discouraged because you can and should take the necessary steps to get certified or licenced, if your skill is something you love! And these steps are very minor compared to trying to get a degree, paying lots of money often to find there are not any employers who want to hire someone without true work experience. It happens every day to well meaning people like you and me. Even if you have a degree, you still need to understand one very important ingredient to success! You need to be able to market your skills to people who want them! Bottom line is if you can't let others know you can fill their needs, your phone will never ring!
So the first step in marketing your skills is knowing your customers needs! The next step is knowing how to get your skills in front of potential customers and clients! Now as I was saying before I did't have money for advertising or anything like that, so I had to get creative! In fact if you can believe it, my fist marketing avenue was actually a local free advertising website called Craigslist! Yes Craigslist was in fact how I got started as an independent business owner! But like anything you want to be good at it takes some dedication on you to learn how. My best friend at that time became another well know free website called YouTube! It's FREE, and is loaded with hours and hours of amazing advice and self help! Google was another amazing source of information. So I took these resources and learned how to market my skills to potential customers.
Now a lot of the great people I found on YouTube taught me that there are a few keys needed to really get that ball rolling. One was the use of social media sites like Facebook. But I think the one that helped me the most was Yelp! After all it was FREE and was in fact a brilliant way to not only get in front of potential customers, but also a way to gain potential trust from them! You see how Yelp is most beneficial is the fact that your customers can actually review your work performance! So this means that if you are good at what you do, you can potentially get 5 star reviews! And the more 5 star reviews you get, the higher up they place you in your advertising area to new customers seeking your skill set! The key here is to always ask for a review from your customers, because the more reviews you get the more your phone will ring! In fact one of my family member has so many 5 star reviews, he actually complains that his phone wont stop ringing, lol!
So I started by using Craigslist to post my skills by creating attractive ads to get in front of new customers. And each time I was finished with a job, I would ask for a review. Now not everyone is into Yelp, and not everyone is going to leave you a review. In fact in my experience, if your not careful some people will only leave you a bad review if they were not satisfied with your service. But this is actually a good thing because it pushes you to be the best at what you do! So after a few months you can actually have enough reviews to gain traction on Yelp, and so after I had some shiny new 5 star reviews praising my excellent services, I started using that on Craigslist, again for FREE, to gain trust from potential new clients! And before long my phone was ringing on a regular basis from both my efforts on Craigslist and Yelp! In fact they complimented each other quite nicely! In fact before long I had all the big shot businesses scratching their heads! They couldn't understand how I literally came out of nowhere to dominate the marketplace with my skills!
By this time I had also learned about another important ingredient to being a successful business owner, and that was having credibility! And to have credibility people want to be able to have a place to check out what you have to offer, as well as your experience. So I did what any one should do and decided to create my own website! Again my resources were still pretty limited so I used a well known FREE website known as WordPress. WordPress allows you to use A website template to create beautiful advertising for your skills. The one caveat is that you will need to pay for two things up front. First is a domain name which is typically a name for your business like Joe's plumbing shack, or Lisa's Designer Clothing for example. Some names may already be in use and not available so you will need to be creative here. However most domain names can be leased for as little as a dollar! Unfortunately you will need to renew every so often, but its usually pretty cheap. The second thing you will also need for your website is whats called web hosting. This is a service that actually publishes your website on the internet for you. This way you can send potential customers to your website to have a look!
Now in my experience the top two web hosting services are GoDaddy and Bluehost, but some people also like Host Gator. All three are great, it really all comes down to your specific website needs. They typically offer their service by the month, but if you want to save some money you can go 3,6, and 12 months in most cases. Now lets say your not really tech savvy, and not sure how to go about creating a website on WordPress, no problem. There are places online that streamline the whole process for you, for very reasonable rates like a brand new one call WIX.com. You can also use a website called Fiverr where you can find knowledge people to do the hard work for you at a very small cost! Its really just knowing where to find these resources and putting them to work for you! And trust me, if I can do it, so can you. I have a learning disability and I was able to use these resources to run a successful business for years now! And I have never been happier in my entire life!
So bottom line is if your frustrated with dead end jobs, and tired of wasting your valuable time, it is totally achievable! All you need is a skill, and a desire to have a better life! Get on websites like Meetup.com. This is a website that connects you to like minded people in your local area to learn from each others ideas! Its great and you will meet all kinds of interesting people as well! This will also give you the encouragement to know you can do this if you really want to be truly independent! So what are you waiting for? Take a chance, and live the life you always dreamed about!