Working for yourself can be an emotional and financial rollercoaster but for me, the highs outweigh the lows. I quit my last salaried job in March 2017 and have been my own boss ever since.
I yearned to be self-employed for four or five years before I made the move to leave the ‘normal’ working world. It hasn’t been easy but it has definitely been worth it. You can read about how I became a full-time travel blogger if that’s the journey you’re hoping to take, but this post is dedicated to celebrating the pros of self-employment.
This blog post contains gifted items
Now that I’ve finally achieved my goal of running my own business, I’d do well to pause amid the meltdowns and late payments and ‘what am I even doing with my life’ moments and remember WHY I wanted to be my own boss in the first place.
Self-employment isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely for me. As I approach my third year as a business owner (While I’m Young is a profitable business FYI, and I also run a social media management company), I thought I’d stop and remember the reasons I made the leap in the first place.
6 Best Things About Being Self-Employed
1. It offers unrivalled flexibility
I’ve learned that time is the most valuable commodity in life, after health. The flexibility being my own boss gives me means travelling when I want to, and also taking time out to see my parents back on the Isle of Man. For others, that might be moulding your day around your kids’ schedules.
I choose my own working hours, which means I can work at the times I feel most productive. I often start working from bed on my phone before 8am, take a long lunch to run errands if I need to, book a yoga class mid-afternoon and work for a few hours in the evening.
It takes planning and self-discipline to set your own working hours, but once I got into my stride it was like a revelation.
No ‘normal’ job would allow me to travel like I do now, and that’s the biggest benefit for me. Being my own boss also allows me to work really hard for a month, then take time off the next month to travel (although I’m always still working while I’m away, whether that’s taking photos and jotting down notes for blog posts, answering emails or keeping on top of social media).
Twenty days annual leave? Thanks, but no thanks.
2. Unlimited earning potential
Money chat is always a bit awkward, but I think it’s an important thing to address. After all, we all go to work to get paid. It’s not for the good of our health, is it?
It took me a while to realise this (and even longer to start reaping its rewards), but there is literally no cap on how much you can earn when you’re self-employed. Sure, I don’t have the safety of an annual salary and I definitely have months when I feel like the biggest idiot in the world for sacrificing a fixed income, but I generally find the fact that I’m in charge of my own earnings very motivating.
Basically, the harder I work, the more I earn. This can sometimes mean I burn out because I take too much on, but I’ve learned to manage my workload better with time.
Running my own business has also taught me about earning passive income, which is something I probably wouldn’t have invested time in had I still been in a salaried job. The ads you see on my site along with the affiliate links I use here help me earn passive income, so as long as my site is live, I’ll be making money. Why did nobody tell me this sooner?
3. A ‘normal’ job couldn’t make me feel this independent
My confidence levels have soared since I quit my full-time job. I enjoyed most of the jobs I had after I graduated from university, don’t get me wrong. But when I was employed by a company, I always sort of resented the limits it placed on me. The teenage rebel in me hated the fact I was working towards someone else’s dream rather than my own.
Despite the rollercoaster of emotions running a business forces you to ride and all the self-doubt you have to overcome, being my own boss is the thing I can identify as my main source of confidence. It makes me feel like such an adult. Nobody helped me turn travel blogging into my full-time job and I do everything myself, which can be stressful but I’ve proven to myself that I’m capable.
I’ve always craved independence and being my own boss definitely affords me that luxury. When things are going well, I feel like I’m invincible.
4. I love having the freedom to say no
There’s no boss to bow down to, just my own ego (which sometimes needs checking). I’ve found that I have a lot less patience for other people’s crap now, and that’s because I’ve been running my business for a few years and I’m used to being in charge.
Similarly, I can turn down work I don’t think is right for me – or even work offered to me by someone I don’t get good vibes from. Being a business owner has made me a lot more self-assured and I never feel afraid about pushing back on things I don’t think are right. I know in a regular job, I wouldn’t always have that level of freedom!
Could I go back to the nine to five life? I honestly don’t think so. I’m so used to running my own show now that it would be incredibly difficult for me to fit back into permanent employment.
5. The skills self-employment gives you are transferable
I’ve never had so much responsibility in any other role. Running a business by myself has taught me how to manage my time more efficiently, keep a website running properly, do my own accounts and tax returns, negotiate contracts and also how to identify opportunities for growth.
As a team of one, I have to wear every hat in my business – though I am looking to delegate more in 2020 and hire some help. If I don’t do something, it doesn’t get done. There’s nobody to lean on, so I’ve had to learn new skills.
If I did ever need to go back to regular employment (god forbid), I’m confident my time as a business owner would help rather than hinder me in job interviews.
6. Location independence is a blessing
When I first decided I wanted to be a full-time travel blogger, I read loads of articles about how you could get paid to travel. They’re all a bit click-baity and don’t convey the reality of running a profitable travel blog, but I was completely enamoured by the idea of being able to work from anywhere.
Back then, in my final year of university, I visualised myself blogging from my laptop on a beach in Bali. Now, as a woman in my late twenties with a fiancé and an actual money-making blog; the biggest pro of location independence is that I can go back to the island I grew up on to see my family.
Commuting made me miserable so I’m ecstatic I no longer have to waste hours every week on trains and buses (unless it’s to go on an adventure, of course). I can work from home, from a coffee shop, from an airport or in the hairdressers’. It’s great!
Of course, I have taken advantage of my situation and answered emails from the poolside in various countries. And yes, it made me feel like a boss.
I’ll never pretend being a full-time travel blogger is all sunshine and rainbows and Instagrammable cocktails in f*cking Belize because making money from a blog requires a lot of hard work and dedication, but it is the best job I could ever imagine having – and the fact that I built While I’m Young from nothing is something I’m very proud of.
As I said at the beginning of this post, not everyone is cut out for self-employment. And that’s okay! I’d never judge anyone else for their own career decisions and some people genuinely are better suited to the 9-5, pay-check-at-the-end-of-the-month kinda life. There’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
Everyone has different experiences and this is just what I personally like about being my own boss. Would you be interested in reading a post about the downsides of self-employment? Let me know!
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Connie McKendrick says
Love this Danielle! Really inspiring and just what I needed to read and hear in the first week of January. 2020 I’m coming for you.