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I got an idea of writing this post by reading Steve Pavlina’s article „10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job“. In this post he explains why you should not be a wage earner as it is better idea to start your own business. I personally prefer to be an entrepreneur too, and I am less and less working for pay. At the same time I do not agree that being an employer cannot be a desirable and suitable solution for many people. Many people are not capable of doing business and many people do not want to do it. Let’s take a closer look to Steve’s 10 arguments.

1. Income for dummies

When you are a wage earner then you are getting paid when you are working. You have a certain number of working hours or you have certain tasks to complete. You are only paid for doing them. If you own your business then your business is working for you, your goods are being sold by other salesman and so you can be making money while you are sleeping or snowboarding. In that sense income from employment is active, while income from business is passive.

In fact, income from business is rarely totally passive. You still have to do some work. Even if you have invested your money to other peoples’ businesses then you have to keep your eye on your investment. It takes lot of time to build a business that earns you money. Keep in mind that on the average self-employed works more hours than wage earners. If you start your own business then you have to work very hard in the beginning and it takes time until you will be earning money.

And even if you succeed then it is very difficult to automate your business to the extent that you can be totally passive. Even if you are doing business in internet, then it takes time. For example, it took time for me to write this blog post and upload it. Of course, if you have it running well then you can reduce then number of hours you put in it, but usually the market situation is changing fast and you have to develop your business continuously, which requires your effort.

In the short-run you will be making more money in the paid employment. When you start your own business then it may often happen that in the first one or two years you will not earn any profits.

2. Limited experience

Many people do not start their own businesses as they think that they are not experienced well enough for that. Therefore they will get a job and obtain experience from it and pretend that they will start their own businesses later.

Steve argues that being an employee provides experience for being an employee and that kind of experience is not much use when you want to by a business owner. Most jobs give you experience how to do a specific task well instead of teaching you to how to make money.

I would not underestimate the value of experiences from paid employment although I would agree to Steve to some extent. Your job will develop many different skills for you are clearly some of them are beneficial for starting your own business. I would say that you will need these experiences especially if you are let’s say 20 years old. It is very difficult to start you own business by that time. If you have worked for 5 year in other company then it will be much easier.

Of course it depends on the type of job you have. If you have a job in sales or management then it can be pretty similar to entrepreneurship and it will give you lot’s of experiences. If you are working as a librarian then it will not help you that much. I have being working at the university for 5 years and although my experience is not directly linked to business, I would say that it is useful for my for my business projects.

3. Lifelong domestication

When you have a job then you are taken care of many things. You are provided work tasks and tools, you get regular pay every month, you do not have to deal with accounting, taxes or selling your product.

It may be comfortable for you but at the same time you have to obey the orders from your boss. He decides what you should do and what not to do. To some extent it may be look similar to being a pet or even a slave. You have to obey your master and he takes care of you.

Entrepreneurship gives you freedom. That is one of the main reasons why many people choose to start their own businesses. It is the same for me. I like freedom. I like to make decisions on my own.

But freedom is not so easy. It is not so comfortable. If you make mistakes then they will hurt you more when you are a businessman. If you make a mistake as an employee then you may get fired, but you can usually find another job and until that you can get money from unemployment insurance. If you are a businessman then wrong decision can cost you your investments.

Actually many people prefer to be pets. They are satisfied with moderate income and they enjoy the fact that at 5 PM they can close the door of their office and may forget their jobs until the next morning.

Not everybody is capable of doing business. If you know that you have serious trouble on focusing to the work if your boss is not monitoring you then you would be better of by working for your boss. Business is not for lazy people. But if you want to be lazy then paid employment may provide you an option of living a lazy and comfortable life.

kristjan Business doing business, entrepreneur, freedom

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The overwhelming majority of the richest people of the world are involved in entrepreneurship in one way or another. It is almost impossible to reach the highest income ranks as a wage earner. An exception to that rule is individuals who are world class in some professions. For example best actors, singers, and professional athletes. In other cases you have to do some business in order to become ultimately rich.

Only a relatively small number of people deal with entrepreneurship. Although the entrepreneurial activity is different in different countries, the number of self-employed is roughly 10% of the employed in the western countries. It means that only one out of ten deals with business and the rest of people are employees. Why so few people choose entrepreneurship, when it is practically the only way of getting very rich. One reason is the fact that although some business-owners are extremely wealthy, on the average the self-employed are not much richer than employees. There are many small businessmen all over the world which have not created a decent income despite the fact that they have dealt with their businesses for several years. Some people do not earn anything form entrepreneurship, their businesses go broke and the entrepreneurs loose their investments, which in many cases come from their personal savings.

The second reason for such a low share of entrepreneurs is a widely spread belief that most people are not good in doing business their personality is not suitable for that. This can be used for explaining the fact that many businessmen are unsuccessful and cannot reach high earnings. Usually the personal traits which are required for doing business successfully are the following

• Desire for achievement and will-power. Entrepreneurship requires continuous and goal-oriented action. There will always be drawbacks and it may take some time to gain success. Doing business is suitable for those who like to commit them themselves to achieving results in longer perspective.
• Desire for independence. Entrepreneur is his own boss, in many cases his quite individualistic by his nature. Entrepreneurship is not suitable for people who like chatting with colleagues and passing time doing nothing. If there is no boss, it means that no one will give you detailed orders what you have to do, the entrepreneur has to decide it on his own.
• Self-confidence and optimism. Entrepreneurship is about making choices. What is the best price for your product? How to advertise your product? How many and what kind of employees do you need? How much you will pay them? An entrepreneur has to make such decisions every day. If you are indecisive or sceptic about future then it is difficult to be a businessman. Entrepreneur has to pursue its goals without being too much worried about the possibility of failure. Entrepreneur has to pursue profits not avoid losses.
• Risk tolerance and eagerness to act in uncertain situations. No business is completely risk-free. Although preparation, gathering information and commitment to your business will reduce the risks, there is no possibility to totally eliminate them. Entrepreneur’s income is unstable over the years, one year he may earn millions of profit, the next year he may get losses. If you like stable and fixed income, then entrepreneurship is not for you.
• Inclination to fast decisions and action. The world is changing faster and faster. Entrepreneur can not wait long with his management decisions or the competitors will be ahead of him. In doing business, there is frequently not enough time for sophisticated analysis, but you have to make a good enough decision during a short period of time.

Most of people think that those kinds of traits are inborn or at least formed in childhood or youth and therefore people, who are lacking these characteristics, think that they are not suitable for entrepreneurship. In fact, as far as they do not possess these characteristics doing business may not be successful for them. But actually it is possible to develop entrepreneurial traits even if you are grown-up. First of all it means altering your thinking. We can change our attitudes towards risk. We can develop diligence and dedication. We can train ourselves to make fast decisions. We can get used to unstable earnings. We can make a habit of acting without orders of the boss. If we think a little then we find that we can acquire all those characteristics, which were listed above. Of course, the question is that are we ready to change ourselves and do we want to work hard on that. If yes, then we can be successful entrepreneurs.

kristjan Business business skills, doing business, earnings, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, personality

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Overcoming the global economic crises depends among many factors also on the number of entrepreneurs, who could adjust to the forthcoming changes. Probably many existing businesses will die during this or the next year. It creates an opportunity for new companies to replace the old ones on the market. The last one hundred years has mostly been the century of the employees as the share of the entrepreneurs in the population has been lower than during the previous centuries. A couple of hundred years ago all the handicraftsmen and farmers were entrepreneurs. Now the situation could change, but the growth of the entrepreneurship activity depends to a great extent on the career choices of young people. The central issue is how many university graduates are going to start their own businesses. But they need relevant education for being successful in it.

Most of the entrepreneurs are not persons, who have deep specific knowledge in a particular field. In the majority of cases they have broad-based education. Dealing with business, especially with small business requires skills and knowledge from different fields, as the have to face many different tasks. The opposite case is the specialists, who are employed in big companies, as they can concentrate on specialisation to a narrower field and enhancing a limited number of skills. Although entrepreneurs can and have to employ specialists, they still need diverse knowledge for recruiting specialists, giving them appropriate tasks and evaluating their performance.

Recently there was made a survey among the graduates of the Business School of Stanford University, which investigated how the study results and choices in curricula affect the probability of starting an own business after graduation. The results of the analysis gave support to the hypothesis, that balanced set of skills increases the chances of being an entrepreneur.

First, the probability of starting business was higher for those graduates, whose grades were more evenly distributed among different courses. Those, who got very high grades in some subjects and low grade in other subjects, were likely to become an employee.

Second, the future entrepreneurs were more likely to choose courses over a broader spectrum of fields. They did not choose classes only from one field like management or marketing, but the studies include various courses in all fields of economics.

Third, those who started businesses, worked during their studies on many different jobs. More precisely, it was not the number of different jobs, but number of different tasks they had to perform on those jobs, which affected their future career decisions. Performing many different tasks, the future entrepreneurs, acquired a diverse set of skills and knowledge, which were beneficial for starting their own business.

It can be concluded upon these results that more broad-based education is necessary for promoting entrepreneurial activity. That kind of education gives the graduates an ability to see the potential needs of the customers and spot the business opportunities. Therefore it is not so good if university students, and especially those who study business or economics, specialise too early, as it decreases their possibilities to becoming an entrepreneur. The specialisation may come later, for example at the master level and the broad-based undergraduate education does not prevent specialising later to a narrower field.

kristjan Business education, entrepreneur, skills