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To Be Self-Employed or Not To Be Self-Employed

Guest post by: Tracy Emerick

Article Overview: Being self employed is not for everyone. Before you head out to "be your own boss" you might want to consider if being self employed is right for you.

To Be Self-Employed or Not To Be Self-Employed

There are two types of self employed persons:

1. Loving being self employed and wouldn't make any other choice

2. Hating being self employed, but have no other choice Loving being self employed and wouldn't make any other choice

People like me are from the "loving being self employed" group. I have been self employed before retirement and now I'm self employed after retirement. Members of the other group that are "hating being self employed" can very well be retired persons like me, perhaps a retired military man or woman, a retired corporate executive, or a retired airline pilot who can't continue to fly due to age. In every case these retired, self employed people are starting another career because their retirement is no longer sufficient to support their lifestyle.

It doesn't matter what group you belong to, being self employed is a state of mind as much as it is a condition of life. To succeed as a self employed person there are three rules you need to follow:

1. Conserve Cash

2. Manage Risk

3. Enjoy What You Do

Conserve Cash is fairly simple, when you're out of cash you're out of business. Cash is the key to being self employed because it is the key to business. One of the fastest ways to go out of business is to extend credit so that you have a large accounts receivable. This is a situation where your income statement shows you have a whole bunch of profits but your balance sheet shows your receivable represent all of your current cash - which means you can't eat unless your invoices are edible. Another killer is inventory. The worst use of cash are goods sitting in your garage or basement that tie up your cash - unless you can eat your inventory you could starve with too much inventory. So, the key to cash can be cautioned to two points:

1. Be self employed as a middle person (middle man) so that someone else handles the receivables and you receive a commission. This keeps your cash in your pocket

2. Be self employed using someone else's inventory, let someone else tie up their cash, not yours

Manage Risk is also quite simple, don't expose yourself to anyone else's folly. Don't get yourself in a chain of distribution where you can be held liable for someone else's poor products or services. Being self employed as a middle person is one key to conserving cash, but it also puts you in the courtroom should a buyer of a good or service be dissatisfied or worse harmed by a product or service you represented to them. It doesn't matter if the supplier has insurance, if you-know-what hits the fan you will be named along with everyone else in the chain of distribution. Your risk is the loss of all your cash and person wealth should things go bad.

Enjoy What You Do, while you may or may not want to be self employed it is important to enjoy what you do. This doesn't mean you have to enjoy the product or service you are selling. Rather, it means you enjoy the people you're involved with in your self employed business environment. If you can associate with people you enjoy in the course of your business you will do well. So, the best type of being self employed business is one where you get to pick who you are doing business with.

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Article Tags: cash, conserve cash, distribution, employed, enjoy, hate, inventory, loss, love, manage risk, middleman, risk, rules, selfemployed
Referred by: http://jaykubassek.com



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