Being my own boss:👍 & 👎
My little text agency, SO Many Words, was officially founded in March, but on August 1st I jumped for joy in honor of my two-month anniversary of SOMW employment. It's been a busy two months, full of moments of panic and excitement and marked by a huge expansion of my comfort zone. Who would have thought that posting things on LinkedIn could be so scary? But only until I started cold emailing.
I'm sure this list of the hots and nots of self-employment will change as I continue to run and work for my business, but this post is all about what I've noticed and experienced over the past couple of months. It will be fun to look back on this post years down the road and laugh at my naivety.
What I love about being my own boss:
I'm not exhausted all the time.
When I was commuting, D was stuck with ALL the household chores. Laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning... you name it, he did it. And for that, he gets a trillion gold stars. He was just as exhausted as I was and his commute is only 12 minutes. When I came home, my energy levels were running on E and the weekends existed just for me to reach normal functioning energy levels, no reserve. D experienced the same thing. But even just after a few weeks of me working from home, we both realized that we were staying up later, woke up feeling more refreshed and on the weekends, we had energy to do more than sleep in late and spend the day watching Netflix. We're sleeping in a little later and now I have more time to help with the household chores so D doesn't have to do it all alone. *Full disclosure: we were also whole30-ing in June, so I'm sure that had an influence on our energy levels too. Living my life without being exhausted is awesome. Thanks for letting me sleep in and start my work day whenever I want, boss!
No politics.
I'm both the queen and the peasants. I make decisions and then I grumble about the decisions the boss made. The only drama I have is when I spend too much time picking what music I want to listen to and not enough time paying my bills. I gossip about my elderly neighbors listening to their TV too loudly and what they complained about when I saw them in the stairwell on the way to get my mail. SOMW HQ is an environment of peace, love and empty coffee cups scattered across the apartment.
Full support for all of my ideas.
I'm not even going to try and be humble: I am my company's greatest employee! I have great ideas all the time! But, I've also had some bad ideas. What I love about being the bo$$ is that I can choose which ideas to go for and which ones to forget. I can try new things whenever I want. I can create my own strategy. I can take coffee breaks 5x a day without feeling that people think I'm lazy because I know that I'm still thinking about how that headline can be snappier. It's an interesting balancing act: I work for my clients, providing a service that they outsource for. But when it comes to SO Many Words, I can pretty much do whatever I want!
What I love a little less about being my own boss & having my own business:
It's lonely at the top.
For the first month, I was too busy and too focused on getting settled to notice that I was alone all the time. About halfway through month 2, I really started craving a coffee break with other people. I wanted to talk about my projects and hear about their projects, I wanted to find inspiration for my writing, I wanted to tell someone about something funny that had just happened. D and I do our usual work day exchange when he comes home and we talk about our days, but that's not really the same as asking your desk neighbor if they want to go for a coffee and talking about the weekend (or gossiping about elderly neighbors).
Paying for office supplies.
To everyone who is not self-employed and works in an office: NEVER TAKE FREE OFFICE SUPPLIES FOR GRANTED!! I'm a huge fan of notebooks and pens. And I also print a lot because I like to proofread my texts when they're not on a screen. For years, that paper and those pens just appeared magically when I went to reception to see if they had what I needed. They opened a drawer or went into a side closet and voilá! Office supplies! Now I have to order everything myself - today I ordered a whiteboard and whiteboard markers and I had to decide between paying $6 for a four-pack of boring markers or $13 for a pack of eight exciting colors. Because I'm a small business owner who needs to make sure she doesn't squander all of her business' funds, I went for the boring pack. Will $7 make a difference? I don't know... but those are the kinds of hard decisions I'm faced with as a freelance writer / founder / ceo / president / board member.
The transparency of payday.
In Switzerland, we get paid once a month usually around the 25th. Ah, what a glorious day, that 25th. The day before you might be wondering if you should really get that coffee on your way to work and you think, "What the hell, no risk no fun," and you go for it. And on the 25th you know your account has been reloaded and you go ahead and buy coffees for everyone! Sure, you look at your pay-slip and see what has been deducted from your account, but what matters is that number in bold at the bottom. That's all yours! When you're a business owner / self-employed, you are responsible for not only making sure that the number in bold at the bottom is available, you are also keenly aware of what the deductions are and where they are going (not into your account unfortunately). Two 25ths have passed since I started SO Many Words and I can tell you, that day and the days leading up to and following that day were filled with stress. Treating myself to a coffee was a total no-go. I now know exactly what goes in and what comes out and that's scary. It's true what they say: ignorance is bliss. BUT... it's also empowering to know that I'm completely in charge. If I work hard, I can pay myself. It's all up to me. Is that terrifying? Holy shit, yes it is.
Business-owners / self-employed readers: what are your 👍s & 👎s?
