Going Solo
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Are you ready to leave the corporate world and become a consultant? It's a tempting thought and probably one that everyone in corporate America considers at one time or another. Especially those of us in technology who have skills that can easily be used to help some other company.
Here are 10 reasons not to go into business for yourself[/a], which is an interesting list. It's from someone who evangelizes the benefits, joys, and methods of escaping the corporate cubicle. If you're seriously considering becoming a consultant, starting your own business, or going out in any way on your own, I'd recommend her site as a place to learn some things.
Coming from someone that helped start this site and has worked for it for 3 years this might sound funny. I don't really like being in business for myself. I know, I've been successful, had a good life, let you all know about large parts of it, but the truth is I didn't love working for myself. If not for Andy and Brian supporting me, I'm not sure I'd have done it.
Working for yourself, even when you're successful, isn't this easy, amazing job. It's a hassle and it's hard to worry about the different parts of a business. I'm a writer and a techie. As much as I pay attention to marketing, sales, and other groups, I don't want to do their jobs. I have an opinion and am happy to express it, but I don't want to get more involved than that.
Even when it's my business.
I'm not really advocating one way or the other that you should or shouldn't start a business or stay in a cubicle. Rather I want to caution you that it's not as easy as tuning queries. The marketing, accounting, and collections will be as much as the job as the T-SQL.
Read about other's experiences, think hard about it, and consider all the parts of the job that you'll need to do. There's always more than you think and remember that just as with a new job in corporate America.
The grass is not always greener.
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Steve Jones
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I learned this the hard way. A buddy and I decided one night that starting a web development company was a good idea ("Dude, people will pay us to make websites for them, screw waking up early to go to work" might have been our company charter).
After a while we realized that neither of us were very good at marketing, sales, customer service, etc etc. Our combined skill set was basically creating websites (he could make them pretty and I could make them functional).
So we both ended up with lousy jobs to make ends meet, and made enough money on our small number of small clients to almost pay for our servers. As soon as they were gone we gave up. The only upside was that those complex tax forms are much simpler when you don't pull a profit.
I'd like to try again someday (maybe with something else, web design was not a passion but rather something relatively easy to do) but never again will I jump in like that expecting an easy payout. Next time I will be sure to include at least one business type person, if he can't handle those other departments at least he'll have a clue how to delegate them to someone who can. Until then I am quite happy playing with databases for someone else.
-- Stephen Cook
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I went solo 14 years ago, and never looked back. The 10 points in the article - I see those as positives for a disciplined, self-motivated individual. It's true that taxes are a downside, but you can write off 1/2 the SE tax and all your health insurance costs, so that makes quite a difference to the bottom line. And it's not as if you don't have to pay taxes at a regular job, either.
I did not choose this path - after being downsized in the 90's I took some agency work to pay the bills, but gradually grew my own customer base & disconnected from the agency scene. Virtually all of my new work comes from customer referrals - the "other" kind of networking.
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I didn't like running a business either. I just want to do my 9-5 thing and get my money. I want more than that, like responsibility and creative environment and so on, but basically I just want to do what I love and take home the money. Running your own business is a pain in the butt. I now work for a company that helps financial advisors learn Exit Planning for business owners. Getting out of your business is almost as scary as getting in...
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