art of the sellout

Blogger Steve Pavlina has written an excellent article: You Are Self-Employed.

He encourages all of us, even if we work for other people, to think of ourselves as self-employed. If you’re an employee, you sell your labour and skills for profit. The fact that you do all of your business with one customer makes no difference. Nobody but you will take responsibility for your career development.

Imagine a business saying to its biggest customer, “We’re going to drop all our other customers and serve only you. Just tell us what you want done, and we’ll do it. Pay us whatever you think is a fair price. Invest in our growth however you see fit. Tell us when we can go on vacation. You command; we obey.” While it wouldn’t be impossible to run a business this way, it would certainly be very risky and unstable compared to the alternatives. Yet this is how many people choose to run their personal services businesses. If I were an investor, I’d think twice about investing in such a business — I’d be more likely to invest in their competitors.

I found this to be a bit of an eye opener. My first reaction was that this could easily lead to a really bad attitude at work. (The manager in me is hard to shake, sometimes.) I dislike selfish workers who seem to think that we pay them for the privilege of their presence.

However, the more I think about the statement “we’re all entrepreneurs,” the more it makes sense as an enlightened bit of business philosophy. A lazy employee is still an entrepreneur working for themselves, they’re just not very good at it. They’re the people who, if they had their own business, would let it crumble to dust.

A good entrepreneurial spirit can help take charge of your career path, even if you work for someone else.

The basics of the philosophy are:

• You trade your time and skill for money.
• Make sure you are getting reasonable and profitable compensation for your time and skill.
• Make sure the rate you charge for your time and skill is competitive.
• Make sure you invest in upgrades to make yourself more productive.
• If your customer treats you badly, move on to the next one.

While seeming a bit counter-intuitive at first, thinking this way made me re-think my whole relationship with my employer. Like it or not, I’m already self employed. The only person who is really going to look out for the interests of my business is me.

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