Why are so few on this site...self employed.

It puzzles me because the Access "thing" opens all sorts of opportunities...I know because I have made use of the opportunities...many of which would not have been available if it was not for this site.

But why do people with all the knowledge stay in jobs for shit pay etc.

Err... maybe we don't get shit pay?

And maybe some of us can't get health insurance without working for a company with group coverage.

Why are so few on this site...self employed.Is this based on some analysis? If true then maybe self employed have a busier time running their business. If we're talking specifically about Access based work the maybe it's easier to maintain workflow by being in a company. Maybe work tends to be offered to larger more stable companies rather than individuals. Maybe it's difficult for individuals to survive by just supporting Access (whereas companies are likely to provide a host of services). I'm just guessing here. I don't work in IT and I'm not self employed.

But why do people with all the knowledge stay in jobs for shit pay etc.I work for a company for stability. I don't get shit pay - if I did I would change jobs (climate permitting).

Chris

I would like to be self employed but I see many problems/risks along the roads....

I have been trying to get a business of the ground, with what I thought was a good product only to get shot down on every corner. Knowing my product is a sound one...

This is something in a smaller form is estimated to save about 25-30k per month for a company who contracted me to develop it. This problem I have seen at other companies and been trying to sell my ideas.... but for some reason they dont like saving such costs each month?? Or I am unable to explain the problem sufficiently?? or something?

The problem is right there, I know it to be as I was working elsewhere inside this company and was able to see it with my own research. OK maybe a bit insider information ;) but... hey... I know they can save that money... but cannot convince them to spend 20k one time + small maintenance fee/per year on me to save themselves atleast 30k one off and atleast 15k/year.

I guess I am to dumb to be self employed :(
Also my "crummy" pay easily pays for my morgage and stuff... so I am not one to complain I guess.
Also the added benifits of Car, Pension fund, Health insurance and other "french" benifits make it even more worth while.

Err... maybe we don't get shit pay?

But that seems to be a complaint, that is, the developers get shit and the managers get the money.

And maybe some of us can't get health insurance without working for a company with group coverage.

Never thought of that aspect. However, on guns/hunting sites, where the majority of members are American, the split between employed and self employed seems to me to be what one would expect from a random sample of the population.

In % of actual work/credit etc. Yes they do...

Then again that would still be true of a manager earning 50% of my salary...

No good, meeting sitting, lunch eating, outside smoking, coffee drinking, full of **** and air good for nothings they (on average) are.

* No offence meant to anyone *

There is a theory that says, if you do a good job you get promoted... once you no longer get promoted... guess your not doing your job that good anymore :(

This theory is true (unfortunatly) for a lot of managers.

As Chris has already asked , is this based on some analysis? If so how did you do it? I have no idea what jobs most, infact probably almost all, do and whom they work for.

Brian

I would like to be self employed but I see many problems/risks along the roads....

I have been self employed since I was about 19 and I am just the opposite to you......I see being employed as a risk:D

I have been trying to get a business of the ground, with what I thought was a good product only to get shot down on every corner. Knowing my product is a sound one...

This is a common situation. If things were reversed and I was looking to get a job I know that I would be lost.

This is something in a smaller form is estimated to save about 25-30k per month for a company who contracted me to develop it. This problem I have seen at other companies and been trying to sell my ideas.... but for some reason they dont like saving such costs each month?? Or I am unable to explain the problem sufficiently?? or something?

I am sure you can explain it OK. But how many calls a day do you make and I mean cold calls. Also, if what you have can save a business $30,000 a year then I imagine it is mainly applicable to a larger business and selling to the larger business needs lots of calls to get going. The very process of making calls and the resulting appointments also provides sign posts for direction.

If the truth be known probably the real product you have to sell is not the package that saves $30,000 per year but rather yourself and what you can do. The idea/product you have that will save $30,000 is just one outcome of your abilities/knowledge etc.

The problem is right there, I know it to be as I was working elsewhere inside this company and was able to see it with my own research. OK maybe a bit insider information ;) but... hey... I know they can save that money... but cannot convince them to spend 20k one time + small maintenance fee/per year on me to save themselves atleast 30k one off and atleast 15k/year.

This just comes down to "one in the hand is worth two in the bush". Payment to you is a definite but the saving in the people's mind is either doubtful or a long way down the track.

I guess I am to dumb to be self employed :(
Also my "crummy" pay easily pays for my morgage and stuff... so I am not one to complain I guess.
Also the added benifits of Car, Pension fund, Health insurance and other "french" benifits make it even more worth while.

I probably phrased it wrong with shit pay. What I meant was I see it as shit pay given the abilities of people on the forum. Put it this way, if someone has the potential to earn $2 million a year but only earns $300,000 then that is shit pay.

I guess I am to dumb to be self employed :(

Probably to smart to see the way it is done:). Being in sales mode is the key. A friend of mine who is a very big money earner, I mean real big, runs a lawn mowing and home handyman business. The reason he did so well is he is great door knocker and generated the work and of course his income is from the labour of others.

But again, your "product" that saves $30,000 is just one outcome of your ability. Your true product is what you can do.

As Chris has already asked , is this based on some analysis? If so how did you do it? I have no idea what jobs most, infact probably almost all, do and whom they work for.

Brian

Just an observation and in particular from the Political/Watercooler forums where most posters seem to be coming from a position of being employed.

I have been asked why I do not do consultancy work.

Basically a bit idle I suppose in that now I am just short of the retirement fence.

But where I am now nobody tells me how to do things in Access, I take no hassle from anybody and I enjoy what I do.

Been working as an employee for a very long time now. Suppose if I had know at 19 what I know now I really would be a whizz kid. Slide rules were the hi-tech gadget then. I had a double sided one with loglog scales.

Peaceful employment is the order of the day now for little while longer.

I do think that self employment could be a bit of a culture thing. perhaps it is more "normal" over the pond than it is here.

No idea myself but just a thought

L

Also for me I'm not a sales person and don't want to be a sales person.

Also for me I'm not a sales person and don't want to be a sales person.

Everyone is either a salesman or a saleswoman. Everyone is selling all week.

Everyone is either a salesman or a saleswoman. Everyone is selling all week.

Thats a platitude and it's wrong.

Thats a platitude and it's wrong.

You are not selling in the formal sense of rounding up business. But you are still selling and selling all year.

We have been here before on another thread. Don't bother arguing Chergh as far as Mike is concerned the guy brushing the street is selling.

Mike's problem is that he has exagerated a small truth to the extent that it has become rediculous and lost all credibility.

Brian

I dont do Cold Calls, period... Doesnt make sence for me to make these calls after hours

If the truth be known probably the real product you have to sell is not the package that saves $30,000 per year but rather yourself and what you can do. The idea/product you have that will save $30,000 is just one outcome of your abilities/knowledge etc.
No, this is an actual database that will need some addaptations for each company. I would NOT be involved at all, other than the inititial setup and tutorial introductions to the users....

This just comes down to "one in the hand is worth two in the bush". Payment to you is a definite but the saving in the people's mind is either doubtful or a long way down the track.
Offcourse there is a lead time, but where most IT products are involved lead times are long and return on investment 5 years or more.

Here lead time is say 2 months, return on investment 1 year at most. I have even offered to one party that was particularly intrested but 'scared' with the "one in the hand" approach....
I will do it for 10% of your savings in the next 5 years +1.000 euro as a down payment. No further cost at all... just that a % of the savings... What risk is that?

If they had signed that contract, I would have made a killing! Unfortunatly they did not. And yes offcourse anything that returns money like this is aimed at companies with more than just 10 customers.


Put it this way, if someone has the potential to earn $2 million a year but only earns $300,000 then that is shit pay.
I wish I had that problem.

Being in sales mode is the key.
I cannot sell, period.

But again, your "product" that saves $30,000 is just one outcome of your ability. Your true product is what you can do.
True, my 'value added' to business is more than just that. However, even at selling myself knowing my added value to the business... Selling myself to an internal customer I sometimes have a hard time :(
Just to show how bad I am at sales.


Thats a platitude
A what?? For some of use English is a second language :eek: Sorry

We have been here before on another thread. Don't bother arguing Chergh as far as Mike is concerned the guy brushing the street is selling.

Mike's problem is that he has exagerated a small truth to the extent that it has become rediculous and lost all credibility.

Brian

Good advice, I think I'll take it.

A platitude is just a dreary remark, sort of like "every cloud has a silver lining", and they're usually wrong.

I cannot sell, period.



Being in sales mode does not mean someone is a good salesman or has to be a good salesman. Someone who is a good salesman but not in sales mode won't sell.

Being in sales mode is about attitude and recognising that some thing has to be sold.

How many people have you presented your data base to? How many companies would there be that could be prospects for it or some other version of it?

Perhaps people who are willing to give out free advice tend not to be interested in profits?

saw a great quote today. came from one of the sample dbs here actually. something like:

"It takes three people to create a successful enterprise: a dreamer, a businessman and a son of a bitch."

thought that was pretty good.

[not taking aim here, just thought it apropos.]

Perhaps people who are willing to give out free advice tend not to be interested in profits?

There's no such thing as free advice surely?

Don't bother arguing Chergh. . .

Good advice, I think I'll take it.


I also think it's a good idea you keep your comments to yourself. Nice that you agree.

Col

Perhaps people who are willing to give out free advice tend not to be interested in profits?

I would say most who are self employed remain that way due to life style.

In my experience people tend to be self employed or employed because they are type of person. I would rather be self employed and earn $50,000 than be employed and earn $100,000 and I think the reverse situation would apply to the employed person.

For some reason there appears to be far more employed types in the data base arena than is the case for other occupations. Yet on the surface one would think it would be the reverse. The data base work lends itself to work from home and with a very small outlay in equipment and with a very high profit per hour for the packages you have put together.

My experience doing this for money is limited at the moment but so far I have found the money is to be made doing small stuff as opposed to complete DBs. Simple things like selling backup packages and converting simple Excel files of the type where people tend to have an .xls for every month etc.

My experience doing this for money is limited at the moment but so far I have found the money is to be made doing small stuff as opposed to complete DBs. Simple things like selling backup packages and converting simple Excel files of the type where people tend to have an .xls for every month etc.

Downunder stuff like this seems to still excist... but in the NL, not much like this to be found. SAP and other big darn clumsy ugly to expensive to big to much of everything but still considered to be decent systems for a small business.

Your average business even MKB (Small and middle businesses) will soon have one of these systems because it is hype here. While they could easily manage with some spreadsheets and some clever databases for say 1000 euro worth, they rather invest in a system that not only eats money for a living, it enjoys having your time to manage it for desert.

Downunder stuff like this seems to still excist... but in the NL, not much like this to be found. SAP and other big darn clumsy ugly to expensive to big to much of everything but still considered to be decent systems for a small business.

Your average business even MKB (Small and middle businesses) will soon have one of these systems because it is hype here. While they could easily manage with some spreadsheets and some clever databases for say 1000 euro worth, they rather invest in a system that not only eats money for a living, it enjoys having your time to manage it for desert.

I can easily imagine how in countries with a small area that ideas/methods would be embraced across the population. In addition I suspect Europe in general embraces technology to a much greater degree than Australia.

Here is an example of how simple some of my stuff is:

Call Shell("explorer.exe c:\folderxyz", vbNormalFocus)

A few are those are made and each run by a macro in Excel and the appropriate macro run from a combobox on a form. An auto_open macro to open the form and shortcut to the xls file. If they have Access I stick the same sort of thing on a nice little form and a shortcut to the form. So far sales of that type of thing have been from $250 to $500. However, that would not do well in a white collar business like advertising, engineering, legal etc as the office girl is likely to have done one of those little courses on Word and Windows etc.

From what you said there does not appear to be much opportunity for that sort of thing in the NL. Might do well in the American Bible Belt:D

I would say most who are self employed remain that way due to life style.

In my experience people tend to be self employed or employed because they are type of person. I would rather be self employed and earn $50,000 than be employed and earn $100,000 and I think the reverse situation would apply to the employed person.I’d agree, it’s each to his own. There are elements to being self employed that I would enjoy too e.g. choosing when you work and what you work on, being your own boss etc. But as I said before, I like the stability, I like knowing I’m going to get a paycheck each month and how much it will be (this helps me get a mortgage). I like not having to worry about healthcare or doing tax returns. I like the idea that someone else has “manage” the business and I just get on with my job. I like the idea that at 5pm I go home and don’t have to think about the job. I like the camaraderie of working with my colleagues. But I can see why some folks would not like this.

For some reason there appears to be far more employed types in the data base arena than is the case for other occupations. Yet on the surface one would think it would be the reverse. The data base work lends itself to work from home and with a very small outlay in equipment and with a very high profit per hour for the packages you have put together.I would suspect it’s a case of supply and demand. I agree with Mailman. Companies go for robust well supported solutions. I work for a small company and we use SAP (not a fan!). We use it because it is well maintained and supported. It does everything we need it to (albeit sometimes clumsily!). The company we use to provide our support has a team of over 1000. That means if I have a problem then I get an answer/solution pretty damn quick because there is always resource available.

Suppose we used a one-man-band support solution e.g. for our hardware repairs. How could I guarantee that the guy would be available when I needed him? How would he be able to give me an 8 hour response? Also, suppose I chose to use a software solution created by a one-man-band e.g. a call log. How do I know this guy will be around to support and develop this solution for the next 5 years? What happens if he gets run over by a bus? Ok, we could have an escrow agreement but it’s still a lot of hassle compared to choosing a well recognised and supported solution.

So the demand created by businesses dictates that there is a demand to work with larger support businesses in the main. So sure, people may want to be self employed but the market dictates that the bulk of employment is going to be tied up in employed business. I think the area were one-man-bands will exist is providing niche solutions (the example in our company is a PDA solution – not mission critical) where the demand is low and therefore not attractive to larger businesses.

Chris

Chris

On average very small business likes to business with other small business. Although there are some self empoyeds that seem to bridge the gap between working in the back room and big management. They are often consultants as financial controllers and the like.

But as I said before, I like the stability, I like knowing I’m going to get a paycheck each month and how much it will be (this helps me get a mortgage). I like not having to worry about healthcare or doing tax returns. I like the idea that someone else has “manage” the business and I just get on with my job. I like the idea that at 5pm I go home and don’t have to think about the job. I like the camaraderie of working with my colleagues. But I can see why some folks would not like this.

I would be worried I would get the sack or made redundant and have to find another job:D

There are a lot of people who feel stuck in the mainstream, they need to have the so called safety net of being in the direct employ of a company or corporation. Sadly they are the ones who would fall apart if their position was farmed out to a freelancer or get the sack for whatever reason.
I was in the rat race before but hated it from the get go so I retired at 45 and started to work under contract for other companies under properly negotiated terms. Most companies would prefer to subcontract as they do not have the burden of all the contingency expenses of having to perform human resource functions. As a consultant you can negociate the terms which work best for yourself, including working from an office at home full or part of the contract. Also up the bill to ensure you can afford health insurance as an individual as a lot of companies have some financial leeway as they do not have to do the HR stuff for you, take care of that yourself. Even if you can not negociate more money, sometimes working conditions will lead to less stress which is worth more than a little more in the bank.

I tried the self-employment IT consulting route for several years. I earned a decent income, but on an hourly basis I could have done nearly as well working at MacDonalds. The problem is if you are selling, you aren't billing and if you are billing, you aren't selling. So, you need to work a ton of hours to accomplish both.

The business culture is different here, too. You can't get contracts from large companies, because you aren't on their preferred vendors list. That means your clients are basically smaller companies who don't have the budgets bigger companies have, so contracts are a lot smaller. But, they still require a lot of smoozing.

But, the biggest problem I had was clients who payed late or didn't pay at all. It was not uncommon to have $15k - $30k in outstanding receivables for 60 - 90 days or longer. That may not seem like much to many of you but that's a significant percent of my income.

In the end, I found it to be most beneficial to hire on to a large consulting firm at an hourly rate. It's worth the percentage they take to get a regular paycheck and decent long-term contracts for larger clients. In the last 17 years, I've had contracts that lasted 4, 4, 1 and 8 years.

I agree with Mike about Sales and Marketing. If you are to be wealthy in business, it's not the most important thing, it's almost the only thing.

I have operated a small business and have installed voice and data networks in companies with thousands of employees, while competing against AT&T, Siemens, and Northern Telecom.

And we accomplished this without price wars.

So don't ever let yourself be convinced that large companies won't buy from small, sometimes they do.

Dell was once small.

I work full time and am also self employed .. what does that make me :o Crazy I guess!

In the real world, I need to buy a house imminently and settle down, maybe even have a family. Doing that when self employed is just way too much of a risk (and a cost!) however my business (predominantly IT Support & database driven website design using CMS) is something I can do from home.

I foresee once I have done the whole house-buying family-producing I will be self employed full time .. but until then I lead a double life :)

Working for someone AND secondly for yourself is not crazy - that is resourceful - just as long as you have goals and are willing to cut loose the lesser of the two as your targets are reached, or you will run the risk of being a victim of excess stress.

I work full time and am also self employed .. what does that make me :o Crazy I guess!

In the real world, I need to buy a house imminently and settle down, maybe even have a family. Doing that when self employed is just way too much of a risk (and a cost!) however my business (predominantly IT Support & database driven website design using CMS) is something I can do from home.

I foresee once I have done the whole house-buying family-producing I will be self employed full time .. but until then I lead a double life :)

I work full time and am also self employed .. what does that make me :o Crazy I guess!

In the real world, I need to buy a house imminently and settle down, maybe even have a family. Doing that when self employed is just way too much of a risk (and a cost!) however my business (predominantly IT Support & database driven website design using CMS) is something I can do from home.

I foresee once I have done the whole house-buying family-producing I will be self employed full time .. but until then I lead a double life :)

Same here. I work both.