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

[dan-cat]

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

 

[wazz]

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.]

 

[Rich]

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?

 

[ColinEssex]

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

 

[Mike375]

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.

 

[namliam]

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.

 

[Mike375]

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

 

[stopher]

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

 

[Mike375]

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

 

[Fifty2One]

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.

 

[Balr14]

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.

 

[Thales750]

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.

 

[RCheesley]

I work full time and am also self employed .. what does that make me 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

 

[Fifty2One]

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 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

 

[Thales750]

I work full time and am also self employed .. what does that make me 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.