You find your own jobs, set your own hours, and call the shots. But you have to get someone else to pay you to do it. Who’s really your boss?
Who’s really your boss when you work at home, but depend upon others to write the checks? Sure, you created a Web site and a stunning portfolio, and you’ve managed to build up a reputation in your own field of expertise. But you still have to sell yourself, promote yourself, and pound the online pavement (so to speak) to find great jobs. Great jobs come with great (or, not-so-great) employers. So, are you the boss…or are they?
The Self Employment Authority Crisis
Even professionals who work for clients, persons who contact them about services such as consulting, might face the self employment authority crisis. You tell yourself you’re in charge, but you still have to do what they ask. Freelance writers may get told to rewrite, designers may be told to come up with an entirely new concept, performers may get booed off the stage and told they won’t receive any money. There’s always someone else to please, isn’t there? You find the work…but someone else has to be willing to pay you for what you do.
Here’s the luxury of being self employed: you get to decide which jobs to take and which jobs not to take, which clients to work for and which to tell no thanks to. If an employer asks you to do something you don’t want to do, you don’t have to do it. Sure, you won’t get paid - but that’s one of the downfalls of self employment (to everything, there is an up and a down). They may be the ones who are paying, but you’re the boss over what you do (and don’t do) with your self employment.
