The Meltdown and Entrepreneurship
I had my own business meltdown in 2008, chronicled briefly in this article in Charlotte Magazine. Since then I’ve taken stock in what’s important, what’s possible and what’s probable for the next chapter in my life.Big thoughts.Although it’s possible that I’m attracting people who are similar to me in their entrepreneurial hard wiring, I have noticed an uptick in the number of people I meet who are considering applying themselves to creating work instead of finding it through an employer. I made my decision long ago never again to be on a payroll. Been there, done that, had the reconstructive surgery.The decision isn’t so easy for most others. Some approach the question with mental calculus involving return on investment and probability which goes something like this:
I have Xwaking hours a week and know that finding a job will take Ymonths and I have Z% chance of making (insert income goal here) with a job versus hanging out my shingle, representing a return on the investment of my time that yields A per hour spent trying to get a job and B per hour going the entrepreneurial route.
On the other hand, if I hedge my bets by trying to get some freelance work on the side or selling crafts on etsy.com while trying to find a job, (insert math equation here).
These are left-brained approaches.
Others, like my friend and lawyer-cum-artist Catherine Anderson, takes the right-brained approach of I don’t care about the money, I’m going to live the life I want to live and I’ll figure it out along the way.
And still others go into self-employment kicking and screaming, perhaps finding themselves technically self-employed by virtue of doing a little something here and there for a 1099 while praying that eventually they can get on someone’s payroll again.It appears that a great many of us will become self-employed by one path or another. I hope the US will radically re-structure itself from the industrial revolution social safety net policies that make self-employment scarier and more costly than necessary.According to Freelancers Union “the independent workforce has grown to 30% of the U.S. population, employment laws have not been asked to adapt.” For example, access to health care, disability and unemployment insurance, unpaid wage compensation, and saving for retirement are much easier to obtain as an employee than as a self-employed worker.Then there’s taxes. Again, Freelancers Union weighs in:
Independent workers face complex and burdensome tax rules. Independent workers pay more taxes than traditional employees because the tax code overlooks them in some instances, and directly targets them in others. Freelancers pay higher social security and income taxes than standard employees. They have limited access to the pre-tax health care financing available to standard employees. Many must keep detailed records, set aside money, and make tax payments each quarter because they don’t have access to a streamlined system of tax payment like payroll deductions from a regular paycheck.
I’m an anti-corporate type, which perhaps overly influences my thinking on this matter, but I think the massive layoffs of highly-educated people around the world, enabled by communications technologies, will lead to a social renaissance that will bypass the corporate hegemon. If you haven’t read Dan Pink’s excellent book, Free Agent Nation, it’s still pertinent. And here’s another blogger’s take on free agency.Not to change the subject, because there’s a lot to do here in the US, but I don’t think every individual country can come up with its own approach to economic recovery in a vacuum of the rest of the world. The G20 will convene in London this April. Let us hope nationalism won’t get in the way of reforms that will make life livable for us all.
