Olim

April 3rd

The real truth about self-employment - part 1!

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Hey! Welcome to the 39th instalment of the Olim Love Letters - a weekly newsletter written by me, Eloise. Here, we talk about connection, copy, Really Weird Childhood Stories™, and the odd linguistic snippet thrown in for good measure.

“Self-employment just seems too risky to bother with, you know?”

Hamster cheeks full of burger (plus melty plastic American cheese yesplease), it took me a while to answer the question posed to me across the BBQ.

This query - or statement, really - is one that I’ve heard in different guises over the years. The question, at its core, is:

“Is self-employment worth it?”

(It being *gestures wildly at everything*).

The answer is always personal, of course, but here’s an Eloise Hot Take™

If you want to start your own thing, Reader, you should.

Here’s why.

1.You deserve to find out if this is actually what you want.

Did you know that 70% of Americans say they’d like to be self-employed, but only 6% actually are?

How many of us have dreams of opening up a coffee shop, a creative agency, or a small but punchy law firm that takes on cases by day and hunts criminals by night? (Just me, my cape and my nunchuks? OK.)

We sit at our 9 to 5s, lost in ideas of what could be, and rarely - if ever - take concrete actions to find out if we like the reality in question!

I think this is down to risk aversion, but doesn’t spending hours daydreaming about something you’d bloody hate in real life feel a bit unproductive to you, Reader?

This is why I wildly, aggressively recommend that ANYONE start their own thing if they’re thinking about it. It doesn’t have to replace your day job. It doesn’t have to be forever. You just have to gather evidence about whether or not it is the right thing for you.

And if it’s not? Great! You have the answer! You can forget that “what if?” for good.

2.Self-employment can be as secure, if not more so, than employment

Now, this is obviously an Eloise Hot Take ™ on a complex, nuanced, and delicate issue for a lot of people, and to explore it fully would require more space and time than we have here in this newsletter.

But from observation and research, I’m quietly coming to the conclusion that employment is not always the safety net we often believe it to be, Reader.

I’ve been made redundant, outright fired, and have struggled for months to find employment. Please know that I would never belittle anyone going through a job search or experiencing redundancy.

But if you’ve always been employed then it’s easy to look over at the people who are self-employed and think they’re taking a ridiculous risk when it comes to job security.

This begs the question, though. What does it mean to be secure in the first place?

It could mean:

• I know I have the same amount of money coming in every month
• I know what’s expected of me
• I get sick pay and holiday pay
• Someone else sorts out my taxes for me

These are all perfectly valid definitions. But employment can also bring:

• Job uncertainty or loss
• Professional stagnation
• Toxic work cultures that make you sick with stress
• Being forced into an office twice a week (the horror!!)
• Being paid less than your skills and work merit, because “well, that’s the industry average”

I don’t know about you, Reader, but none of that feels especially secure to me. The trick with self-employment perks is that they’re usually more subtle than the black-and-white numbers on a monthly payslip or an FTE contract.

But that sense of safety can be very swiftly taken away. Earlier this year I had a conversation with a brilliant, hard-working, talented friend who’d been told he had to hit all of his Q1 KPIs in one month or he’d be fired for underperforming (he wasn’t in the first place, but these guys were on a mission to “trim the fat*” and made him a target).

He pulled silly hours, knocked all his goals out of the park…and they fired him anyway.

When you are a self-employed person, you work just as hard, if not harder, than you would in an employed role - but all that effort genuinely benefits you.

You could work your socks off for someone else’s success, like my friend above, and it might not mean a thing.

*If I catch any employer using this phrase about human beings facing redundancies in their company, I will feed them to my composter.

3.It can be the most financially rewarding AND life-affirming use of your skills and abilities

Meritocracy was a big buzzword back when I was job hunting in 2016. Companies prided themselves on being meritocracies - places where people doing good work were rewarded accordingly, secure in the knowledge that they were valued by the business.

Here’s a hill that this control freak will die on: self-employment is the most rewarding meritocracy out there, because you have control over your effort, your work, and your output.

The effort that you put in is appropriately rewarded, one way or another.

If you work hard, work intelligently, and make yourself good to work with, that pays off. If we make a habit of slacking off, slouching through the day at <50%, or coasting, well, eventually we reap what we sow.

Self-employment isn’t comfortable, but it is honest.

In my first year of running Olim, I made £9,500. The year after, £56,500. The year after that, the business closed out on £103,000*.

Even I know that’s a ridiculous percentage increase from year 1 to year 3, and we all know how crap I am at maths. Now, none of this is to say: Long live the hustle! Work harder! #GirlBoss your life! If you’ve been here a while, you know that’s not how we do things.

*One of these days I will share how making that last figure made me physically and mentally sick (it costs a surprising amount to make six figures!).

So is self-employment hard work? YES.

Is it hard work that feels worthy and rewarding? YES.

Can you get that from regular employment? PROBABLY!

But are you in control of your efforts when you work for someone else? Do you have a direct line to the people you help?

Are you 100% able to take responsibility for your wins and your losses? Are you rewarded according to what you do, not your gender, how pally you are with the boss, whether you get invited to the board’s recurring golf game?

I really hope the answer is yes! But if it isn’t - and you’re still freelance-curious - it’s another great reason to give it a try.

Part 2 is coming your way next week - but please write me back in the meantime!

Are you a freelance or self-employed human? What’s the best job you’ve ever had? Do you want to start something of your own but don’t know how?

Tell me all about it.

Big love,
​
Eloise x