The Advantages of Becoming an Entrepreneur – Why I Decided to Quit my Secure Job.
Among the many advantages of becoming an entrepreneur, 5 were directly responsible of my jump from a secure job to my entrepreneurial adventure. Four of these advantages can be summed up in one word: Freedom. The fifth one is, according to me, the most important advantage of becoming an entrepreneur.
The first advantage of becoming an entrepreneur: Financial freedom
The first and maybe most obvious reason why I started to dream about becoming an entrepreneur was money. You see, I grew up being told that I had to study long and hard to get a good, secure and well-paid job. So I ended up having a bachelor degree and a master degree, ready to receive the all the hard earned money I thought my academic degrees would get me. After all, I studied long and hard and accumulated huge student debts in the process, I would obviously be gratified with a really good salary, right? Wrong! As I got into the market, I soon realized that some friends with basic high school were paid nearly as much as I was! Even worse, they got out of school 6 or 7 years before me so they didn’t have debts and were able to accumulate a fair amount of money. I realized that basic demand vs. offer was much more important to get well paid than a master degree. This is when I began to read about all the advantages of becoming an entrepreneur. I didn’t take me too much time to realize that almost if not all the really rich people were entrepreneurs. Many had college degrees, many didn’t. The only important thing were their ability to identify market demands and to answer these demands with great value. If I could rapidly give the market enough value, in enough quantity, to answer its needs or wants, I would get rich. I would get out of debts much more quickly than by holding on to a secure job that would only get me a tiny raise every year. Getting rich quickly was the main advantage of becoming an entrepreneur that motivated me to quit my secure job. In fact, the only way to get more money by staying an employee would have been to get old! I could have changed the world, I wouldn’t have matter to my boss… the only way to earn more was to get older. The advantage of becoming an entrepreneur is that it doesn’t matter that you are 25, 40, or 60 years old or that you have a college degree or not. If you have a really brilliant idea, you will benefit from it.
The second advantage of becoming an entrepreneur: Time freedom
This advantage really struck me after becoming an entrepreneur. If I needed to sleep a little more because I had a bad night (a little bit of insomnia is part of the disadvantages of becoming an entrepreneur), I could. If I needed to meet someone for my business, I would set the meeting outside of rush hours so I could get there in few minutes instead of an hour. I recently calculated that the mere fact of becoming an entrepreneur had the advantage of freeing almost 7 to 8 hours each week, only because of traffic! That’s a whole day of work every week that I can use to create more business profit, go to the gym, sleep more, or anything that will bring me more happiness or money. The last way that this advantage manifests itself is by allowing me to adapt my schedule to my wife’s schedule in order to be there for important moments. The same is true for family, friends, or simply for events I would never attend if I were still an employee having to get up at 6 every morning.This is a huge advantage for me, although I didn’t really thought about it before becoming an entrepreneur.
The third advantage of becoming an entrepreneur: Freedom of location
If you develop a good business model and have good people in place to delegate important business tasks, freedom of location could also be one of the advantages of becoming an entrepreneur. It may take a little while to set it up, especially if you are into a “brick and mortar” business, but it is truly possible, and not that hard. Of course, you will have to be there in person from time to time, but with good people in place you will soon get paid even when you take a day off. You will even get paid when skiing for a week or two or when visiting a country with your family. To me, this advantage of becoming an entrepreneur also means that if my wife’s job gets transferred to another city, I can follow her and only come back to town from time to time.
The fourth advantage of becoming an entrepreneur: Freedom of choosing my projects
This advantage of becoming an entrepreneur was a real motivation to quit my job and do things on my own! Have you ever worked on a really, really boring, annoying, meaningless project that was nonetheless treated by your boss as if it were critically important? Me too! I mean, I have worked in so many places where all the minutiae and really absurd processes took at least half of my day. I think these were the moments where I felt the most urgent need to get out and become an entrepreneur. So many hours lost in debilitating processes. I honestly think that, on the long term, this kind of work could lead to issues like depression or other work related mental health issues. Think about it, being “forced” to do things that you know are unnecessary and for which you feel no gratification at all, and doing these things again and again and again. When you are becoming an entrepreneur, you have the advantage of being able to choose your projects and only work on those which are truly important or that you enjoy the most. Of course, becoming an entrepreneur necessitates that you accomplish some boring tasks. But even then, these tasks have a truly important meaning for you: they are the necessary steps for becoming an entrepreneur and living the life of your dreams! So they are relatively easy to accomplish because they mean something. The best thing is, as you are becoming a more efficient entrepreneur, you will be able to delegate these tasks to someone who like this kind of job, because everyone has their own talents and preferences.
The most important of all advantages of becoming an entrepreneur: Becoming a Master in life.
Above all the advantages of becoming an entrepreneur, I think this one is really the most important. After quitting a “secure” job that wasn’t really that gratifying or well-paid, you succeed by your own, doing something that you are passionate about. Soon, you realize that while everyone around you was safely staying on one side of a really dark forest… you had the vision and the courage to get into the dark forest, knowing that it would bring up many fears, insecurities, and maybe pain. You did it because you knew that sooner or later, you would get through and arrive on the best side of the dark forest, where you have more money, more time, and feel more joy and satisfaction. This is the true advantage of becoming an entrepreneur. Knowing that despite all the fears you had and all the fears people tried to push on you, you went and you succeeded. The next time you’ll face a challenge, you’ll know you’ll be able to succeed again. To me, this is the most amazing advantage of becoming an entrepreneur.