Should you get a job or start a business?
Steve Pavlina wrote an article on his website about why it's "stupid" to work as an employee. Although his site does provide a lot of useful advice, I thought I'd write a few comments about his (emotional) arguments in favor of entrepreneurship.
Unlike Pavlina, I have experience BOTH as a corporate employee (working for IBM, American Express, CDI Corporate Education Services, Abbott, the Ministry of Justice and a major law firm) and as an entrepreneur.
My view is that working for a corporate employer is not necessarily bad, IF you know HOW to use the employer's resources and structures and processes to your own advantage. In fact, what you learn during your years as a corporate employee will prove invaluable if or when you decide to become an entrepreneur.
My comments, preceded by ">", are intended to provide a more balanced view. Pavlina's whole article does provide a lot of good points and I recommend a visit to his website at http://www.stevepavlina.com/
===
1. Income for dummies.
Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income for dummies.
Why is getting a job so dumb? Because you only get paid when you’re working. Don’t you see a problem with that, or have you been so thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to only earn income when you’re working?
> He's conveniently ignoring the fact that valuable intellectual capital and expertise can be developed while you're working for an employer.
Have you never considered that it might be better to be paid even when you’re not working? Who taught you that you could only earn income while working? Some other brainwashed employee perhaps?
> Yes, you can get paid when you're NOT working, BUT it requires that you create a system that DOES work when you don't. Most people do not have the system expertise to create such a system, or the knowledge content to benefit from systems such as publishing on the Web or in print. It does take a while before a person learns about how to create a money-making system, such as a best-selling book, a high-traffic blog, a product selling over the Net, etc. So while you're learning how to create such a system, it does make sense to work for an employer so as to generate income that you could eventually invest into your money-making system to make it perform even better.
Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get paid 24/7? Get paid whether you work or not. Don’t your plants grow even when you aren’t tending to them? Why not your bank account?
> Because a plant is organic and follows the immutable laws of nature, while a bank account is not.
Who cares how many hours you work? Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much time you spend at the office. Most of us won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60. But if you have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it. We don’t care about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive. Do you really care how long it took me to write this article? Would you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?
Non-dummies often start out on the traditional income for dummies path. So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been suckered. Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way. And of course there is a better way. The key is to de-couple your value from your time.
Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income.
> Often, future entrepreneurs learn about money-making systems by working as an employee. Indeed, as an employee, you're operating on a daily basis INSIDE a money-making system, so it's up to you to learn everything you can about how your employer creates value and financializes it.
If you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead. If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free. As long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid whether you’re working or not.
Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged. Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it.
> I don't know how “easy” it is to learn it. I graduated from McGill University with a marketing degree with Distinction (“A” average). I was also valedictorian of my elementary school and high school. Yet it wasn't easy for me to learn about business from books. I had to read full time for two years (I read over 800 books).
2. Limited experience.
You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience. But that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf. You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not. A job only gives you experience at that job, but you gain ”experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real benefit at all. Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician.
> He lacks knowledge about how expertise is created. Expertise and expert performances improve from deliberate and focused practice, NOT general life experience. A job also provides benchmarks, procedures, supervision, training, focus, dashboards showing key performance indicators (KPI), etc. to HELP a person become better at creating value and increasing productivity. Pavlina doesn't know all of that because he has never worked for a Fortune 500 company. He doesn't realize that top companies like IBM recruit only the best, and they invest in training the best.
Social conditioning is amazing. It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.
Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (”You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you? Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?
The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just silly. You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of anyone. If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional gambler.
> Good "gambling" means focusing on the EMV or Expected Monetary Value, which is Probability of Success X Payoff. If an employee makes $40,000 per year, and is contemplating launching a business that might generate $100,000 with odds of 1 in 4, then choosing between 40K and 25K is easy. Sometimes, launching a business is a better bet, other times, getting a job is the statistically superior bet.
6. Having an evil bovine master.
When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”
> No, you can actually communicate like civilized people. Peter Drucker provides strategies for “managing one's boss” for win-win outcomes. You just have to develop your people skills. Knowing about negotiation also helps significantly. I've had over 12 bosses, and I've always successfully negotiated win-win working arrangements with them. The key for me was to know what my boss' goals were, and to help him/her achieve his/her goals. Read Baltasar Gracian's the Art of Wordly Wisdom to gain valuable insights into the office politics game.
> Although I can understand why Pavlina seems upset and angry, I think there is a case to be made for BOTH working for an employer and starting your own business. We just have to be factual and present rational arguments, and let people decide for themselves. The danger with Pavlina's one-sided thinking, due in large part to his limited experience with the corporate employment system (one year only), is that he might influence young people to completely ignore the corporate employment option. Yet, a large corporate employer could be an invaluable training platform during a person's formative years, as well as a relatively easy source of income for preparing one's exit out of the corporate world into the realm of entrepreneurship.
Unlike Pavlina, I have experience BOTH as a corporate employee (working for IBM, American Express, CDI Corporate Education Services, Abbott, the Ministry of Justice and a major law firm) and as an entrepreneur.
My view is that working for a corporate employer is not necessarily bad, IF you know HOW to use the employer's resources and structures and processes to your own advantage. In fact, what you learn during your years as a corporate employee will prove invaluable if or when you decide to become an entrepreneur.
My comments, preceded by ">", are intended to provide a more balanced view. Pavlina's whole article does provide a lot of good points and I recommend a visit to his website at http://www.stevepavlina.com/
===
1. Income for dummies.
Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea. There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income for dummies.
Why is getting a job so dumb? Because you only get paid when you’re working. Don’t you see a problem with that, or have you been so thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to only earn income when you’re working?
> He's conveniently ignoring the fact that valuable intellectual capital and expertise can be developed while you're working for an employer.
Have you never considered that it might be better to be paid even when you’re not working? Who taught you that you could only earn income while working? Some other brainwashed employee perhaps?
> Yes, you can get paid when you're NOT working, BUT it requires that you create a system that DOES work when you don't. Most people do not have the system expertise to create such a system, or the knowledge content to benefit from systems such as publishing on the Web or in print. It does take a while before a person learns about how to create a money-making system, such as a best-selling book, a high-traffic blog, a product selling over the Net, etc. So while you're learning how to create such a system, it does make sense to work for an employer so as to generate income that you could eventually invest into your money-making system to make it perform even better.
Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get paid 24/7? Get paid whether you work or not. Don’t your plants grow even when you aren’t tending to them? Why not your bank account?
> Because a plant is organic and follows the immutable laws of nature, while a bank account is not.
Who cares how many hours you work? Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much time you spend at the office. Most of us won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60. But if you have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it. We don’t care about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive. Do you really care how long it took me to write this article? Would you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?
Non-dummies often start out on the traditional income for dummies path. So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been suckered. Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way. And of course there is a better way. The key is to de-couple your value from your time.
Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income.
> Often, future entrepreneurs learn about money-making systems by working as an employee. Indeed, as an employee, you're operating on a daily basis INSIDE a money-making system, so it's up to you to learn everything you can about how your employer creates value and financializes it.
If you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead. If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free. As long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid whether you’re working or not.
Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged. Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it.
> I don't know how “easy” it is to learn it. I graduated from McGill University with a marketing degree with Distinction (“A” average). I was also valedictorian of my elementary school and high school. Yet it wasn't easy for me to learn about business from books. I had to read full time for two years (I read over 800 books).
2. Limited experience.
You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience. But that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf. You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not. A job only gives you experience at that job, but you gain ”experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real benefit at all. Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician.
> He lacks knowledge about how expertise is created. Expertise and expert performances improve from deliberate and focused practice, NOT general life experience. A job also provides benchmarks, procedures, supervision, training, focus, dashboards showing key performance indicators (KPI), etc. to HELP a person become better at creating value and increasing productivity. Pavlina doesn't know all of that because he has never worked for a Fortune 500 company. He doesn't realize that top companies like IBM recruit only the best, and they invest in training the best.
Social conditioning is amazing. It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth.
Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (”You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you? Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?
The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just silly. You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of anyone. If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional gambler.
> Good "gambling" means focusing on the EMV or Expected Monetary Value, which is Probability of Success X Payoff. If an employee makes $40,000 per year, and is contemplating launching a business that might generate $100,000 with odds of 1 in 4, then choosing between 40K and 25K is easy. Sometimes, launching a business is a better bet, other times, getting a job is the statistically superior bet.
6. Having an evil bovine master.
When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”
> No, you can actually communicate like civilized people. Peter Drucker provides strategies for “managing one's boss” for win-win outcomes. You just have to develop your people skills. Knowing about negotiation also helps significantly. I've had over 12 bosses, and I've always successfully negotiated win-win working arrangements with them. The key for me was to know what my boss' goals were, and to help him/her achieve his/her goals. Read Baltasar Gracian's the Art of Wordly Wisdom to gain valuable insights into the office politics game.
> Although I can understand why Pavlina seems upset and angry, I think there is a case to be made for BOTH working for an employer and starting your own business. We just have to be factual and present rational arguments, and let people decide for themselves. The danger with Pavlina's one-sided thinking, due in large part to his limited experience with the corporate employment system (one year only), is that he might influence young people to completely ignore the corporate employment option. Yet, a large corporate employer could be an invaluable training platform during a person's formative years, as well as a relatively easy source of income for preparing one's exit out of the corporate world into the realm of entrepreneurship.
posted by Super Peter at 2:31 PM
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