Self-Employment VS Working a Job

one of the unanticipated blessings real blessings of this channel has been the people that I've been able to talk to as they have considered and are working through the decision to make a big employment change in their life I've talked to a lot of people ranging from a physical therapist who stopped being a physical therapist to be a general contractor to young people who are trying to decide which trade to start into to uh I've talked to several people who are retiring from the military and have decided they just have to live a as a carpenter or a contractor because they want to be able to control their own schedule and have a variety of activities and be able to look over their shoulder at the end of the day and see what they accomplished I've talked to a lot of people who say that because of things that they've learned on YouTube they're now after two years in the trades they're a foreman and or a young superintendent who was being promoted to superintendent after coming from it and then just a couple of years sort of working for a general contractor and they identified him as being sharp and detail oriented they were going to make him a superintendent and he wanted to talk about what in the world should I know before I start working for these people who I like and who like me in a way where I've perceived that I could let them down I talk to people who are exhausted at the at the 80h hour work weeks of being a small general contractor I talk to people who want to know how do I make enough money at this at this self- employment picture to be able to take any time with my family and I talk to people who are so delighted that they've made the change and they love the freedom so much and they love the people that they've met and that they work with and they have clients that have become long-term very positive the whole gamut of people is they work through the decision to make a change in their employment either from less freedom and more security to less Security in more freedom or back the other way I've had all the freedom I can afford and I need something I can depend on so we've touched on this and talked about things related to this a lot on the channel because it's been a big part of my life and now in conversations with people like you it continues to be a big part of my life and maybe it's worth speaking to for a few minutes most of us come from a position of being employed by someone to do something and the typical progression is we get better at what we do and we get we become able to do more skills partially because of what we learned in that job and then in many cases we come become dissatisfied people don't quit jobs they quit bosses right you run up against somebody who has the responsibility to um instruct you in your job performance and you don't get along with that person and pretty soon you write off the whole job as being something you can't deal with when really it was the person maybe so I talked to these these people all the time and what I'm what's becoming more and more clear to me is that I guess I lived kind of a Charmed existence of making changes while I was employed by others and then finally kind of being Thrust out into the cold which is what it's like to be out there by yourself you and your family against the world in a self-employment picture but in general if you're in an employment picture I know people who have gone to work for utilities Public Utilities i' I know School teachers I know people who have taken jobs inside of government or inside of Corporations and work a long time in one spot and come to the end of that with some real security and having enjoyed real stability my brother I'm so proud of my brother he was a fighter pilot for the Marine Corps he flew f-18s he was as steady as sunrise and as talented and Brilliant as a guy can be and he got to the top of the food chain and he's remained at the top of the food chain in in Flight in different flying jobs always working for someone else and he he and I have talked about the difference in our lifestyle between the security of working for the man and the lack of Freedom someone always is dictating your schedule and my life of so long working for myself with barely enough but all the Time in the World to use what is barely enough so maybe you're one of the millions of us who has the nagging thought in the back of your mind I should be doing something different I am dissatisfied so maybe you're that what should I do what do you do with that thought well the first thing that you should do is not jump out of the boat you're in you never jump out of the boat in the storm you wait until you have a spot to land before you jump right so don't bail I mean unless the situation is Extreme and ask yourself is there more for me to learn here how long will it take me to learn it and how am I going to have a realistic expectation of what something different might look like and then start looking for the people who can teach you that who can talk to you about that spend as much time worrying about who to talk to about what it's like to not have security as you're spending worrying about how do I get more freedom in my life does that make sense stop obsessing about your problem and find some people who can teach you a more realistic perspective of what it's going to be like when you're out there in the cold cruel world both the people who are having some success and the people who are experiencing some failure because your chances of one or the other are much heavier weighted towards some kind of failure and pain than some sort of rocket ship success there's only one Elon Musk okay and we're not him now I don't know how you find those people and don't become toned deaf to the people who are lamenting and you know I'm kind of guilty of that you hear a lot of cold water on this subject come out of this Channel about be careful about being a general contractor and it's all true but you can't you can't rely on others to crush your dreams but you can rely on others to give you the benefit of their experience and then hope you have the wisdom that you need to apply that so let's rewind the tape a little bit there is a lot of good to be said about a steady job the guys that work for Pacific Power and Light around here I don't see much turnover there you know I run into the lineman occasionally and I know a couple guys that work there I don't see much turnover in that job and when I was a kid my dad said well you know you got to go to work for the power company I was talking about getting into a union apprenticeship as a carpenter and as was typical I didn't really listen to what he said but a job with a utility is a great job those people have enough money to have a comfortable standard of living they have vacation so they can escape and experience some Freedom with their people they have good health insurance they have they have all of those things if you're a young man right now you could get a job with a power company if you try hard enough and 40 years from now you're going to look back and say you know that was a pretty darn good ride I'm glad I did it some of us are brimming with ambition we're Restless we're itchy with ambition and it's a Priceless commodity that will exhaust itself you're going to run out of that ambition and so it is smart to capitalize on it while you've got it it it it's the young ones Among Us that instigate so many powerful things for good or for real and so let's talk about that ambition be a little leery because the ambition can blind us it is rocket fuel and it can Propel us at the at at an extreme rate of speed in a direction that we can't recover from so you need to if you are that person who is compelled I know I can do it I know that nothing will stop me from doing it that's great but you better find an older cooler head that you can talk to heck I don't know maybe it's your grandmother but somebody in your circle of acquaintance or that will come into your circle of acquaintance is a voice that you should listen to when you do an ambition audit we need to do ambition audits in the same way we audit how much fuel is in our fuel tank how long's it been since I checked the oil what what's the status on as in the same way we audit anything else that we have to keep track of in our lives because if you either run out you're stuck alongside the road or if you get too much you know you're out of balance in that direction we should do ambition audits once in a while and find someone who who can help us understand wait a minute is this good idea just boundless optimism run a muck or is this in fact a good idea now I don't know who that person is I already said that but maybe you do and if you don't don't be seduced by your optimism into leaping into something until you find some good counsel and the Good Counsel should come from someone who both will encourage you to do it and someone who will discourage you from doing it if you have both those extremes and then being aware of your ambition make your decision and uh set that course now part of the course that we can set is to find fulfillment in a side hustle if you have a steady gig and if you're drawn to entrepreneurial Adventure do it in a small way side hustles are a huge employer right they're a huge discretionary income producer they're a huge source of Education both in terms of what's going to work and what's not going to work so if you've got a powerful entrepreneurial itch develop on the side now if you're a married man you talk to your bride about this you're already doing that and if you're not you're not going to be married long and if you're not it's probably your problem because we have to be able to consult with our with our better halves about the big changes and the big Dynamics in our personality that are either going to cause extreme success or catastrophic failure that's one of the reason that the twain become one flesh or a single organ organism is so that together the two are about four times smarter than either of them individually so you've always got to give it the wife test so as I wrap this up the thing that comes to my mind is maybe best Illustrated in the story of my neighbor LM James LM James who has a business called Stone Age table tennis and they make beautiful concrete ping pong tables I mean beautiful highest quality and they ship them all over the world it's quite a Niche and he's doing great and he was able to step into um self-employment and be a success because of the personal education he got in his journey through employment up to that particular point he worked for a company that produces quite a few pre-cast concrete accessories that are in Forest Service romtech he worked for romtech I think they're a local company that's done good making various um accessories for public campgrounds that sort of thing he worked there for a while he worked in a cabinet shop and between these two areas of and probably other places we're going to find out in a video that we do over there with him again he developed three things an understanding the materials an understanding of really nice processes for creating the forms that he was going to need and a contact list the niche skills you're learning and the people you meet are your biggest assets if you actually are going to listen to your ambition and jump out of the ship into that cold stormy sea of self-employment you got to develop the con the contact list you've got to keep some records of how long it took to do the things you did when you did them from other people in order to get the data set the things you're going to need in order to actually get a tow hold in the world of self-employment it's a scary world it's fraught with risk it's fraught with opportunities for real success both personally and professionally it's going to introduce you to people and practices and problems that you haven't imagined and when you're in the middle of them you're going to think what was I thinking and on the other side of it you're going to be smarter you're going to be perhaps successful and you will have had a bigger impact on more people's lives which maybe is the best reason to consider self-employment if you're thinking about doing this I want you to listen to this we've got the essential Craftsman Academy you may be aware of that there's a link in the notes that you could go to the go to the website check out the academy but in this conversation the most valuable aspect of the essential Craftsman Academy is twice a month we have shop talk where dozens of guys show up in a zoom meeting I'm there Nate's there and we have had several young guys come on and say hey I've been in this I'm doing this I'm thinking about trying this what do you guys think or how do I become a tree surgeon what do you guys think about this job and there are Wise Old heads there that are at that meeting just to share with each other what we're doing and what we've learned and they'll give you an answer and so even if you just join the academy for a while right if you just show up in the academy for a while until you think you've gotten your money's worth consider that because shop talk on essential Craftsman Academy is where you're going to find more wisdom in one spot ready to share without judgment than anywhere else that I'm aware of you might check that out thank you for watching essential Craftsman and keep up the good work

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 128,060

Keywords: anvil, forge, blacksmith, forging, craftsman, mentor, trades, tradesman, career, smith, carpetner, builder, wisdom, workbench, fabricate, tools, tool, tips, trick, hacks, protip, career change, construction career, construction career change, contractor career, construction employment

Id: mn-YdBhN7N4

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2024