Choosing to be your own boss is a courageous move. Whether you left a job to do this or whether you had to become self-employed because you had no work, both reasons are admirable. Those who plod away in a 9 to 5 job probably envy you. But sometimes there are months when being self-employed gets tough. In these months you may envy people, perhaps your employees, for having the security of a steady income, even if the company they work for makes less profit.

Working for a company under a boss allows one to concentrate on only the duties in their job description. Everyone has their allocated tasks and once yours is done, you can just keep yourself busy on smaller tasks until 5pm and then head on home.  OK, sometimes it’s a little more stressful than that. Sometimes you work overtime and work for a mean boss, however, the future of the company or the responsibility of paying, hiring and firing staff is not directly your problem and if the company has problems, you can walk out and look for another job elsewhere. Depending on the position you work in at a company, there is often the support of colleagues and someone above you to make the tough decisions and final calls. Being part of a team also brings security and peace of mind to your job.

Being self-employed is often scary because decisions, and the outcome of these, are all on your head. If you are a one man show or a small business it’s up to you to reel in the clients and bring in the money. If you can achieve this, there is also a lot of organising, running and maintaining to be done. If you can get a handle on that, you can start to enjoy the benefits of self-employment. These include having no boss to answer to, working your own hours and reaping the rewards of the company’s profit.

The independence, admiration and feeling of achievement can bring you happiness and confidence that far outweigh the stress and hard work of being self-employed. For some people they could never imagine themselves working for someone else and that is the motivation they need to make a living being self-employed. Entrepreneurs are a classic example of people who are too innovative to be stuck in an office with set work hours and someone telling them what to do.

Donna Van Wyk writes on behalf of Skilled Migrant Jobs, a job board offering job services in Australia. This article was written by a guest author. Would you like to, submit a guest blog post?