Working For Yourself VS Working For Others [Updated]

Hi everybody out there in cyber space.

My name’s Sharif and today we’re going to be talking about the pros and cons of working for yourself vs working for others.

First I want to start with the fact that, a lot of people automatically think that working for yourself is just deemed for failure, that you’re definitely not going to get anywhere and that you’re going to have a tough job on your hands to actually be able to earn a living, let alone do well, be comfortable, not be horribly struggling.

The first thought people have is “you’re probably going to end up a bum for a long time” of course there is good truth in that and reason for them to think that but I wanted to say something really interesting about that mentality which is the fact that you have most people… sure it’s true that most companies will fail; 90% of business fail, or 99%, whatever. … but think about it, how many people are not even going to start? Think about it; how many people are not even going to try? Think about how many people are telling you it’s not going to work or it’s better to work for someone else in the end. I mean, there is a lot to be said about working for somebody else and learning and gaining a lot of experience and then working on something on the side and after you establish yourself to do your own thing. Of course that’s highly recommended in most fields but if you don’t have the mind or vision that you’re going to be working for yourself at some point, you’re never going to get close to it no matter how much potential you have to do that.

The thing I wanted to say was that all these people who tell you, “you can’t do it,” let’s say it’s 100 people, a 1000 people, 10s of thousands of people, 100s of thousands or even millions of people were saying that “it can’t be done” … well they’re not even starting, so you know what’s happening, that gives you the opportunity to take their place, if these 100s of thousands or millions of people were saying “yeah it can be done, anyone can do it, you just gotta go for it” and they were all going for it and doing it, imagine the amount of competition you would have. Well the reality is there are still millions of people doing it, but there’s even more people who aren’t doing it and developing a niche from that is an opportunity.

I also wanted to say that, let’s imagine everyone was like that, everyone was doing it and competition was high, still, only those who would stick to it to the end, not those that are just jumping on a trend, not doing it because it seems easy or a sure bet but doing it because truly deep down they want to do it and will stick to it thick and thin whether it works out well or not they’re going to figure it out, they’re going to get through the difficulties, they’re going forward, they’re going to be constantly raising value through that commitment and daily work solving problems at higher levels and getting more people that value.

That is going to be the key anyway, even if all the odds are against or even if you have the perfect opportunity, you’re not going to make the most of it over the longterm if you do not have that sort of vision to keep going. More than adjust a singular goal but always going towards higher goal basically, with a constant process of always levelling up and improving which is going to be absolutely required. So I’m just saying that ‘yeah, most people are going to say “No’ but that’s you’re advantage. The fact that most people are saying “no,” when you say “yes,” you’re different. That makes you much more likely to succeed if you’re sticking to it. Even if everyone is doing it and saying they’re going to do it, it doesn’t matter if they don’t stick to it in the end. Whether one is getting luck at the beginning or failing, it doesn’t matter as they will not last into the longterm unless that are committed to it. Not just going through the motions but doing things that actually have importance and meaning to your life and the lives of others as much as possible and is really coming from an authentic and genuine place.

So the advantages of working for others in general is you don’t have to decide. You don’t have to decide for yourself other people are deciding for you. Your schedule is pretty much going to be based upon what others are asking for you. You’re going to have a routine based upon what are the standards for where you’re working. Nowadays settings are more flexible, there’s more telecommunications, you still have to be more independent. You learn that from a post secondary education you still have to be independent in managing your time and what you do. But in general when you’re working for others whether it be at a low level in regular labour job or at a higher level in Information Technology or even a business marketing job; if you’re working for others you’re being told what it is that you need to get done. Sure on the side you can go and come up with your own initiatives, your side businesses or whatever, but in that work when you’re working for others you don’t have to decide so actually it’s a wonderful thing in a sense that you don’t have that responsibility, it’s not all on you, of course it all depends, if you end up at the top of a company, of course, the responsibility all ends up on you, that totally changes the situation, but what I’m trying to say is that that’s actually both a blessing and a curse in either case.

If you’re working independently on your own, the blessing is you get to decide everything. You can choose what you want to represent, what you don’t want to represent. How you’re going to implement a certain strategy, what kind of products you’re going to make, which direction you’re going to take, how you’re going to grow and how you’re going to improve. How you’re going to take feedback, what point in that feedback is going to mean something to you, what are you going to disregard and what are you going to be inspired from or what you can bring that’s different against what you’re seeing that’s out there while staying in line with your integrity. You get to decide everything but at the same time that’s the curse because you have to decide everything!

When you’re doing an independent business, when you’re doing your own thing, you have your own system for getting things done or your own team to work with and you’re the major investor let’s say or you’re the owner, you really need to decide. You have to do a lot of the decision-making. You can go ahead and try to get others to decide or help you to. But then where is your direction, where is your vision? … You do not have a strategy [then]. You’re not building it around yourself. That’s just one small grain in the rice bowl; what other people think. In the end you still have to decide. It’s also true when you’re working for others, in the more micro sense, but you never have those kind of stakes unless you are at a very high position in a company where it ends up being almost the same thing anyway.

The disadvantage of working for others is that you don’t get to decide, you don’t get to say “Hey, I want to make this a little bit different.” You can make suggestions… if you want, you might be able to, but even if you’re in a high position you might be able to; you still might have to fight for it or you still might have to go around what other people are thinking, you might even have to concede and say “Ok it can’t be done” and then outside of the time that you have to dedicate to someone else’s idea or the agreed idea that may not be what you think is the best… after spending all that time on that, on the side you would have to create some more time to do it your way just to show that “you know this works better” when you do it. For someone else it might not work for them if they do it because they have a totally different perspective or even if objectively it might make a lot of sense [for them not to do it] but they can’t know that you can do it and not everyone knows you the way you can do it, so you have to do it then. On top of that since you’re working with others, you have to do their thing too. You see how much more complicated and stressful that way is? So that could be a problem especially if you’re trying to do your own thing.

If you don’t want to do your own thing then working for others is probably ideal. You don’t want to work on your own and be independent if you’re not trying to work on your own thing. If you just want to be part of something, that is your dream. If you’re looking to do something more finite as part of something else rather than being at the centre of it or the impetus of it. Let’s just say you’re not a control freak, to put it in a simple way. That’s the thing. You really have to be a control freak if you want to go independent and be the owner. Even if you’re working with others, if you have a high level of responsibility a lot is on you and you’re supposed to be doing those decisions. You cannot be divining an oracle or something. You have to learn and do the research. Come to your own conclusions, connect your own dots to form your own image as to what you want to achieve and then you can achieve it but remember if you’re going to do your own thing you’re going to have to decide, and you’re going to have to create that map; there’s nobody doing it for you like when you’re working for someone else.

When you’re working for somebody else your going to have to accept the fact that there’s going to be times where it’s a “No.” to whatever it is you think even if it is perfect to you and you know that it’s going to work absolutely if you do it that way and that thing, and maybe it will but when you’re working with others you’re going to have to sometimes deal with the fact that they’re going to say “No.” and you still have to do what they want you to do, and you still want to do what you want to do so you have to figure out a way so, that’s what I’m saying. To consider that, if you really want to take control, if you really want to be ahead and in charge, find a way to get started on your own thing, maybe like I said, on the side to start but the more you’re in control the more you’re making decisions the more you can find out; are you right about your idea? Is it true? Is it going to work out? If it doesn’t, that’s the best way to learn. If people tell you “No.” and then you stop there, Ok maybe they were right, maybe it wasn’t going to succeed, but you don’t really know it unless you did it first hand and you’re going to feel much worse if you find out that it would work when someone else did it instead, it’s better to find out it didn’t succeed, but at least you gave it a shot.You can build up off of that. You can’t build up off of nothing; off of not trying, off of not doing something. You can only build up off of getting something done.

Well anyway I hope this helps you. Whatever path your on, whether you’re thinking “Ah, I don’t want to work for others anymore” but you don’t realize how much responsibility you’re really going to have to take and, yeah, you can follow other people’s models and patterns but still in the end you’re going to have to decide which one. No one is the same in the end, so it’s going to take some creativity on your part. You might want a lot of creativity, but you have to be ready for an extreme amount. You can always get others help and advice to get you started . So you have to really weigh what that means before you do it. Another thing, if you’re super stressed out because you’re already trying to do your own thing, you don’t know what to do, and you don’t know where to go, like I said, you got to think about the decision making. How are you going to reduce the amount of decisions you’re going to make while still achieving what you want to achieve? You can still work for others for a bit to get you back in the mindset of; what are people doing, what is working, what you think is going to work for you and the kind of thing you’re doing; but you’re going to need that perspective to calibrate from. That’s why you always need to be learning and you always need to be studying. That’s so key in either case.

Personally in my view, I figure it might as well be in your overall mission and what you want to do and that can’t be decided truly by anyone else but you. Someone else might want something different but you just got to know what you’re getting into and know there is no ideal situation and one situation isn’t going to be better than the other. The ideal situation is going to be decided by your ideal, but just know what it actually is practically when you actually do it against what you think it is before you decide “this is definitely it” know that you’re going to have to take all the responsibility when you’re going to work for yourself and in working for others you’re going to have to sometimes work around what you truly want to do. I don’t just mean “Oh, only the fun stuff” because even when you work for yourself and you get to decide everything, there’s still going to be tons of stuff that’s not fun, but it’s deciding what kind of stuff that’s not fun that you think is worth doing because of your vision. Rather than, let’s say you’re working for someone else and there’s not fun stuff that has to be done, but you don’t feel it’s bringing you towards where you really want to go, then it’s not good, but if it is and you’re working with others, then it’s the perfect situation, you don’t even have to decide as much, but I think for people who have a lot of vision and can see where they want to go… Oftentimes unless you’re on the same mind length and you got that right team, the right people, you’re probably going to be building up someone else’s world rather than your own. Ideally all of our worlds can harmonize but that can’t happen until you are clear on your world and what you’re working from.

That way there can be a lot of growth. Amazing relationships can happen between multiple independents. That’s pretty much how most large businesses grow and end up happening. If you want to keep growing and rising up or you’re happy to reach a certain level and that’s good for you, that’s fine for a lot of people, especially if they like to spend a lot of time in something outside of work, even if they want to make that same kind of impact and it’s important to them, it still has an impact to them and their lives, then that’s fine, that’s great; you should know that if that’s you, don’t try to bite off more than you can chew. Also realize that if you are going for that [independent route].

I hope that was a helpful video for you. get your mind going “You know I can do this. A lot of people are saying I can’t do this. They’re saying ‘No.’ it’s my opportunity to step in. There are also a lot of people doing these kinds of things as well. Why is it that some who are doing better? Who is bringing the value? Who is sticking to the end? Who is being authentic? Who’s constantly raising levels?” I hope that was easy to understand.

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