Being self-employed, or being employed?

     There are a lot of important questions, and above is one of them.

     Before trying to get an answer, it is important to analyze yourself objectively in a complex way to determine factors like, physical and mental conditions or academic, economic and family aspects.
I would use some illustrative common sense examples:
      If you are physically disabled; therefore, you cannot be a firefighter. If you are not tall enough you cannot join the military.
     If you are a active person who cannot be quiet, it is going to be hard for you to work in a office.

     With children, it is going to be hard to combine your working life with your family life especially if your profession requires you to travel multiple times long or short distances.

     When you start thinking, all doubts both pros and cons in the world come into your mind, which of course both have their advantages. Therefore, which one would be the best decision?

     Let´s now analyze both of the options.

     Being employed.

     There are two different ways to work for someone else:

     a) Working for the state or government.
     b) Working as an employee for a company.

     Working for the state:

     You know you chose the profession that you want. You study some chapters. You get ready. You take the examination, and if you study enough, you have a good discipline, and memory. You pass the exam; generally you work in that profession for the rest of your life.

     The main advantages of working for the state are the security and stability of always getting a salary.
On the other hand, you could spend your whole life doing the same job, always doing the same thing unless you keep studying and hopefully ascend to a better position. Some people do not consider it as an inconvenience. However, some people do see it as a disadvantage because the job becomes monotonous.

     As an employee of a private company:

     There are many possibilities in this area, depending on your condition as we have mentioned before you could obtain a job at a multinational company, small company, or with a small business.
It has the advantages that u do not need to think, only accomplish what work that needs to be done (unless you are an executive).

     If you are a little restless, you learn the profession and wait for a promotion within the company, or you could go somewhere else where you can get better labor conditions and a better salary. This will develop your professional life and progress.

     The risk that you are facing when you are employed depends significantly on if it is a multinational company, medium size or small company.

     It is true that multinational companies do not have a heart. If they need to fire someone in the company they will not even think twice about it. They will simply get rid of you, and end of story.

     If you are fired when you are young, the consequences are less severe than if it happens when you are older, because you have been developing that career during your whole life and changing professions will pose a huge challenge, unless you find another company where you can keep a similar profession.

     As years go by we are more limited geographically since moving can be expensive and cause problems within the family with your husband/ wife, or kids that do not want to change town and start all over again with friends, school, city. Therefore, several family tensions possibly can occur.

     If it is a small or medium size company your chances of getting promoted are limited, due to the small amount of positions, unless someone retires or dies in the company. Even in this case, the position could be taken over by a family member of the president a friend or by someone close to the board of directors of the company. This is the reason why you could be waiting all your life to get that position that you want and that you have been preparing yourself to do and never get anything.

     This could be the cause of a personal disappointment and an uncomfortable environment with all of those around you in the company.

     In conclusion, the professional life and progress, affects your family and friends, will always depend on someone else.

     Being self employed:

     If you have finally decided to be an entrepreneur, let´s see what can we do and how to design your professional life.

     I would like to say that you have to analyze yourself beforehand. From the moment that you decide to become self employed is constantly going to make you to think, to analyze, to look, and to decide. This is going to be your life since you decide to be an entrepreneur and work for yourself.

     Always keep this in mind: "a person who works for himself always has to think in two different perspectives in every single situation. A person in this situation is the employer and employee at the same time, and he/she has to pay attention to both aspects at the same time. A balance between both perspectives is absolutely necessary. It is not a legitimate excuse the fact that there is a lot of work to do in one aspect of the business, because taking and spending more time in just one function of the firm will weakness the rest of the functions. For example, the administrative part of the company starts falling apart the whole company will fail.

     Your business is like a machine, you need to take care of every single piece. If you take better care of certain pieces in particular, as time goes by, the machinery will start to fail due to a lack of care of the other pieces. Therefore, as an entrepreneur, you have to control and know about everything in your business, such as, financing, clients, suppliers, taxes, the functioning of the machinery, tools, production etc.
Let´s go step by step.

     I will encourage you to analyze yourself once again, because now we have to see different issues.
If you are sure about what business you want to open or what profession you want to do, you need to know among other things, the following:

     a) If you have the education/ studies required to develop the profession or business.
    b) If you do not need studies for that profession, what knowledge do you need to develop that profession or business? Let’s be realistic, it is not enough to think that you will get it as you develop the business. This is a big mistake and it will lead you to failure.

     c) The capital you have to begin with or Personal money. We will talk later about other ways for financing.
     d) Analyze geographically the area where you want to start and the area you want to impact with your business.
     e) Material required for starting the business.
     f) Number of employees required to begin.
     g) If it is possible to begin on your own or you will need shareholders.
     h) Knowledge of the market. It is crucial to know if it is a consolidated into extinction, expanding, emerging, etc.

     Do not think analyzing a market is too complicated and that it is something that could only be done by big corporations, or that you would need to spend a lot of time and money that you do not have, etc.
It is not that way. Before you spend a cent, buy a commercial store or make any kind of investment, you need to have complete knowledge about the demand of the product you are going to offer. What is the price of it in the market? Once we know this, the next step will be where can you buy it? What surplus company can supply you and at what price?

     With this data you will know the purchase and sale Price. It is necessary to add to the purchase price of many kinds of cost including production, storage, handling, transformation and all of the costs involved with the product until it is handed to the final client.

     As you will see, this is something that does not add any additional cost. It is just something that you can and should consider doing. If the price of purchase plus all the added cost is less than sale price, in other words, you get a profit, then go ahead with your idea. This idea has a chance to succeed. However, if the purchasing price plus other expenses is equal or higher than the sale price, leave that idea. Do not even try it because you will only lose time, money and a lot of effort that you could be using to create another profitable business.

     If the product or service you are going to offer is an innovation, something that is not in the market, make a survey to know the acceptance that the product or service could have. Ask the people that are the target of the product or service to inform you if they would buy it, or if it would be difficult to sell in the market.

     Once you go over all the pros and cons, you are the one who has to make a decision.