Freedom: The biggest benefit to running your own business (Blog)

[Erin Pavlina]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Erin Pavlina's blog:

Freedom: The biggest benefit to running your own business

[Bing Wu]

I think your feeling of freedom can depend on how well business is doing. If your bills aren't being paid and you're feeling stressed, that feeling can carry throughout the day, even when you're not working. So when you do take time off, it's not really time off because mentally you're not feeling very free.

But can I wake up in the morning and decide I'd rather jog or get a haircut rather than have my butt in the chair by 9am? Absolutely

[st33med]

Originally Posted by Alex Wu

I think your feeling of freedom can depend on how well business is doing. If your bills aren't being paid and you're feeling stressed, that feeling can carry throughout the day, even when you're not working. So when you do take time off, it's not really time off because mentally you're not feeling very free.

But can I wake up in the morning and decide I'd rather jog or get a haircut rather than have my butt in the chair by 9am? Absolutely

Sometimes the power of freedom includes the power of free-falling.

[Erin Pavlina]

Yes with great freedom comes great responsibility. You're free to prosper and free to fail. Taht's why the other article, about the trials and tribulations of running your own business, is a very important read. You gotta be ready and even when you take the plunge it doesn't always work out.

[Dimond]

No matter what, I LOVE having my own business. I definitely experience freedom daily, regardless of the circumstances. I've had over 125 jobs and was miserable doing practically all of them. While at them, I was always trying to figure out others ways to make money so I didn't have to be there. Having my own business full time was such a relief in so many ways. I'd rather deal with any issue working for myself than working for others. It's just the way it's meant to be for me. If one business doesn't work out, then I would just create another one. A regular job is not an option for me. Once you decide that, you can make it work. Sometimes you need to be creative and find various sources of income either in your business or outside of it when necessary. But it should still be on your own terms as much as possible. And as enjoyable too.

[Mabel]

Yes--it is true you trade in one set of concerns for another. Before you create multiple sources of income from your business, it can be unnerving. Knowing what I have experienced over the past 7 months of freedom, I think I would have not quit my job when I did. I think I could have been more clever about transitioning from the world of cubicle to the world of the free.

[Erin Pavlina]

yeah that's an important point. Knowing when to make the leap and quit the job.

Im seeing a lot of people quitting their jobs with little savings and their new business not built up enough.

[Angela]

It's funny you should mention that -- LOL-man and I were just talking about taking a mad Autumn weekday dash to Dizzyland!

[Dimond]

Originally Posted by Erin Pavlina

Im seeing a lot of people quitting their jobs with little savings and their new business not built up enough.

One of the main keys is not to invest much (of your own) money in a new business. This is how many lose everything when things don't work out. You need take it slowly plus realize that just because you're starting to be profitable, doesn't mean it will always be that way. So make sure to save any money you can along the way. Luckily I've had a couple of businesses where I didn't need any money to run them.

[Mabel]

Don't get me wrong....as I do not think quitting my job was a mistake, but I believe I could have timed it more intelligently by taking certain actions and not replacing one kind of group think for another. That said, I still very much believe in myself and my ability to succeed and will only take my failures and my miss-steps and translate them into information that other people can use to truly respect who they are when they make the decision for themselves. I realize now that I was too susceptible to adopting other people's platitudes and values into my plan to quit my job and now I am helping people listen to themselves. Two people could appear to have identical situations but their own preference for what they will tolerate--for example tolerance for risk could translate into different action.

I am very appreciative of every single word of the article I wrote on reasons to appreciate why I quit my job: Reflections: 13 Reasons to Appreciate Why you Quit your Job I am willing to do what it takes to succeed as I am very good at raising my vibration when it falls and I have a vision of what it is in the scheme of it all, about what I want to accomplish.

I realize that when I have doubts, I am not being true to who I really am and it is more about absorbing fearful energy from others rather than truly having any concerns about my ability to succeed.

[escapeplan]

The time freedom is there to an extent but I'm not mentally free. I always have at the back of my mind what the next step is to expand, or what if the next contract doesn't renew etc. While in employment I felt trapped and while running a business I find that I am freer, but only in a sense. Rather than running a business I should focus on owning a few!

[Erin Pavlina]

Yep, owning instead of running is awesome. Gotta get me some of dat.