By Folker Wrage
Look at any given LinkedIn profile, or any CV, including your own – you will see an account of success, achievement, and happiness. Of course. No one wants to look unhappy. No one wants to declare past professional experiences as failures or a waste of time.
The reality is different, and we all know it. Well hidden between the lines of the profiles is what’s real: years of frustration, jobs from hell, terrible decisions, tragic twists of fate. The fact is: most of us keep looking for the perfect job for almost all of our careers, and never find it.
Instead, we put our hopes in whatever comes next: That golden opportunity, the new responsibility, the marvelous employer, the grand regional role. But then we find the new place equally disappointing, the new great responsibility a mere theory, the great company a well disguised snake pit.
And that’s not all. With every level you climb, the hours get longer, the politics turns from annoying to lethal, and the risk rises exponentially. No matter where you go, work hours are getting crazier, job security is almost nonexistent, and the pressure is painfully high. Not to forget, salaries clearly aren’t what they used to be.
Reality check
Think. Reflect. Analyze. Is this really what they told you work was all about? Is this really what you chose when you decided to start your career as an employed person?
And now think back. You will surely know someone who started his or her own company, some 10 or 15 years ago. What did you think? What did you observe? How was that person doing?
Chances are, you will remember that person was working incredibly hard every day, had ludicrous working hours, and was in a constant danger of failing in his or her entrepreneurial efforts – of losing the business. Your friend probably wasn’t making much money either.
Crazy?
How did you react to this? Like most other people, you were probably thinking that this person was crazy. You probably thought that it’s weird that your entrepreneur friend was so happy, in spite of his or her hard life and low pay. Some were even starting over after going bankrupt, instead of finding something that was more secure. Man… I would never trade in my cool job for such a highly risky operation, for bad pay and excruciating work conditions.
Well – it turns out that you did, in the end. The days when employment was synonymous with security are gone. The days when entrepreneurs were still working their butts off when you were already sitting by the pool, they are also over. The days when you were making really good money for a bearable amount of pressure: over.
Or, to put it more bluntly – every single aspect that has traditionally made employment a choice that was at least equally as interesting as starting your own business, has either vanished or has crumbled to insignificance.
Rewarding
At the same time, entrepreneurship has turned into something much more exciting, immensely more multi-faceted, and remains to be much more rewarding on a personal level.
And your chances of success are much better than they used to be. No matter what you want to do, you can not only start doing it as a business more easily today, you can also find people who will finance it. You have endless opportunities to let people know about your business, and to help them find it. Even if your company is just you – you have a global market to sell to, a global network to tap into, hundreds of digital platforms to use and a global audience to which you can present yourself.
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Looking at it from the perspective of an employee, starting your own business has even more positive aspects. You can kiss your toxic leaders goodbye. You can leave all corporate politics behind and quit aligning your opinions and statements with superiors. You don’t want to work with assholes? Your chances of not having to do that are infinitely higher.
The balance
Here’s another look at it: the omnipresent subject of work-life-balance. It’s obvious that this magic balance can’t be found by strictly limiting work subjects to working hours, or by putting work and life in opposing camps.
Work and life are balanced when your work is as much an enjoyable part of your life as your time off. This balance is hard to reach, yes, but the closer you get to it, the lower the risk that your work is actually destructive to your private life. More happiness is always better – and there is no reason why work shouldn’t make you happy.
It makes more and more sense to say goodbye to toxic employment environments, to leave all the pain and dissatisfaction behind. No, you will not work less, you won’t reduce the pressure, and probably won’t get rich. But you’ll be so much more satisfied, so much more happy.
Make a move
So – what do you want to do? What is your perfect job? What does it look like? Define the job that would really make you happy. And then create it and go. Try turning it into a business. Of course you need to be smart about it. Plan it, calculate it, discuss it, write a
business plan, do all the research you need. You will find out that even just researching and planning your own company will give you happiness.
And once you have started, you have all kinds of options. Stay with it. Expand. Find partners. Diversify. Modify. One day maybe even sell it. Whatever makes you happy.
The funny thing is: as soon as people see you happily doing your thing, they will want to hire you, to do exactly what you are doing, but for them. My guess: you’ll politely decline the offer.
Folker Wrage is an award-winning advertising executive who now heads his own consultancy, Wrage / Antwort in Zurich.
