Why I quit being an employee: Is self-employment for you?

thank you to found for sponsoring a portion of today's video found is a banking app that makes the financial Logistics easier for self-employed entrepreneurs and I'll tell you more about them later when I was finishing up the last step of my Clinical Psychology doctoral program which was internship I had a big decision to make I was trying to decide between going into a group practice or creating my own with the help of a supervisor so I had an offer from a group practice and I had an offer from this potential supervisor and this was probably

one of the biggest turning points in my life because my decision Unleashed a series of decisions that completely changed the trajectory of my life I chose to go the self-employment route and doing so Unleashed a few different things it allowed me to finally become a published author it changed my quality of life it changed my income and ultimately it allowed for me to my husband to finally decide to move abroad if I had gone the employee route I don't think a lot of that would have happened so in this video I'm going to share my

own Journey with this why it was the right choice for me I'm going to list some pros and cons of being self-employed versus an employee and then list the traits that I think make a person a good fit for [Music] self-employment so the reason why self-employment was the right decision for me first and foremost this is something that I've never really heard anybody talk about before but I have issues with authority figures and this is not to say that like I am passive aggressive or I don't do what authority figures want of me quite the

opposite I'm actually very scared of authority figures even the beneficent ones so the idea of getting in trouble even though I'm a person who does everything by the books and tries to do nothing wrong was too overwhelming for me I hated having a boss above me who was there to of discipline me I hated the constant threat of if you break our rules then you're going to get in trouble because I'm not the type of person to do that in the first place and I don't like to be threatened and I don't need somebody else's

set of morals dictating the way I should do things because I think that's something people need to decide for themselves they need to have their own moral code so that's honestly one of the biggest reasons why I think self-employment is right for me because I don't have anybody above me except really the law the second reason is that I wake up every day and I feel genuinely excited to get to work and I feel Joy whereas when I was working for somebody else throughout grad school I woke up every day feeling dread I woke up

every day feeling like I'm not here doing this because I want to do this I'm doing this because I have to because somebody else is mandating it I would wake up every day in fight ORF flight to the point where I would wake up naturally around 5:00 a.m. because my heart was starting to beat out of my chest partly due to the fact that cortisol spikes in the early morning I no longer feel that and I wouldn't trade it for the world because that sort of dread and that sort of fight or flight is super

bad for your nervous system it's super bad for your health long term another one of the absolute biggest reasons why being self-employed is right for me is that I can work from anywhere it has always been my dream to move back to Europe and it just would not be possible if I were employed by somebody else because of the time difference because of possibly needing to come in person and because of the tax Logistics and not only can I live wh but I can also work from wherever you know sometimes I go on vacation and

I will still bring my laptop with me do a little bit of work from there but I'm the one to decide am I going to relax today or am I going to work today and nobody's telling me that I can't the hardest part about grad school was not being able to go see my family whenever I wanted um because of the way the clinical rotations worked the practica and the internship you need to acrw a certain amount of hours and you can't go on vacation whenever you want to even if you've recruited it so I

felt very trapped for a long time because I felt like I have my grandma who is elderly on another continent and I want to see her and the fact that I can't go see her feels honestly like a violation of my rights it feels like I'm losing time with my loved ones and I hate it so the second that I gained the opportunity to work for myself I did and now nobody can tell me that I can't see my family I can also work whenever you know I do pretty much have like a 9 to

5 schedule because so does my husband and we spend the rest of the time together um but technically I could work whatever hours I want and I do sneak in a workout after lunchtime which wouldn't be possible if I did have an employer the freedom to do that the freedom to maybe take a little bit extra with my journaling for the morning and know that I'm not going to get in trouble for being late or maybe I can work on untraditional schedule this week because of a trip I have coming up nothing beats it being

self-employed is also right for me because I'm very intrinsically motivated I'm the type of person that I actually work myself harder than any boss what super unreasonable expectations for myself and I'm not saying this is a good thing but I'm just saying you need to be very intrinsically motivated to be self-employed because there's nobody there keeping you accountable giving you an external reason or threatening you with punishment that has to come from within that desire to do the things on your to-do list I'm very disciplined and I'm very consistent and that's very helpful when you're

self-employed if you don't have it then you're probably going to struggle financially when you're on your own and the last reason why this was the right choice for me is that I'm not a person that really needs to work in a team I work far more efficiently and more creatively independently and so not having that Community isn't something that I really miss or feel sad about so those are my personal reasons but let's talk about some more General pros and cons of each option so for self-employment you know a really big Pro is you have

no boss but yourself versus when you're employed you have a boss with self-employment you have time Freedom meaning yes you could put in work now that pans out later or also you can just work untraditional hours whereas with self-employment typically the hours are pretty much dictated by the boss with self-employment you also have location freedom of course there are still some tax considerations if you want to move out of the country but they're manageable when you work for your own PLC versus when you work for somebody else's Corporation for employment unless you're fully remote and

your boss finds a workaround to help you work in a different place you don't really have location freedom and if you're in person certainly you have no location Freedom with self-employment there's less of a cap to your income versus when you're employed there is a cap it's not like you can keep getting raises every month or every year because somebody else is paying you it's coming out of somebody else's paycheck so your compensation is kind of at the mercy of that person's generosity versus when you work for yourself there's nobody telling you what you can

or can't do the sky the limit when you're self-employed it can be an opportunity to really do something that is values aligned to create something based on your own personal mission in life and that's part of why you get that intrinsic motivation versus when you are employed for somebody else you're working towards somebody else's dream you might come upon a job or a company that does tend to be quite aligned with your values but it's quite unlikely I don't think most people get that opportunity and at the end of the day you're still mostly doing

it for somebody else's vision of how to implement those values not your own now a potential con of being self-employed is that for some people doing what you love for work takes the fun out of the passion this is something that I hear with people who are in Creative Fields especially that like oh I used to really love making art or writing but now that it's my job I don't get as much joy out of it that hasn't really been my experience to tell you the truth so I don't think it's true for everybody but

it's definitely a very real possibility another con of being self-employed is that can be isolating especially if you're extroverted or especially if you tend to get lonely if you don't interact with a lot of people whereas generally with employment you have more of a team and more of a community and certainly more people to interact with although I will say if you're working remote or if you're working in small teams or toxic teams you still might not be getting the connection needs met another con of being self-employed is that to some degree you know factors

outside of your control not considered your level of effort and input correlates to how much you're making whereas when you're employed by somebody else you still get paid for PTO you still get paid for sick days and you still get paid if you're not putting in 100% of the effort with self-employment also you don't really get benefits you have to put aside your own uh retirement funds you have to put aside your own taxes you have to get your own health insurance whereas with employment typically you do get benefits like health insurance um for 1K

and so forth but again I will say that's not always the case and and I think we're seeing more and more jobs where the benefits aren't great even if they do have them I think this is the biggest con of self-employment it is something that absolutely gives me the brain scrambles that's what I call it is the hassle of dealing with the bookkeeping tax and banking Logistics all of that stuff is much easier when you are employed but I'm here to tell you if you are like me and you absolutely suck at the logistical stuff

of banking and taxes there 's a banking app called found that can absolutely help you with this found was created to make self-employment easier and it helps with all the things I just mentioned bookkeeping invoicing Banking and taxes all in one spot to make it easier for self-employed business owners here are some of the free things you can do with a found app as you get paid in your found account it'll autoc calculate how much you owe in taxes cuz remember when you're self-employed you have to be the one paying taxes usually quarterly sometimes even

monthly not just once every April and it can be kind of a guessing game if you don't have an app like found to figure out exactly how much you owe while you use founds business debit Mastercard the app allows you to track and categorize your business expenses easily identify writeoffs and maximize your tax savings you can also save receipts and easily categorize purchases easily generate income expense and profit and loss reports you can create custom sub accounts called Pockets where you can allocate funds to each category so rather than having a bunch of different separate

financial apps for bookkeeping invoicing Banking and so forth you have it all all in one appp where it's really easy for you found has a really easy sign up no credit check won't impact your credit score has no minimum balance no hidden fees no overdraft fees and no ATM fees although ATMs May sometimes have their own fees you can either use the mobile app or the desktop for Access allowing you to manage your money from anywhere and you can also get real-time transaction notifications and even freeze your account and you can get cash back rewards

with your found MasterCard debit card I was really impressed with the thousands of positive reviews that they have with found you can create an account in minutes and set up the app to do the hard stuff for you so that you can focus on the part of your business that you actually love so if this sounds like something that you'd find helpful make sure to use my link which I'll put in a pin comment as well as at the top of this description box for userfriendly banking services so check it out so like I said

that aspect the financial taxes bookkeeping stuff is absolutely the worst part of being self-employed and in the past I've woken up from an invoice from my bookkeeper for almost $1,000 all because it's something that I don't like the responsibility of having to do on my own so found is honestly a lifesaver in that regard but let's talk about what traits I think are good to have if you're self-employed versus what traits might mean it's not the right choice for you and this is based on my own personal opinion and based on my own psychological understanding

of people like I said you have to be very intrinsically motivated intrinsic motivation means it's coming from inside you there's nobody externally telling you what to do threatening you if you don't do it or forcing you into it it comes from within so if you're the type of person that no matter what your work situation is you always put in 100% of the work because it means something from within then you might be the right person for self-employment discipline I think is also really important and that goes kind of hand inand I think what causes

discipline is in a lot of cases intrinsic motivation because it's just harder to force yourself if it's coming from external factors like peer pressure like familial expectations like a boss threatening you if you're a person that can work the amount of times that you need to work and isn't tempted by distractions or other things you could be doing then self-employment could be great for you ironically the type of person that might be attracted to self-employment might think oh when I'm self-employed I'll be able to do whatever I want with my time and it's not going

to be any work at all and it's like those types of people when they actually realize that they have to put in the work independently might struggle to do so if you're very consistent that's also super helpful you do need to have your own schedule and a set of habits that you have every day also if you're independent if you prefer working on your own instead of in a team although I will say when you're self-employed you know it might start off as just you or maybe not maybe you start off with a team but

later on you can certainly expand so it's not necessarily that you always have to work alone it is possible to build a team around your business but it is something that you have to work harder for if that's something that you want and it has its own tax and financial hassles of its own it's not as much of like a builtin community and also if you're a very organized person I think you could do very well with self-employment because when you're self-employed you're the only person that has to get all those responsibilities done so if

you're not organized there's nobody reminding you about it there's nobody hounding you to do it you just don't get done and then they end up consequences for it so maybe self-employment is not for you if you have the opposite of these traits if you need sort of an accountability buddy to do things where you need that extrinsic motivation you struggle to get the intrinsic motivation in the past when I have worked in group settings there were therapists at my work site who would like ask other therapists to hop on a zoom call so that they

could all do notes at the same time and this to me was kind of mind-blowing because from my perspective that would slow me down I feel like I like doing things right away and on my own and I don't really need like somebody keeping me accountable that seems like it would slow me down that seems like it would kind of micromanage me so if you're the type of person that needs that sort of accountability buddy or group accountability maybe it's not for you also if you're a very very extroverted connected person where you need a

community you need a team you need to interact with people every day could get pretty isolating it could feel like you're not getting your energy refueled because as we know extroverts get their energy from social interaction whereas introverts get their energy taking time alone unless of course like I said you build your own and if you build your own then that could be even greater because you have your own team of people that really stand for the same things as you who you personally selected it's harder to get there certainly if you're just kind of

not organized you struggle to stay on top of things forget to do things you do things late that could have pretty negative consequences when you're self-employed I'm curious what sort of self-employment you the viewer are considering so if you want to write that in the comments I'd be very curious I hope that this was helpful thanks again to found check out their Link in the pin comment and I'll see you next [Music] time