Stable jobs vs Entrepreneurship ( PART 1 )

This has been THE debate for quite some time now, and it hasn’t ended, nor will it ever. There will always be an ‘x’ amount of people arguing for entrepreneurship, for every ‘y’ amount of people arguing for jobs that are stable. ‘x’ could be less than, equal to, or greater than ‘y’ ; it doesn’t matter. When there’s both ‘x’ and ‘y’, this argument will always exist.

Now, just because I usually write about entrepreneurship and business, I’m not going to root for it.  First, I’m going to talk about how entrepreneurship beats stable jobs, and then I’m going to talk about how stable jobs beats entrepreneurship.

NOTE – Entrepreneurship is a job too; So, when I say “stable jobs”, I mean jobs that most people usually hunt for.

10 reasons why entrepreneurship beats stable jobs –

1. It makes you stronger, smarter, and a lot more courageous than you are right now.

Once you take the entrepreneurial plunge, you learn that that was a mistake ! Endless hours of work, struggling to survive, countless people to meet, and a whole lot more of things to do to take your business forward. Now, this is where most entrepreneurs fail. They quit at this point and they give you a damn good reason as to why they did. But the other tiny fraction of entrepreneurs cope with all the bricks being thrown at them; they become stronger (emotionally), smarter, and then derive success from it all. The ones who survive that initial chasm, are the ones who make it.

2. Networking.

Yeah, you might be able to network well even when you’re working, but the kind of networking you do when you’re an entrepreneur is totally different. You don’t just meet people who are good at your area of expertise; you meet a lot of people who are good at a lot of other areas too. You’ll have to market your startup; so, maybe you’ll get in touch with an advertiser, or a journalist, or a blogger. You’ll have to find legal support; so you meet lawyers, law school students, and get to know a lot of stuff that you wouldn’t normally get to know.

There are a lot of other areas to cover, be it law, marketing, finance, etc., but you get the point.

3. You can make more money than you ever could with a job.

This is only when it comes to successful entrepreneurs. The ones who DIDN’T quit when there were bricks being thrown at them.  Once you taste success, there’s no looking back.

People already know you exist; you’re invited to talk at a lot of events. That’s just people handing out a “let me market your startup for you” invitation. Money just follows you once you’re a success. This doesn’t matter if your target market is a small one, or a huge one. If you’re a success in that niche, you make a lot of money.

Now, bear in mind that money is just a MEASURE of how well your business is doing; not the primary reason for you to do business.

4. It gives everybody a well defined satisfaction.

Imagine you’re working under someone for some X company, and you’re earning Y amount of salary. That is great. Your family is happy, your friends are happy, everybody’s happy.

Now imagine another scenario. You start up a company; you work on it a couple years; there are a lot people doubting you; you succeed and get back at all those who doubted you. NOW imagine the kind of satisfaction you’ll see in the eyes of your family, your friends, in YOURSELF.

There’s a degree of satisfaction to everything, and it always increases with success. It also increases exponentially with every success that’s more significant than landing that promotion in a job.

5. It makes you lead a minimalistic life.

You see very less entrepreneurs who tend to incorporate a lavish lifestyle. Usually it’s the other way around. Yeah, the ones who make a lot of money might buy an island or two; but personally, you see a lot of entrepreneurs being thrifty, and very minimalistic. The degree of minimalism may differ from entrepreneur to entrepreneur, but it holds good nonetheless.

Warren buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs are a couple of examples.

6. It makes you a good decision maker, and hence a better leader.

Decision making is more a practice than an innate skill. To some people, it doesn’t come by naturally. In that case, they learn to make decisions via practice. Being an entrepreneur gives you numerous opportunities to display your decision making skills, and with every decision we become better at it.

In a world where everybody respects, follows, or is intimidated by, are the ones who know how to make decisions flawlessly. It doesn’t matter what the decision is about; if we acquire that skill, we will survive.

7. It makes you a jack of all trades. 

Yes, being a jack of all trades is usually better. Being an entrepreneur means being involved in multiple areas of your startup, regardless of whether it’s your area of expertise or not. Like I already mentioned earlier, you end up meeting a lot of people from diverse aspects of your startup, and as a result, you learn a lot of stuff.

8.  It unlocks the inner Steve Jobs in you.

Everybody tells me that Steve Jobs was one in a million. “You could only dream about doing something like that.” they say. But if I tell them about his LSD days, him dropping out of college, him practically being a hippie, him loafing around with his friend, then they’ll probably re-think about what they said.

Ofcourse, he was a true visionary. But when it came to starting a company, any ambitious person with a good enough product could do it; but only a few people do, and this has been the case for centuries. And thanks to these cowards, the courageous ones can reap what they sow, no matter how little they’ve sown.

Being an entrepreneur forces you to bring out your inner Steve Jobs. The startup days of a company are fragile and it needs to be looked after. It’s like going into war, and only a war hero can save that company. Who better than Steve to win wars ?

9. Hesitation ? What hesitation ?

Entrepreneurship forces you to get out of your comfort zone, face your fears, makes you take risks and move on the edge. If that doesn’t make you better in every way possible, I don’t know what will. Whatever hesitation you’ve had in your past about whatever aspect, it all just goes away eventually.

Public speeches, thousands of people infront you listening to what you have to say; holding meetings and discussing the future of your company with your partners; Brainstorming visions and other industries to tap into; all these are things you don’t get to do in your regular day jobs, unless you’ve been hired to be the CEO of some company. But I’m talking about most jobs out there. Not everyone gets to do what a CEO does, unless you’re an entrepreneur.

When you’re running a startup, you’re the CEO, as well as the janitor in your office (or a garage).  There is no concept of hesitation whatsoever.

10. Putting a dent in the universe.

Every entrepreneur is out there trying to find a solution to some problem. Sometimes, we don’t even know what the problem is until we’re presented with the solution. You think that’s an easy feat to achieve?  That is practically being fortune tellers !

Entrepreneurs make lives better, and in the process, they heal the economy (which is more or less, in the gutter today). That is nothing short of making this world a better place.

This point is an answer to ‘why does one want to be an entrepreneur?’ and the answer is not just this point; the answer is every point above, and this point too.

‘Why do you want to be an entrepreneur ?’

You want to be an entrepreneur because you defy authority; you know that just because someone says this is how you do it, it isn’t efficient.

You want to be an entrepreneur because you know how to build something that can heal the world, and in the process you create hundreds, or even thousands of jobs, thus directly affecting the economy.

You want to become an entrepreneur because there’s no way a regular day job would get you to do something extraordinary.

You want to become an entrepreneur because you were destined to be.

I have written the 2nd part of this article which talks about how stable jobs beats entrepreneurship. Click here to read it.

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