The following is a post by MPFJ staff writer, Kevin Mercadante, who is a freelance professional personal finance blogger for hire, and the owner of his own personal finance blog, OutOfYourRut.com. He has backgrounds in both accounting and the mortgage industry.
Employees sometimes pigeonhole themselves into very tight niches. They focus on very specific tasks and skill sets, which can enable them to do their job more efficiently. But one of the problems with this approach is that it can result in a very narrow focus, that can result in them being passed over for promotions, or even subject to layoffs.
It might be better to think like your self-employed, even if you have a job. A self-employed person is always forced by circumstances to look at the bigger picture. That means being aware and prepared to deal with the bigger picture. That bigger picture focus can often expand opportunities, and produce new and valuable skills sets.
In truth, virtually every employee is really self-employed – they just don’t see it that way.
You’re a Self-Employed Person With One Client
Unless you’re in a union, you really are self-employed. But if you have a full-time job, it just means that you are self-employed with a single client. Yes, your employer is actually your client! You’re ability to earn a living is dependent upon your ability to deliver specific services, at a specific price. To the degree that you are successful, you keep your job, and even create opportunities for promotion.
Some people even have two or more jobs, which means – technically speaking – they actually have two or more clients.
This view of your employer as your client is more than just semantics. If you view your employer as a client, then you will want to keep them satisfied, so that they will see the value of your worth, and keep you as a service provider.
This is very different from the more common working-for-a-paycheck mindset that so many employees bring to the job. That’s often an attempt at earning the most amount of money, for the least amount of effort. Put another way – going through the motions.
But if you consider yourself to be self-employed, and you view your employer as a client, both the relationship and the work takes on deeper meaning.
In addition, viewing yourself as self-employed also tends to minimize the feeling that you are trapped. Since your employer is a client, the loss of that client at some point will simply mean that you move on to another client.
Take Ownership of Your Work
As a business owner, you would have to be prepared to stand behind your work. If you don’t, you will lose customers and clients. This is very different from the go-along-to-get-along thinking that often accompanies the more traditional view of work.
A business owner isn’t content to merely to get the job done, but also to make sure that his client is happy with the work performed. He knows that the client can always go elsewhere, so he carefully provides his products and services to keep the client coming back.
Still another aspect of self-employment is taking ownership of failure. The business owner takes responsibility for failure – after all, there’s no one else to blame. More important, she works quickly to rectify the problem, whatever it is. Mistakes are made, and obstacles are encountered, but the self-employed person always knows whose responsibility it is to make it all work.
This is vastly different than the efforts to deflect failure that commonly happen in organizations. But if you can become known as a problem solver – as someone who takes ownership of the situation at hand – you practically win by default. While everyone else is ducking for cover, you become the seen as the person who saves the day.
Developing a Keen Sense for the Bottom Line
If you’re self-employed, you’re always aware of profitability. For this reason, you will consciously work to do more of what’s most profitable, and less of what is least profitable. This is a critical concept in virtually any money-making venture.
Many employees don’t grasp that it works the same way in a large organization. Look around your company, you will probably notice that the people who move up the chain of command the most quickly are almost always people who are closely connected to profitability.
The more that you can do to either increase sales or decrease costs, the stronger your position in the organization will become. This is in no small part because management will recognize and appreciate that your goals and actions are more closely aligned with theirs than the other members of the staff.
Always be Building New Skills and Contacts
Self-employed people work in a highly competitive environment. Since there is strong competition for the client base in almost every business category, the entrepreneur knows that his skills and abilities must stand out.
That requires building new skills and contacts as a part of business-as-usual. Every skill that you acquire puts you in a position to fill or expand a different niche. Every contact that you develop becomes a potential partner, and an opportunity to network and synergize skills.
In addition, a network of capable contacts can give you the resources you need to get a job done that may be beyond your own skill set. This is a talent that every successful business owner must develop. It enables you to take on larger and more important assignments, and to complete them even if you don’t have the necessary ability to do them completely on your own. It represents the ability to leverage both people and skills.
Always Be Looking for New Opportunities
If you’re self-employed, you’re never “stuck” with one client. You are aware that there are other clients, and you are always open to the possibilities that they present. This can go a long way toward eliminating the fear factor many employees have in regard to their employers. If you think that your current employer is the only game in town – whatever the reason – you’ll work with a certain amount of fear. That kind of emotional state is never conducive to doing your best work.
As an employee, you may fear the loss of your job. But if you see yourself as self-employed, you’ll likely see the loss as inevitable – at least eventually. For that reason, you’ll always be on the hunt for new opportunities. You may even make it a practice to build a portfolio of potential opportunities. This is Self-employment 101 – the business owner is always aware that he can and will lose clients. For that reason, he’s always on the lookout for new ones.
In today’s hyper-competitive job market, having that kind of attitude is practically a survival skill by itself. It doesn’t mean that you are disloyal to your current client/employer, but more that you are aware of the uncertainties of the business environment that you’re operating in.
There’s one other benefit to the perpetual search for new opportunities. If you find enough of them, you may be setting yourself up to enter formal self-employment. If you identify multiple opportunities – that is, potential new clients – you may create a niche for yourself as an independent consultant.
In this way, thinking like you’re self-employed, even if you have a job, creates an eventual point of entry into actual self-employment.
Give it a try, and see what it does for your career.
How about you all? Have you ever tried something like this to give your career a boost? How did it work out for you?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy https://www.flickr.com/photos/shimelle/877913815/
