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New Year's Resolution: Become Your Own Boss
The economy is bad, but you have a job. The pay is decent, regular. You've got health insurance. You're making your mortgage payments. Got a bit tucked away for retirement and your kids' college. You're one of the lucky ones, right?
So, why do you feel so dissatisfied?
You might tell yourself it's because you're working harder, for the same pay. You're on the grid all the time; you've got a laptop, VPN, Blackberry.. You're traveling on Sundays. Your boss can be a jerk. You disagree with the way the execs are running things. Employee morale is low; the constant negativity is getting to you. And you don't feel there's any loyalty or real appreciation for the hard work you're putting in. You could be gone tomorrow.
All are certainly great reasons for feeling dissatisfied on the job, but there's a single reason that underlies them all: disempowerment. Remember how good it felt when you learned how to ride a two-wheeler? When you got your driver's license? When you finally moved out of your parents' home, out from under all their rules? The source of all that good feeling was personal empowerment. And it's a rare corporate environment that doesn't succeed-either consciously or unconsciously-in taking it away from you. To complete the process, those same corporations spend billions every year on marketing campaigns designed to make you feel dissatisfied (read, disempowered) if you can't afford the possessions and experiences from which they're profiting.
You might dream of the day you will quit your job, become your own boss. But, here's the Catch-22: As long as you feel disempowered, that day will never come. You will always find another reason to stay in your miserable job.
So why not make a New Year's Resolution to become your own boss in 2011? That doesn't mean run out and quit your job on January 3. But, rather, resolve to take meaningful steps to reclaim your own feeling empowerment, to move in a direction where the idea of becoming your own boss doesn't feel quite so insurmountable. Six easy things you can resolve to do in 2011:
Get inspired. Seek out and start following blogs, books, and other content created by entrepreneurs. Interact with them. Ask questions. Use social media to develop relationships with people you don't know. (You never know who you might meet and how they might help you in the future).
Start researching. Allot yourself a specific amount of time each day when you look around for business opportunities that might be out there. Start paying attention to commercial real estate in your area: What's available? What are the costs? Find out what it takes to obtain business credit, how close are you to qualifying? What would you need to do to get closer? You may never pursue any of the opportunities you find, but you will never start your own business if you don't ever think about the specifics of how to do it.
Hire a financial planner. Devise a plan to pay off your credit cards, clean up your personal balance sheet so the prospect of investing in your own business won't feel so out of reach.
Change your attitude at work. Resolve to assert yourself more, start mentoring younger employees, refuse to participate in negative bull sessions, and try to empathize a little more with your boss. Keep reminding yourself that you are practicing to be the person in charge of your own business, which can mean making tough decisions at times.
Be a better networker. Pay more attention to the people around you at work. Are there some who would make good employees in your future business? Who else in your workaday might help you in the future? Start cultivating those relationships now.
Start dreaming. You may not be able so see today the content of your future business, but the first step to creating that vision is to allowing yourself to dream about it. What are the things you love to do? What kind of boss will you be? What kind of work environment will you create?
Keep reminding yourself that the road to becoming your own boss is paved with empowerment. Make a clear resolution to get on that road in 2011.
Six sure signs you're feeling disempowered in your job
• You're secretly disappointed when you survive a layoff round
• You have imaginary arguments with your boss or coworkers
• You lie awake at night, worrying about on-the-job problems
• You feel like a victim all the time
• You have hobbies or passions for which you can never find time or energy
• Right around noon on Sunday, you start feeling uneasy; the feeling of dread gets bigger as the day goes on
