Food for thought this weekend - who is your lord and master?
I find it ironic that Radio Shack would fire 400 workers via email on the eve of the U.S. Labor Day Holiday. For me, there was no clearer sign that the traditional covenant between company and worker is in rough shape. That leaves me torn regarding my past, present and future.
I continue to work with companies and corporations that employ workers in jobs, and I know they’re committed to growing and expanding that business as well as maintaining a great work environment. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be clients, since, as an independent, I determine with whom I work.
At the same time, I can’t shake off what I know to be my truth - you couldn’t pay me to get a job. I’d rather go to jail.
I’ve had jobs I loved, don’t get me wrong. Kinko’s was awesome, and I had an wonderful team, but when it came right down to it, I was shackled to my job by the golden handcuffs of a regular paycheck. It took a kick in the posterior from the universe to unlock me; my MS flared, leaving me temporarily unable to see.
Blindness has a way of forcing you to re-examine what you’re doing. I realized that as long as I continued to trade my time for their money, I was in a prison of my own design.
What I needed was a way to capitalize on the value I could bring to the table, not the number of hours I could stand up. After all, for each hour I was working for the company, I was earning them far more than they paid me.
I knew the value I delivered for Kinko’s. What I lacked was a mechanism to cut out the middleman and go direct to customers I could deliver something of value to.
So, despite knowing nothing about servers, html or programming, I decided I was going to teach myself how to use the Internet to deliver value to the folks who could really benefit from my expertise. After all, it offered an always-on solution, relatively low start-up costs and nearly instant feedback.
That rather rash decision has worked out really well for me.
I now have the flexibility to do what I love - help others accomplish their goals, without being beholden to them. My clients engage me because together we agree that I can add significant value to their bottom line, and my earnings reflect that. I am once again able to write my own paycheck.
Now that I am back in control, I am a free agent. It’s a great alternative to a job, and I recommend it without reservation to those people who recognize they’re stuck trading their time for money but don’t know how to escape.
If that’s you, and you’d like to break free, contact me. I can help.
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
Robert A. Heinlein
