Freelancer, Small Business, Entrepreneur: A business requires you to turn a hobby or skill you master, into a business.
Before you get into anything, there are a few things you should think about. Becoming an entrepreneur or self-employed has become a mainstream idea. The economy today is leading many professional in becoming a freelancer or entrepreneur.
Freelancer vs. Small Business Owner vs. Entrepreneur
There was a time when a job gave people a sense of security.
However, there has been a huge shift from traditional office roles to work from home roles, project-based roles, and contracted positions globally because there is deterioration in job security.
The reality is there are various types of self-employed or being your own boss; each is different with specialized expertise or benefits.
You can either be a freelancer, individual small business owner, or entrepreneur.
Deciding what you want to be is the first aim, as it will help you plan for your future accordingly.
You will be able to save money, take time out and face any risk or failure when you have your mind and heart in place.
Freelancing
Freelancing is a good place to start when wanting to begin working individually and independently.
There are various reasons why one would want to begin freelancing.
You might begin freelancing because you want to have a better balance in your personal and work life, or you might want to provide others the skills or crafts you have, or you might want to perfect your skills, or it might happen without you wanting and with you already having a full-time job.
There is an immense difference between a full-time job and freelancing.
A full-time job offers an income to cover all liabilities regularly.
Freelancing has no set schedule, clients, team, or work; it all comes like a sudden wave.
Most of the time, freelancers work independently. However, at times they might work or higher contractors or other freelancers to get assistance with their workload or some projects.
Freelancers are in charge of the price they set, the deadlines they create or get, and finding their own work or clients.
The more time gets put in by freelancers, the more the money gets received.
No work means no income!
The work in freelancing does not change in size and is not sustainable. There are no long-term commitments with any project or client, which is why they constantly have to keep looking for work.
The downfall of a freelancer is how they might have a good skill or two and that is it, they have a limited skills capacity.
Another downfall is how the income depends on how fast they complete a project or find clients and other projects.
If you have extra time and looking for extra income, then freelancing is the way to go.
Freelancing to Starting a Small Business
Starting or owning a small business means building it greater than you.
A small business requires branding, sales, processes, business plans, systems, and many other actions to ensure it runs well and smoothly without you having to be involved in it 24/7.
The most important thing a business requires is money.
If you have the money, that’s great.
However, if you do not, then you can think about getting a loan, specifically created for people looking to get self-employed to help them out with the business finance, extra costs, and so on to get up and running.
Once you have a steady running business, you can start looking for skilled young people to hire and train according to your terms.
This stage will help you not be hands-on and concentrate on other things while managing your team to do various other tasks for you.
The more confident you are about your business and yourself, the better your small business will run, especially if you work with the market rate at the beginning.
As a small business owner, you will have to continue working on your network and look and reach out to potential clients or customers and take up more and varied tasks than when you were a freelancer as you will have a team and a reputation.
So, you begin as a freelancer, working your skills, meeting new clients, and once you build a name or a reputation, you expand to become a smaller business, working with the same skills or services, or products you have.
Entrepreneurship – The Final Destination
Now that you have become a small business owner, with a team at hand from being a freelancer, and have faced your share of risks and failures and still got to this point, what do you do next?
If you do have this question in your mind, then, believe it or not, you are already on the next step of becoming an entrepreneur and on the route to entrepreneurship.
How?
Well, entrepreneurship is a route of looking at a bigger picture, asking what you can do more, always evolving.
Entrepreneurs are leaders; they work, think, and act as leaders and have no problem taking higher risks, whether in general or financially.
They search for new opportunities which will help to expand their skills and potential and give them access to more diverse and fascinating projects.
People at the entrepreneurship level, are at the place where if they do turn down a project, they will not affect their business finance or bring high ROI.
At this level, the entrepreneurs do not have to worry about monthly finances to ways to pay for their liabilities, as that will happen smoothly.
At this point, they will begin to solve worldly problems and think of ways to make the world a better place.
Final Words
A freelancer has the time and skills to become a business owner and then an entrepreneur. Nothing is impossible. It all depends on what goals you have and whether you wish to reach a higher position or not. Many might be happy to stay as freelancers, but some might want to emerge. If you have the desire to evolve, then you will reach your final destination in becoming an entrepreneur.