I went along to the London OpenCoffee Meetup for entrepreneurs and investors yesterday. Many enthusiastic business people filling the Starbucks inside the otherwise quiet Esprit clothes shop on Regent Street provided an incongruous scene, but it works well and there was a steady buzz of conversation throughout the time I was there. If you are starting a business in the London area and want to chat to others in the same boat, even find some leads, then I’d recommend it.
Archive for the 'Other' Category
Before the end, I worked regular hours, earned regular pay, commuted far and was a often a little bit disatisfied. In short, I was employed.
Following redundancy I’ve been busy researching, discussing and planning (my excuses for few blog posts recently) and now have concluded:- I’m not going to seek further employment, instead I will be my own boss and earn my own crust!
This is, of course, both exciting and risky and deserved my serious consideration. Some of you may have considered similar decisions for yourselves and come to various conclusions. As I’ve described before, our environment often trains us to be risk-averse, to get as well paid a job as we can find and then conform to keep it. (The misfortune of some is that the perceived need to conform blinds them to the reality of some of the costs of doing so.)
Like a rocket escaping the gravity of earth, breaking out of the employee mould requires something of a leap. This, I think, requires motivation and opportunity, and the presence or absence of these are probably the main factors why different people choose different courses.
Anyway, back to me. My basic plan is to establish a small software company, target a niche market and trade primarily over the internet – a type of business sometimes referred to as a micro ISV. I’ll write more in the future about my first product and my progress in making it ready for release, suffice for now to say that it is specifically for management accountants and that I would have saved many hours each month, when employed, had I written it before.
It remains to be seen how the new hours, pay and satisfaction stack up against what I’ve been used to. The only thing I know for certain is that I’m not going to commute far!
I’ve just been made redundant.
That was a surprise. In fact it’s a shock to think forward to Monday when, for the first time ever, I have no plan, no agenda. It feels like there’s a chasm ahead.
It’s interesting to feel that, because my head is hyperactive with thoughts of what I might do next. I’m itching for some time free of other people’s demands to think properly through plans of making my own employment, which I’ve hoped to do since I was at school. Thoughts and feelings don’t always concur.
I was always quite impressed with the American way of managing careers that I observed when living over in California at the turn of the century. In that time and place it seemed as though nobody was tied down. People would give up one career with abandon and re-launch themselves into something completely different, apparently just for the fun of it and with no fear of losing the plot. They were determined not to drive their careers into dead ends: ruts were for climbing out of, even if it meant going back to school and getting another degree.
(Actually, the idea of getting degrees from “school”, rather than a university, didn’t really help my esteem of degrees over in the US of A, but I’ll put that down to being an outsider who just didn’t understand …)
Over here in England, we’re much more conservative about our careers. Give up a perfectly good job? Do something completely different in which one has no training or experience? How reckless! No, young man, the thing to do is keep your head down, prove your worth by the fact that you’ve stuck to your (accidentally chosen) career through thick and thin.
So, anyway, I’m considering being a little bit American at the moment. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.