Barbara Winter: Making a Living Without a Job

That was a new insight to me, so I began looking for evidence. Sure enough, Margaret was absolutely right. No matter what crisis is going on, more people are unaffected than harmed. Knowing this has kept me calm in situations that previously would have scared the wits out of me.

I’ve also considered that if the odds are in my favor—and yours—in times of calamity, how much more must they be on our side when we’re creating something about which we care deeply? Even though a topsy-turvy economy has an impact on everyone at some level, many will be far less affected than others. And some will come through it better than before it happened. Let’s look at how the odds are shifting.

Most of us grew up in a Big Is Better culture. Our parents and older siblings seemed to draw their self-esteem from working for giant companies. It didn’t matter that these companies did not possess a soul or that their workers were discouraged from thinking creatively. Spending their days in a cubicle became socially acceptable. The company was big and that was impressive.

As we watch the collapse of gigantic institutions (the list gets longer every day), we can join the doom-and-gloom crowd and see this as the end of our world as we know it. Or we can see it as a groundswell of change that is bringing with it unimagined opportunities, opportunities that will be the basis of the Small Is Better culture that’s been quietly emerging for several years.

More than a decade ago, trendspotter Faith Popcorn pointed out that more and more of us would move out of corporate confines and into our own businesses. In her book The Popcorn Report , she says that satisfaction and having control over our own time are going to be top priorities. Popcorn writes, “After a shocking period of corporate greed, after years of commuting, people are dreaming of renovating old houses, starting hands-on entrepreneurial businesses, or even doing what they’ve built their careers doing—but on their own time and terms. We are asking ourselves what is real, what is honest, what is quality, what is really important…. Nobody works harder, or happier, or more productively, than people working for themselves.”

So why haven’t we all figured that out? Could it be that making a living without a job is almost never an option offered by guidance counselors? Why do colleges continue to turn out corporate workers when the trend is in a different direction? Have the myths about risk scared us away?

Despite living in the shadow of an old paradigm about work, every day more of us decide to inhabit this new creative minority. A few years ago, I became a Junior Achievement volunteer. For six weeks, I spent an hour every week with a group of lively fourth-graders. The first day I was there, I introduced myself to the class and told them about my business. Then I asked if anyone knew somebody who ran a small business from home. Nearly two-thirds of the kids raised their hands. That probably wouldn’t have happened even a decade earlier.

Now hardly a day passes when I don’t read about or meet someone who is happily working on their own. At the end of 2003, a London newspaper headline proclaimed, “Huge Rise in Workers Who Go It Alone.” The article stated that an estimated 300,000 people in the U.K. had decided to abandon their jobs to go out on their own just that year.

The U.S. Census Bureau, in a report from the late 1990s, shared this affirming information: “In the past, a homebased business was viewed as a side business operated primarily as a hobby or as a source of secondary income. The data contained in this study show that assertion to be inaccurate. The researchers’ findings demonstrate how the home has become a hub of business activity, entrepreneurship, and business creation. Sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations added $2.9 trillion to the economy, with homebased firms contributing $314 billion, or 11 percent.” The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) reports that every year there are dramatic increases in the numbers of home business operations.

What does a tiny business offer that a big one doesn’t? Why are the odds in favor of the small enterprise? To begin with, small is flexible. Times change, and smart small businesses change with them. No slow bureaucracy needs to be approached for permission before change can be implemented. The ability and willingness to change as necessary ups the odds that a company will weather tough times.

Small is accessible.Your guidance counselor may have forgotten to tell you this, but the free enterprise system is wonderfully open to anyone who wishes to participate, providing their intentions are honorable. You don’t have to look very far to see entrepreneurs who are young, old, educated, uneducated, immigrants, physically challenged, women, social activists, and introverts. That list doesn’t even begin to describe the array of people who have found success working on their own.

Small is diversified.Financial gurus have always advised investors to diversify their portfolios. That same advice can be applied to earning that money. In this book, you’ll be introduced to the idea of creating Multiple Profit Centers. Once you understand the value of having several income sources, you’ll be eager to start building your own portfolio of moneymakers. Not only will this affect your earnings, it will also eliminate the Eggs in One Basket syndrome (which is devastating if the one and only income source disappears).

Small can be frugal when necessary.Anyone who has built a business on a shoestring knows how to be thrifty. In fact, some folks discover how creative they can be when they tap into their imagination to solve problems.

One of my favorite entrepreneurial role models was Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop. In her early days in business, she had no money to advertise, so she created attention-getting signs for her shop windows to draw customers in. Even after The Body Shop was an international chain, the company never spent a penny for advertising but found creative ways to let people know it was there.

Spendthrifts aren’t nearly as good at improvising. Odds favor the frugal.

Small is less risky.Author and entrepreneur Seth Godin says, “For the last six years, I’ve had exactly one employee. Me. This has changed my life in ways that I hadn’t predicted…. I can write an e-book and launch it in some crazy way and just see what happens… If you don’t have to bet the farm on every launch, you’re way more likely to launch more, which vastly increases your odds.”

Small is a perfect fit.Creative self-bossers quickly learn that they don’t need to follow a big-business model. Work nine to five? Not if they don’t want to. Live in a city? Not if they prefer a cozy island. Wear a business suit? Never. A self-designed business allows for personal quirks and preferences. Happy people tend to be wildly productive people. The odds go up again.

Small is proving to be secure.Not long ago, I wrote an e-zine article inspired by Joseph Campbell’s observation that the insecure way is the secure way. In the piece, I talked about how job security is a myth. I had barely sent it out when I started receiving calls and emails from my readers who are making a living without a job. One reader, whose experience seems to echo that of the others, wrote:

My business is better than ever right now and I have no fears about layoffs. I work as a private math tutor and babysitter and had to adjust my “ego” because I can’t tell people I have some lofty position. What I have is daily freedom, joy, and independence.

I am no longer sacrificing my health in order to have what society has always told me I should have. My boyfriend (he’s 52, I’m 44—boyfriend sounds so young) is an independent massage therapist and his business has never been better either. We keep saying, “Wow, there’s no recession for us!” I don’t have a big retirement account and neither does he, but we feel so confident in our ability to “take care of ourselves” that it doesn’t matter! Self-bossing is the best!