Employees to Contractors to Entrepreneurs ?

Most people with full time jobs I know of hate their jobs. For a variety of reasons. And a majority of them have been dreaming of becoming ‘entrepreneurs’ and building businesses of their own. 

And almost all of them (that decided to venture out) have started or about to start a business of consulting and work as independent contractors. Doing the same or similar work they have been doing all along (software development projects for instance, as most of us are Software developers), though now they think they are well represented and compensated for their hard work.

Is becoming an independent contractor a necessary step in between an Employee and an Entrepreneur ? Or being an independent contractor itself is the business? Is this what they really wanted ? or its just an easy start to get something going, on your own, so you can think of ‘real thing’ later on ?

This great snippet by Seth Godin “Building a job vs. Building a business” put these thoughts in perspective. Read on.

Like Seth Godin says in that post, both of them are good and will work. But they are totally different things. For some, one may lead to the other, but most (almost all) it will not.  If we are totally convinced of doing one thing or the other and go do them, it is totally fine.  We just need to have that clarity in our dreams and ambitions.

If you hate your job working in your current company and want to come out and do same or similar job as an independent contractor (and eventually become a consultant and later on assemble a group of such people and call that a business), that’s fine. There are so many great and successful businesses of that sort. Just make sure that’s what you have been dreaming of.

Or you wish you could do something different ? Then, Do something different.