By Tim Harrison
If you’d told me several years ago that I was going to start my own business, I’d have laughed at you. Then I’d perhaps have chided you for confusing me with someone else. Business? Me? No, no, I was an art major (and then an English major). Going into business held zero appeal. I was content to work for someone else, be one of the creative cogs in the company machine.
Trouble was, I found myself looking for creative cog work in 2001-2002; the bubble had burst, the economy was floundering, and what few jobs were out there had herds of applicants stampeding over each other to get them. I would interview for job after job and end up runner-up out of 200 applicants more times than not. After hearing “you were in it all the way until the end, but we decided to go with the other guy” one too many times, frustration gave way to discouragement. Which was threatening to give way to desperation and a thrilling career asking people if they wanted fries with that.
Strange thing about desperation—it sometimes inspires people to completely different ways of thinking. Clearly people and companies needed my skills, there just weren’t enough with the budget or workload for full-time positions. The obvious course would’ve been to start looking for work outside my field, but I was stubborn. If corporate America wouldn’t hire me, then I’d do it myself. It had never occurred to me before that to open a business, but how hard could it be? All kinds of people did it, right?
And with that impulsive (and rather naïve) thought, I had completely changed my mindset. No longer was my problem, “I need a job”; now it was, “I need clients.” Just a subtle shift in language and I was off on a completely new road to the unknown. I read up on what one needed to do to be self-employed, got myself a business license and the appropriate tax documents, whipped up a Website, and before I knew it I was a businessman.
Then the anxiety set in. Did I really want to be an accountant, administrator, marketer, salesman, secretary, et.al., as well as the creative guy? If I worked for someone else, I could just be Creative Guy and let those three-piece-suit-types handle the money stuff. I hate money stuff. I hate sales! Could I even do this?
But as time went on, and as I picked up new clients and had old clients come back with new projects, I found that some of the money stuff takes care of itself and the rest of it, well, it isn’t so hard (it’s a nuisance, to be sure, but not that hard). And the benefits of working for myself turned out to be pretty sweet. On balance it suits me very well.
John Lennon once said, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” I might amend that with, “...if you let it.” If I’d thought about my situation with more practicality and safety in mind rather than impulsive stubbornness, I likely would have never opened up shop. After all, abandoning the familiar to jump headfirst into the unknown, even when the familiar is soul-crushingly frustrating, is a scary prospect.
But the unknown doesn’t have to be scary—sometimes it’s a beautiful thing.
Tim Harrison is the proprietor of Constellation Design, a (mostly) one-man firm providing stellar desktop publishing services for small businesses and individuals. Visit www.constellationdesign.net for professional help with all your print and online presentation projects!
