Being self-employed complicates things when you want to make a long-distance move.
Mortgage companies can be skittish about lending. And then there’s the whole thing about moving so far away from a business with a physical location that you have to start over. Add to that being in a highly-regulated business like gunsmithing, where there’s no such thing as a license transfer, so you’re prohibited from conducting normal business during the three to six months it takes the ATF to bless you with a license, and you have a real cluster of a problem.
Some of these complications are admittedly self-created. We could escape the rest if we just found a spot in the “normal” world of pay stubs and W2s. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, that’s not completely off the table. But in addition to not being our preferred means of support, our skill sets have morphed to serve our clients and not an employer, so compensation would likely suffer in a “regular” job.
At least my business is portable (as long as we have reliable internet) 🙂 But we’ll need more than what I’ve been bringing in. Maybe I’ll just double my rates?
No silver bullet here. Just need to think outside the box, and if necessary be content to chip away at the problem until we manage to crack it wide open.
Sounds like you were in a pickle! Owning a business and working for yourself is hard! Everyone thinks of it as a dream, but it seems like a ton of work!!
I don’t know if this will make sense, but even though being self-employed makes some things harder, a lot of things are just better.
I’d rather be broke or get knocked on my ass because of my own failures than be chewed out by a boss or passed over for a promotion because I didn’t kiss the right asses at the office.
It is a juggle when you work for yourself. Pros and cons. Both my husband and I own our own businesses and recently he took a temporary job in Nashville for 3 months. It had been the first time in years he had worked for someone else. It was very frustrating for him. But the steady and reliable paycheck was nice.
Did knowing it was a temporary thing help at all, Lydia?
Hubby & I have talked about doing whatever it takes, even if it means working at Walmart or Waffle House! I think in some ways the closer the job is to our self-employed vocation, the more frustrating it might be.
We’ve got a plan (I’ll write that blog post soon, I swear) for morphing our businesses so we can live wherever we wind up, but I think it’s important to stay flexible and be willing to work for someone else if that “steady and reliable paycheck” is needed.
We are still working for others, but building a business on the side. We really want our business to replace at least one of our current incomes. We know there will be some struggles along the way, but there are always struggles. 🙂 Not a negative comment, just that there are always pros and cons to everything. We just have to decide if it is all worth it and gets you to the life that you want to live. 🙂
Yep, Jessica – recognizing that there are always struggles is mature and realistic, not pessimistic. With work, it’s more a matter of deciding the *type* of problems we’re up for solving than problem-filled vs. problem-free.
Being able to consistently win interesting new projects (I’m a self-employed website developer) is something I stress about, but I’d rather do that than have no choice over who to work with.
Life isn’t always easy, but handling its bumps, twists & turns is far more interesting than coasting along 😁 (which is good, because coasting seems to last for like five minutes tops!).