the goose

Although I hate the term, you could roughly describe me as a entrepreneur.  Like most entrepreneur’s my Mother despairs at the fact and really wishes I’d just get a proper job with a carreer path.  With that in mind, I thought I’d try and put one together.

Entry Requirements: You probably have spent some time during school and college either running sports clubs or heading up the debating team or trying to con money out of your class-mates by selling fake driving licenses printed off from your 24-pin dot matrix printer.  Starting stuff is something you have always enjoyed and in some way, a little like the English, you would rather make up your own game rather than lose at someone else’s.  There are no intellectual requirements for entry and any old fool can give it a go.  Some kind of problem with authority or other chip on your shoulder is a distinct advantage.

Years 1 – 3: Enjoy early success as an employee working for someone else.  You prove good at your job but at the same time are impatient to be calling all the shots.  Having realised that your boss is an idiot and comforted by the large amounts of money he chooses to pay you, you start to develop ’sidelines’. Talk in the pub begins to be dominated for talk of not having to work for the man.  You secretly order The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and The E-Myth.  Your sidelines start to occupy more and more time during working hours.

Years 3 – 5: Taking the plunge and going freelance you manage to escape the 9 to 5 and start working a 6 – 9 as you soon discover that doing the work is only half the job, finding the work is the hard part.  Gaping holes in your own ability to run yourself, let alone a company, start to become aparant to everyone apart from you.  The stash you put together during your full-time career ebbs away a little until your bank balance finally demands that you contract yourself, selling hours until the tax man cometh.

Year 5 – 9: The initial slack that the tax man gave you in terms of making returns starts to run out and you finally begin to grasp the amount of money you pay for those roads, hospitals, banks etc you use.  You may at this stage have taken on debt that starts to look rather less repayable that it previously had.  At the same time, your friends careers are starting to take off.  You cousin Mark recently became country manager for an international retail chain and your college friends are starting to make repayments on their new 5-series while your bus fair seems to be getting more expensive every day.  You occasionally check the job listings and perhaps go for one of two interviews which you fail to get.

Year 9 – 15: Things are starting to look desperate.  Just when it seams like you must have made every mistake in the book, you somehow manage to find more- and some of them are looking very familiar.  There are brief periods of light between bank repayments and tax bills which are enough to keep you going.  Economic conditions don’t seem to be doing you any favours but at least it starts to feel like it can’t get much worse.  You get audited for tax, unveiling a raft of things you’d rather not have thought about.  They levy a huge fine which you can’t pay and manage to negotiate your way out of it.  That feels good until you start to get behind with your payments again 3 months later.

Year 15 – 30: Rinse and repeat until you eventually hit it big.  You start to believe what your selling and eventually someone else does too.  You start to get asked to do interviews in the paper and the bank balance is looking good enough to make a down-payment on a pretty nice apartment.  You start to look at getting a professional manager in to run things for you and take that month long holiday you had always dreamed of in the sun.

Year 30 – 40: At some stage during these ten years, something catastrophic happens.  Rents go through the roof or property values go through the floor.  Either way your business starts to crumble. The professional manager you brought in turns out not be up to scratch when it comes to these new economic circumstances.  Letting people go and selling properties is the name of the game as it looks like that retirement you were starting to enjoy might have to wait for another 15 years.

So that is it.

Roughly, about 5 years of success tucked in-between a load of stress and effort.  No need to apply to anyone to get started.