My 10th book was released July 27th. It's called You Don't Want a Job: Why Self-Employment Reduces Your Risks & Increases Your Rewards. If you're already a self-employed, it contains loads of information from great psychological resources that'll make you feel good about your choice, and help you make the most of it. Here are a few of the ideas from the book, which you can buy from us right here.

[S]ince no one else is going to take the trouble of making sure that we enjoy our work, it makes sense for each of us to take on this responsibility. — Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, p. 101-2

Self-Employed Doesn't Always Mean Entrepreneur

Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur.

Some are cut out to be freelancers.

Entrepreneurs want to create. They want to be in the driver's seat. They do not fear the fires of risk. They like finding new people, making connections. They want to choose their own deadlines and make their own way.

Some folks don't fit that description. That doesn't mean they should get a job. It means freelancing instead of entrepreneurship.

Freelancing is hiring out your talents to a number of different people. It's like having lots of bosses. Except you get to choose them, not the other way 'round.

Working freelance (the word comes from "free lance," as in, a mercenary who was good at one thing: fighting wars, whoever was paying for it) means you don't have to convince clients they need your help. Your clients are entrepreneurs who appreciate the skills you bring to their business. They understand you. Your marketing is simpler because it's aimed at other business folks, not end users. Your pricing is less subjective. You don't have to set your own deadlines. You know what needs to be done every day.

Entrepreneurs and freelancers get the same benefits despite their different personalities.

You Have Control

One objection I hear to the concept of entrepreneurship is that "you're just trading one boss for a whole bunch of bosses: your clients."

Well, sure, if you're doing it wrong.

Control is not a gift you're given, it's a power you wield.

When you're the boss, you have control over the 4 Ts.

You control what tasks you do.

You control the techniques you use.

You control the time you work.

You control the team you work with.

I can hear you yelling about the last two from where I’m sitting. "My buddy is never around because he's always rushing to meet a deadline." "My sister's clients are all jerks, but she needs the money."

Covered in my other books, I'll briefly dispel those here:

If you schedule properly and maintain good client relationships, you should rarely, if ever, be forced to work at a time you'd prefer not to. I keep my goal dates (I don't even call them "deadlines") flexible enough that if I want a day off, I can take one. What that also means is that if I wake up at 4am and feel like working, I can, because then when I'm tired at 9:30 I can take a nap.

Working for jerks will make you a jerk. It is an immutable law that we become like those we associate with. Choose clients you wish you were more like. It takes guts to turn down money from someone you don't want to work with, and I'll admit to making this mistake more than once — and regretting it every single time.

You do not have to work 88 hours a week, nor do you have to work with jerks. You are the boss. If you work too much or with the wrong people, it is because you chose to, not because you had to.

Autonomy Over Balance

Anyone who always chooses the 4 Ts entirely at their own whim is going to struggle. We live in a complex intertwangled society, as gregariously social creatures. It goes against nature to seek total independence.

Another autonomy is over the balance of autonomy we choose.

When the economy shifts, I focus more on one type of project than another.

When I'm partnering with someone I want to build a working relationship with, I'll use the tools they're familiar with, at least at the outset.

When a beloved client really truly needs it now, I usually choose to pull out all the stops to deliver for them.

While I won't work with jerks, either as my client or as a co-worker on a project, I have worked with folks who didn't light my fire in every interaction. I've asked advice from folks who seem incapable of tact. I've read great information in deadly dull books and blog posts.

And every one was a choice. My choice. Choice to balance how much autonomy is right for this time, this day.

A Job Is Simpler

Life is complicated and messy. We tell ourselves stories to simplify it, to get a handle on it, to teach our children.

Oversimplification can be a useful teaching tool, a beneficial coping strategy. It can also fool us into believing that simple is better in cases where it's not.

Having a job is simpler, tidier, than the messiness of creating your own business, whether entrepreneurial or freelancing.

Simpler.

Not better.

Even though you know who I am, we'll say it again, a little differently:

After losing two jobs in a row because companies went out of business, Joel D Canfield resurrected Spinhead, the web design company he'd founded in 1998. In the six years since his last job, Joel and his family have traveled full-time throughout the US and Canada for 18 months, created and refined multiple businesses, and spent nearly all their time doing exactly what they wanted to do instead of what they had to do. Read more about his newly released 10th book "You Don't Want a Job" at http://JoelDCanfield.com

At the supermarket I noticed a package of batteries with this blurb: Lasts as long as Energizer.

So, they're as good as the next guy.

Is that any way to advertise yourself? Is anyone going to switch battery brands (or, more importantly, start working with a "virtual" partner on mission-critical tasks) because they're "as good as the next guy" ?

Marketers talk about your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for a good reason. If you can't show a prospect why you are the only possible choice, why you are the perfect match for them, ask yourself: why should they choose you?

If you're only as good as the next guy, what happens when the next guy gets just a little bit cheaper, or a little better, or both?

(By the way, even if you're far better than the next guy, if you can't show a prospect why you're a perfect match, consider the possibility that they aren't a perfect match for you.)

Once in a while someone will warn an aspiring entrepreneur that "you'll feel like giving up."

Oh, really? That's like saying "It will feel like you have a headache." Uh, yeah.

Here's the truth: there will be days when the only reason you don't turn in your Entrepreneur's Badge in a miasma of frustration, anger, and disgust is because you can't find the flipping phone number of whoever takes the "I Surrender!" calls, and that's because you can't bear to crawl out from under the covers to go look for it.

Y'know, like yesterday.

Then sleep, with its magical power to strip us of reason and pour beautiful dreams back into our souls, will gently wipe away the smudges and push you out the door to do it all again.

Y'know, like today.

Just got word that a big project we'd invested a lot of effort into isn't going to happen. In the past, I would have pinned a lot of hopes on that money coming in, and been in a panic when it didn't.

These days I know better. No project is certain until the money's in the till.

So many metaphors come to mind. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, f'rinstance. It's easy to say, look, we've got eggs, therefore, we'll have chickens. Or, look, we've got hot prospects, therefore we've got a project.

Speaking of eggs, don't put 'em all in one basket. If you earn your living primarily from a single client, that client owns you. In reality, you're en employee, not an entrepreneur. Have plenty of smaller eggs, not just one large one.

And more than one basket, if you can arrange it.

Twenty small streams of income is more stable than 2 large streams. Seems nothing is stable these days, so when you start juggling all those chickens and eggs and baskets, be prepared to lose a few.

If you've got spares, there'll always be enough for that omelette.

Recently a personal interaction reminded me of an anecdote I read some years ago about tea. (I love tea, but this may be my first business lesson about it.)

When tea first arrived in England it was expensive. Not, a little bit pricey expensive, but prohibitive, only for the rich expensive. But it caught on quickly, because, well, it's great.

One woman in the south took a full pound of her expensive cache and sent it to her sister in the north, telling her how marvelous it was. Her sister boiled it, dumped the black liquid off and served it like a vegetable. She wrote back about how terrible it was.

She'd prepared it like a vegetable, which she understood, instead of seeing it for what it was: something entirely new.

Some business folks hear about the 'new marketing' and assume it's just more of the old marketing, except online. They still want instant results, measured in dollars return on dollars invested. They want ways to convince people to buy, no matter what they're selling. They spend time and money bolting a website and blog and email autoresponders onto their old-school advertising.

They're dumping the tea and eating the leaves, and then they wonder why it doesn't work.

If you help your clients with their marketing efforts, you may, like the first woman in the story, assume that they'll know how to brew a pot of social media marketing. Erm, tea. Whatever.

But, like the second woman, they don't. They can't. Because it's so foreign to them, they have nothing to connect it to. Give information away, with no firm plan for monetising it? That don't make no sense!

Had the first woman included some simple instructions along with her glowing praise, the story may have had a happier ending. Don't leave anything to chance. Clients who are new to the new marketing will need a lot of hand-holding, a lot of encouragement and explanation and nudging.

Don't assume they get it, unless you actually see them drinking the tea.