anything goes with emma chamberlain - the truth about being self-employed

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

HAPPY TO BE BACK! i've seen a lot of talk on the internet about how amazing it is to be self-employed and how we should all strive for it, and turning your dream into a job is the key measure of success. as someone who is self-employed, i can definitely say it's not all it's glorified to be, so i'm talking through all the pros and cons of being self-employed, and why sometimes having a regular 9-5 isn't a bad thing at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello everybody! We're back! Anything goes as back! What a great feeling! I really missed you guys a lot. I took about a month off and just recharged my brain and tried to find myself and I didn't find myself but I did recharge my brain so that was really good and it feels really good to be back in my bed recording, talking to you guys. I missed it a lot. So here we are. Back to business as usual. Very exciting. Very exciting. I'm going to catch you up on a few things before we get into today's topic. I'm going to catch you up on a few things before we get into today's topic. Number one, I need to give you a snack recommendation that I discovered. So recently I've been getting into pistachios.

I don't know why. I don't know how this happened. Because prior to recently I always thought that pistachios were the most boring nut like I thought they were so boring I was like I would rather have an almond I would rather have a cashew. But something came over me and made me want to buy pistachios and so I bought some lightly salted pistachios that were in the shell about a month ago and I was like, wow, this is actually a great snack. I really enjoy the flavor of pistachios. I enjoy the process of cracking the shell open.

Like this is really great. I love this snack. Where has it been my whole life? But then the other day when I was at the store going to buy more pistachios, I noticed that the brand Wonderful sells salt and vinegar flavored pistachios. This was a game changer for me. I had to buy them and I had to give them a try. There's something that I would have never bought otherwise, but because I'm going through a pistachio phase,

I was like, okay, I will try them. To make a long story short, they are actually fucking incredible. And they're so random. So many vinegar pistachios sound like a train wreck of a snack. Like they do not sound like a good snack, but I'm here to tell you that they're delicious, they're worth your money,

and this is not a paid ad. I'm just genuinely sharing a good snack with you. Like is that such a crime? It shouldn't be. Solem vinegar pistachios go out to your closest store and pick them up. They're everywhere. They're at like every store. For some reason, pistachios are at every store.

And unless you're looking for them, you won't notice. But they're weirdly at every store. Like I was just in an airport the other day and I was like, wow, every single little airport store has Passachios in it like this is such a reliable snack that's so widely available to me I'm so happy that I found it anyway. I'm done talking about pistachios. That was I bet a bunch of you already clicked off Of this episode and we're like wow we were so excited to hang out with Emma again After a month of her being gone.

And now she just talked about pistachios for four minutes. We miss the old, anything goes podcast. Sorry, sorry. I had to share that with somebody. I've been holding it in. Because nobody in my personal life fucking cares about pistachios. So I have to talk to somebody about it.

So hopefully one of you cares. Unfortunately, I think that that's the only life update I have for you before we begin today's topic, which is very telling, you know, like the fact that my recent snack favorite is the only life update I have that just shows you how boring my life has been over the past month of me trying to recharge and relax. Nothing interesting has happened. Anywho, let's get into today's topic. So, today we're going to be talking about the issues with romanticizing being self-employed. I've been thinking about this a lot because I am somebody who's technically self-employed. And I've been thinking about the pros and cons of it a lot, because a lot of people romanticize the idea

of being self-employed, especially like on the internet, you hear a lot of people saying that their ultimate goal is to be self-employed. And I totally understand why. You know, being your own boss in theory sounds like a dream. And in a lot of scenarios, I think that being self-employed is better than being employed by a boss, because a lot of times, you know, when you're working under somebody else's structure, you know, that can kind of clash with your own work strategies and, you know, it can be a conflict of interest, you know what I'm saying? Like, you and your boss might not see eye to eye on how things should get done.

Or you just might not get along with your boss. Like there's a lot of things that can go wrong when you have a boss. And there's a lot of scenarios when it's not great. And when being self-employed would be far better. But I also want to shed some light on the other side, which is that being self-employed is not perfect. It's not this perfect dream job scenario that everybody thinks it is, who hasn't necessarily

experienced it. And I think that there's a lot of pressure, on young people, especially, who are not yet established in a job to strive to be self-employed because our society kind of deems that as the best job, the most impressive job. I think that if we were to look at what our society looks at as the perfect job is taking something that you're passionate about and turning it into a business where you're your own boss. That's like the scenario that everybody dreams of. But I actually am not so sure that it's as great as it seems.

I'm really not. I remember hearing a quote once that when you quit your 9-5, you start a 24-7, which basically means when you quit your 9-5 job to be self-employed, instead of working in 9-5, you start working at 24-7, because being self-employed is like not just a full-time job, it's like beyond a full-time job, because when you're your own boss it's really really hard to set boundaries and to say okay you know what today I'm only going to work from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then after that I'm going to stop thinking about work and I'm just going to relax. It's really hard

to do that when you're self-employed because instead of just doing what your boss tells you and then going home and, you know, disconnecting from the whole thing, your job is more heavily ingrained in your being when you're self-employed and you will struggle to ever stop thinking about it. It's like when you're working, you know, you're working to achieve your boss's goal, right? And so if you have a boss that's not you, then it's easier to just follow orders in a way that's less intimate to you, right? Like, you're just doing what your boss tells you to do in a more robotic fashion.

It's not as intimate for you. It's not as meaningful to you. Whereas when you're your own boss, the quality of everything and the fire under your ass to make everything perfect is so much worse because the work that you're getting done directly affects Your business instead of you working for somebody else's business if that makes sense

It's just so intimate so there's not really a work-life balance when you're self-employed, because everything is so deep. There's a huge burden of responsibility when you're your own boss, because not only do you have to get a bunch of work done, but you also are required to discipline yourself if you're not working hard enough. And this can become unhealthy very quickly, because I think there were a lot easier on other people than we are on ourselves.

For example, I'm never going to give someone else the workload that I give myself, because I don't have any sympathy for myself. When I look at myself, I'm like, you could always work harder. Whereas when I look at somebody else, I'm like, well, that's a human being, and, you know, they're only capable of so much before they're gonna burn out, right?

But you don't look at yourself like that. In addition to that, if you're a boss of somebody else, you might say, okay, this person is going to get two weeks of vacation time this year and they can use it whenever they want. And I hope that they enjoy it and don't think about work once. But if you're your own boss, you're less likely to think that you deserve a vacation. And if you do decide to give yourself a vacation, there's a very good chance that you're not going to be able to stop thinking about work, because you're not going to feel like you deserve to fully check out.

Also, there's a good chance that you might not even be able to stop thinking about work even if you wanted to, because being self-employed comes with so many more responsibilities than just being an employee of someone else. You have to kind of be on call at all times because you're the boss. Now for some people who have a different mindset, being self-employed could be great, you know. They might look at being their own boss as freedom. And they might be able to have this work-life balance. They may be able to disconnect from their work so that they can enjoy their life outside of it.

Like, it's not like it's impossible. There are some people that are wired like that. But I would say for the majority of people who are self-employed, they find it impossible to have a balance. They are working 24-7, 365 days a year, whether they're typing up an email or they're just thinking about it, it never stops.

Which leads to extreme burnout. But the problem is that if you're self-employed and you're burnt out, yeah, you can take a break because you're your own boss. So you can give yourself that break. But giving yourself a break is difficult. It's really difficult. I've always struggled with this personally. I have such a hard time taking a break because I always look at myself in the mirror and

think, well, I could do more. I'm just not working hard enough. I think a lot of people also struggle with the concept of being an employee because they don't like the feeling of being below somebody. They don't like the feeling of being below somebody. They don't like the feeling of working below somebody. In a lot of people's eyes, that feels like a failure. And I don't know why that's being spread throughout social media. I've noticed it a lot. Like a lot of people kind of don't have positive things to say about being an employee. And although I think that being an employee could be shitty, depending on where you're working,

what your boss is like, blah, blah, blah. I also think that being an employee is not necessarily a bad thing. Like, I'm not saying that being an employee is always a positive experience because that's definitely not the case. But what I am saying is that being an employee should not be looked at as a failure as much as it is. It doesn't even necessarily need to be looked at as a stepping stone. You know what I mean? A lot of people look at being an employee as a stepping stone to

eventually being your own boss. But I think that that's taking away from the positives of being an employee because here's a thing. When you take your passion and you find a way to monetize it, you find a way to make money from it and you build a business model around it. Then your passion in life becomes also your job. And I don't care what anybody says nine times out of 10, that ruins the excitement for you. Because the second that you start making money from a creative thing,

it goes from just being a hobby that you're passionate about to something that holds a lot more weight. It holds your livelihood on the line. Turning your passion into your job almost inevitably ruins the spark that it once had. And honestly, that's not always terrible because there's always room in life to find new hobbies, new passions that you can do on the side that maybe don't make you money that still have that magic. So if you turn one of your passions into a job, there's still room in theory for other things on the side that can excite you that don't have the weight of money involved,

but it's pretty tough. It's pretty tough, because once you turn your main passion into a job, it's really, really hard to find time, to find those magical little hobbies ever again. And I don't know why that is necessarily, but it is really difficult. Now this goes back to working a nine to five being an employee instead if you're working set hours for a company.

And it might not even be a company that you're particularly passionate about, but it's a job that pays the bills that is not excruciatingly terrible for you. It doesn't make your life worse. It maybe leaves your life at net neutral, like it doesn't negatively impact or positively impact your life. It's just like net neutral. It's just your job, you know, and you're cool with that. That can actually be a really great thing because after work, you're able to fully mentally disengage. When you clock out, you're done. And you can go home and put your energy towards things that you're passionate about things that you're excited about and fully enjoy those for what they are

With low stakes. There's no like you know your hobbies and passions are just fun for you. They're just something that Make your life better And you're doing them completely for you just for you And you're doing them completely for you, just for you. You're not doing them to make a check. You're not doing them for some sort of accolade. You're just doing them for you because you enjoy them. That's not a terrible life at all. Yes, you know, your job and your means of making money

may not be the most exciting part of your life. But because you're an employee of somebody else, mentally it's easier for you to disconnect after work so that you can enjoy all of your free time to the fullest without having to think about your job. Whereas when you're self-employed, as I said earlier, you never stop thinking about it. You never get to disconnect.

You never get to just be like, oh, I'm done for now. It is so hard. So, all of this to say, there's just nothing wrong with not being self-employed. And being self-employed. And being self-employed, it just doesn't need to be this romanticized thing, because it's not as great as it sounds. It has quite a bit of cons.

And I think that if you can find a job that you don't absolutely despise going to every day, that has a boss who's rational and pleasant, that's a great situation. I also wanted to talk about people romanticizing being self-employed, specifically on the internet, because this is like the most popular dream job right now, you know, the idea of being able to make money fully from the internet or through the internet in some way, either as an influencer or an entrepreneur, whatever, it may be, people do not talk about the negative sides to this specifically. Actually, they do, but maybe not enough. Maybe not enough, in my opinion.

Okay. For starters, the income is extremely unpredictable. If you're working on the internet, income is not something that you can rely on. Things are constantly changing. Based on whatever website you're using to make your money, whether it's YouTube, Instagram, Shopify, whatever it may be, algorithms and things like that play a huge role in the success of your business on the internet. And algorithms are constantly evolving. And one, your income is based completely on an external source, which is a website that

has a mind of its own. That's very unpredictable. And that unpredictability is very terrifying. And it makes it hard to know what moves to make in your life. Because you don't know how much money you're gonna make next year. You don't know how much money you're gonna make the year after that.

And you don't know if you're gonna have to get a different job at any given point if something doesn't work out. That is very scary. And that anxiety and uncertainty causes a lot of people a lot of grief. And that's not very fun. The other thing about having a business on the internet is that you completely give up your privacy. In order to keep up with the algorithm and to stay relevant in a sense, you have to be constantly interacting with the internet directly. And whether you like it or not, interacting with the internet is giving up your privacy, no matter what.

And basically every scenario, unless you're like selling a product, if you're like selling a product and your personal life has nothing to do with what you're selling, like you're not selling a product along with your personality because a lot of businesses do that, then that's a little bit different. But, you know, if you're an influencer of some sort,

or you're an influencer who has a business who likes to share the behind the scenes of the business, you're giving up privacy, and you're opening yourself up to the entire world for criticism. And that's not easy, you know what I mean? Let's say you're selling jewelry in a small boutique in your hometown.

That's opening up criticism to the people who live in your town. Whereas if you decide to go sell jewelry online, you're opening yourself up to criticism all over the world. And this is a bittersweet thing because the fact that everybody all over the world can see your jewelry is an amazing thing. But as human beings, we're sensitive. And so criticism can discourage us and make us not want to do it at all anymore.

If it gets to a point where it's out of hand, whereas, you know, if you're just selling your jewelry in a local boutique, that whole experience is a lot more level-headed, relaxed chill. I think that involving the demons of the internet into the way that you make your income can be really dangerous because the internet is a very, very toxic place from hate and criticism to the way that things go viral to the addictiveness of it. When you start making money in some way through the internet, it's very easy to start to get obsessed with likes and views and things like that because those things enhance your online business. So let's say you have a jewelry business and you make TikToks about your jewelry to promote your business online.

You might start getting obsessed with getting as many likes as you possibly can on your TikToks about your jewelry, and that might make you overly obsessive about likes and paranoid about whether or not your account is becoming irrelevant. Because if your account becomes irrelevant, then your jewelry becomes irrelevant and you're scared, you know, or let's say you're an influencer and you're just simply selling yourself. You might start to base your worth off of how many likes you're getting, how many views you're getting. If you're making money doing brand deals and things like that, you might start to feel

like shit about yourself when you're not getting as many views and likes or you're not getting as many brand deals because you might start to think that people just don't like you as much anymore. When you yourself are the product that you're selling, you start to base your worth off of all of the wrong things, likes, brand deals, views, etc. And that's a whole other slippery slope to go down, you know, deciding to be self-employed in the form of being an influencer where you are the product. That's possibly the worst way of being self-employed that you can be. I'm doing it myself, so I know all about it, right? Being self-employed as an influencer, if you will, I hate that word, I don't like to use it about myself,

but you get what I'm saying. As an internet personality and that being my business, I know how toxic it can get, right? Because as I mentioned earlier, you're basing your worth off of all of this stupid shit that doesn't actually matter, like your relevance on social media. That doesn't matter.

But when your means of income, when your means of an income, is that right? Is that even grammatically correct? When the way that you make your money is based on whether or not people like you on the internet, there's so many toxic things that can come of that.

I think one of the worst parts about it is the fact that a lot of times being an internet personality is kind of unexplained. Like, if you look at a lot of people who have made a lot of money being an influencer, and you think about what their talent is, it's not always obvious. I even look at myself and I'm like, I don't fucking get how I'm here. And then I made a career out of just like being myself. That doesn't make any fucking sense.

That doesn't make sense. It's this combination of luck and being in the right place at the right time, and maybe a little bit of talent, but a lot of times being an internet personality, it's kind of just luck. And when something is based off of no talent, like being an influencer, for example,

that can go away so quickly. That can go away tomorrow. That could go away at any given moment. There is no promise of that lasting in any way. And that's a dangerous game to be playing. So in theory, being an influencer, being self-employed, being an entrepreneur of some sort, all sounds great, and like a dream come true, I don't think that it's something that necessarily deserves all of the accolades that it has. And I don't think that it's something

that needs to be seen as the peak of success. I think that you can live a very happy life, possibly even a happier life, working for somebody else else and then disconnecting after work and using all your free time to live a happy life that allows you to pursue your passions in a low stakes way. And that's that. It's impossible for everybody in this world to have a job that is rooted in their passions. It's impossible, right? For everybody to have that.

But I don't think that that needs to be seen as a bad thing. I think that actually doing a job that's maybe mindless isn't actually so bad of a thing. Or even if your job is just something that you are a little bit interested in, you know what I mean, but it's not like your main passion in life. Something that's maybe a smaller passion for you. That's fine too, you know. You know, don't feel like you failed if you can't find a way to make money from your passion. Look at it like this. Look at it like, I get to enjoy my passion for what it is, and I get to enjoy it for me.

I don't have to worry about making money from it. I can just enjoy it for what it is, and it's going to remain sacred to me. And that's a really, really beautiful thing. And if I were to start profiting off of it, it would lose that magic. And if you do get lucky and find a way to make your passion profitable, remind yourself that it's normal when something that you are one's passionate about loses its magic and becomes just a job to you. It

becomes just a way to make money for you. And remember how important it is to look outside of your job and find something else that you can be passionate about that's, as I've said a hundred times, low stakes, something that you do just for you, just because you love it, because when you turn your passion into a job, your passion becomes a job and is no longer as much of a passion, and you're going to need to fill that gap in your life once again.

The biggest mistake that you can make is not filling that gap with something else to be passionate about. Purely passionate for no alter your motive. I think that the art has been lost of having a dream and a passion and having a career and allowing them to be separate. You know, they don't always have to go hand and hand. And if they do, that's great. It's not going to be a perfect situation either. It's not going to be, you know, all sunshine and butterflies like you may expect. But that might work out for you. But also if that doesn't work out for you and your career and passions have to stay separate, that isn't going to be as bad as people say that it is. It's all about your mindset and how you look at it. Okay, so I asked you guys on the Twitter to ask me questions about being self-employed,

the Twitter is that AG podcast if you want to follow and participate in future episodes, or if not, that's totally fine too. Anyway, let's get into it. Somebody said, does it feel draining not having a routine to go with as your own boss? In my experience, it can be very draining to have to create my own schedule and keep myself in line.

You can't really go into autopilot like you do when you're an employee of someone else. Because you not only have to hold yourself accountable to get everything done, that you yourself assigned yourself, but you also have a decent chance of feeling pressure to keep working even after you've gotten all the work that you assigned yourself for the day if that makes sense. So let's say you say on your calendar, okay, today I'm going to answer emails for four hours and just get that done. That's the only task that you assigned yourself for the day. Let's say you finished the emails that you were supposed to be working on by 2pm. Now I'll have said you have the rest of the day free.

In theory, that sounds like a beautiful thing. But when you're your own boss, you're like, oh, okay, well, I'm just going to keep working on stuff. Next thing you know, you keep giving yourself assignments over and over again until 9 p.m. On the other hand, you might give yourself an assignment for the day and be like, okay, I'm gonna work on emails for four hours today and then not feel up to it. And because you're your own boss,

you're like, I could just push that off. I could just push that to like next week. I don't need to do that today. And then next week rolls around and then you're like, ah, I don't really, I still don't really want to do that. And nobody's holding you accountable except for yourself. So you end up procrastinating things far more than you would if you just had a boss to tell you, no, you have to get this done.

End of story, you have to get this done and a story you have to get this done and Then that can end up putting you into some sticky situations where Now you feel like shit about yourself because you're like I didn't hold myself accountable hard enough and Now I'm behind on a bunch of shit Because nobody was there to yell at me to do it So there's negatives on both sides of the spectrum. You can overwork yourself and you can underwork yourself. And yes, you can also have a happy medium,

but that's a lot harder to find, I would say. It's a lot harder to find balance than you would think. Personally, being somebody who's self-employed, I find myself on usually one extreme or the other, where I'm either overworking myself or underworking myself, and there's like no in between. Somebody said, what are the benefits of being self-employed? I would say the biggest benefit of being self-employed is being able to create your own schedule to accommodate your life best.

So, even though you're working mentally 24-7, it's a lot easier to morph your schedule and shove things in when they feel fit. In a way where you have flexibility, you have a lot more flexibility in your day-to-day life because when you work and how you work is up to you. And that's a really great thing. But I would say that's one of the only good things about it. But that's a really good thing. So like, let's not get it wrong or get it twisted. That's a really good thing. But that might be one of the only good things about it. Somebody said, how do you get yourself in line and stay organized?

I really think that writing things down is the best thing you can possibly do and using a calendar daily and writing down all the things you need to get done, all of the deadlines that you have and sticking to them because it's so easy to move things around when you're your own boss and just be like, oh, I could push that to another day, whatever.

But you can't do that, you know? And at a certain point, when you're self-employed, you're like, oh, fuck, like I can't keep pushing things around. Like I have to stick to my guns and like be my own boss here for real and be like, okay, actually I have to get this shit done. On the day that I told myself I would get it done, there needs to be discipline and it needs to come from within

and I need to stick to it. Or else, all hell will break loose. Somebody said how do you think it's best to divide our time between work and personal life? I think this is the hardest thing and I still don't know how to do it perfectly. I know that it's possible. I just haven't found the way yet. Because for the past, you know, four years since I've become self-employed, I cannot think of one moment that I've not

been thinking about work in some capacity. And that's something I'm working on because it's not a way to live your life. You know, you've got to have a life outside of your work. But that's just really hard to do when you're self-employed because almost all facets of your life somehow tie into your work. Somebody said, does it bring more free time than a traditional job would? See, this is the biggest thing that I think goes under-disgust. You might have more free time if you're self-employed. Technically, technically, you might be able to give yourself more time off. But whether or not you will, and whether or not you will use that time wisely,

is not certain. For example, when I have time off, when I give myself time off, I'm still thinking about it. I'm still thinking about it. I'm still thinking about work. So even though as a self-employed person you may have more time off, you're not gonna have time off from thinking about it because there's something all consuming about being self-employed that's hard to escape and hard to turn off. I related to when I was at school, right?

During the school year, my brain was filled with school work every day until I finished my homework. And then the second I had finished my homework, I was good. And I was like, okay, I can think about whatever the fuck I want now. And then when summer break came around, I didn't think about school for three months straight. I had time to think about whatever I wanted to.

I used my free time when I was in school so much more wisely than I do now that I'm self-employed and I have more free time, but I don't ever use that time to fully relax and think about whatever I want. Somebody said, do you think that being self-employed gives you less anxiety? I think that anxiety in work is inevitable, in any kind of work. Whether you work for yourself, whether you're an employee, whether you're taking time off

from work and you don't have a job right now, there's anxiety around it. I don't think that there's a job on this planet that doesn't come with anxiety. So I would say that that's kind of unavoidable in any job. Somebody said, what do you do if no job really appeals to you or interests you?

I think that that's okay. You know, I think that that's okay and I think that you have to reframe the way that you look at getting a job. And instead of looking at it like, oh, I'm really interested in my job. Look at it like this. What job can I get that will work best in my schedule and be tolerable? Because in life, not everything is going to be exhilarating and exciting. You know what I mean? It's okay to have some elements of your life that don't heavily excite you. You know, that's part of the human existence.

Having a job that's just meh, you're like, eh, it's okay, like, you know, I have a few friends there and, you know, it's fine. It's like the way I make my money. Like having a job like that is not a bad thing. It's not. Because you can use your time outside of that job to find things that enhance your life. You know, you don't have to have a job that's life enhancing necessarily.

I would argue most jobs aren't life enhancing. Sorry, working is not fun for anyone. It's very rare that working is fun. The thing that I think makes working fun is working with other people that are cool people to be around. That's the best part about working. So, if you can find a job that has a cool community within it? That's awesome. Because even though your actual job itself might not be life enhancing,

the people there might be life enhancing. There's so many different ways to frame it, and it's so different for everybody, and there's so many different ways to structure your life that I don't think that there should be any one way that's ideal. I don't think that there should be any kind of lifestyle that's romanticized, because everybody is an individual. The structure that's going to work best for you is not the same that's going to work best for your best friend.

Have an open mind and don't listen to what society says about what's the most impressive, what's the dream scenario, blah blah blah. Do what works the best for you. End of story. And I can guarantee that there's no such thing as a perfect working life. There's no such thing. No matter how perfect your favorite influencers life looks like because they get to be self-employed and make money posting photos on the internet. No matter how easy and amazing that looks, I can guarantee it's a nightmare. And no matter how much you envy that CEO that you follow on Instagram,

their life is probably a nightmare too in some ways. And that person that you follow on Instagram that's a breeze to add a coffee shop, is probably one And that person that you follow on Instagram that's a breeze out of coffee shop is probably one of the happiest people you follow. Like I kid you not. You see what I'm saying? On that note, I'm really curious to hear what you guys think because this is definitely based on my own personal experience and the experiences of people that I know and I'm

close to. And I know that everybody on this planet has a different human experience. And so I'm very curious to hear about your guys' experiences with these types of things, what you think, whether you agree with me, whether you disagree with me. And yeah, feel free to tweet at me at AG Podcast and we can get a little conversation going about it. And that's all I got for today. You guys, it was so nice to catch up and talk and discuss what's been on my mind.

Thank you for listening and sticking around. You can follow anything goes on any platform that you stream podcasts. And leave a review on Apple podcasts if you like. I'm so grateful for you guys. I really enjoy our weekly conversations and the community that we've built. And you guys all fucking rock.

Have an amazing rest of your week, and we will talk very soon. Bye. Very soon. Bye!