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What kind of career do you want? It’s one thing to be an oarsman, keeping the ship moving. But it’s another to be charting the course, especially in unfriendly waters.

If we were to broadly divide the working mindset into two different types of careers, they could be: A) You work for someone else, B) You work for yourself (there are always exceptions to the rules; this is just for broad strokes,) and of course, both come with positives and negatives.

Working for someone else has many advantages. The positives are: You have a steady paycheck, maybe with incentives and benefits, schedule, role, and responsibilities. This steadiness offers comfort to many. The negative:  having little to no say in how the organization operates. If you think you have better ideas than the people running the show, you rarely have the ability to affect change in that way, or to influence them into your way of thinking.

Working for yourself is almost the exact opposite in every way to working for someone else. The positives are: You can do whatever you want in terms of organizational structure and direction. You can make your own schedule, choose what clients/businesses you want to target, work with whom you choose internally, and generally do things the way you want them to be done. The negatives are, however, that whatever happens, it’s all on you. If the corporate structure does not work, you are responsible for changing it. If the processes you design and put in place do not work, it’s your responsibility to change/fix them. If the market is not responding well to your products or services, it’s on you to find out why and change things. Being an entrepreneur involves headaches and worry. Each night you may worry where your next paycheck is coming from, are bills being met, are employees, colleagues, and customers happy. The weight of the company’s world is on your shoulders.

So which is the path for you?

Whether you want to take Option A or Option B depends entirely on what your priorities are and how much they weigh against each other. Is it more important for you to have a steady paycheck and schedule, so you can focus on your personal life (social and/or family)? Doing that may involve forfeiting your having a direct say in how things get done, but you get to sleep at night without the worry of the solidity of your situation. Or is it more important to not be told what to do by someone higher in the chain than you, especially if you disagree with the way things are done? That path comes with all the worry about your next paycheck and if the ship is moving the correct direction at the correct speed (both of which are on you.)

Now, personally having opted for ‘B,’ I balance the weight of “where is my company’s next paycheck coming from,” with the fulfillment and joy I receive from working with people I love, and having a direct hand in making things happen for us.

If you are ready to choose the “Path of Entrepreneurial Spirit,” we recommend you read this article from TechCrunch about the Zen of Entrepreneurship. It has some very helpful tools to help the worried mind of the entrepreneur.

In the meantime, we have a ship to steer, and treasure to find.