Job Vacancies And Jobs Search In Malaysia : Allyhunt

Here I go again… engaging in my favorite past time—day dreaming. My perfect picture—taking a bite of my favorite cheese cake and a sip of cappuccino at my favorite café with soft music in the background in a delightful afternoon… To me, this is simple luxury. It gets better when I witness other people in work clothes scurrying back to their office. Merely fantasizing makes me happy. Of course, you can still get that if you are unemployed or married to someone who is loaded. I am not talking about that but about a working person who earns a stable income but yet is able to enjoy the flexibility that most employed people can’t. It’s called self-employment. If you are self-employed, you can declare 3 to 4 pm as your tea break. You can walk into the office at 11 am and nobody cares. You may not even need to work in an office for you can choose to work at any place you fancy. No more punch cards and having to report to your boss when you are running late.

Should I quit my job now and take a step of faith, venturing into this “self-employed” world? But what if my dreams were just dreams? What if there were actually no afternoon tea-breaks? But first things first, what kind of work can I do as a self-employed? I have not figured out somehow.

The following is a true confession from Bonnie…

I was in the manufacturing industry for five years, handling all sorts of shipping and logistics documents. One day, a friend approached me to set up a training consultancy firm. He has done some training in his employment and finds that he is ready to start something on his own. He convinced me that I had a sound knowledge of shipping procedures and perhaps, I could target the shipping and logistics market.

We did some planning on how the revenue could be generated and were quite convinced that we should be able to earn a handsome income, definitely more than what we are getting now as salaried employees. Besides, the overheads would be low as we plan to operate from home. Thus, it was a splendid idea.

Both of us quit our job and we started our business venture in the first week by making a lot of cold calls. The rejection rate was high. Both of us did not have any marketing experience and to get us to make one call after another to a stranger on the other line and to be rejected can be quite overwhelming. I usually felt very tired by the end of the day. In fact, I dreaded making the cold calls.

Once in a while, we did receive some good news but somehow we couldn’t get enough participants to start a class. So, classes were postponed most of the time. When we got our first training program running, we were extremely delighted but it was a 10-week effort. We struggled through the first six months.

The truth of the whole venture was that I was totally disillusioned. We didn’t get our salaries because there were always bills to pay—telephone, electricity, trainer’s fees, rental of the training venue, training materials, etc. After ten months, I called it quits but my friend decided to hang on for a little while more.

Bonnie’s experience was rather gloomy and I believe not everyone who started on their own ended in the same fate.

Who has an interesting tale to relate? Do you think Bonnie made the right choice by quitting in 10 months? I know this question may be rather tricky but if you were self-employed (freelance, included) or had gone down that path before, perhaps you could shed some light to help the many aspiring employees who are contemplating venturing into this journey of being self-employed.