Successful Unemployment

I am watching the snow fall on the outstretched cornfields of the American Midwest. It is 10° F outside, and after seven years in Southern California, living here seems inhumane.

After my husband’s new job brought us to Illinois a year ago, I needed employment that would not depend on my physical location. Something that would allow me to follow my husband around the country (his new job requires traveling) and at the same time let me to make money, expand my mind, and use my technical experience.

“I know!” I thought. “I will start my own company!” I’ll just have to do a bit of marketing, a bit of sales, and a bit of engineering. I have done all three successfully before, so how hard would it be to do it all again? Except this time, it would be on my own terms. The idea seemed brilliant. MVP Modeling Solutions, LLC was born, followed closely by the Successful Unemployment Toolkit.

There has been a substantial increase in technical consultants over the past year. As layoffs became more frequent and search for jobs more difficult, many technical professionals decided to become consultants, or start their own companies.

Like most of these budding entrepreneurs, I was not prepared for what was to come. Just as I planned, there were marketing, sales, and engineering activities…but there were also extreme emotional swings that I did not consider before starting to work for myself.

There are times while running my business when I feel on top of the world. When I land a consulting project, or run a successful marketing campaign, or a happy customer lets me know how much he appreciated my help – that success is purely mine. There was no boss to guide me in planning, no co-workers to make corrections. It is a very different kind of “high” that you would never feel when working for someone else.

Unfortunately, with the very high “highs” come very low “lows”. There are days, like today, when I am watching the falling snow thinking about business plans for 2010 and doubting every single idea that comes into my head. I am not smart enough to run a whole company… I am not creative enough to figure out how to tie it all together… I don’t have enough sales/marketing/engineering experience and even if I did, it wouldn’t matter…Do I even want to do this?… Whoever decided that it was legal to make people live in 10°F weather?

I can’t go to my non-existent boss and ask him to help me define my business goals, because I am the boss. I can’t meet a co-worker at a water cooler and moan about how the cold weather sucks and should be illegal. I am my co-workers. This makes it much harder to pull myself out of the self-employment “lows”.

When you are working for yourself and you don’t feel like getting up in the morning, no one will drag you out of bed. Sleep all you want. You do not have to explain yourself to anyone. And that can be exhilarating and excruciatingly difficult at the same time. If you are thinking of becoming a consultant, or starting your own company, be prepared for this emotional rollercoaster. There are days when I can barely drag myself out of bed in the morning because the idea of how much there is do to and how difficult it will be to do it, is overwhelmingly daunting.

During those days, there is one thought that keeps me going. That thought is that tomorrow will be a better day. Maybe even one of those exhilarating days – all I have to do it get up, open up my calendar, and start checking things off my to do list one step at a time. If you have recently become self-employed and are experiencing similar doubts, I recommend you do the same. Before you know it, your business coach calls with some great ideas, happy customers let you know that you are making a difference, a consulting contract gets accepted, and you are back on a “high” again.

During those times it seems that freezing at the 10°F is well worth it to see the beautiful snow cover the cornfields.