I spent my twenties and a good chunk of my thirties thinking of my work life in terms of a “career”—I evaluated choices based on what was “good for my career” and I tried to think of my work world as a ladder or a trajectory from beginning to end. When I decided to start my own business, however, I stopped thinking of it so much as a career and more of it as just a part of my life. I have found that while some of start home businesses as an outcropping of a former career, there are others of us whose home businesses are a dream that was unfulfilled in our old life.
While I have always done a fair amount of writing in my “career” work in nonprofit management—the freelance writing was really a passion so developing my business started as a “side” to may career. Now I have some other paid work that is not part of my business and I just think of it as “stop gap” work to support my family while I build my business, not a career. Five or Six years ago, I would have thought of it as building a new career. Perhaps it is true what is said about how attitude and perception are everything. It took me a little while to start to think of my business as a real, going concern when I first started—but once I did, everything else in my work world fit in around my business (not my business fitting in around my other work.)
How about you? Do you think of your business as part of your career or does it feel different? Does one affect the other or are you done with “career” thinking and more into thinking like a business owner or an entrepreneur?
See Also the JOBS Blog