What happens when the company you are working for has to do layoffs and you lose a job?
If that provided 100% of your income, you still have 100% of your bills, but zero income.
What do you do?
For me it was to be self-employed or establish a business.
As I look back on my work life I can see I have been too insecure to be an employee for the reason stated above. I would live in fear of losing 100% of my income. And it did happen to me.
After selling life insurance on a straight commission basis for about eight years I was hired as the director of pensions for an insurance company when I was around age 32.
It was a cool job: I was not confined to an office; they gave me a car, a secretary, and an expense account. It lasted for three months and then my company merged with another company and everyone on the fourth floor was out of a job. I was on the fourth floor.
That was on a Friday. On Monday I was working again on my own and getting paid.
Here is how I look at it: If I have 100 clients, and one of them doesn’t like me or dies, or finds another vendor, whatever, I only lose 1% of my income. And that client is easy to replace.
Three months after being laid off from the insurance company I started my own pension administration company with two partners. We started with 30 clients and in a few years grew to 300 clients, each paying us $1-2,000 per year.
It was 1987 when we sold out to a public company and I walked away with $300,000.
Other than the three months as a true employee I have either had my own business, been a partner in a business, or been self-employed for about 50 years. That has always felt far more secure to me than being an employee.
What do you think?
To Your Prosperity,
Rennie
