Some thoughts on self-entrepreneurship and the 9 - 5 workday

@rok-sivanate wrote a great post a few days ago about scarcity mindset and crypto, it's definitely worth the read. In a nutshell, he talks about using crypto and the blockchain (in particular Steemit) to break out of the mindset of scarcity of money and that there are really other great alternative ways to earn, if you're willing/able/capable of putting in the effort.

And although I very much agree with a lot of that idea, I wanted to talk about something that's been in the back of my mind for a while now around this, mainly around the whole shift from the 9 to 5 work week mentality to this new self-promotion self-entrepreneurship "revolution" that's been going on lately.

Steemit is full of people (admittedly myself included) looking to try this new form of social media to see if they can make make it a living, to see if they can make an impact, to see if they can start a new name, or even a new life for themselves. I honestly think it's an amazing concept and an amazingly optimistic mindset for a community to have, and there is a lot of good that comes of it as a result.

But self-entrepreneurship is nothing new. People have been selling themselves, their products, their brands ever since the start of any form of barter really, although I'm mainly considering it as it relates to capitalism now. Pretty much anyone can decided they don't like the current 9 to 5 system and quit it to set up their own business and maybe get to do work they're more passionate about. Heck, just a couple months ago I had the opportunity with some friends to speak to a couple women who co-founded an escape room company (which coincidentally have been popping up all over the US a lot lately) - their story was exactly like this. They were tired of their previous jobs and decided to quit and make a business around something they were more passionate about.

But, there's this funny thing about creating a new business from scratch: it's a lot of work, especially since you have to spend a lot of that time convincing other people about it. You have to either get a loan from the bank, or find some investors willing to provide you with some initial capital, and to be able to do that you better make sure you have a decently solid business plan. You need to register it with the government, figure out where it's going to exist, hammer out the legal structure, obtain permits, etc and that's before you even consider the effort you'd need to actually invest to do whatever it is that you want to do. I'm not even that familiar with the process, I just did some quick searching to get an approximation of the steps involved.

Personally, I don't think this revolution is in the idea of dropping the 9 to 5 for creating your own proprietorship - I think the revolution is actually in having a far lower barrier to entry than we've ever seen in the past. If I want to make videos for Youtube, all I need is a camera and a microphone (and maybe not even that depending on the type of content you want to make). If I want to generate ad revenue on Facebook, all I need to start is to basically just sign up. And the same thing goes for Steemit.

Of course, none of that is a guarantee for success, my point is that now suddenly you have this new opportunity that's available to a much wider range of people than before.

There are a couple of implications with this. First, it means that we're naturally going to see a lot more people on these platforms all experimenting with their ideas and trying to see if they can make a living. Which of course means that if you want as many people to succeed on your platform as possible, you're going to need a reasonable way of doing content discovery (and also being able to pay everyone adequately, in the case of Steemit).

Second, this kind of "revolution" has the potential to open an available avenue for people to protest existing work norms en masse.

How long has the 9 to 5 work day been around now? It seems like more and more people are starting to echo sentiments of fatigue and dissatisfaction and perhaps even resentment of their work and their work schedules. If people are actually fed up enough (and we're not just hearing about it from the vocal minority) then it's possible we could start to see a shift from 9 to 5 to independent entrepreneur as more people discover and accept this internet business as a legitimate way to make a living. If that were to ever entice enough people to leave traditional vocations, employers could take notice and potentially offer additional incentives to get people to work for them.

Of course, this is purely conjecture and really only just one way this kind of scenario could play out. I have no idea if there are a significant number of people dissatisfied with their work, and out of those no idea how many would actually choose to adopt alternative vocations given the circumstances.

I do believe that these kinds of things tend to slowly improve over time as it has throughout human history, but particularly with the rise of automation in the coming years it's entirely possible that we'll see something very different play out. Instead of employers handing out better benefits we could just see a ton of jobs replaced forcing people to seek opportunity elsewhere. Or revolt against the machines. Or just do nothing. It's all very hypothetical at this point, although my guess is that as automation rises we'll start to see people shift to alternative vocations - perhaps creative, perhaps basic income, perhaps something we haven't even considered yet.

Anyway, I feel like I've gone a little off track here. My point is really just this: I don't believe that 9 to 5 is permanent. As we see more people either quit and start their own entrepreneurships or become replaced by automation, we will likely see a shift toward alternative vocations, non-economic benefits, or perhaps even things like basic income. But as with anything, these will all take time to come to fruition if they even do at all - it will be interesting to see what happens within the next 10-15 years or so.

But even then, there will still be opportunities - they might change but they won't be gone completely.

_{Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash}