Lets start by differentiating between being self employed vs becoming an entrepreneur. No, they are not the same thing, and they will lead you down 2 very different paths in both planning and execution. For this reason, it’s important we figure out which you want early in the planning phase.
Self Employed
Being self employed means you don’t have a particular boss, notice I didn’t say you don’t have a boss. More on why I phrased it this way later. You are free to pick and choose what jobs or work you take on. Basically, as the name states, you work for yourself, you are a freelancer and don’t work for another business and that’s where you plan to stay. At least for a while, starting here doesn’t mean you can’t later decide to expand your business and become an entrepreneur. In fact many entrepreneurs start here and work their way to entrepreneurship as the experience seems much more organic, and easier than jumping straight to entrepreneurship. This route allows you to learn more about the business and make necessary changes while you have a lower overhead, meaning your mistakes will cost you less. This means by the time you move to entrepreneurship you have likely delved into a bit of marketing, you’ve learned how to quote work, what it takes to do the work, etc. so you’ll know what to expect from the team you will eventually be managing.
Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurs on the other hand are more like managers. Their role is to organize people and resources for the business. So you wouldn’t be doing the actual work yourself. This means that if you decided to quit your job because you have a passion for doing a particular type of work and wanted to concentrate on doing just that, then entrepreneurship is not for you. Starting here would require more capital. You can get this from either funds you have saved yourself, loans, or investors. Starting here means you have a clear business model or plan, and you are building a team to fill in roles you have already specified and which you will be managing. This could include sales, marketing, product development, service providers, etc. While you could fill one of those roles, your overall job here would be to manage the team. And of course the team doesn’t necessarily mean employees you hire on. It may be comprised of freelancers or consultants you hire, or other third party relationships you have built.
Dog training
To further illustrate, I’ll a use dog training business. Lets say you have a passion for dogs and want to spend as much of your day with them, training them and making their relationship with their owners better. You would then be better off becoming self employed. You can take on as many clients as you can manage and would spend your time working directly with the dogs which is what you like doing.
Lets say now that you once again have a passion for dogs and you’ve noticed the dog pounds are over crowded and not enough dogs are finding homes as you would like so you want to make a difference. You decide that if the dogs were well trained owners wouldn’t give them up, and would be more likely to adopt more dogs. Your best option now is to become an entrepreneur. Your job would now be to hire employees, and train them on becoming good dog trainers. Then you would find the best way to market your services to reach as wide and large an audience as possible. Then work on the best way of expanding your business to the size you feel happy and comfortable with. While you are making a difference in the life of many dogs, you wouldn’t really be working directly with the dogs.