Moving from working for the boss to being your own boss: the pros and cons of starting your own business.
To own your own business could be an exciting and hard experience: two sides of the same coin. There are no exceptions in the world of advertising, design and graphics.

For someone to own his business is the only way to do something gratifying.
For others to work as employee guarantees safety and a work-life balance.
Each person is different and has different points of views and aims.
Someone wants to put in his eight hours, go home with nothing else to do and without any job troubles possibly.
Someone else wants to have independence in organizing his work and to take his own responsibility.

Both of them are right. Both of these situations have huge benefits.
We don’t want to talk about stereotypes: the employee who runs away at 6 o’clock or the workaholic manager who spends his time doing new business. It’s important to choose the right working environment you prefer.

Sometimes this is not up to you, but the economic scenarios drive your decision.
You are a freelance or a consultant due to market trends, and maybe you have to choose whether increasing your business creating something bigger or trying hard to back in company as an employee. Let’s have a look at the main pros and cons of owning your business.

Some good reasons to be a freelance

• You can direct your work in your way.
• You can create your working environment.
• You’re the boss, you have the control.
• You can (must) manage your working time (and also personal time).
• There is no success limit.
• There is no amount income limit.
• You can manage your business as you like.
• You can hire people to take care of the boring tasks you don’t like but they need to be done.
• It's prestigious to own a successful business.
• This is an experience you can use for the rest of your life.
• You can create something new, something yours.

This seems great, isn’t it? But all that glitters is not gold.
Let’s take a look at the cons of create a start-up or try to became a his own boss.

Some good reasons NOT to be a freelance

• The responsibility is always yours (economic and organizational responsibility).
• Long start-up phase with all bureaucratic problems related.
• You can’t have a fixed salary also for a long time.
• Extra hours are not paid.
• You must manage deadlines and priorities, if you miss the right timing you’ll lose opportunities.
• Usually an investment of money and time is required.
• You have to adapt to change quickly.
• You have to manage the market uncertain.
• It’s hard to detach your mind once you’re at home (that maybe is your office).
• There are no guarantees that your business will succeed.
• Sometimes you may feel alone in your business.
• It could be hard to get self-motivated.
• If you set up your activity incorrectly, you could run for 16 hours per days in order to refine it, rather than see the business that runs itself.

If you like to control and manage your business activity, and you don’t have any problem to deal the “cons” we wrote about, then you probably deserve to be your boss, work as a freelance designer or create your own business.
Start thinking how to deal the cons. Well begun is half done.

If lot of responsibilities and problems to solve working hard, sometimes not paid, gives you a scary feeling, maybe it won’t be better to open your own activity, and you should try to improve your employed job situation.

Good luck.