Avi Arya weighs entrepreneurship against working for someone else, covering experience, discipline, and money. He shares practical advice on what it actually takes to run a business and how to know which path fits you.
Foreign hi, this video is about Should I be my own boss or start working for somebody else? Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Avi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer. And this is one of my favorite ever questions because I'm hoping to shed light into something that I've seen happening in the last 10, 15 years while running Internet moguls and my own businesses around digital and affiliate and all of that. Ladies and gentlemen, what I've understood is that a job is a job is a job. Once you become today, a lot of people put CEO on their Instagram and think instantly something is going to change. You're still going to be going out asking for appliance. They'll be paying you money whenever, today, tomorrow, delayed payments or whatever. And you have to prove to them your worth every single day, week and month before you get paid for the month. And so therefore you are doing a job as an entrepreneur. Here you might be the first point of contact in a new business and your client is going to call you 10 times a day, your vendors are going to call you. Every single aspect of your business is going to be dependent on you. So if you feel overwhelmed that you are getting a lot pressurized in a job and you feel that you could do all of this for, you know, for your own self, think again. Because once you get out of a job and you do something on your own, then not only are you doing just that job, but you're doing 10 other things that might slow you down, number one. Number two, a job. If you think that you're an expert at your job and you're really doing it well, then I think you might be growing really fast in your job. And also you might be getting great opportunities to work in other companies and making maybe in other countries as well. Most of the time when you are fed up of your boss or you're fed up of your situation is because if either you're not very good at your job or you might not be as disciplined and therefore you want to run away from a situation, maybe try to build a situation which gives you freedom, that freedom will come because you'll be your own boss, but the freedom from discipline will not come because you in fact, you need more discipline as an entrepreneur because you will have to get up in time every day. Because the day you don't get up in time, your company is not running. The day you don't pick up the phone, your company is not running the Day, you don't pay the bills, the company not running, whereas in your job, everything else is running and you're learning on anybody else's expense while getting paid. So hey, listen, I'm not saying do a job or do, you know, entrepreneurship. I'm just telling you one thing. It's better to get experienced, have the right amount of money, and maybe have a partner or two so that there is an ecosystem of understanding and learning that is built around you before you jump into a business. A solopreneur sometimes find it very difficult to run a business unless they are qualified enough or they've run that business parallel while doing their job. Because that requires a level of commitment while you're doing your job and fulfilling your job responsibilities at the same time, you're running your business on the side. And if you're able to do it successfully and still make money, you might want to make that transition from just working on your own business twice a week to making it three times, four times, and then full time jump into the business. Most of the times when people get into a business, they run out of cash because the cash, cash planning has not happened. Because especially in an agency world, ladies and gentlemen, your clients are never paying you on time. There are too many variables. You have your taxes to pay, you have your salaries to pay before you get paid. Leaders always eat last. And whatever you have remaining from your new business, you better put it back into your own business because you're still building. So it's going to take three, five or 10 years to build a successful business. And that success could be a couple of thousand dollars a month or tens of thousands of dollars a month. It might never lead to a million dollar business. A million dollar business is a very big business. So don't be, don't get taken away by all the numbers that you see on people giving ads and saying make $25,000 a month or make $2 million a month or whatever. Yes, it's possible. Yes, people are doing it. But let's be practical over here. Let's see what most of the people are doing. So more than 75, 80% of the people are making less than $1 million running an agency or a business. So probably you're going to be in that 75, 80%. And if not, if you're an overachiever, you're a great guy. I'm sure you are. And so you can scale it up just for practicality purposes, for everybody's understanding. Let's see if we have that 80% market so we're making less than that. And the cash flows are also always going to be tight. Is that a situation you'd like to be in? If yes, one of the things I would advise you before you get into your own entrepreneurship would be work closer with your boss. In my agency, a lot of people have become intrapreneurs and then they became entrepreneurs. Hats off to them, full respect to them and all the love to them. I support them, I send them clients that we don't work with all the time. The only thing is that these people became very close to me. They understood my problem, they understood my tensions. They actually came, they would stay back and ask me the situation. Nobody else in the company did except those people who eventually went on to become entrepreneur. They asked me the problem I was facing. They went with me for difficult client meetings, they went for collections meetings. They understood how the payroll works. They went over and be above and beyond their call of duty to understand the pain point of an entrepreneur. So if you're working in an entrepreneurial setup or you're working to want to get into an entrepreneurial setup, be close to your boss or your supervisor, climb the ladder and try to learn more and take more responsibilities. Not only will you grow while you're doing that, while you're running the agency or for your boss, you will grow more. You'll be able to command, demand whatever salary you want people to. Now you're going above and beyond and telling a boss, hey, I'm here to take care of all your problems and get into every single department. And I'll shoulder responsibilities with you, shoulder to shoulder. While you're doing that, you're also getting paid. And while you're learning the nuances of the business and the tensions that a business owner goes through, you're getting paid and you can come home and analyze. If this market is for you, if this game is for you, the other thing that will come with this exercise is that you can. You can also learn. Hello, you know what? My boss might not be doing it the correct way. Maybe there's a better way of doing it. And so you might. It might be a positive thing and it might lead you to it. Shed new light to your perspective. And you say, hang on, this guy is not doing it correctly. I try to advise him, but he's his own company and he's not doing it. But if I open a company, these are the 10 things I'm going to do correctly, which he's not. Whatever Seren done, if you look at it from either way, if you. If you do a job for a few years working with somebody, not only do you build your repertoire, you build your portfolio, you build your connections. It is the stepping stone for an entrepreneur. I have never understood why you would like to get into entrepreneurship without having an experience, especially being a solopreneur. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you one thing. Once people leave the agency network and stop working for a company, immediately the network effect goes away and you're on your own. An entrepreneur and owner is on his own. You'll have to build your networks, you'll have to go for the meeting, you have to do the sales call, you have to do the cash flow, you have to do the payroll. You have to do every single thing in your business and keep your team happy while you understand that you might be stressed with cash flows. So my idea is not to discourage anybody from entrepreneurship or starting their own agency. I think it's a great business, it's great learning. If you're an expert at something, you can command a great price, and it's lovely. The only thing that I recommend is to first not say that either I do a job or an agency. My idea is to flip the question on its head and say, first, start working for somebody. Especially choose a boss who you feel that you resonate with that person's values and style of working. Understand what he's doing right and wrong. Your boss, your mentor, will always teach you two things you can always learn from a person, even your parents or any superstar or any hero that you follow. You learn what to do, and you'll also learn what not to do. Most people, when they get closer to their idol or their boss or whatever, they realize, hello, he's a human being and he's making mistakes. And all of a sudden you feel, oh, my God, he's not as big as a hero as I thought. But instead of that, why don't you start thinking that I am here to be in his shadow to learn two things. One, what I have to do, and secondly, what I must never do. Learn these two things why we're getting paid for it, and then go ahead and decide you have the right partners, you have the right amount of cash, and you have the right understanding and the context. And then slowly make a transition from where you are through starting your own agency or being, getting into whatever business that you want to make. And for all of you people who are listening to this video, and it brings value to you, thank you very much for your 8 1/2 minutes of your time. Time is the biggest asset everybody has. So if you've given me this time, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much, very much. Once again, this is Avi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband two superwoman, streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet Bogus. Thank you very much for listening. I'm signing off.
