In this YouTube commentary, Shelley Young compares traditional salaried 9‑to‑5 employment with commission‑only roles, outlining the predictable pay, benefits, and stability of salary jobs versus the uncapped, autonomous but unpredictable nature of commission work. She shares her own transition from a salaried position to a commission‑only sales role, emphasizing the skill development, mindset, and personal freedom she gained. Young highlights the type of personality—motivated, competitive, and responsible—who thrives in commission‑only environments, and notes that many women she works with have found greater autonomy and financial control through such roles, despite common misconceptions about risk. She positions commission‑only as a middle ground between a fixed salary and full entrepreneurship, offering flexibility without the overhead of running a business. The video concludes with an invitation to a free hour‑long course that details the exact path she took to succeed in commission‑only sales.
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Commission only, the hot topic. Is a commission-only role worth leaving your 9 to 5 for? Now, I've done both. I've done the full salary and I've done the commission-only, both for multiple years. So, there are pros and cons, and I'm gonna sit here and give you my opinion, take it or leave it, to show you both sides. Because I think when people talk about this topic, They are biased. They're like, it has to be one or it has to be another. I genuinely see both sides. I'm gonna do my best to unpack it with you today so you can actually make an opinion on what works best for you. So let's get into it. So first of all, let's talk about a salaried job. The way it works is you get paid for the hours you work. So when you sign that contract, You are basically giving a certain amount of hours a month away in turn for an amount of a paycheck that is on that salary. That is how it goes. There are sometimes tips involved or bonuses involved or some incentive involved. That's typically how it works. You also typically get a certain amount of paid time off, benefits like that. Some do healthcare, some don't, depends. And essentially you get like a bundle of goodies, if you will, like a bundle of perks. for the hours in a month-to-month basis that you basically trade. Now, the pros of that is every single month you know exactly to the penny or to the dollar what you're bringing in your bank account. You know, you know how much you're gonna get taxed, you know exactly what you're gonna make. It's predictable. You have a certain amount of days every single month or every single year that you know you can take. You know exactly when your days off are most of the time, and it is predictable. Now, the downsides to that is it is predictable. So if you want to make more, if you have a summer holiday and you want to make extra, you can't really. You have to try and think of a way outside your job to maybe make more, or if you can make more in your job, you have to trade more hours. So you have to Spend more time doing that thing to make the money to have extra that month to pay for your summer holiday or whatever it is that you want. If you're getting married, a new car, whatever it is, you have to trade that time for money. So if you're someone who genuinely couldn't bear the idea of not knowing the exact amount that's coming in your bank account every single month, If you're someone who likes following the rules and likes your 30 days off every single year without fail, that's how it is. And someone who doesn't value, I guess, that freedom a lot, doesn't value necessarily travel a lot, and just prefers a very predictable wake up, clock in, do my job, clock out, the 9-to-5 salary job is for you. Commission only probably wouldn't suit you because you want predictability. Now, you could argue on the cons that someone could fire you or you could be made redundant, and there's no predictability there. But if I'm not being difficult and I'm trying to be as simple, clear-cut as possible, if you like that, salary is for you. Now, commission only, where that comes in— let's talk about the cons first. You don't have that necessary predictability. You don't know the exact number that's hitting your bank account at the end of each month. You don't have a number of holidays, and you don't have someone telling you what to do. You have to be more self-aware, you have to be more accountable, and you have to hold yourself to a higher standard because you have that control. Now, as humans, we are taught to follow by the rule book, so it takes a certain type of person to actually go, no, I don't want to do that, which means there's a certain type of responsibility. And if you're not responsible, you can be reckless and you can get stuck and trapped, and then you can't make money. So you have to have a level of intelligence about you to do a commission-only role. Now, the pros is your income is uncapped. I don't mean the uncapped like PJ lifestyle, Lamborghini lifestyle. I just genuinely mean you're not trading a certain amount of hours for a certain amount of income in a contract. Essentially, your income is up to you. If you wanna work more, you make more. Or if you want to get better at the thing, you make more. That's how it works. So for me, when I went into commission only, I just had to get better at having conversations with people and closing deals. So I didn't necessarily have to work more. I just had to get better at that to make more money. So for someone who's motivated, competitive, ambitious, likes a challenge, that's perfect. Like me, because I was like, let me see what I can do. Let me see how much I make, I can make. Whereas a nine to five actually made me go in with myself and not enjoy life as much because I was like, well, I can either do a lot or I can do a little. Doesn't matter. I'm going to get paid anyway. So if you're someone who enjoys a challenge, if you're someone who likes pushing themselves, ambitious, likes achieving things, commission only is good for that. And in my opinion, that is like the black and white of it. Now, actually bringing my experience. Into this, I found a 9-to-5 is almost dressed up as this really stable, predictable, safe option. Yet a large number of women that I actually work with have faced redundancies, have not been able to get the shifts they needed, have not been able to work around their family life, which means they were fired from their jobs. And to me, that's not stable, that's not safe, that's not predictable. Now, I believe commission only isn't for everyone wholeheartedly, and there's going to be a lot of you watching this, I don't believe it's for you. But there are a pocket of people commission only is perfect for, they just don't know anything about it. Because when people hear commission, they think car sales or something where you get a salary and a small commission. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about working for online businesses that have huge profit margins, And a lot of that goes to the sales team with big commission checks because the skill is so important and the money is all collected by the sales team. So there's a lot of responsibility. And if you're watching this and you actually enjoy responsibility and you actually enjoy working hard and you actually enjoy challenging yourself and learning and developing, but you're capped at an hourly salary with no opportunity for travel, No opportunity to push yourself or to go the extra mile, then commission only might just be that fire you need. And that was the same for me. Commission only became that fire, became enjoyment, became the challenge that genuinely transformed my life and allowed me to take full control and full ownership of my life. And a lot of us paint that to be scary, like, oh no, you want predictability, you want safety, but Not everyone does. And I'm sure most of you watching this won't want that necessarily. And I'm not saying one month you wanna make $10K, the next you wanna make zero. I'm not talking about that. You can have a lot of consistency and actually a lot of predictability with commission only. But you wanna take things into your own hands. You don't mind if one month you make a few thousand extra and the next month you make a little bit less. You don't mind that because you get that autonomy over your life. Or maybe you don't wanna make $10K months, but you wanna make $3K to $5K, but just be able to have your mornings. And that's what commission only can give. It gives freedom, it gives choice, it gives autonomy over your day, it gives autonomy over your finances, and it gives you that level of responsibility without having to start a business and wear all the hats and do that whole level of risk. Actually, commission only is that center. Instead of being in a 9-to-5, instead of owning a business, you can be in that middle. So you don't have the risk either side, and you're in the middle working for someone else's business but on your schedule. And for me, I found that was like revolutionary. I found that was the best of both worlds, that I could do that without having to start a whole business. So yeah, that was my 2 cents. Just a bit of a chit-chat, give you an idea of the difference between salary and commission only. And I know there's a lot of taboo about commission only, and it's such a risk, yada yada yada, but really it's not. Like, the women that I work with, as long as they have the right mindset, you gotta have the right mindset, and a little bit of conviction, It's actually turned out to be the best thing that they ever did because they actually get that freedom and autonomy over their lives. And if you want to know the exact path I went down for commission-only roles, I'm going to leave an hour-long free course somewhere here. I filmed an hour-plus long free course to teach you A to Z the route that I went down, the skill I learned to be commission-only and completely transform my life. So yeah, take a look and let me know what you think. See you in the next one.
