A little bit of a rant for people considering getting out of the rat-race by trying the whole, “Just start a business” thing.
This particular excuse is a favorite line; a classic cop-out, troll, attempted clap-back that privileged and wealthy people use when the masses start pointing out how lopsided, corrupt, and broken everything is.
This is the misdirection they use to ignore how bad things are (or to prevent people from banding together and realizing how bad things are).
“Just start a business.” It's that easy, right? You're just being a lazy, entitled, new-gen whiner. Grab those bootstraps, young one! It's so easy! Grandpa did it in 1945!
So, after years of going through all the motions (school, university, military, jobs, etc.) and still finding myself living paycheck-to-paycheck with no hope in sight, I decided to see what it would take.
What I've found so far is that my suspicions are mostly true: Almost everyone who “just starts a business” has had an inordinate amount of support, both financially and socially (think family business connections), from family [funds]. Or, they started a business back when the economy and country wasn't an actual joke. Like, in 1960, when houses were $80,000, wages kept pace, and a gallon of gas wasn't $7.
At any rate, whether they were able to do it while living at home with zero expenses (a very privileged and complicated situation in itself), while their well-paid spouse worked and they stayed home with nothing to do, or they did it in a paid-for dorm/condo with mom and dad's money while they partied in school, I've yet to meet anyone who has actually started a legit business from literal scratch with no outside help–while working full-time.
But fuck it. I said I wouldn't let that stop me. It's just an excuse, right?
“Just start a business.” (Since “Just” is a favorite word to toss into these disconnected fantasies, I figured it can't be that hard.)
One of the things I said I would avoid at all costs is getting a small business loan. This would be on my own terms, with money I have, not money I don't have with someone else breathing down my neck. That would simply defeat the purpose of this whole endeavor. After all, the point is to create your own financial independence, not go straight back to having investors and bosses and debt.
So, I started simple.
An idea, a need, and a way to fulfill it. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a software engineer, so my idea is related to selling products rather than services.
Some of the first needs I ran into were things like a website to sell from, a way to get the products I need to sell, and a way to make/prepare them for shipping.
This is aside from the massive time requirement to get all of this in order. This is a big one.
At any rate, I jumped in.
All in all, I was high on the excitement of 'really doing it' for the first few months. The prospect of selling a thing on my own and taking the first steps toward being an actual self-reliant human felt refreshing. I went to my normal 9-5 feeling elevated and hopeful, and I couldn't wait to get home to keep plugging away at my very own business. I no longer felt the strangulation of being desperate and at the mercy of an employer who pays me shit, and it made me start seeing everything differently. I had some confidence, my self-esteem was going up, and I was riding that wave. For a while.
That feeling has quickly given way to hopelessness and desperation though.
My first issue was…as you might have guessed…money. This gets expensive, even with the cheapest options.
Living paycheck to paycheck makes this damn near impossible. So, right off the bat, the concept of “Just start a business!” presents major obstacles in our current late-stage capitalist dystopia–at least for working people without family money. If I get a second job to fund this, I'll have negative time to do anything but brush my teeth and sleep for 5 hours, so that's out of the question.
Again, I refuse to get a loan, so I've done things little by little and when I have the time and energy. Working 9 hours and commuting back home leaves little to NO time whatsoever to accomplish anything, so it has been slow going. I'm also not 25 anymore (in my 30s), so my actual energy and health are not what they once were. I simply cannot do 16-hour days and pull all-nighters. I'm still in decent health, but everything is just a little bit harder. Just a little bit more draining.
With that, it has taken me about a full year just to get some groundwork laid. I've gone through phases where I told myself to accomplish at least one thing a day, whether that was something as simple as ordering a sample, or something more complicated like budgeting or finding a supplier or creating a prototype.
I'm to the point where I know exactly what I need, and most of the smaller operation items have been purchased and/or set up.
However…Here are the things I still cannot afford, because I don't make a living wage:
- Licenses
- Trademarks
- LLC
- Product (to sell)
- Website
- PO Box
- Packing materials
- Shipping account
- A lawyer to look everything over
While this isn't unreachably expensive, it's still about $10,000 to get started.
This is where my motivation and hopefulness has really started taking hits. I basically burn through my entire paycheck every 2 weeks just on rent and food/gas/utilities/insurance/etc. That leaves me looking down a month-long cycle just to be able to get some money to put aside for the business. That's 4 weeks of stagnation and being gridlocked, hoping no unforeseen expenses come up, because I don't make a living wage.
The prospect of saving $10,000 seems insurmountable.
I stopped doing one thing a day, and the state of the world started crushing my resolve.
My employer shot down raises, we stopped receiving profit sharing, people were laid off, and there's nowhere to go but sideways at work. I've seen housing skyrocket, and I've watched the world basically fall into disarray while people–fuck knows why–cheer for the policies and people who are almost literally shitting on our chests.
A gallon of milk is like 6 fucking dollars. I need 2-3x my current wages just to be able to afford a basic entry-level house or condo. I can't take a sick day or vacation. If my car finally kicks the bucket or needs a repair, I'll be riding the bus because I can't afford to fix it. To add onto injury, student loan forgiveness was aggressively obliterated by morons, and that would have given me a huge boost towards getting the business going–RIP that.
I come home tired and exhausted. My mental health is wiped. I feel like I have weights on my feet, and depression is high.
When I think about getting a different job, my motivation tanks. I'm getting too old to keep job hopping. I'm sick of it. I'm not going to go back to university for another degree, because that just means more debt and starting all over again.
So here I am, sort of just stuck. Still living paycheck to paycheck. Unable to save money to get a business going safely (without major loan risk).
So, next time I hear someone say, “Just start a business, lul,” I might just take off my shoe and slap them across the face.