Escape from the Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim has a podcast by Dr. Srikumar Rao, Columbia and London Business Schools, author of Are You Ready to Succeed? My favorite quote was:
I don’t have a work life and a personal life. I have one life and either it’s working or it’s not.
If you are the same person at work and at home and if you are unhappy at work or at home, you’ll likely be unhappy both at work and at home.
Pamela thinks the corporate environment is so broken that so many people will start leaving to start their own business that corporations will have to change in order to keep people. Maybe I’m a cynic but I think it’s much easier for people to go into work everyday and collect a paycheck than it is for them to dream up a business model, quit and run a business. I think corporations and the current corporate culture is around to stay for a while.
One of the reasons that many small business owners are not successful is because they want to do what they love, not run a business. For example, massage therapists go into massage because they like massage therapy and want to help people and then they discover that you have to run your own business. Giving massages is not the same as advertising, making business cards, renting an office, scheduling clients, etc. Running a business is a lot of work. If you just like writing code or giving massages or fixing cars, you might not be willing to quit your job to start a business of your own. You might spend a lot less time actually writing code or giving massages.