When I was a flight attendant, I was responsible for training new flight attendants once they had finished their classroom work and were ready to learn how to take what they had learned to the airplane. While much of what they learned from me was how to pick up trash and pour soda, I tried to educate these new flight attendants about what it really meant to live the life of a gypsy.

Many of these people had an idea that flying all over the country was a glamorous lifestyle and in some ways that’s true but those perks and great working conditions usually come with seniority. The reality is that the working conditions in the airline industry are unlike almost anything else in the world and it was important to me that anyone choosing this career understood what they were facing.

The same can be said about being self employed. Before embarking on a career where you are “your own boss”, it’s important to understand that you are also your own employee and will be responsible for your own success. Most people start their own business because they have a skill that they enjoy and do well. They think that since they are proficient at their skill, they will be proficient at running a business doing that skill. In the book The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber discusses the mistakes that Entrepreneurs make when starting their own business.

Gerber says, “The technician suffering from an Entrepreneurial Seizure takes the work he loves to do and turns it into a job. The work that was born out of love becomes a chore, among a welter of other less familiar and less pleasant chores. Rather than maintaining its specialness, representing the unique skill the technician possesses and upon which he started the business, the work becomes trivialized, something to get through in order to make room for everything else that must be done.” The E-Myth Revisited.

It’s important to understand what the working conditions are going to be and decide if this is a life you are prepared to live. Doing something as your full time job is different than doing it as a hobby but many people jump into a new business without really counting the cost. This explains why so many small business fail within their first year but it also explains why those businesses that succeed can bring incomparable satisfaction to those who do make it.

We looked at our optimal working conditions before deciding how to grow Vision Quest Virtual Tours into the business of our dreams.

Greg has been self employed as a photographer most of his adult life and I have been in commission sales so we both have a long history of being responsible for our own success and income. We wanted to build a business that would also allow us to have a life. In my next blog, I will talk about what we wanted that life to look like.

To learn more, visit our website at www.VisionQuestVirtualTours.com.
Paige Mitts 404-863-9769
Vision Quest Virtual Tours is a North Georgia Virtual Tour company that is a nationwide provider for high quality virtual tours for Education, Healthcare and Hospitality. We offer a high quality service at an affordable price.