In one of our favorite scenes from the 2008 biopic The Social Network, Harvard students Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss meet with the University President to address fellow student Mark Zuckerberg allegedly stealing their idea. After presenting their case, they are told by the President: “Harvard undergraduates believe that inventing a job is better than finding a job. So, I'll suggest again that the two of you come up with a new project.” While we don’t support commandeering others’ intellectual property, we absolutely concur that inventing a job is exponentially better than finding a job. Why? Let’s break it down:

No guarantees. First and foremost, finding a job is not a guarantee of success, employment security, or personal fulfillment. In the above example, the Winklevoss twins could have easily pursued full-time positions in Investment Banking or Venture Capital, and attempted to work their way up the corporate hierarchy. Is this a safe, linear path? Not at all. Private companies that employ full-time employees are more mortal than most think, and employees are never immune from downsizing, layoffs, payroll cuts, hour cuts, sales commission caps, and of course the social risks: personal dissatisfaction, nepotism/lack of advancement, management mistreatment, harassment, exploitation, wrongful termination, injuries/mental stresses, overworking under duress of losing one’s job or sacrificing a chance at promotion. There is constant risk. If there’s no guarantee you’ll be successful or even happy at a 9-5 job, you might as well risk betting on yourself to be successful and fulfilled. Did we mention attaining financial independence?

Ownership. When you are an employee at a company, unless you are in commissions-based sales, the company’s success has little to no tangible or monetary correlation with your income or equity (if you even have any whatsoever). In fact, by definition, most employers construct employee contracts to limit payroll expenditures beyond a certain percentage. This is a disproportionate disadvantage for any employee, as the quality and quantity of your work is not rewarded, and the largest incentive is to simply not lose your job. Some exchange of services, huh?

However, when you start a business, you own it, flat out. Unless you started it with a partner(s) or raised capital, you are the sole equity holder, therefore the sole decision-maker. Logically, this also means you are the sole beneficiary of any and all business successes, and your financial success is directly correlated with the business’ success. Best month of sales yet? Greatest monthly take-home for you. Big unexpected client signed on with a big up-front retainer? Enjoy that retainer (less business overhead). Manufacturing cost of your highest-selling product decreases 13%? That 13% goes right back into your pocket. Let’s say the business is successful, but you’re sick and tired of running it. Have a feeling the industry is about to take a turn for the worst? Sell it for a lump sum, or unload some equity for liquidity and take a long vacation, focus on something else, or start a new business entirely. Your ownership enables freedom and more importantly optionality. 

Less externalities. Since you created your job, you are less subject to many externalities, and unaffected by others entirely. For example, a 9-5 employee can get fired, laid off, or demoted. Since you created your job/business, this is impossible. Again, your job/business is a meritocracy, so your success is tied to your business’s performance. If you neglect your duties or fail to meet client/customer demands, or sales run dry, your revenue may disappear, essentially laying yourself off. However, that should be enough incentive for yourself to not only keep the business alive and well, but streamlined and ever-growing. Commission caps, hour cuts, nepotism, management mistreatment, exploitation, harassment, and corporate politics are mostly, if not entirely, non-factors in this scenario. You’re in control, so your work experience will correspond with what you allow or disallow.

Delegate. In a 9-5, since you are a subordinate and not an owner (or even partner in most cases), your superior probably delegates less than fun tasks to you. These are neither fun nor rewarding, are typically not challenging, and offer little to no monetary or intrinsic reward. They’re simply renting your time for (less) than what they’ll net from your labor. 

What if you were the one in charge? Since you own the business and you’re the decision-maker, you control who does what, when, how, and for how much. Once your business grows to a point where it’s no longer feasible to run by yourself, or simply not worth killing yourself working 80 hour weeks over, it’ll make sense to hire someone to take mundane, time-consuming duties off your plate. For example, this might look like paying an employee $1,000 a week to answer phones and service customers directly. The quality of life for your self-created job then improves immensely, as dreadful and time-consuming but essential duties can be delegated to another individual who’s solely responsible for tending to such matters. Since you started the business, know the products, market players, business strategy, and clients/customers better than anyone, your time is the most valuable, so you are entitled to hand off lower value, less-rewarding labor to lower-paid employees so you can focus on higher-level macro duties. Goodbye admin, accounting, marketing, data entry, customer service, returns, graphic design, and IT.

Outsource labor. This is similar to delegating, but the distinction here is that you have the freedom to outsource any task or duty, simply because you don’t want to do it. Regardless of whether outsourcing takes a bite out of your monthly income, if you’re okay with earning $15k/month and backpacking in Europe for 3 months instead of earning $20k and being at a computer 5 days a week, then maybe it’s worth it to you. The point here is you have the choice. Whereas in a 9-5 job, you probably don’t. The world is your oyster, and with the advent of mainstream internet access and online businesses, it’s realistically feasible for anyone to start a business and outsource a majority of the work to domestic (or overseas) laborers for a fraction of the profit, in order to streamline or liberate your time.

Passive income. For a full-time employee, passive income is not an option, unless you are a remote consultant on retainer, or have a business on the side (which has nothing to do with your full-time job, by the way). Your full-time position is a contractual agreement between your employer and yourself that rents your time on an hourly or annual basis in exchange for no more than X amount of dollars/euros/insert your local fiat. 

Conversely, for the individual who creates their own job and starts a business, passive income is both attainable and the ultimate (potentially recurring) goal. As explained above, one of the many beauties of owning and running your own business is your role as the sole or lead decision-maker. Therefore, you can decide who or what processes to delegate, outsource, or automate. As your business grows and streamlines, you can gradually remove yourself from the equation, merely overseeing operations from a distance at your own discretion. The farther you remove yourself from the business’ equation, the more passive running your business becomes. As with becoming successful at anything, the first win is always the most difficult. Starting a business is no different, in fact probably more difficult. However, once you painstakingly work through the process, learn from your mistakes, and optimize an efficient formula, starting the second venture becomes a little easier, thanks to the invaluable experience and financial security from your first business’ success. Like anything sustainable of value, this process has a massive compounding effect and perpetually enables you to conceptualize and bring to life additional income streams with removing yourself from the equation as fast as possible and transitioning the main operations to a passive income mode, like your others.

Focus on strengths/interesting work. Now that you’ve delegated and outsourced any work that is not conducive to proportionately allocating your time and expertise, you are free to funnel your efforts into the most high-yielding, bottom-line boosting, challenging (in a good way) and intrinsically stimulating responsibilities. This could be enterprise sales, contracting deals with interesting affiliates, product development, experimenting and/or implementing new technology, etc. Whatever it is that you’ve found to be the most pleasurable (or most profitable) part of the job, is now all yours. Not only is this enjoyable and probably monetarily rewarding, but it also enables the most important factor; self-improvement. Anyone can build a business, outsource the large chunk of it, and step away to semi-passively maintain its day-to-day. But building a business should inspire one to recognize growth opportunities and scalability potential. This is one of the primary reasons we contend passion is overrated; because no one hates anything they’re great at. Success is contagious, and should be leveraged to snowball into more success. 

Recession-Proof. This is relative but definitely some truth to it. In economic downturns and a myriad of other risks facing full-time employees, one of the first budget lines accountants look to slash is personnel. Why? Salaries are typically one of a company’s highest expenses, if not the highest. This means no bonuses, reduced hours, and layoffs. While entrepreneurs and self-employed business owners are not immune to recessions, they are certainly in greater control of their financial stability given they maintain regular cash flow. Whereas many companies and large corporations are hamstrung by quarterly earnings, investor dividends, corporate debt, over-leveraged exposure, and catch-22 expenses of larger businesses (employee 401k’s, health insurance, multiple brick and mortar properties, bloated executive salaries, ‘team-building getaways,’ severance packages, etc.), you are probably unaffected by these. While no one's ‘immune’ to recessions, if you created your own job/business and have a reliable business model, you just may have greater financial stability and financial independence than most.

So, what did Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss do instead of folding their hand and settling for traditional 9-5 jobs? They invented their own job and built a U.S.-based Crypto-Asset online exchange that is now one of the safest, most compliant, and most popular digital asset businesses on the planet in a nascent and rapidly-growing sector. The point here: 9-5 jobs will always exist, but they should not (in most cases) be one’s highest goal. For most, the ceiling is much, much higher, and more fulfilling, but sadly is never realized. Our advice? Start your dream job today.