S1 10: Self Employment vs Traditional Career

Do you ever catch yourself stuck between “I want to work for myself” and “Wait, how would that even work?” 😅 Same. For us neuroqueer folks and other marginalized identities, balancing traditional job searches with the dream of self-employment can feel like a full-time job on its own.

This week on The Colorful Futures Podcast, I’m sharing what it’s really like to move from the corporate world to carving out a career that fits you. We’re talking about understanding your strengths, navigating the challenges of the job market, and figuring out how to build a business that aligns with your values (without burning yourself out in the process).

Spoiler: Trying to do it all on your own? Not the move. Finding your people and creating accountability can make all the difference in turning dreams into action.

If you’re wondering what self-employment actually looks like and how to start taking small, actionable steps toward a career that works for you, this episode is for you. 🎧💖

---

Transcript

Speaker: Liora Natania

Hello, my friend, and welcome back to another episode of the Colorful Futures Podcast. I'm your host, Liora, Career Coach, Talent Acquisition Consultant, and Founder of Colorful Futures. 

In this show, we talk about all things related to careers and business through the lens of the lived experiences of folks with marginalized identities, intersectional identities, people who have been historically underrepresented in business and in corporate work. You can expect to hear real stories, advice, and tips from myself as well as other guests on the show.

Our goal is to help you build a successful and sustainable career where you can be your authentic self. In the recent months, I've been working with a lot of clients that have transitioned from focusing on their job search to building a business or people who just always wanted to build a business and are starting that journey. 

And I've found that every client I work with or most clients are having similar struggles around, they know they want to have a successful, sustainable business and they know that their end goal would be offering a certain kind of service or an offer or working with certain kinds of people, but getting from where they are now, which is step one, to earning that income, earning enough money to replace the job that they either have or that they would hope to have. That middle part is very confusing. 

And what I've seen with the clients I've worked with is they focus on that end result of making sales and earning income and getting that stability, but their business isn't set up. They have all these ideas for marketing, they have ideas for offers, and it's just very unclear as to what that next step is. And of course, we're all ADHDers, so like, the idea of the sort of linear process doesn't come natural to us at all. 

So that's what I want to talk through today is kind of working through those fears, those uncertainties, those insecurities and how you get from the idea of a business and sort of the kind of concept, the vision of being a business owner to actually having a successful business, making income, making sales, marketing it, and knowing what the fuck you're doing in the process. 

Lately, I've been working with a lot more clients who are exploring self-employment, who are interested in building businesses. Some of these folks have come to me with the intention of building a business, and many of them have started with looking for a traditional job and being on a job searching journey. And as we work together, it kind of evolves from I wanna work for someone else to I wanna work for myself and like, what the fuck does that look like? 

So as I work with people, whether they're in my group program, Claim Your Career, or one-on-one, naturally the way that I approach my coaching in both group and one-on-one settings is we always start with career discovery or as I like to call now, career disco. 

So through career disco, we define you know, where they've been, what worked, what didn't, what they like, what they don't. We talk through like, the skills that they've learned that they want to keep growing or that they want to keep using and then the things that they don't. 

So maybe, you know, if you have a background in sales and you're like, I really liked consulting with clients. I really liked creating solutions. I liked the organization part of it, but I really didn't like the sort of sales driven cold calling part. You know, that's important information to know. 

Or if you're in marketing, getting specific about what things you like. And then I have folks who have worked in one field and they're like, I'm not interested in that at all and I wanna use this kind of skill that I have. Like I have a client who worked in media and production and they don't wanna be in media anymore at all, but they loved the organizational aspect of it, the systems part of it. That comes really naturally to them, so they wanna lean into that.

And the clients that I work with who are starting in a job search journey, who are coming to me for job search advice, to get a job, to get a traditional job, as we go through their career disco and we define what they like, what they don't, what they want to do, what they don't, oftentimes I'll kind of pick up on little signals that, they'll say, like I could do this, maybe I'll freelance, maybe I'll consult, maybe I'll whatever, or they'll just mention skills that I know can work well for self-employment.

And the first question I ask is, have you considered self-employment? Or I'll say, like, what do you think about self-employment if they've actually said the words. And then we'll talk through, you know, what that means to them, what they're scared about. Is it a finance thing? Is it a stability thing? 

Most of my clients now, the biggest concern is how do they manage their executive functioning when running a business? How do they still have some sense of team, of community when they're a solopreneur, when they're only working for themselves and they don't have a team? And obviously there are financial concerns too.

But what I found, which is actually kind of interesting, and I'm kind of realizing this now, is that that's never the first thing. It's always like, how do I work with my brain? How do I actually like, stay accountable to my work? How do I get from this idea to actually earning money? And the actual income, the sales part is sort of secondary. 

So there's a shift that happens when someone is working through a job search. And especially in this market where finding a job is difficult overall. And then trying to find a job as a neuroqueer person adds another layer to an already difficult process. Whether it's because we're worried about masking, we're worried about burnout, we're worried about like, it going to be a queer-friendly environment? Do we put our pronouns in our resume? Do we not? 

And there's all of these different nuances that we have to consider. Because we can't just like, apply to a job and not think about all of these things because that's just not who we are. And these corporate systems weren't built for us. So we have to literally be thinking about every little detail of the process. 

Then you add in this job market where it makes it even more difficult to get work. And then you add in the fact that at least for me and my clients, you know, we don't want to just work for a company that is going to cause more burnout, that is going to be misaligned with our values, that is going to disrespect us. 

So now you've narrowed down that lens even further. And there's only so much that you can do to find jobs like that, to apply to them, to get the offer. And I found that that's where I'll be, you know, talking with my clients and they've been applying for months, they've been applying to maybe 100 jobs, they haven't been able to find quite what they want to do.

And it seems like a natural step for a neurodivergent person to take, of that sort of very tiny voice in your head that's like, maybe I could just work for myself. And my job as their coach is to walk through the job search process. Yes. And like, create space for that. Make sure they're set up for that. Absolutely. But as soon as I hear that like, little voice speak up of like, maybe I'll work for myself. I'm like, no, no, no. Like speak up, say it louder, speak up.

Because there's a statistic that, don't quote me, I don't know the actual numbers, a large amount of neurodivergent people, especially ADHDers, end up working for themselves. A large amount of autistic folks end up working for themselves. I know for me, I was tired of reporting to the cishet white man who would write their company values in a way that sounded really good, but their day-to-day practices went completely against that. 

And there's only so much of that that you can take until you're just like, fuck it. Can I just be focused on my own stuff? Everyone I work with, it's not just a matter of they wanna make a business because they wanna make money. It's like they wanna build a business because they wanna help other people, whether that's helping other people through helping them with their workflows and their systems and their processes so that they can avoid burnout in their own work and their businesses. 

Or it's they want to work in marketing, but they want to market for organizations that are mission-driven, organizations that have a movement that they're behind. At least in my experience and my clients, it's never a decision based on just the money. It's a decision based on choosing a quote unquote non-traditional path of self-employment so that they can make a larger impact and more positive impact in the world. 

And that's something that's really difficult to do when you work for other companies and you have very little power and autonomy when you're working for someone else. Not to say that that's true of every company, but most of them for sure. 

What I like to do with these folks is recognizing where they're at, where, you know, and this was me too, when I first started my business, way before I started Colorful Futures. I had recently started working for this startup. And I remember telling my boss at the time, the Recruiting Director, like, I asked her, what do you think about like, quote, moonlighting? Can I consult with people on the side? 

And, you know, it wasn't a problem, but I never did anything with it. But it was that voice of just like, I've seen so much in recruiting. I've seen this opportunity where people are struggling to work within these systems and I wanted to help them with it. So again, it wasn't about the money. It was, can I help bridge the gap of neurodivergent and queer folks, People of Color, non-native English speakers, like anything like that they're struggling with because of their identities, because of the fact that corporate America especially is not made for them in mind. 

I really wanted to help them navigate that. So, you know, it wasn't until maybe a year and a half later that I actually had the opportunity and the time to build the business. And in the beginning I found with myself and with my clients, you know, you have all of these ideas, you have this swarm of thoughts that comes through of who you want to help, what you want to do, all the worries, all the concerns, like there's a million and five things going on and a million and five ideas that run through your brain. 

And if you want some help organizing that you can listen to my other episode that talks about organizing all of your thoughts around entrepreneurship and self-employment. But really the key is to dig into like, what's the why behind it? And so this is actually something I've been doing recently with the clients who have gone from I'm job searching to, I have this sort of idea of like, maybe I'll consider self-employment. 

And then we talk about it a little bit more. And then they go to, okay, well, what, what's actually next? Like, how do I make this a reality? Then there's like the in-between of before you even decide, okay, this is what I'm going for. There's the thoughts of, all right, well, maybe I'll balance both. 

So I have a client right now who was in my Claim Your Career program, through that program realized that she wanted to consider self-employment. And so what we've been working on together is both. You spend some of your time on your job search. You spend some of your time taking some initial steps to build a business.

And maybe you get a job, in which case maybe the business gets put on hold or you spend less time on it, or maybe you still job search and maybe you don't get anywhere, but then you're still putting time and effort into your business and just kind of balancing both of those things. 

And I think that can be really helpful for folks who are skeptical about self-employment or maybe you're still nervous about it because you can give yourself the opportunity and the choice to still get a job, to still have that option of what we think of as stability or even just the thing that we're all taught is like the quote, right thing to do. 

There's actually been several people I've talked to who have had a struggle of talking with their friends and family and their loved ones about exploring self-employment because again, like we're told that that's the harder thing to do or we're told it's not the sustainable thing to do. You know, we're conditioned by our school and by our family and whatever that you should go for stability, that you should go for the full-time job. 

You should go for the corporate position and like you just have to do what you have to do to survive and self-employment is like the riskier choice. And to those people, I say, okay, maybe you think it's riskier, maybe you think it's not aligned, and that's fine, you can go work a corporate job, but that doesn't mean that's the right thing for me or for my clients or for the people who are considering self-employment. 

Because the reality is, as I've already said, these corporate workplaces, traditional work as we know it, especially in the US, it's not built for us. So to tell a neuroqueer person, to tell a multiply marginalized person that it's, I don't know, insert anything here, that it's selfish, that it's privileged, that it's like, unrealistic to go and start a business and be self-employed. 

I mean, frankly, it's unrealistic and unsustainable for us to be going through these corporate workplace systems that we burn out in, that we are on this like roller coaster, on this ride of like, you look for a job, you mask the interview, you get the job, you work in it for a while, all while masking, you burn out, you get fired, you get laid off, you quit because of burnout, whatever, and then you start again. 

And I found that that window gets shorter and shorter. So maybe your first job is four years, your second one is three, your next one is a year until you're like, I need to get off this fucking ride. Like, you know, we can't keep doing that. And that for me was, was something I really had to think about when I started my business, was like, I was laid off. It was really difficult to find a job for a recruiter.

I was like, what am I going to do? I could keep applying, which I was doing in the beginning. I was like, maybe I'll go back and I'll work for a coffee shop again. And like for a little bit, and by a little bit, my ADHD brain is like a little bit, but it was like maybe an afternoon. I was like, maybe I'll go work at a coffee shop again. And then I had to think through, like I was romanticizing the idea because I was like, okay, I could get income. I could have a little social life. I can have a little structure.

I could get free coffee and food again, benefits and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, that all sounds really great. And then I pictured myself in that role. And this is what I encourage my clients to do too. Picture yourself in that role. What does that look like? And not just the good parts, but the bad parts too. 

And when I did this for myself, I pictured myself going through the day and thinking through all the frustrating parts of the day, all the things that I can't control. I would think through how much I'd be underpaid and it gave me flashbacks to all the jobs I had like that, where I spent half the day pissed off, resenting it, resenting my team, resenting the customers, like just resenting being in this role that my mind would always go to like, I could literally be at home right now, building my own thing and like having so much more control over it. 

And it's in that thought exercise of letting myself kind of go through, okay, yeah, like, what are the good parts about getting a job? And what are the bad parts? Like, what has historically happened for me that made me realize, yeah, no, I'm not going to do that. The time I could be spending working at that cafe, I could spend doing my own thing and being so much better off for it. 

This is why I tell people too, like self employment is scary, but it's also empowering. And you're kind of picking your hard, you know, do you want the hard of trying to fit within these systems that just fuck you up for so many reasons, or do you want the hard of being able to build something really beautiful and help other people in the process? 

When you're kind of holding both of these things, you're still job searching, you're still applying when you can, and you're building your business and you're taking those steps. I always encourage folks when they maybe get an interview request or they're applying to a job to think through like, what aligns with them. And this also comes back to the career disco process. 

So, you know, looking back to what values do you find important? What parts of the job are important, what things do you want to avoid? What are things that historically has made it harder for you or that you haven't aligned with, and making sure that the job you're applying for, interviewing for, is resonating with all of the goals that you set in that disco process. 

It's also really interesting. I had a client literally just a few days ago. We had a session and she was like, fully focused on self-employment. And by that afternoon, I think it was the same day, got an interview request for a job in media, which she doesn't want to do. And the job sounds pretty cool. Like it's definitely in alignment with the things that she wants to do as a self-employed person. 

But the first thing I asked was like, how do you feel about that? Like, are you feeling excited? Are you feeling nervous? Are you feeling like, what's going on? And I think that's one of those things like she can't really identify until she does the interview. But this has also happened before with the same client. They did an interview that they were excited for and they were like, this could be really cool. It's with someone I worked with before. 

And they did the interview and at the end of it, they were like, it was actually reflected to me how much working in media sucks and how much it's soul sucking and like through allowing herself to take the interview, it confirmed to her that self-employment is the way to go. It like, confirmed everything that she figured out on her own, but still like giving yourself the chance to say, okay, great, got this interview or like I'm applying for this job. Let me just keep this as an option.

And it can tell you a lot, if she did the interview and was like, this sounds awesome, I'm going to give it a shot. And this could mean more stability and like all the things that, you know, she's looking for, then I'd be super happy about that. And that's like the whole idea. But what I found most often is those moments of allowing yourself to still explore working for someone else. I like to kind of think of them as like the universe testing you. 

And this is what I told this client was like, this is sort of a little test to be like, okay, you've made this decision for self-employment. Now we're going to give you this other thing and just see what you do with it. And this has happened with me too. I got an interview, it was a few months after I started Colorful Futures. So it was in like, August of 2023. 

And I got an interview for a job and was exploring that and it sounded really cool. And again, I was romanticizing it. I was like, my gosh, I could be making like almost six figures again. I could like, have this structure. I like, won't have to do all these hard things of like, building a business.

And then it was a referral from an old coworker and she talked to me about it, and I was excited for it and she seemed so hesitant. And then I found out later that it was a really bad opportunity and it would have resulted in me being so burnt out and overworked that I was like, I'm kind of glad that that didn't work out because I would have been back to where I was before, burnt out and exhausted and just like, you know, paying my bills, but.

This is, this could also be a whole other conversation. But like when I was making good money, but I was burnt out as fuck, that money flew out the fucking window because I was just like spending it on all these things to make myself feel better. All of that to say, when you're considering starting a business and you're still focused on a job search and you're sort of balancing both, it's just continuously checking in with yourself of how things feel. 

Does it energize you? Does it drain you? Are you thinking through the good parts and the realistic parts, especially when it comes to considering an interview, considering a job offer? It can be really easy to latch onto that because of everything we're taught and everything we're conditioned to think about how that's like, the stable and secure path.

And we want to please people. We want to make our parents proud. We want to make our family proud and like, make our friends proud. But what are we sacrificing in the process of that? And you know, honestly, that's like a conversation to have with your therapist. But that's where I can kind of come in as a coach and just say, okay, like these are thoughts and feelings coming up here are the pros and cons. 

Here's what's energizing you. Here's what's not. It's also my job to reflect that back to you. So when I have clients who are, you know, they're telling me about this job opportunity and then we switch gears and they talk to me about their business. I can literally see like the light enter their eyes again and I can see them getting excited about it and I get to reflect that back to them. 

I'm just like, your whole energy changed. Like this is what you're supposed to do. And there's a lot of fear and a lot of uncertainty because most likely you've never done that before. You've never started a business or maybe you have and it didn't go well. Like for me, I started a business years ago as a Wellness Coach. Didn't go well.

If you're on my email list, you probably got an email about this, but when I started this business again, and it was my second business, it was like, this has to be different. And if you're starting a business for the first time, you want it to go well. And that's where you really need help. Whether it's a coach, whether it's just your friends. 

When I started my business, the first thing I did was just utilize friends of like, I know you don't have a business, but can you look over this resource and just lean in on your community because you can't do this alone. That's one of the things that comes up a lot of fears with my clients of like, how am I gonna make this work for my brain? How am I gonna stay accountable? Like, I don't wanna be alone. 

I like having colleagues. I like having community. And you still get to have that. It just looks a lot different than like the teammate who sits next to you in the cubicle. But it instead looks like networking with other entrepreneurs, networking with other creatives, other people who also want to kind of vibe with you and build your businesses together. 

So I feel like I've talked about like five million things there, but all of that to say, it's possible to build a business. It is more than possible to build a business that's successful and sustainable. And the steps that you take to get there are going to be small in the beginning. It's going to require you moving through your fears and not ignoring them because they're valid. 

They're your feelings, but taking action even if you're scared, even if you're nervous, even if you're unsure. And just knowing that with every step you take, everything that you do is gonna build more confidence in yourself and more trust in yourself that you can actually fucking do this thing. 

All right, there's my little pep talk for the week. Let me know what resonated with you. DM me on Instagram, email me, I would love to hear from you. And we'll catch you next week.