This is, we are constantly told, the age of the freelancer and the entrepreneur. In the U.K., the number of startups passed the 600,000-mark – a record, while official statistics suggest that the number of workers classified as freelancers has grown steadily since 2011, from 1.4 million to 1.88 million. The situation is little different in the U.S., traditionally a hot-bed of entrepreneurial activity. Indeed, a study by the software company Intuit predicted in 2010 that by 2020 40% of U.S. workers would be freelance.
Admittedly, many of these freelancers would not have chosen this life. They have been turned into self-employed temporary workers by companies that no longer want to carry the fixed costs associated with large permanent workforces. But there is also a greater desire – especially since work is these days reckoned to be increasingly stressful – for more control over working lives. This is especially true of younger people. The problem is that, while we in the media and others can unwittingly create the impression that it is relatively straightforward to have an idea in college and quickly turn that into a Facebook or Snapchat, the reality is that it is a lot easier to fail. And it is the entirely understandable fear of failing that prevents many people from making the leap from permanent job to freelance or entrepreneur.
Except that, according to Patrick J. McGinnis, becoming an entrepreneur does not have to be a leap in the dark. As he puts it, it is not a question of either/or. Rather, he advocates sticking with the steady job and being entrepreneurial on the side. As the subtitle to his book The 10% Entrepreneur says, “Live your dream without quitting your day job.” Of course, the predictable rejoinder is that it is surely hard if not impossible to find time in the typically full-on work day for another job. But his point is that being an entrepreneur does not necessarily require more work. Indeed, he urges people to move away from the idea of freelancing – the so-called gig economy, where workers have to work ever harder to earn a living and then have nothing to live on as soon as they stop – and instead embrace the notion of ownership. Investing in a startup, providing advice in return for equity or making money out of a hobby, such as pottery or other crafts, are all ways of being entrepreneurial without having to put in lots of extra hours in doing additional “work.”
Another objection might be that no right-minded boss would agree to their employees giving less than their full attention to their day job. However, McGinnis points to how Google and other companies are increasingly encouraging employees to devote a certain percentage of their time to personal or outside projects in the hope that the creativity unleashed will also benefit their main occupation. And he reminds us that the ubiquitous Post-it note was a result of the policy of its producer, 3M, giving its employees the freedom to work on private projects. Moreover, he makes a compelling argument that the employee who engages in outside work can learn new skills and develop fresh attitudes and enthusiasms that they can bring to the workplace. At the same time, they are, of course, developing skills, contacts and interests that might protect them if – as is increasingly the case – that safe job becomes a lot less safe or even disappears.
McGinnis’s own light-bulb moment came when working for an investment fund that was part of AIG, the huge insurance company that imploded at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. Now, he runs his own firm providing strategic advice to investors and businesses around the world, but also has about 20 other projects ranging from tech companies to real estate that qualify him as a 10% entrepreneur. “I consider myself lucky,” he writes. “Absent the financial crisis, I would have plugged along, head down, eyes forward, on the same set path. I thought my career was bulletproof since I had done everything by the book and had an MBA from Harvard. I was mistaken. Instead I was now the guy who’d built his entire career with the express purpose of avoiding failure but, in fact, had just failed rather spectacularly. It took AIG’s stock crashing, both literally and figuratively, to shake me from my complacency.”