Money And Investing  -

2 8 | § ¶And Like That, He Was Back
   -- To gainful employment

Just like that, a month and a half since I left the world of gainful employment I will start at a new job in a Pre-IPO startup company (beginning of April 2007). So much for my self-employment trial, and I say that with sadness as I was already enjoying the fun of having my own business (which I will keep on the side for miscellaneous purposes).

There is something I discovered during my numerous hours thinking about the business model: there is a stage in anyone's career where the value of the ability to decide how perform a work exceeds the value of the ability to perform the work. My late employer valued my ability to decide how to perform a task or implement something a lot. The market also values my ability to perform it, but I have discovered that if I did 100 days of billable work at my current rate I would make close to what I made in gainful employment in base salary. If I do more than a 100 days of billable work the number will most probably come closer to what I have been doing, plus bonuses.

This lead me to the concussion that I had to do either (or both):

• I increased my billable work day rate.
• I increased the amount of billable days by several multiples. This would meant having employees or sub-contractors, as I have already demonstrated that a consultant can expect to have up to 200 billable work days in a year, but not more.

I would rather do the both I thought. But if I had to choose one, I would prefer the second. The second imposes less limits on the ability to earn money, while the first is really difficult to achieve on my line of consulting. There is the third option of changing the type of service/product offered, but I haven't completely thought into that.

I found only one problem: I do not have experience hiring employees or retaining contractors, nor I do have experience managing people. It would impose a very big risk into my endeavor if I try: a risk I think I could absorb and pay the price of it, given that I do have savings and I can still generate money with my own work. I do, however, prefer the idea of having someone pay for my learning and experience at this point and that is what has motivated my change of heart with this consulting business.

I have decided to accept a position of Manager of Professional Services at a base salary that slightly improves my previous salary, but with an increased bonus/stock-option potential and the ability to learn the skills that will allow me to re-launch my business in more solid grounds.

For the opportunity to provide maximum financial benefit the company has to do well, I have to perform excellently, and I should stay for two to three years in the job. I have established a self-performance criteria that if I can't do more than a 100% of the services sales quota on the first year, I should seriously re-consider going back into independent consulting, however. I must do my best to learn the skills very fast and perform excellently, and I feel confident I will.

Good luck to myself in this new stage of my career. May I learn the skills I could use as an entrepreneur, or jump into the high levels of upper corporate management and its associated compensation. (I am flexible, you see?)