Afternoon folks,

Curious as to what some of you folks do for a living. In particular those that one day thought “sod it I’ll work for myself”.

So what were you doing before hand? What do you do now?

Basically I’m in a reasonably well paid job at the moment but the future isn’t so bright if I stay put. The other problem is I’m skilled to do what I do now and not much else. I don’t really enjoy the sector that I work in. I fancy a change to something different.

Moon on a stick please.

My wife walks dogs and has them to to stay with us

She likes and we haven’t had any real outlay to get the business going. But its hardly the worlds greatest money spinner

I worked for IBM. Well, I say “worked”, they didn’t really know what to do with me so I spent 8 months going on training courses, reading a lot of manuals, and trying to get an OS-390 mainframe to run Doom.

Then I quit, which was probably as much of a relief to them as it was to me.

Do you have a hobby you like? Could you turn that into a business, and maybe risk losing it as a hobby?

I had a goodish proper job and did the opt out thinking, what’s the worst that can happen. That was >10yrs back and been self-employed since, moving from a one man band (which on reflection was pretty low stress, effort but a wee bit lonely) to having a ‘more proper’ business with employees. On balance, it’s been good but you never switch off from it, worry more but satisfaction is higher. Beware the ‘grass is greener’!

I had done a few different jobs, car salesman, delivery driver. Got to the age of 30 and decided now or never so trained as a Driving Instructor.

It was a struggle at first and it cost me about £5k to get qualified and out on the road but now I’m turning business away as I’m really busy.

Money wise, it’s not brilliant but it could be a real money spinner if I put loads of hours in but I love the work life balance.

I’m also a Bikeabilty instructor which I do one day a week.

For balance I quit the rat race to work for myself, but wasn’t cut out for it. That was combined with a fairly tumultuous time with my mental health, which may have been what I was trying to escape from in the first place. Now much better and back to a career but working in the third sector and loving it.

I used to be in enterprise IT sales. When I hit 50 it became clear that the industry didn’t want me and I drifted for a bit.

One horrible job was as a sales designer for a bedroom furniture company but I got to see there was no magic in making beautiful bedroom furniture.

So now I design and make bespoke storage and shelving – fitted bedrooms, studies, some kitchen & bathroom stuff.

The motivation came when I was getting completely fed up working evenings and weekends for the bedroom company and Mrs BigJohn told me to “Pack that in and spend your time doing something you enjoy and that you are good at…and if you get paid for it – that’s a bonus”.

Good advice.