SOURCE - https://brightwanderer.tumblr.com/post/681806049845608448
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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned āforeverā into the only acceptable definition of success.
Likeā¦ if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, itās a āfailedā business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you donāt actually want to keep doing that, youāre a āfailedā writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, itās a āfailedā marriage.
The only acceptable āwin conditionā is āyou keep doing that thing foreverā. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a ārealā friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a āphaseā - or, alternatively, a āpityā that you donāt do that thing any more. A fandom is ādyingā because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.
| just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And itās okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of successā¦ I donāt think thatās doing us any good at all.
Thatās freelancing then, not really a business, isnāt it?
There was a dessert business I used to do work for that catered a lot of local businesses events. She got plenty of work there and then had a loyal customer base because of the introduction to her desserts at these events. That seems like a valid business to me. She retired and moved to be closer to her kids and that was it. No one to take her place. I donāt know what you consider freelancing but she put her kids through school off of it so I donāt know why it wouldnāt count as business even if she technically never had long term contracts. She had her stuff in stores in the area because she made a name for herself and her products. People liked her and her story as much as the food so I donāt think people wouldāve kept buying it if they found out she didnāt own it anymore.
I think you might not be aware of how many people have small businesses. 10% of American workers are self employed. I have done a lot of work for small businesses and itās very different than what a lot of people who had a teacher and a factory worker as parents think.
For me a business is an organization with intellectual property (recipes, for instance) employees (institutional knowledge, know-how), reputation, location, customer base, etc. Basically a bus factor higher than 1.
A successful motivational speaker, a good mechanic or a youtuber wouldnāt be āa businessā in my understanding. A car garage with 5 mechanics would.
Iām not sure why you think having multiple employees is necessary for a business. You need to register a business regardless of how many employees it has and need to pay taxes and carry applicable licenses and insurance regardless. Does a married couple working together count because itās technically two people? Does someone who pays a contract company or temp agency to cover business tasks count? If I run a remodeling business but I just do the plans and subcontract entire construction teams to do the actual remodel that wouldnāt count by your metric. It seems like it falls into the kind of thinking OOP is suggesting against. You seem to have just decided that a business needs to meet some random requirement in order to be valid. What exactly is a single mechanic who works for themselves supposed to say? Do they not own a business?
I already mentioned: intelectual property, unique products, client base, location, assets, etc.
A YouTuber or mechanic can have all of those, but you said you wouldnāt count them. At this point Iām not even sure what youāre getting at. My original point is that not all businesses can be sold for tens of thousands. You can disagree or redefine the word business if you want but I know the reality of it. Neither of us are getting anywhere at this point so Iām happy to just end this here.
Because that aināt a business, thatās a freelancer. LMG has some intellectual property. If Linus is hit by a bus they might lose views, but will survive. Mkbhd (the company) doesnāt, if marques is hit by a bus the channel dies. Because thatās not a business, thatās a freelancer with a production team.