Upper management came out with new policy last week that’s untenable. They can’t expect people to put up with these new rules, and they can expect a mass exodus in coming weeks. But you worked from home four years ago and liked it. Your skills are sharp. You could be your own boss.
But before you tender your resignation and remodel the guest room, read “One Day I’ll Work for Myself” by Benjamin C. Waterhouse.
Before the Civil War, most American businesses were small businesses, owned by people who knew their customers and crafted items in small batches. Big changes came, though, in the postwar years when the American Industrial Revolution made goods available on a larger scale and shippable anywhere.
Today, Waterhouse says, the majority of companies in the U.S. are, by government definition, “small.” Eighty-one percent of those businesses have no employees other than the owner. Around one of nine people in today’s workforce are self-employed.
So how did we get to the point where not working for a corporation, not leaving for the office, not 9-to-5-ing is common, even goal-worthy?
By the early 1900s, Waterhouse says, Americans worked for someone else for benefits and a paycheck. That was especially true in the post-WWII years, when mom and pop ventures existed but the most substantial companies were owned by white men. Politics entered business, and it did so in a big way. Cultural shifts and social changes then altered the way we work.
“One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America”
By Benjamin C. Waterhouse
c.2024, W.W. Norton & Company
$29.99
274 pages
It changed again in every recession that’s happened in the past 50 years, with politics swinging support to and from small businesses and various administrations trying to convince voters that they were pro-worker. And then there was Covid-19, and why return to an office?
The bottom line, Waterhouse says, “is that there are as many reasons for going into business as there are people who go into business. Terms like opportunity and necessity “cannot capture the complexity of those experiences.”
Ever had a job you hated, that sucked your soul dry? Entrepreneurship sounds pretty good when it’s quittin’ time then and it seems to have its moment now. So learn the big picture on being your own boss, but beware: you might change your mind.
First things first: You’ll want to know that “One Day I’ll Work for Myself” isn’t a how-to book. There are no advice sections or end-of-chapter tips and hints. This is a history book, straight-up, and so the lessons are buried inside the timeline, the stories, and the case-studies the author shares.
Stay open to them, and you’ll see how modern work works. Why Granddad’s business thrived but yours doesn’t makes sense. How we got here – with work-for-yourself having such cachet despite the politics of it all – will be perfectly clear.
“One Day I’ll Work for Myself” is an interesting read for any level of businessperson, and for anyone who loves to read about politics or history. If you’re thinking about entrepreneurship, your new boss will love it.
Terri Schlichenmeyer’s reviews of business books are read in publications throughout the U.S. and Canada.