I Work for the Biggest Jerk! Oh That is ME!

I Work for a Jerk

Yes, I work for the biggest jerk I’ve ever worked for—ME.

About three years ago, I wrote a post called My Boss is a Jerk…wait a minute I am my own boss! I think it is time to re-examine this topic. I wonder if this jerk has gotten any better at managing his employee!

Well, my boss is definitely a little bit nicer, but he still knows when I am:

• goofing off
• faking illness
• procrastinating
• running late on a project

Despite these, he has given up trying to fire me.

Working for yourself can be quite daunting!

What can I do about this jerk?

I have worked on multiple strategies on how to deal with this jerk.

Delegate – As a solo-entrepreneur, it is easy to tell yourself that you should do it all. This is a myth. I now have a bookkeeper, an editor, an intern for social media, a webmaster, and various co-authors. I also plan on hiring a virtual assistant within the next year.

Automate – I have automated multiple parts of my business through the use of low cost or free tools. Please read the post 9 Free Tools that Boost Your Brand and Career for a review of some of the tools I use. These tools have allowed me to automate much of my social media, calendar, email, and website.

I am not alone!

This last week, I presented at the AARP 55+ in ATX: Job and Volunteer Fair. There, I spoke about Social Disruption – How Social Media Has Disrupted the Job Search. A wonderful lawyer (no, that is not an oxymoron) Laura Fowler, spoke representing SCORE.

Laura almost immediately started to explain that, when you go to work for yourself, you will be working for the biggest jerk of a boss possible—yourself.

This was a great reminder that I am not alone. Working for yourself is HARD.

My boss is getting better

My boss let me take a vacation this year. I wrote about him in my post, 4 Lessons Learned from My Working Vacation. This was the first real vacation my wife and I have taken in several years!

I am in my fifth year of this entrepreneurial journey, and I can tell you that working for myself has not been easy. From the beginning, maintaining a healthy work-life balance has been really difficult. This was especially true in the early years when money was tight and it was not clear that my business would thrive.

Even so, I’m not quite ready to say I have this work-life balance thing figured out. Heck, I am writing this post on a Saturday afternoon because I have to get this post to my editor today in order to be published on Monday. My boss still does not give me weekends off. What a jerk!

I have to admit, my boss is getting better. He is not quite the jerk he used to be.

What do you think, could he eventually become a nice guy?

Marc Miller  

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