As human beings, I think we hold a natural ability for intelligence. Yet by going to work every day for someone else, the ability to express and explore some of that intelligence becomes hindered. Do you ever feel like a yes man? You think of these great ideas to multiple productivity or cut back expenses… yet the ideas are so radically different than current methods that everyone laughs at you. The method your boss implements works just fine—why would they switch?

You eventually become conditioned to speak up only when you’re told to speak up. Part of your ambition starts to die. Didn’t education challenge us to do otherwise? To question theories and procedures? When you step into the workplace, I think you often make the choice to settle for a potential that’s less than what you are capable of achieving, which is always easier than taking a risk.

What if the boss were you?

In order to survive, you cannot be a yes man and be self-employed. So if you’re tired of being scoffed at, why not become the boss of your own ideas? You’d be able to utilize the intellectual capabilities within you to further your business and ideally, your profits. I’ve read a lot about companies that devote a specific amount of time each year to job development and training. Other companies give employees time to tinker with their own ideas during a specific portion of the week. I think that these environments motivate an employee. Unfortunately, I doubt that you (like me) have snagged such a situation.

I truly believe that the ultimate form of satisfaction may very well come from self-employment. Know any self-employed person who says, “Damn, I miss working in bureaucracy!”? E-mail me immediately if you find such a person because I’m not sure if they exist.

A self-employed person isn’t letting her fears overpower her. The boss isn’t altering her priorities or her satisfaction in the day.

Being self-employed—how to start

You can read gobs of personal finance and wealth books—I did that. You can major in business—I did that. But you know what? None of those experiences taught me how to foster the start-up skills. Nowhere did I learn how to build an idea.

Most of us aren’t in a situation that would allow us to quit our jobs and start anew. The key is ease. I recently wrote about my goal to add $400 to my monthly income–$400 that I earn working for myself. If you don’t know what type of business you want to run, just as I don’t, I think that a financial goal is the only other way to start thinking about how to get going.

I used to listen to people tell stories about missing the beach, so I’d share a memory of when I was on the beach. Now I’m thinking—what can I do to bring the beach to Montana? I don’t mean to literally scoop the shore up… but could I invent a product or opportunity to bring the beach or memories of the beach? My mind starts to buzz, and I forget about my houseguests.

The truth is that I know I can obtain that $400/month. I’ll be sharing ideas—the ideas missed in books and class—that show how to foster that million-dollar idea.

You can’t pretend to be content working from 9 to 5 and letting your ideas be the topic of scoffers. This situation isn’t the life experience that you desire. It’s easier to pretend that your situation is acceptable so that you can avoid the challenge of charging at the situation you really want for yourself. You can have whatever you want. You wouldn’t be reading Aridni if you didn’t want something more. Now is the time to give in to desires, not the fears.

One of the tasks I have been assigned to work on during the morning is the creation of an employee handbook. I labor over how many vacation hours an employee at my company can earn so that he can see his daughter’s Christmas play at school or take the family to the country. Oh the poor suckers who must stick to these rules and regulations that I enter onto my screen!

My boss is at the gym, buying large elaborate Starbucks beverages, and taking time to look beautiful for the day while I work. …while it hits me. She won’t have to follow any of these policies. I’m getting paid by the hour to make up rules for myself and co-workers. Working for someone else feels like a loss of freedom.

I know that the best thing that I can financially and economically do right now is to continue writing this policy manual and following the commands of my employer. But I’d like to generate more income.

An employee finds a second job. An entrepreneur finds an opportunity.

My weekends are tied up with an out-of-town investment project for the future. Yet the rest of the week?

My current schedule Monday through Friday:
7 to 5:30 spent preparing for work, working, loading the dishwasher, and not really feeling productive in my personal development. Sure I feel that my boss benefited from my day, though I’m not sure if I have. So I’m left with the rest of the evening. Aridni articles are being written. The daily tasks like laundry, dinner, and bills are being paid. But what about the rest of the time?

I have set a goal: develop supplemental sources of income that are capable of generating enough money to pay my half of our monthly housing expense, $400.

Questions I am asking myself as I prepare this journey that you should consider for yourself:

1. Why have I chosen my goal—what’s so important about it? And what is the purpose?
2. What nonessentials am I willing to cut from my life so that my goal can happen?
3. What’s my deadline? Or am I even setting a specific deadline?
4. If my goal isn’t achieved by one strategy, will I give up or will I try another strategy?
5. What types of resources and support systems do I need to tap into?
6. Is my husband willing to stand by me, listen to my ideas, and encourage me? And when he isn’t there to fuel my tank, can I still survive?
7. Where am I going to hang those little sticky notes of motivation in my house?
8. What are those stick notes going to say?
9. Every night, ask myself: What did I learn today that can make my performance better for tomorrow?

In case you haven’t heard, the Alaskan oil pipeline just broke. Eight percent of the nation’s oil supply is now cut off. It only took a four percent hit to cause the energy crisis during the 70’s.

We have to find a way for energy other than oil. Let me amend that last sentence, we have to implement an energy source other than oil.

While it really wouldn’t end any oil dependency that America has, what about the coal-to-oil idea? It becomes profitable when crude reaches $35-$40 per barrel. We’ve got ethanol, biodiesel, and who knows what else is out there. So where is the next Rockefeller and what is the hold up?

There is a fortune to be made by whoever implements a solution for energy. I have a feeling that it’s going to be a young company that will tackle this. The only questions are when and what company? Who is going to be the Google of energy?

A couple weeks ago I wrote an article about why gas is cheap at $3.00 a gallon. Then when the article was linked to by another site, the person basically said that I must have invested in crude futures. While I hadn’t at the time and still haven’t done so, it might not such a bad idea.

We’ve all heard that insanity equates the same actions done over and over as we keep expecting different results. Not surprisingly, the results never seem to change. There’s a good chance that you’re doing things exactly like your parents did when they were your age. I mean, they’re probably your biggest introduction into money management. Guess what, in twenty-five years, you’ll probably be living just like they are now if you’re following their earlier path.

Your financial success is established now. The decisions you make today shape who you’ll become. So the question is, anyone out there hoping for something different… working toward something different?

It’s Saturday, and I’m off to work again. Not that working on Saturday is new to me – I generally spend most weekends working on my long-term investment projects. This weekend is different, however, because I am going to work for my employer. You see, the weather right now is very nice, and during the summer, the work I do requires we take advantage of every good day possible. It looks like this may not be my last weekend at work either. My own investment work is forced to a standstill.

Working for different companies through the years, I have thought about what it means to be an employee. When we are children, we are taught to be selfless, work hard, and succeed. These values remain in our society throughout our lives, and people generally expect you to “go the extra mile” to help your employer out. I feel like a lot of employees give their lives to their employer, sometimes without getting a lot back. This brings me to my original dilemma of Saturday work. I am not at all bothered about working on Saturday. I do however feel that when I work for someone else, they ultimately benefit more from the fruits of my labor than I do.

When you work for a company, they take your human effort, and by combining it with everyone else’s at the company, create a product that is ultimately exchanged for money. Now, imagine for a moment that everyone was paid the percentage that they were worth to the final product. Where would the profit be for the company? Sure, the company is worth a small amount as the “glue” factor that holds all the employees together, but ultimately, it’s a matter of taking human productivity and reselling it at a profit.

Am I selfish for wanting to be the beneficiary of my own hard work? This is the main reason I strive to be an entrepreneur – I know that what I accomplish is for myself and my family. The values of entrepreneurship are also very strongly rooted in America, and I find myself torn between these two “value systems” of work.

Anyone else out there struggle? Anyone else torn between throwing every effort into your traditional 9-5 versus the desire to work for yourself?

Martin, our guest writer this week, offers a dilemma that’s been leaving Aridni deep in thought since he suggested the topic. We know that Martin works pretty dang hard, and we’re anxious to see what you think, readers.

When I talked to my friend Heather* the other night, she had just gotten home from a long day at her nonprofit internship in Virginia and her voice was shaking. “I’m so scared, Danielle” she said. “You won’t believe what this cab driver told me.” Heather was living in an area that those in her wealthy suburban neighborhood in Massachusetts would consider a ghetto.

“Now, I don’t want to scare you or anything,” the cab driver told her, “but I feel it would be an injustice if I didn’t warn you about the area where you’re living.” The driver continued, “I actually cringed when I pulled up and saw you waiting outside for me.” Heather gripped her wallet for the duration of the drive. When they reached her house, he said “I would get your key ready before you get out of the car and run for the door. Don’t stand around outside fiddling for your key. Some of my friends even say that if they were cab drivers, they ’sure as hell wouldn’t go to that area’” Heather thanked the driver for his warnings and gave him a large tip. Not until she had walked up the “rotted, splintered” steps did Heather realize how fortunate she was. Many of the regular employees at her company lived in this area year round because it was all they could afford. Here she was, a privleged suburban kid living on her parents’ dime. “My mom would have gladly paid for a nicer place,” Heather told me, “but there aren’t any good neighborhoods for miles around.” Lucky for Heather, in six months she will return to the safety of her hometown, but for hundreds of people at her nonprofit this was all they could afford.

Heather’s story is not unique. When I interned at the American Cancer Society, my supervisor explained that he wanted to take me out to dinner to thank me for my hard work, but couldn’t afford it. Other friends I have talked to in the nonprofit world can barely make ends meet. The majority of the employees at Heather’s organization earn under $28,000 a year with the president only making $31,385. Heather is only making $50 a week on her stipend and on an average day she spends $15 of that on cabs because she is afraid to walk alone in her neighborhood or for that matter to the grocery store. Therefore, she also relies on private transportation to eat her dinner every night in a restaurant. The catch- she wouldn’t be able to afford to live even in the ghetto without her mom’s credit card.

Why is it that those of us who are committed to making a difference with our lives are forced to scrape by while the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are earning millions in stock options alone? A DC lobbyist I know once commented that the best nonprofit employees either have extensive credentials and are only willing to devote their services if they get competitively paid OR are so passionate about a particular cause that they would be willing to work for free. I do not believe this is healthy for our global society, for it makes it difficult for anyone except the independently wealthy to afford to live comfortably while donating their time to a good cause. If nonprofits want to attract and retain a talented workforce, they need to start compensating their people better.

As a result of her internship experience, Heather who has dreamed of being an animal rights advocate since her sophomore year of college, become more cognizant of the personal sacrifices that would entail. As she put it, “I realized that, in order for me to turn my passion into a career, I would be forced to live in areas that I never imagined myself even visiting.” Heather feels torn between what she senses is her purpose in life and the hard shell of the real world. “I want to have a career that is meaningful,” she told me tonight online, but maybe a nonprofit isn’t the best way to go.” I feel the same way in the area of cancer advocacy. The bottom line- how can the children of nonprofit employees make their mark on the world if their parents are barely getting by? We need to consider the next generation of workers in America and how their college educations will be paid for.