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Is there a difference between being self-employed and being a business owner? Yes there is, and you might want to pick one over the other. Nate Woodbury will be talking about the huge difference and it’s important to know why. Tune in to today’s episode to learn more about being self-employed versus being a business owner.
What is the difference between being a business owner and being self-employed? Is there a difference? It’s actually a huge difference. It’s actually a huge… One of those – oh, hey Nate. Hey, you really want to know what the difference is so, stay tuned. Right. So, I told you to stay tuned. You stay tuned. You made it through the ♫♪♪♫ And here you are with him live. It’s Nate, “Be the hero” Nate Woodberry. I’m Scott Christopher. I’m not a hero at all. But you can check out my little YouTube channel by clicking there. A hear a limiting belief in there, my friend. You are a hero. Oh, that’s so sweet of you. Now, let’s move on. I asked the question. I posed the question that you asked me to ask which is, “Is there a difference between being self-employed and being just a business owner.” And you’re saying there’s a cosmic gap. Yeah, huge, huge difference. And it’s important to know the difference. I did not know that difference early on in my life. When I first saw what I thought was an entrepreneur, it was my scout leader he was a dentist. And I saw that he was self-employed, he was his own boss, he made good money. Mm-hmm. And I decided, “I’m going to be a dentist.” And okay. Fair enough. I took a lot of AP classes throughout high school that I probably would not taken otherwise. Wend to med school. I went to BYU. I got a human human biology degree. Oh, you see did take it into college. I took some free dental classes, I observed a dental offices. Yeah. But then I listened to a book by Robert Kiyosaki. An audio book. It was a combination of Rich Dad, Poor Dad cash flow quadrant. I learned… What? Nothing. It’s good, it’s fine. You need to just know, I’m like if, you listen to audiobooks. No, it’s fine but were you doing something while you were listening as I’m saying? Where you’re running, were you’re driving? Probably. Because you know, me I’m like, just get the book and read it. But anyway, so alright. So rich man, poor man. It was Rich dad, poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. I learned that there is a big difference between the business owner and somebody who is self-employed. And it just caused a huge paradigm shift. So, I don’t know if you’re going to have that huge paradigm shift in this video but hopefully, I can spark that. Because once you understand the difference, it can make all the difference. Just being self-employed, all that means is that you’ve created a job for yourself. You’re kind of in charge of your job but you don’t have freedom and you’re wearing more hats because now you’re the boss. And it can be… Give us an example of someone whose job… The self-employed… A dentist is kind of a combination of both. A dentist is mostly just self-employed. I mean, they’re a business owner and that they have employees that do other functions. Absolutely. But their business does not run without them. Like, if a dentist went on vacation and he wasn’t there to drill the teeth, his practice cannot run. Hmm. Okay. He can hire another dentist and then that’s when he steps into the role of being a business owner. He’s not just self-employed. Okay. Because the other dentist would then be able to run his business while he’s on the beach.
Okay, all right. So, that’s hopefully an indication of a start of unification of the difference. A business owner can actually work on the business. They don’t actually have to be the one running it. They shouldn’t be the one running it. They create a system, so I’m kind of a mix. I’m becoming more and more of a business owner but I’m still in the mix of it a lot. I’m still running a lot of the business but I’ve got a whole team of people. I don’t do editing hardly ever anymore. Because all of my team does the editing. I’m still the guy behind the camera but I’ve been exploring different people that I might bring on as either apprentices that I could train or people that are already established as a videographer that I could just pay a higher amount but they could do a really good job. Of people that could you know, take the spot behind the camera. Which the more and more of my tasks that I’m able to to systematize and train somebody else, the more I’m able to really think about the future and grow my business and become more and more successful. The more that I’m stuck in a job, I’m just interrupts from day to day just work in the job. So, basically… I mean, to me it’s kind of a fine line. And obviously, it’s a fine line. Otherwise it wouldn’t even be a that would come up because it is there. Such a blurry, I just said it was fine and now I’m saying it’s blurry. But I mean, you know, for example, if I’m us I’m a speaker. So, I’m a keynote speaker and a trainer. Corporate trainer and leadership and management. But I do it myself, right? And I am incorporated, you know, I have an S corp or whatever Scott Christopher communications. I’m the president and CEO of this company, right? So, I do own the business but I am an employee of the business. I mean, I’m the speaker and trainer. So, I’m a contractor and a freelancer. Meaning, our business gets work by me going and doing the actual work right? Does that make sense? So, in my mind when I think of that I go, “Well, I’m kind of both. I’m kind of a business owner and I’m self-employed.” Because you know, I take jobs through other people. I’ve got another way to define it and let’s see if that could… What would you call me? Is that what you’re saying? This other way? Yeah. Well, I want you to be the one to answer. So, if we were to find somebody who is self-employed, somebody who trades their time for dollars and there’s only a limited amount of time, so therefore years there’s only a limited amount of money you can make, you can get pay raises or increase your hourly amount but your money is tied to your time that you contribute. Yeah. Versus a business owner, it’s not tied to time whatsoever. It’s tied to their ideas and the systems that they create. So… I see you’re saying. So, like billable hours for me. I’m self-employed and these are these… Making money off the time that I’ve been working or the jobs that I do as opposed to the much larger picture which is this is a business that’s alive and as an entity that… So, if you were to step away and stop putting in the hours, is there any part of your business that was… That’s the way you asked. It… Yeah, that’s that’s it right there. If I stopped doing what I did, my business would be, there would be no business. Yeah. And so, how is this linked all back to kind of your main focus. Well, my main focus is actually not YouTube. My main focus is actually influence and entrepreneurship is a big part of it. YouTube is a big part of it. Sure. For obvious reasons. So, I love principles of of entrepreneurship and it’s kind of an important thing to understand. The difference between being self-employed in a business owner. So, I got a trivia question. Alright, I love you trivia. Let’s see if you can guess. We’ll throw a career out there. If you are an uber driver, is that being self-employed or is that a business owner? What’s your guess? Well, I was an Uber driver. Oh, yeah you’ve done it. Yes. And Lyft because I was so bored one summer. Oh, I would say self-employed. Yeah. All the way. It’s their business. Yeah. So, the owners, the the programmers or the people who had the idea (Yeah) who now own Uber, they’re the business owner. Agreed. Right? And then all the drivers are the people running the system. Yeah, we’re self-employed all the way. We got some pretty good business model. Well, they don’t have to buy any taxis. They don’t have to… They have the largest taxi fleet in the world now and they don’t have to buy a single car. Hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, hopefully they won’t wreck their business by their terrible organizational development. I don’t know anything about that. But it’s fine. Now, you alright. Keep going.
So, what’s another example just throwing out there? Of what? A business owner or self-employed and we’ll figure out which is a… A photographer. Professional photographer. Portrait photographer. Photography. So, what do you… Let’s take an example and let’s make one photographer that’s self-employed and one that’s a business owner. Okay, so a photographer that self-employed might have his own studio. He’s the expert behind the camera. Right. People come in, they want a family portrait, he can take it, he can do a nice job. Maybe he’s got some employees that will then do some editing and email it out and whatnot. But if he’s on vacation, his studio is closed. But that’s maybe it’s easier than replacing yourself as a dentist. As a photographer, you could bring in a few photographers that are there helping you and you could start to phase yourself out. Working less and less and less. Becoming more and more just the business owner. Because you own it. I have an exact… I have a friend, Todd Cherry who did just that. He started as a photographer shooting little kids events, sporting events, all these other things. And basically, he was it. And he trained a team to do exactly what he does and he got a building and all the all the things that a business would have. And basically, he can just go home and sit down and do nothing and his business runs. It’s his vision, it’s his goals, it’s his… Everything that’s happening there has his fingerprints on it. But he just kind of collects the money. So, he started self-employed and now he’s a business owner. Yeah. So, let me know in the comments below. Did that cause any type of paradigm shift? I’m just asking out of curiosity. Because when I first learned these principles, it was a big, it was a big change in my mind. I never realized, I thought of what’s a businessman? It was a guy carrying a suitcase or briefcase. You know, downtown Salt Lake. I never realized You know… That’s interesting because the question, that would be maybe, you would answer this as well while you’re doing comments is, “Which do you think you’d prefer?” I mean, this is definitely a pro business owner conversation because it’s a bigger picture. There’s more going on. There’s more to be made quite frankly. With less work from a self-admittedly lazy guy. Being a business owner is certainly what you would prefer? But maybe others would say, “I kind of like that idea of being freelance.” Let me talk about the lazy, the lazy comment. When I was a teenager, my grandpa hired me to do gardening. He just made up jobs for me to make some money. That’s nice of him. It was really nice of him. He was a business owner. He had a rose garden, it was like this big… I beg your pardon? Triangle area. (It’s a joke.) shaped rose garden. And he hired me to weed it. But the weeds grew back so fast. Like 2 weeks later, he’d be weeded again. And he wanted me to weed the thing again. And I’m just like, “Grandpa, this is torture.” He was paying me, he was paying me, but I’m just like… He didn’t want me to but I kind of twisted his arm and I weeded it and then I put down the weed block or tarp and wood chips on top of it. So, that then 2 weeks later, a couple months later, there were no weeds and it still looked good. So, when I say I’m lazy, it’s like, I just want to do it one time I never have to touch it again. But you know, what they’re kind of the moral of the story which is, you did it right, you did it efficiently but you also cut off your own hand. I mean, financially speaking, you no longer have a job because you did it so well. hmm. So, you met the objective but you no longer get paid. Yeah, if you’re wondering becoming a business owner when you’re an employee that… You want to be thinking of annuities. You know what I mean? Just like… That was just analogy. There’s some holes in it. I liked It. I liked it. Alright, remember to like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell. He haven’t said that for a long time. If you ring the bell, YouTube sends you an alert every time we upload a new video. Wow, there’s a great song in there. ♪♫ You can ring my bell ♫♪