doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT, career change

When I was in my first career, working where the streets are paved with gold, I'd hunt grouse, pheasants and rabbits in a wonderful place called the Beverley Swamp north of Hamilton, Ontario. It was no upland Valhalla but lovely country of hardwoods, vacated old farms, a few run-out vineyards, the first black walnuts I had seen, coming from a tiny fishing village in Nova Scotia.

There weren't many hunters, either---this was 50 years ago with lot better places to hunt elsewhere---but one thing I noticed quickly was who they were: steelworkers, tool-and-die men, machinists, guys who worked with brain and brawn in the factories and steel plants of Hamilton and environs. Not a professional or formally educated in the bunch.

These guys had it made, all with a good standard of living, five-days-a-week jobs, good guns and gear, covered with all the distinguishing marks of happy and contented men. A couple invited me to their golf club---I'm not a golfer---but I went and it was something like the site of the Masters in Georgia. None of my professional and self-employed friends ever had the time to live.

I don't believe any man 'has it made' whose job and future hangs on the whim of another. I have seen grown men almost wet their Armani suits when the CEO frowns; I've seen highly paid corporate executives break out in sweat when they're passed over for promotions. And I've seen guys in overalls with their guts in knots about overtime and vacation schedules and hassles with 'the bosses.'

Sure, to a well established one-man business, customers are important - but no one should have control of your future or dictate the terms of your life, except you yourself. If you're not able to tell a client to go to hell, and willing to take a financial hit for doing so, you might as well remain a wage slave.

Most self-employed people are doing what they want to do, and finding real life in their work - not just watching the clock for work to end and life to resume.

The biggest hurdles for new self employed businessman is lack of a proper business plan and insufficient funds to see the plan through the couple of years required to get established with a referral base of customers. However, you have expressed an interest in internet sales and there is a place to start today that hasn't existed before. Ebay,Gunbroker.com and GunsAmerica may enable you to find out what your niche is without having to put it all on the line.

Some are, some are not. Self employment is only the illusion of freedom. It is the servant who takes the money, after all. I've been self employed all but two years of my working life, I'm accustomed to it but paradise it is not.

I've been self employed for almost 20 years, never got married, couldn't imagine the stress of having to support a family and trying to run my business at the same time. I pretty much don't like what I do so at the end of the day I can put it aside and relax with my real interests, which one of the major ones is double guns.

I think the quickest way to lose interest in something is to have to earn a livng at it.

Be your own boss, take the leap, you'll never know unless you try. But it doesn't have to be guns. Hell, the one time I was up at CSMC Tony looked like he was going to have a stroke.

Ying and Yang.

What they said: pro and con.

Sometimes you will have the time, but it's as likely that time will have you.

jack, my experience isn't typical as a self-assigning reporter during all of my first career but I think there's a case to be made that managers, executives and CEOs had less security than all those union members I met in Beverly Swamp. (They couldn't be blackballed from that luxurious golf course, either, because it was owned by United Steel Workers of America, too.) A collective agreement provided more protection from arbitrary action than had management who could be removed with a raised eyebrow for as little as a social impropriety or gaffe.

I have a friend who's a freelance photographer, we both kayak on LI Sound.

Called me up one day and said, "hey, it gorgeous out, lets go kayaking".

I said, "Man, you know if I don't work no money comes in, we're self employed".

"Yeah" he said, " but that's why we're self employed, so we can go kayaking when we want to".

It was a beautiful day on the water.

One thing I will advise to a young person until the day I die...... Start out young and put your money away. I have blown so much money on hobbies that I got no return. Other hobbies I had, did. But I wish I had put my money away years ago. I had a good job for the past 30 years and I have been single for the past 25. But all that time I blew evry cent I had. I was fortunate enough to have a job at a place that has a good retirement and good health care. So now I can sit on my butt all day and not have to do anything except piddle around the house. But it sure would be nice to have several hundred thousand dollars in the bank, too.

In answering your question more directly, engraving and gunsmithing nice hobbies. They are good to start at while you are young. But don't ever quit a good job completely unless you are secure in the second one. Start out small and if everything goes well you can keep growing into something that may be a good business. I wish I had taken up checkering or engraving or gunsmithing years ago. But at (almost) 60, I feel I am too old to start now. I love woodworking and carpentry and have doing those for years. Maybe some day I will tackle a hobby in the gun business. Good luck.