If you are like most individuals, you probably are not happy with your current career or JOB (Just Over Broke), and occasionally think about working for yourself. The 80-20 rule just might apply to everything, including careers and jobs? Being self-employed, however, does not necessarily mean owning a business with the burden of employees, inventory, capital expenditures, and the other trappings of the 20th century "brick and mortar" business model.

Many are finding success in the trend of working as independent contractors, freelancers, and even as online business owners, as services and products offered via the Internet continue to be introduced, developed, and sliced and diced. Believe it or not, the Internet still is in its infancy and has tremendous untapped potential.

Also, if you daydream about being your own boss, you probably consider these limiting reasons of why not to pursue the traditional job market. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Take the time to pen your own list, jot down ideas that you can review, and revise as things come to mind, or as events and priorities change.

This is inspired in part from various comments on blogs, a lifetime to date of self- improvement books, tapes, mentors, and just plain living, doing, and thinking.

These ten points can be characterized as "limits" with a few comments on each as to why you may not be suited for the ranks of the employed, if you happen to have such beliefs. Although not listed in any particular order, notice how these limits are inter-related to each other.

Number 1 – Limited Income. It is certainly obvious that you can only work so many hours a day, and only so many jobs. Salaried positions and hourly jobs will always limit income. Get paid for your ideas and not your labor…and potential income has no limit.

Number 2 – Limited Experience. You hear it all the time. You can't get a job without experience, and you can't get experience without a job. Entrepreneurs do not think in these terms. They look to enrich themselves with more rewarding career(s) and life experiences by creating their own opportunities.

Number 3 – Limited Time. We all each get 24 hours a day. Spend your lifetime working for someone else, and you will be limiting how much time you can devote to pursuing the other items on your list that will truly allow you to meet your objectives and goals.

Number 4 - Limited Learning. Unlike the employee mentality, entrepreneurs tend to possess the capacity to be life-long learners and look forward to learning something new every day. "Learning means more earning".

Number 5 - Limited Freedom. People who learn how to work successfully for themselves have the freedom to make their own decisions and control their own destiny.
They know that the freedoms they enjoy are in direct correlation to their efforts.

Number 6 – Limited Security. The fact is the traditional job no longer provides any of what used to be termed security. Not in this day and age. You are only as good as your last job. In a world of outsourcing and downsizing, you are only two words away from looking for another job, as Donald Trump says, "You're fired".

Number 7 – Limited Opportunity. Opportunity only comes to those who seek opportunity on a regular basis. There is only limited opportunity for growth and advancement in the emotional and physical space of a so-called "real" job.

Number 8 – Limited Control. You cannot control your future when you are limited to the will of others. What are the possibilities? Look this list through once again when you have finished.

Number 9 – Limited Growth. Growth ultimately means more than the few things on this list. The entrepreneur is a work in progress, and has a need and awareness to improve and grow in ways usually not possible as a labor statistic.

Number 10 - Limited Fulfillment. "I could have, would have, should have", only if things would have been different. Those who can, "do". Those who can't…well, they end up working for someone else. You will always wonder what life could have been, if you choose to live in mediocrity.