I decided to take an hour or so out of my schedule and just write. This topic is something that has been on my mind in the last three months, perhaps longer, and writing about it hopefully helps. Comments are (always) open, so your input is valued.

First off, let me start with saying that a choice is best made when (all) the options have been explored. That isn’t always possible of course, but I definitely prefer making well-informed decisions over the opposite. In a casino, you can either lose big, win big, or stay even. The odds are pretty much stacked against you and the gamble is that you have to act on no or little information, which makes my first principle on informed choices moot.

To those that don’t know, I finished an extended degree in business administration last year. It was a weird time, in that I totally ignored the requirements of that degree and wrote an opus on high tech entrepreneurship and the ingredients it needed to succeed. That took well over a year, after beginning to write it. When I graduated, I did so with a good grade (marked down a little for the sheer length of my thesis), and came forth with more knowledge about companies and the conditions to succeed, than perhaps I should’ve accumulated. The first few months were spent looking for a job, which was a strange time. I enjoyed every one of my job-interviews, but we always ended up talking about running the business and the mechanics of the industry, rather than the job. Any conversation I had, I would come away with a few pages worth of information about that company and it’s industry, but I’d get rejected for the job [my general impressions about jobs these days: companies look for specialists, not generalists].

I then took on a consulting gig, which was to help start a business in the wine-space. The way I got it, was that I responded to an unconventional job-advert and wrote a proposal for how I could add value and what I wanted in exchange. It was accepted, and I hired an intern to help me develop the business case. I had a great time, much passion in the wine-industry, much good and bad wine was drunk. It lead me to submit another business plan to the New Venture competition, inspired by (but different from) what I had done [abandoned for feasibility reasons, though I learned a lot]. While I did apply for more jobs, the same situations kept arising, great conversations, where I would act more like an equal than an applicant and no job.

Consulting gig 2 arrived on New Year’s Eve, I was called out of the blue, because of an internship I did in a similar business some years back. I was hired as a consultant to get a business into an incubation programme and look for funding. I semi-wrote about some of it, for my last post. It’s a great product, I think, and I’m very excited about developing it. Every meeting, we come up with new ideas for the business and there’s great energy and chemistry there. In the middle of this, I did a mini-consulting gig — a due diligence project on an investment — and gigs 4 and possibly 5 are in the pipeline.

Those are my gambles and semi-gambles. I could choose to become a self-sufficient consultant helping startups get to the level where they get funding—this was the topic of my thesis and I know this through and through. I could decide to ally myself with my current client for a longer period of time, perhaps become employee no. 5. What doesn’t make this a gamble is that I do what I’m good at and I do what I love. What does, is that I don’t yet have a sales-machine in place for getting future clients; I operate strictly by word of mouth.

On the other side is security. I’ve been offered a job in a financial trust. The wages are reasonable, I would have to move (to a French-speaking country), and I couldn’t combine it with my consulting gigs. I would have to give up what I love doing for a steady income that will likely grow, a good network of people that I could do future projects with, and … a recession is looming. If I were a career-minded / money-orientated / rational individual, it would probably be a good choice to make.

Yet I am hesitant, for obvious reasons, because I may have found my niche, and taking the secure choice would mean giving that up. I have to make a decision in about a week’s time.

What would you do?

Vincent

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