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Said no to a $22/hr shop job in Denver to stay my own boss, and I'd do it again
Everyone pushed me to take the shop gig. Steady check, benefits, no chasing customers. I had been running my own pressure washing rig for about 8 months at that point, barely scraping by, some weeks only pulling in $300. The shop offered $22 an hour plus health stuff, and my brother said I was nuts to turn it down. But here's the thing nobody talks about: that job meant someone else owning my whole day. I took the risk instead. Picked up two apartment complexes in Aurora that needed driveways and walkways done every spring. That was 3 seasons ago. Now I'm booking $1,400 days when the weather cooperates. Not saying the steady job is wrong for everyone. But the advice to always grab the safe option bugs me. If you turned down a safe job to bet on yourself, how did it actually shake out?
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logantaylor1mo ago
One small thing though, the math on the shop job is probably better than it looks. $22/hr is around $45k a year, and if there's health stuff on top, that's real money you don't have to earn back out of your own pocket. Self employed you pay both sides of taxes plus your own insurance, so a $1,400 day isn't $1,400 in your hand. Not saying you made the wrong call, sounds like it worked out great and you built something. Just that the safe option usually gets undersold because people only count the hourly and not everything that comes with it.
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