How to break into working for yourself

The most valuable non-survey-related college class I took prior to going out on my own was Business Law.?ÿ The things I learned in that class provided the basis for a lot of the business-side decisions I've had to make over the years.?ÿ Highly recommended.

It helps to be a natural born extrovert with experience in leading in other areas.?ÿ Those other areas might be from your youth in sports, church, Boy Scouts, 4-H, FFA, Spanish Club, Science Club, etc.?ÿ So many business skills are taught in those programs whether we realize it or not as kids.?ÿ Followers tend to remain as followers.?ÿ They will work very hard to get things done but they won't lead the way.

Courage is not taught in classrooms, but is absolutely essential to working for yourself.?ÿ We all have a wild combination of little (and big) fears that we accumulate over a lifetime.?ÿ Being able to get past those fears to complete a project is critical.?ÿ Experiences, both good and bad, are the only true teachers in this area.?ÿ You either learn to work around those fears or you go back to being a follower.?ÿ Giving bad news to a client is a common work item.?ÿ No one enjoys delivering bad news.?ÿ But, developing methods to soften the blow helps you conquer that internal fear.?ÿ Overthinking the assumed reaction is like a coward dying a thousand deaths while a hero dies but once.?ÿ When working for yourself you probably will not have a partner of any sort that you can simply turn to on a moment's notice and ask, "Do you think I'm right about that?"?ÿ You are stuck with answering that built-in question many times each day.?ÿ Learning how to admit and correct mistakes is not effectively taught in classrooms, either.?ÿ Mistakes and improper assumptions will occur routinely.?ÿ How you react and how you make the needed corrections is unique to you and, again, cannot be taught in a classroom.

Possessing the critical technical skills is a given.?ÿ But, how do you start to figure out which new skills are lacking??ÿ Internally, we all like to think we know all we need to know.?ÿ At some point we each start to realize that we aren't quite as talented as we might like to be in specific ways.?ÿ Admitting that to ourselves is hard to do.?ÿ Having the gumption to accept that shortfall and working on doing whatever is needed to fix it separates success from failure over the long run.

Not every type of surveying requires the exact same capabilities.?ÿ Find the type that works for you.?ÿ Trying to drive a square peg into a round hole damages both the peg and the hole.?ÿ For example, I am not cut out to be a full time construction staker.?ÿ Been there, done that, hated it.?ÿ For someone else it is the perfect fit.?ÿ Not for me.?ÿ Meanwhile, I work routinely with home owners who run the gamut from highly educated professionals in some field to those with fading mental, physical and financial abilities, if they ever had them.?ÿ The property involved may be valued from many millions down to a few thousand dollars.?ÿ Every client deserves the same service.?ÿ But, I also work regularly with realtors, title agents, lenders, attorneys and similar clients who are quite familiar with the work of a boundary surveyor.?ÿ Some are jerks and some are saints.?ÿ Somehow I must adjust my interactions with them to better accommodate their expectations.?ÿ That subject can be discussed in classrooms in great detail, but what you really end up doing will probably be something not mentioned.?ÿ Reading the client is an acquired skill.

A major task in working for yourself is adapting to the unknown financial picture.?ÿ Knowing you will be receiving a certain amount of money in a paycheck on a certain schedule makes personal budgeting fairly simple.?ÿ Never knowing when you will be getting paid is a completely different way of life.?ÿ This gets horribly complex due to all the money you will be spending in order to make your money.?ÿ Outgo usually occurs prior to income.?ÿ Borrowing one's self rich can be done but millions have failed in doing so.?ÿ There is nothing wrong with living on beans and weenies for a period while waiting for that $20,000 check to arrive.

I do not see you say that you have your PLS.

For instance NJIT required 2 courses in Business Law and one in Real Estate Law for their 4 year degree. I took those courses at 2 local community colleges along with a Small Business Law course and a Course in Legal Research at a third community college. That last I found useful although I did not intend to take it. I signed up at a community college a few miles from where I was working at the time and paid for a survey course. I found out on the first day of class that it was too basic and I had no need for it and tried to get into a Real Estate Law course which I found was full. Not wanting to waste that semester I took the Legal Research course. The Real Estate Law course I later took at a community college which was half way between where I was then working and my home. Years before that I took 2 different business accounting courses at my local community college and an AutoCAD course. Besides my Civil Engineering degree other classes I found useful was a Speed Reading course I took at my local community college while I was still in High School and a Dale Carnegie course on winning friends and influencing people.

I have a wide variety of educational experiences and consider every one of them useful and that includes "Typing" in High School.

As to working long hours on a fixed salary, it is unprofessional for a company to require it. You should not have to work longer hours than the working principals. I did not get overtime, but was paid straight time when in excess of a certain total or was entitled to compensatory time off. To find out if you are truly a salaried employee tell the boss you are leaving work Friday at 1PM after putting in 50 hours.

Paul in PA

@paul-in-pa I got my PLS a few years ago, but took night courses and online courses to get the required number of hours of survey related courses in Georgia. Which is kind of why I'm wondering if there what courses or resources are out there that makes a surveyor competent to run the business and client interaction of surveying. Figuring out the the technical side and textbook surveying principles come easy to me. 

I consider myself a quick learner and self-starter, but maybe that's why I found myself with a license in a PM role before I really had the necessary experience to deal with that responsibility, but there just doesn't seem to be any place to go for definitive answers for a lot of my questions. Maybe I'm looking for practical solutions to something that only comes by more experience when I'm used to being able to find answers for myself through manuals, textbooks etc. Maybe what I need is to find a smaller company with a slower pace where the senior RLS has the time to walk through projects with me until I have a handle on his approach to the process, but in an office with multiple RLS licenses everyone has a different approach and opinion to most of my questions and gets exhausting not having a clear answer when i'm trying to crank out $50k a month in billings of the small projects that are given to me as the low man on the totem pole.

@jim-frame Mine were Technical Writing and Local Flora.

@samizdat

Working for multiple bosses makes life difficult. I worked for several companies under multiple engineers and usually I got it right with 2 out of 3 on engineering issues. Fortunately at any place I worked under a surveyor it was only one who was in charge, though another person may have been licensed.

Paul in PA

@samizdat

on the business side I'd highly recommend setting a few nights aside to read (and then digest) https://surveyorconnect.com/community/education-training/looking-for-book-by-dan-beardslee-a-business-management-handbook-for-land-surveyors/paged/3/