`7. Why Self-Employment and Entrepreneurship Can Be Meaningful Opportunities Leading to Professional Success
Beyond the traditional path of professional development, there is an alternative way to build a career: starting your own business. This approach can be an accessible and meaningful direction for many people.
Entrepreneurship and self-employment are not “the right choice" for a particular group of people. They are a great opportunity for everyone, including people with disabilities, because they offer a lot of flexibility and independent control over working conditions, schedule and environment - all important factors that traditional employment cannot always offer, which, as a result, makes many jobs inaccessible.
This module looks at three main aspects of entrepreneurship. First, we will look at why and how starting your own company can be a meaningful professional alternative, and what this path looks like in practice. Then, for anyone who has an idea, a skill, or a hobby they want to turn into a source of income, we will look at what helps a venture succeed and what key mistakes to avoid. In the third part, we will outline what a full business plan looks like, and how you can start building one in a structured way.
This topic was created to give you enough knowledge and practical tools to make an informed choice - whether starting your own company is really the right choice for you, and if you decide to go in this direction, to take your first steps with confidence.
7. a. What Are Self-Employment and Entrepreneurship?
Self-employment means working for yourself, not for an employer. An example would be offering a particular service or product. In this case, you take direct responsibility for managing your time and all other resources key to the work, finding clients, and handling income and expenses. A self-employed person may work alone (for example, as a software engineer, graphic designer, data engineer, translator, seller of handmade goods, and so on), or sometimes hire others to help - but the most important feature is that the person themselves is the business.
Entrepreneurship is used as a broader term. The person the idea comes from creates and runs a business with the intention of realising a project that generates value for others. Not all entrepreneurs start out aiming to build large companies. Some build small but sustainable businesses, often aimed at solving a specific need or challenge in their community. Others start with one service and grow over time, gradually expanding what they offer to clients. Some successfully build large international companies and offer value to society on a global scale. What connects everyone involved in starting a business is recognising an opportunity, taking initiative quickly, and building a working, sustainable venture.
7.b. Benefits and Challenges of Entrepreneurship
Although it sounds like an excellent alternative with many advantages, it is also very important to consider the real challenges that come hand in hand with starting your own business. Understanding both sides well can help you judge whether the path of a founder is really for you.
| Area | Advantages | Challenges |
|---|---|---|
| Schedule | You set your own working hours and can match them to your energy, medical needs, or the support available to you at a given time | Without a clear structure set by a manager, it can be hard to separate work time from personal time, especially if you have no previous work experience - this can lead to high levels of stress and inner tension |
| Environment | You choose your own workspace - at home, in a shared office, outdoors - and you can organise it around your personal access needs | Despite the importance of choice and flexibility in your work environment, working from home can sometimes create a feeling of isolation due to the lack of opportunity for direct contact with people |
| Income | There is no fixed ceiling on income. The more successful the business, the more your income can grow | It takes time and a lot of effort for a business to develop to the point of offering stable, ongoing income, especially at the start. It's important to factor in the time it takes to recover your investment. You have no guaranteed paid sick leave or paid annual leave |
| Autonomy | You decide what work to take on, which clients to work with, and how to grow your business | All decisions rest with you - there is no manager to hand a problem to, or one to support you at a challenging moment. Finding clients requires building a working strategy and successfully carrying it out |
| Meaning | Building something of your own can be deeply motivating and personally meaningful | The early stages of a business often require a lot of effort before real impact, visible results and stability appear. Without support from family and loved ones, it can be an extremely difficult undertaking. It is often linked to high levels of stress and tension, and taking on risk |
Real-Life Example: Johan, Self-Employed Data Engineer |
Johan is a self-employed data engineer, building and maintaining data pipelines for small and medium-sized businesses. He lives with a chronic pain condition that made a standard 9-to-5, in-office job difficult to sustain over time. Becoming self-employed let him set his own working hours to match his energy levels, and set up a home workspace that he can fully adapt to his own needs. In his first year, unpredictable income was one of his biggest challenges, so he kept two part-time contracts running until his client base was large enough to rely on his own business alone. He also missed having colleagues to turn to when facing a difficult decision, so he joined a small online peer group of self-employed IT professionals with disabilities, where members exchange advice and support each other once a month. Johan's example shows that the advantages and challenges of self-employment often sit side by side, and that most challenges can be managed with the right strategy and support, rather than being reasons to avoid this path altogether. |
Callout box presenting a real-life example of Johan, a self-employed data engineer, describing his motivations, challenges, and how he addressed them.
7.c. Turning Your Personal Strengths into Opportunities
One of the most effective ways to start considering self-employment is to start with what you already have experience in and already know how to do well. This does not mean finding some ideal passion and turning it into income, because although in some cases this can be a successful venture, more often this approach would be unhelpful and would create unrealistic expectations. The idea here is rather first to stop and objectively look at the skills you have developed in your life so far, the knowledge you have built up, and the things other people ask you for help with. The story of Barbara, who developed strong organisational and administrative skills out of necessity (coordinating her own medical appointments, paperwork, and specialists while managing a chronic condition) is an excellent example. She successfully turned that into a paid service helping other patients navigate the same process.
Skills you have used in paid or unpaid work, such as communication, creating new products, research and analysis, teaching, writing - these are just a small part of the skills that could allow you to start a self-employed venture, and all of them have potential market value. In addition, and even more specifically, in relation to your personal life experience, skills such as navigating the healthcare system, managing a specific condition, using assistive technology, and understanding and having access to a specific community also have the potential to become the basis for creating a service that genuinely helps others while also bringing you stability.
The following reflection exercise can help you start mapping your own strengths.
| 🎯 Practical Activities for This Section |
| It's time for creative work, and in a very exciting direction. The first step in this phase is mapping your strengths: think about your strengths and write down ten things you know how to do well. Then mark which three of them other people most often ask you to do. These are your starting points. |
| As a next step, you can continue with slightly more detailed development of the idea: choose one of the three skills/activities from your strengths map and describe it in more detail - as you would explain it to a potential client, in two sentences, to see how they would react. |
| Market research: it's time to look for your potential competitors - find two or three people or businesses currently offering something similar. What prices do they charge? How do they describe their service? What could you do differently? |
| Case study on entrepreneurship: research an entrepreneur with a disability who works in a field that interests you. What was their path, and how did they start? What obstacles did they face? What have they built? Where are they now? Try to get in touch with them. |
Callout box outlining a step-by-step practical activity for mapping personal strengths.