One Day I’ll Work For Myself

If you work for yourself or would like to, have you considered whose shoulders you are standing on? Ben Waterhouse is a professor and faculty director at the University of North Carolina, and he answers that question and more in his newest book, One Day I’ll Work for Myself. In this conversation, we explore some of history’s most pivotal inflection points that led to the plateau of big business and learn why self-employment is more than financial freedom.

Episode Highlights

Ned Beatty’s scathing indictment on big business
Ben’s Origin story for One Day I’ll Work for Myself
Big business was not a ‘thing’ until the railroad era
Wright Patman’s role in supporting the small retailer against large-chain stores
Mark’s reason for studying and appreciating business history
The emergence of the NFIB
Comparing and contrasting NFIB and the SBA
The point in time that big business begins to level off
Working from home and why AT&T got their prediction wrong
Michelle Gobert’s franchise ownership story
The rise of non-employer firms
Ben’s book ideas

What’s important about non-employer firms is the motivation of their owners. As my UNC colleague Dr. Dawn Rivers has shown, the main driver for many non-employer business owners is not entrepreneurial ambition or the desire to make a fortune and build a business empire. Rather, many are motivated primarily by a desire to control their own time and the conditions of their labor, and they will frequently limit the work they do to accommodate their lives.
One Day I’ll Work for Myself, page 190

One Day I ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America

$14.99

Accessible, fast-paced, and eye-opening, One Day I’ll Work for Myself offers a fresh, insightful cultural history of the U.S. economy from the perspective of the people within it, asking urgent questions about why we’re clinging to old strategies for progress—and at what cost.