What's up, everyone? All right. So in this episode, I'm going to talk about some of the drawbacks of being a self-employed individual. Uh, it doesn't really matter too much what you do. You know that's making you self-employed Uh, but I'll talk about some of the perks as as well, of course, because there are many.

But I think sometimes people focus exclusively on all the upsides of being a so-called self-employed and maybe neglect some of the very real downsides. The drawbacks: So I'm a day trader, as many of you already know. although perhaps if you checked out this video just because it was recommended to you, you might have not known that initially. So I'm a day trader and in a lot of ways I would kind of consider myself to be self-employed now that's in quotes because I'm being a day trader.

Um, you're not subject necessarily to self-employment tax. Uh, day trading. Income is not considered self-employment uh, income. but nonetheless in in all sort of intents and purposes for this video.

The downside would being self-employed is that there's no time off. really. So I'm traveling and trading as I often do. That's one of the nice things about I Suppose being self-employed and certainly with day trading that you can do this from anywhere in the world as long as you've got an internet connection.

And for me, my schedule for gosh, more than 10 years for the most part has been to trade only about three hours a day. which is, you know, kind of a nice routine, so that's definitely one of the upsets. But the downside is that feeling of never being able to really get away because any day that you you take off so to speak would be a day that you're not getting paid. you're not making money.

So in a way it costs you money. not just to travel, but it also costs you for the money you're not making from your typical work. And that's certainly not true. If you work a nine-to-five job, you know if you have a nine to five job where you punch in, you punch out, you get vacation time and sometimes two, three weeks, maybe more.

which is awesome. You actually you get paid to be on vacation. and that is not the case with being a self-employed Trader for sure. So right now I'm in Antigua and you might think oh wow, he's having a great vacation.

but it's not really a vacation because of course every day that I'm here I set up my computer and I trade and there is always that feeling for me that if I don't turn on my computer I Get that fomo of ah is this the day we're gonna have? You know, Finally a really big move and I'm gonna miss it completely. So one of the things that I often say with trading is that it's important to always show up because you never know what day you might get some really nice momentum. And the fact is I found that even just my top 10 days last year contributed 20 of my profits for the whole year. So it's one of those things of and they say that about the market it's It's very hard to time it so you just have to be consistent either long term, just be in the market the whole time.

That way you catch the big days, you don't try time tops and bottoms or with day trading just to show up every single day. But then showing up every day in a sense means there's no days off. And that's true. there really are no days off.

now for me, it's It's even a little bit worse because of the work that I do for Warrior. So when I first created Warrior it was as I've talked about it was a Blog So it's kind of a side hustle to my trading. You know something? I kind of did on the side but I enjoyed doing it because I enjoy trading I enjoy talking about trading and over the years it became a bigger and a bigger part of my daily routine. And when you're a business owner and maybe a self-employed day trader at the same time, there really is no vacation.

and I I would say that's the biggest downside to being a small business owner or to being a self-employed day trader is it feels very hard to carve out time to step back. And so I think that that drawback can lead to a higher burnout rate among Traders Where you know you get into this phase where you're getting more and more frustrated. The Market's choppy. You know, Whatever the case is, you haven't had any real meaningful vacation or time off, and you know, 10 years or whatever it is, you know, But two years, five years doesn't really matter and you just start to get frustrated.

You get stubborn and it's one of these things that you feel like you have to always be showing up every day, because if you don't, you lose that kind of momentum. that positive feedback, the momentum, and the next thing you know, it's like you've taken a week off a month off and now you're disconnected from what's been happening. You feel kind of rusty. It's hard to get back into it, and so the tendency is just to kind of keep on going.

But that burnout risk? what it can lead to is a a series of poor decisions. You know, bad decision making, decision fatigue. In a way where you start taking trades that are maybe again, stubborn or getting a little impatient and frustrated and so you're just kind of jabbing the keys, but not with really as much strategy or discipline as you might typically have. So this is where I do think.

If you are suffering from any of that, it is important to look at the time you're spending trading and to ask yourself, is this a time that, I should do like a one week kind of detox where I just take a week off to really press the reset button and I've only done that in my career. Well, I guess I've had three and this is over ten years. three full weeks off. Uh, one was when I got married.

um, and that was the first week off that I ever took trading from when I started until you know that point. So that was I had a little bit of withdrawal I was like what do I do in the morning? This is weird and I felt a little antsy. but and unfortunately I remember during that week there were a lot of things on the warrior side that I still had to deal with. you know, because I'm the boss So in fact, that really wasn't much of a week off.

The second week off that I took was when I got a concussion I fell hit my head uh, awoke I lost Consciousness woke up, didn't know who I was, didn't know what my name I knew nothing I was like a blank slate so it took me about a week to kind of recover from that. so I didn't trade for a week. then. that wasn't really much of a vacation either.

that was a mandatory time off and then about a year and a half ago I took a week off when I went to Turks and Caicos and I remember that I was like, you know what? I think I need to take the week off because I was feeling burnt out. I was feeling kind of. you know, just been a crazy year and so I just said I'm gonna take the week off and I'm gonna. You know, people at Warrior might be a little sad that I'm not there and I've got some great students that'll sort of, you know, step up while I'm gone.

it's only a week so I'm gonna do it. and I remember when I came back from that week off I felt so recharged and then I went on to like a really nice stretch following that week off. and in fact, any money that I might have lost by not trading during that week I more than made up for on the back side when I came back recharged and I didn't expect that. So that now in a way does make me a bit of an advocate for if you're feeling that burnout to try to prioritize that mental health and taking that time now right now I suppose I could say I'm feeling a little bit, uh, burnt out because we're now like a year and a half into this bear.

Market Um, and this is a time where I'm kind of feeling like I might like to take that time off, but uh, Market's not been great? Really feel like I can't afford to miss days So I'm kind of pushing through and I'm going to probably keep doing that until I reach a point where I'm like really, just like you know okay I need a break so you know we go as long as we can, but this is. this is definitely a challenge with being either self-employed and certainly being a day trader that you might not think about initially. Uh, you know you might think it's all fun and games and everything else, but there really is this very real, um, risk of burnout because you just feel you can never really take day off. That's hard, so you know.

I Anyway, so I thought I would kind of just share that with you. um, in case you didn't know about that, that drawback and uh, and encourage. On the one hand, if you really are at a point of like you're starting to make bad decisions, that that's the time where it's you want to step back. you want to give yourself a week to recharge so you can come back refocused.

But then on the other hand, um, sometimes with trading and I've had this, you know for the most part be the case with me I just bring it with me everywhere I go and I give it, you know, three hours or so a day. so I spend a little bit of time doing that even if I'm traveling, whatever it is and then when it's done I Put it aside and I move on to the rest of my day and that has generally been worth it. You know you might think oh, it's not worth it. you're going on vacation, you spend money to travel and then you know you have a big red day.

You're going to be disappointed frustrated. But one of the things I do when I'm traveling and trading is I usually scale back I manage my risk a little bit tighter versus when I'm you know, at home and I just try to show up and sometimes and I've had these days where I've had fantastic days where I'm you know on my laptop in a hotel room and I'm like wow, that was awesome. we just made 20 grand, 25 Grand or whatever you know, 50 Grand whatever it is and it's like whoa, that was awesome. I'm glad I showed up today.

So yeah, a job that requires you to always show up. You don't get paid holiday, you, you eat what you catch so to speak, and um, and and there there can be some occupational hazards in that with burnout getting a little frustrated and stubborn and so I think. As always, it's good to be able to really, uh, kind of have an ability each day each week each month to start self-reflect on like where am I on the spectrum of you know, feeling in the zone or feeling like sort of burnt out. Where's my decision making right now? Uh, do I need to step back a little bit? or or am I good? So I would say check in with yourself on that.

Different people are going to be susceptible in different ways and have longer stretches between you know, periods of real strong productivity and needing to have a recharge window for me. I've done pretty well with very minimal recharge windows. Maybe I you know would have done better if I had taken more time out, but but there's no way to know that and I don't really have any data that would suggest that that is true. So for right now, just keep on grinding and you know that's kind of part of being very independent.

You're self-reliant You're dependent on yourself for producing income that's in the way that's Source self-employed And um, you know that there's there's a great sense of self-sufficiency and self-confidence that comes with that. But you do feel that, uh, you sometimes feel you can't really afford or shouldn't you know, step back and take the time off that maybe you should. Maybe you actually need it. So something to think about Some food for thought as I'm here traveling, trading and working.

uh, the whole time. All right. So anyways, just thought I'd make this episode for you. See what you guys think? Leave your comments below and thanks as always for tuning in.

Thank you.