Business English

Being your own Boss

1) Is it better to work for a large company or be self-employed? Why?

I personally believe it is best to be self-employed, because it gives you the

opportunity to invest not only your time wisely but also your knowledge and
money. It gives you an open space to be creative and to innovate as you
think it would be best for you and your business. By being your own boss
you get to face daily challenges and get to learn from your mistakes, hence
you are more committed to bring your best at work, generate ideas and to
delegate responsibilities to the work force. Nowadays young people show
an increasing interest in being self-employed and entrepreneur mostly
because it is an attractive alternative among the labor market characterized
by greater insecurity and instability1.

2) What do you think are/would be the advantages and disadvantages of being

your own boss?

Advantages:

 Employment generation.
 Participation in the national and local economy.
 Time management at your consideration.
 It is a constant learning process
 You learn to make decisions under pressure
 Generating Revenue
 Possibility to re-invest if the business grows at a considerable pace.

Disadvantages:

 Lack of experience

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  Access to Credits and funding
 High risk of failure when not having support or being in a low
economic growth
 Not having adequate staff recruitment

3) What do you have to do to become self-employed in your country?

There are three ways to formalize the creation of a business; first, there is a
model in which you can constitute your business as a Natural Person who
performs this activity on a regular and professional base and assumes all
rights and obligations of the commercial activity they practice.

The second way is through a Legal Person, which is a fictitious person,

capable of exercising rights and obligations and to be represented in and
out of court. The most common are, S.A (sociedad anónima), LTDA
(Limitada), S.A.S, (Sociedad Simplificada por Acciones), in order to know
which one fits best for your business, it is recommended to go to the
Chamber of Commerce where they will advise you to choose the type of
society.

Finally, the third way is by creating a Commercial establishment in which a

set of goods are organized by the entrepreneur for the purposes of the
company, and they may belong to one or several owners and used for
development of various trade activities.

In order to work in a legal base, for the three models mentioned above, you
have to go to the chamber of Commerce and fill in some papers to have a
number known as “Commercial Registration” or “Matrícula Mercantil” 2 and
have an ID specially for the Legal Person, that can be obtained in the DIAN
and is known as NIT (tax identification number).

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