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Why Gen Z want to be their own bosses

Why Gen Z want to be their own bosses

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At the age of 22, Liam Quirk was working for an SEO agency on a good salary of £35,000. He was earning more than his friends, and felt satisfied with the autonomy he was allowed. But after four years he decided it wasn’t enough, and in May 2020 – in the middle of the pandemic – he quit in order to become his own boss.

Older members of his family thought he was crazy to set up his own agency and some doubted it would work at all. His colleagues were not supportive. “I was on a good salary for my age so it was quite a big risk when we launched,” he says. And for a while, it didn’t work: for the first six months, Quirk moved back home to his parents in Liverpool, lived off savings and didn’t pay himself a penny, despite working 12-hour days, six days a week.

A desire to travel while working drove him to strike out on his own. He’d always had an entrepreneurial mindset and had planned to work for himself since the age of 17. Four years after the launch, Quirk’s company is making a healthy profit – he expects to hit seven figures next year – and he now employs 14 people with an average age of 24.

The phenomenon of Gen Z ‘quiet quitting’ has hit the headlines over the past few years, as have accusations of the under-27s lacking resilience in the workplace – and, alongside these trends, there is a move to greater levels of self-employment among young people. According to a 2023 Meta poll, one in three Gen Z-ers say the “best way to achieve wealth” is to work for themselves. And 45,000 people between the age of 20 and 24 were doing just that between April 2022 and March 2023, according to a global study by Kantar.

“They see their parents who have worked themselves to the bone, which has made them realise there might be more to life,” says Victoria McLean. As the CEO of City CV, she works with people looking for new jobs and has increasingly seen more people wanting to work for themselves or quitting their jobs in the hope of freelancing.

“There’s this pushback against authority and having the option of doing what you want,” she tells i. “Social media is a big part of it as well. You see these successful people in a way you didn’t 20 or 30 years ago. You see people living perfect lives on Instagram or being able to travel or work from exotic locations or just have more freedom.”

Although Quirk is a young success story, McLean doesn’t believe this shift to freelancing is necessarily a good thing for young people. “If you’ve not worked within a professional organisation it’s hard to know what that should look like. It’s hard to understand the culture, the collaboration, the training, the relationships. You learn a lot from being in paid employment.”

She also thinks people are missing out on not working with older, more experienced, colleagues. “Workforces that are intergenerational work really productively because often young people learn from those who are maybe more mature, more experienced and more seasoned. There’s a lot of knowledge they’re not gaining now. It’s easy to think you know it all.”

But for some of Gen Z, it is the older colleagues driving them to leave the work place.

Lizzie Lynch has been freelancing since June 2023 (Photo: Supplied)

Lizzie Lynch, 26, left her £43,000 role last year after a senior member of staff criticised her. “They really damaged my confidence,” she says. “I was criticised for pointing out management issues and labelled ‘negative’ for speaking up for myself and others.” She says “the stress wasn’t worth risking my health”. Since June 2023 – when Lynch was 25 – she has been freelancing.

She has struggled to maintain a work-life balance while being her own boss. “Being a one-woman band is hard and overwhelming. I still haven’t got a proper routine down. It’s incredibly hard to say no when it’s work you want to do and money to pay the rent. There’s no annual leave and I haven’t had a proper day off since Christmas.”

Roman Read, 22, works up to 12 hours a day now he is running his cleaning business, Well Done, in London. “I have the mindset of always saying yes,” he tells i. “I find it hard to switch off sometimes. I’m always ready to work, which can take away from personal time with family and friends and which makes me fatigued mentally and physically.”

Read, from Buckinghamshire, runs the company with his father but previously worked in retail. At the age of 16, he started working evenings and weekends at the cinema but, after he was forced to work Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, decided it was not the right place for him as he wanted different hours. Afterwards, he moved to a Ralph Lauren store in Bicester, but he only lasted six months as he did not like the shift pattern. “I wouldn’t go back to working for any establishment,” he says. “I found accountability hard. I would forget to get my things ready for the next day or print paperwork.”

Roman Read was not a fan of the retail working hours (Photo: Supplied)

For Joshua Jenkins, 22, it was being in control of his income that pushed him into self-employment. During Covid, he worked at an Asda supermarket in his home city in Cardiff and although he did not dislike it, he “wanted and needed to earn more money” and did not want to “rely on an employer”.

For two years, he has been coaching fitness clients online for a monthly fee. It means he is constantly online replying to clients, sending them videos or at his laptop researching supplements and nutrition. “I have a lot more freedom day to day,” he says. “I can take the business where I want to get it.”

Although it is stressful finding new business and not having holiday pay, he is adamant a nine-to-five job would not work for him.

Behaviour analyst Briony Lewis says the pandemic was a huge catalyst for young people choosing to be freelance. “Young people are increasingly exposed to the harsh realities of the workforce. Many grew up in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that affected their parents and now witness millennial managers grappling with burnout and mental health issues.

“The pandemic reshaped people’s relationships with work and many of them entered the workforce when it was experiencing change and disruption, meaning it didn’t feel stable. This generation, arguably the most disillusioned with work, recognises that greater control over their working lives, achieved through freelancing opportunities, leads to better outcomes.”



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