Name: Working for yourself - 6 Minute English
Uploaded: 2021-02-11T18:10:58.000Z
Duration: 6 min 17 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Georgina.

Rob, what's the best job you've ever had?

Err well, this one, of course! It's very creative, with lots of variety.

Well yes – it's a permanent job - a staff job -

Yes, these things can be important, but have you ever been

freelance – by that I mean, working for yourself

and selling your skills and services to different businesses?

Well, I worked as a paperboy once – delivering newspapers.

But not really – it's a risky way to earn an income.

But many people choose to, or have to work as a freelancer

And that's what we're talking about in this programme.

But let's start with a question for you, Rob.

This is about job titles – back in the 19th Century,

Were they… a) someone who played the drums?

or, c) a music publicist – who drums up –

Well, it's got to be someone who plays the drums –

OK, Rob, we'll find out if that's right at the end of the programme.

Long gone are the days of a job for life,

where you spent your adult life working your way up

We work in many different ways now because the needs of

businesses change frequently and it needs to be agile –

changing the size and type of work force in order to meet demand.

So, people need to adapt and some choose to work for

themselves, offering their skills to different businesses

But it can also be a lifestyle choice, as we're about to find out.

Yes, some people have chosen to become self-employed –

working for themselves - but also, because of the recent

coronavirus pandemic, some people have been

Let's hear from Carla Barker, who set up her own business

She told BBC Radio 4's programme You and Yours how she felt…

You know the idea of giving up a solid, permanent,

full-time, paid, comfortable, role is a bit petrifying…

It is super-scary because … you then have that fear of

You also have things creeping in that say you know

like self-sabotage – are you good enough to do this?

Are people going to want to take me on as a business?

an informal way of saying work for herself.

She described giving up a full-time job as petrifying –

I guess working for yourself must be scary

as you're solely responsible for your own success.

It's no surprise Carla had feelings of self-sabotage –

having doubts and fears that stopped her achieving something.

Luckily, she persisted and things went well.

And many other people who have become self-employed

or freelance have overcome the fear and discovered the benefits.

Like Fiona Thomas, who's the author of a book called

She also spoke to the BBC's You and Yours programme

and explained why she gave up the 9 to 5 –

the regular, full-time staff job – and how it helped her…

A kind of combination of wanting some creative

fulfilment from a job, compared to the job that I was in

before, which was very much customer based and working

But I also wanted the flexibility to accommodate

my mental health because I suffer from depression and

anxiety and I found working in a rigid schedule and being in

front of a lot of people all the time really

And I also wanted the financial freedom to be able to,

just having to wait on being promoted or getting a

So, working for herself gave Fiona a good feeling

that she achieved something she wanted to do –

It also meant she could work more flexibly

and that helped her with her mental health

because she didn't have to follow a fixed rota of tasks.

meaning the money she earned was not controlled

by someone else, and she didn't have to wait

Let's get back to my quiz question now, Rob.

Earlier I asked you if you knew what job a

drummer used to do back in the 19th Century?

And obviously, a drummer plays the drums!

Well, you are sort of right but a drummer