Go Hire Yourself An Employer Richard K Irish

What Actually Happens When You Treat Your Business Like a Job You're Hiring Someone for

Richard K Irish wrote a book called Hire Yourself An Employer that flips the traditional job-seeking mindset on its head. The core idea is straightforward but not everyone gets it right. Instead of looking for a boss to hire you, you position yourself as a service provider that businesses hire. The difference between understanding the concept and actually making it work has everything to do with execution details most people skip over. As an employee, you trade hours for money with someone else controlling the schedule, the workload, and the terms. As your own employer, you set rates, choose clients, decide when to work, and bear the risk of empty pipelines. Irish's framework is really about shifting how you approach that transition so you don't walk into it blind. I've watched plenty of people quit their jobs thinking the mindset shift alone would carry them. It doesn't. The book gives you a starting point, not a business plan. The tricky part most beginners miss is that hiring yourself means you now have to act like an employer would treat any other hire. You need to define your deliverables clearly, price them realistically, and handle the administrative side that used to be someone else's problem. Payroll taxes, invoicing, contract work, liability considerations — these suddenly become your responsibilities whether you like them or not.

How to Actually Use the Framework Without Wasting Your Time

First, stop reading the book cover to cover and expecting inspiration to hit. It works better when you treat each chapter as a checklist item. Go through it methodically. Write down what services you'd offer, who would actually pay for them, and what your minimum viable rate would be. That third part matters most. I've seen people skip straight to the branding and web design before they could honestly state a number they'd be willing to accept for a single project. Next, pick one specific skill or service you can deliver well enough that someone would pay for it without needing extensive training. Generalists struggle here. The framework assumes you have something marketable. If your current skills don't qualify, that's the step you spend the most time on before anything else clicks into place. Then model your pricing around value, not hours. This is where the employer mindset really shows up. Employers don't pay you for sitting at a desk. They pay you for results. When I was testing this approach myself, I initially priced by the hour and ended up penalizing myself for being efficient. A client needed a complete audit of their customer onboarding flow and I finished it in three days because I'd done similar work before. If I'd charged hourly, I'd have made less than minimum wage. I switched to fixed-project pricing and everything changed after that.

You also need to handle the legal and financial setup before you start taking on paying clients. In the US, that means registering your business entity, getting an EIN, opening a separate business bank account, and setting up basic bookkeeping. Don't skip the separation between personal and business finances. I learned that the hard way when I mixed them for about four months and nearly couldn't reconstruct enough documentation for quarterly estimated taxes. An accountant who understands self-employment helps here, even if it's just a one-time setup consultation.

Common Pitfalls That Derail People Early On

The biggest one is underpricing because you're uncomfortable charging more. It feels awkward at first. You've been an employee your whole life and suddenly asking for five hundred dollars for a two-hour project makes your stomach tighten. But the market sets the price, not your comfort level. Research what similar services go for in your area or niche and price at or slightly below that range to start. Never price below market rate because that attracts the wrong clients and trains them to expect cheap work. Another pitfall is treating this like it happens fast. Irish's book implies momentum but doesn't sugarcoat the timeline. Expect three to six months before you have consistent income replacing your salary, assuming you're starting from scratch with no existing client base. If you already have skills and contacts in a marketable area, it can be faster. I knew someone who went from zero clients to three recurring customers in eight weeks because she had built a professional network over ten years in corporate marketing before making the switch. Her timeline was nothing like someone starting cold. Networks matter more than the book sometimes lets on. You will not find clients by publishing a blog post and waiting. Reach out to former colleagues, post in relevant professional groups, attend industry meetups. The job you're hiring yourself for still requires sales. The only difference is you're now both the salesperson and the product.

When This Approach Won't Work for You

Let me be clear about the limitations. This framework assumes you can deliver a service that someone else values enough to pay for. If your skills are purely internal — things like management, coordination, or operational roles that require a company structure to function — you may find it much harder to translate them into standalone services. I ran into this with a former manager friend who spent years optimizing team workflows. He wanted to apply the employer-hiring framework but had no clear service offering that translated outside his previous employer's context. We spent weeks trying to package his skills into something marketable and eventually he realized he needed to target a specific industry where his expertise had direct ROI, like logistics companies facing scaling problems. That specificity made it work. Without it, he was stuck. Another scenario where this breaks down is when you need benefits like health insurance, retirement matching, or paid time off. Self-employment means you cover all of that yourself, often at higher cost than employer-subsidized plans. Run the numbers on your current compensation package including benefits before quitting. The gap between gross pay and net take-home as a freelancer can be substantial once you factor in self-employment tax, health insurance premiums, and the absence of employer 401k matches. If your goal is quick income replacement with minimal upfront work, this isn't the path. It requires upfront investment of time, some financial runway, and genuine willingness to handle the business side, not just the work side. The book gives you the conceptual shift. The rest depends on your situation, your skills, and how much effort you're willing to put in during the transition period.