What the end of an industry teaches us about control, and why so many capable Australians never stop to ask whether self-employment might suit them better.

Somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 jobs across Australia are quietly coming to an end.

Not because of a recession, and not because anyone did anything wrong. Simply because the work is finished. Across the oil, gas and major construction sectors, a decade or two of enormous projects have moved out of the building phase and into the running phase. The infrastructure is built. The plants are online. And the tens of thousands of skilled people who put it all together are being told, one role at a time, that their part is done.

For most of them, the next thought arrives on its own. Find another job.

It is such a reflex that we barely notice it happening. Something ends, so we go looking for the next version of the same thing. And in a lot of cases that is exactly the right move. But when change is forced on you, when a whole industry winds down around you, there is a rare and valuable moment hiding inside the disruption. For a short window, everything is already up in the air. That is the one time it costs you almost nothing to ask a bigger question. Not “where do I get another job,” but “what do I actually want the next part of my life to look like?”

That question is the subject of Episode 70 of The Real Franchise.

The default nobody chose

Ask most Australians what you do when a job ends, and the answer is instant. You get another one. We are, culturally, hardwired for it. We are raised to believe that a responsible adult is an employed adult, that being between jobs is a problem to be solved as fast as possible, and that the fastest way to solve it is to slot back into the workforce somewhere else.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to work. The work ethic behind that reflex is a good thing. The problem is that the reflex is so strong it skips a step. It answers the question before the question has even been asked.

“Getting another job is normally what our brains default to. We are hardwired to get a job.”

Sit with that for a second. When was the last time a careers advisor, a school, or a well-meaning relative put self-employment on the table as a genuine, equal option alongside a salaried role? For most people, the honest answer is never. Self-employment is treated as something separate. Something riskier, further away, reserved for people with money or a big idea or a family business to inherit. It is rarely presented as simply another way to earn a living for a household.

And yet that is exactly what it is.

Two myths doing a lot of damage

When you dig into why people rule out working for themselves, two beliefs come up again and again.

The first is that self-employment is not really employment. That a job with an employer is the real thing, and running your own business is a kind of gamble sitting off to the side. This is worth challenging directly, because both earn money, both take work, and only one of them lets you decide how much of each you take on. When you work for a boss, your income has a ceiling. You trade a fixed amount of your time for a fixed amount of pay, and your life has to be arranged around whatever that allows. A business flips that. You choose how hard you work and, within reason, how much you earn. If you only want enough to live comfortably, you can build for that. If you want to grow something much larger, you can aim at that instead.

“You’re always capped on what you can earn when you work for a boss. In a business, you get to decide what kind of life you want to lead.”

The second myth is about money. A lot of people quietly assume owning a business means finding hundreds of thousands of dollars up front. Buy a cafe and you might be looking at three quarters of a million before you have sold a single coffee. For someone with a mortgage and a young family, that is not a risk, it is a fantasy, so the whole idea gets filed under “maybe after thirty more years of saving.” And for the traditional model, that caution is completely reasonable.

But the traditional model is no longer the only model. The barrier that made business ownership feel out of reach for ordinary earners has been coming down. It is now possible in Australia to start a properly supported business for a small weekly amount rather than a life-altering lump sum. That single change quietly dismantles the “I could never afford it” objection that stops so many capable people before they even begin.

Why a forced ending is actually an opening

Here is the part that is easy to miss when you are in the middle of it. A forced change is stressful, but it is also clarifying.

When your role is quietly comfortable, you rarely stop to audit it. The pay is good, the routine is set, and there is no obvious reason to pull the whole thing apart. It is only when something ends that you get permission to look at it honestly. Take the high-income, high-cost pattern a lot of fly-in fly-out and resource workers know well. The money is genuinely excellent. But the money is that good precisely because of what it costs. Being away three weeks out of four is the price of the pay cheque, and for years that trade can feel like it is simply the deal.

“It’s important, when you’re in a place of change, to sit back and ask: is it worth it? Am I prepared to pay the cost for that benefit, or are there other options?”

The answer might well be yes. Plenty of people weigh it up and choose to go straight back into the same kind of work, eyes open, and that is a perfectly good decision. The point is not that self-employment is better. The point is that the decision should be made on purpose, not on autopilot. A forced ending hands you a rare chance to choose the next thing deliberately, and it is a waste to spend that chance simply reaching for the nearest replacement.

The real reason people hesitate

Cost is what people say holds them back. It is usually not the real thing.

The real thing is fear. Not fear of the price, but fear of the unknown. What if it doesn’t work? How do I find customers? How do I know I’ll make any money? Those are not silly questions. They are the right questions, and anyone who jumps into a business without asking them is being far too casual about a serious decision.

The mistake is not asking the questions. The mistake is assuming the only way to answer them is alone.

When people picture business ownership, they picture DIY. Figure it out yourself. Work it out as you go. And DIY is genuinely daunting, because building a business from scratch with no support is enormous, and the odds reflect it. Around eight in ten Australian businesses fail within the first three years. That statistic is real, and it is exactly why the fear exists.

But that number describes people doing it on their own. It is not a law of nature. It is the outcome of a particular way of starting: without systems, without a proven process, without anyone who has done it before sitting beside you. Change the way you start and you change the odds you are up against.

“The way to handle fear is to get information. Check the numbers. Check the processes and the systems.”

This is where support earns its place. A good network does the invisible work before a new owner ever opens their doors. Web pages, local search presence, marketing, signage, vehicles, uniforms, brochures, business cards, the entire machinery a solo starter would have to discover and assemble on their own. Done properly, and done every week as normal business rather than as a one-off experiment, that groundwork is what turns a terrifying leap into a set of steps you can actually follow.

Franchising is just outsourcing the hard part

Franchising has an image problem, and some of it is earned. There is a version of it built on big upfront fees and thin support, and the media reports on the failures because failure is news. But reporting on the worst one per cent of anything is not the same as describing the whole.

It helps to reframe what a franchise actually is. You already outsource the important, specialised things in your life. You get a professional to cut your hair, an agent to sell your house, an accountant to handle your tax, an adviser to tell you where to put your money. Nobody calls that weakness. It is just sensible to hand difficult, specialised work to people who do it all day.

“Franchising is just outsourcing your business start-up to experts who know how to do it really, really well.”

Seen that way, a good franchise is simply outsourcing the riskiest, least familiar part of self-employment, the starting, to people who start businesses for a living. Think of it like baking. If you have never baked a cake before, the outcome is a coin toss. Follow a proven recipe and a good method, and you can reasonably expect a cake to come out of the oven. A refined business system works the same way. Follow the steps, with guidance and support, and the result becomes far more predictable than going it alone.

None of which means every network is worth your money. It means the category deserves a proper look rather than a reflexive dismissal, and that the real work is telling the good ones from the bad ones.

Practical takeaways: if your job or industry has an end date

• Notice the default before it decides for you. The pull toward “just get another job” is strong and often invisible. Pause long enough to actually weigh your options rather than letting the reflex choose for you.
• Add up the true cost of the old role. Not just the salary, but the time, the travel, the weeks away, and the toll on family. A big income can look very different once you put the full price next to it.
• Separate the myth from the maths on start-up costs. You do not necessarily need a huge lump sum. Low-cost, supported entry models exist now, so check what is actually possible before you assume it is out of reach.
• Treat fear as a signal to gather information, not to retreat. Ask about systems, processes, track record and what support looks like in the first critical months. Facts are the antidote to fear.
• Interrogate any network you consider. How do you make your money? What happens to you if I struggle? How often will we actually speak? Who coaches me, and what have they built themselves?
• Look for evidence, not polish. Genuine care leaves a trail. Ask to speak with current and past owners openly. Brochures and glossy promises are not proof of anything.
• Give yourself permission to count self-employment as a real job. It earns money, it builds something, and it can hand you back control over your time. It is not a lesser option. It is just one we were never taught to see.

The end of a job can feel like something being taken from you. And in the moment, it is. But it is also one of the few times life stops and clears enough space to ask a better question than the one we usually settle for.

We have built a culture that treats another job as the only sensible answer when work runs out. For some people it is. For others, that reflex quietly closes a door they never even looked through, at the exact moment it happened to be open.

Self-employment is employment. We were just never taught to see it that way. And when change is forced on you, the next move does not have to be forced too. It can be chosen.

That is what The Real Franchise is really about. Not convincing anyone to buy anything, but widening the set of options people consider before they decide.

Frequently Asked Questions

My industry is winding down. Is starting a business really a realistic alternative to another job? Yes, and for a lot of people it is worth serious thought rather than a default no. The moment of forced change is actually the easiest time to consider it, because everything is already in flux. The key is to make the decision deliberately, weighing what you want your life to look like, rather than grabbing the nearest replacement role.

Do you need a lot of money to start a business in Australia? Not necessarily. The old assumption that you need hundreds of thousands of dollars up front applies to some traditional models, but not to all of them. Lower-cost, supported startup options now exist that make business ownership accessible to ordinary earners, not just people with a large nest egg.

Why do we automatically reach for another job instead of considering self-employment? Mostly cultural conditioning. We are raised to equate being a responsible adult with being employed by someone else, and self-employment is rarely presented as an equal option at school or by careers advice. The reflex is so ingrained that many people never pause to ask whether working for themselves might suit them better.

Isn’t starting a business much riskier than taking a salaried role? Doing it entirely alone is risky, and the roughly 80 per cent failure rate over three years reflects that. But much of that risk comes from starting without systems, a proven process, or experienced support. Change how you start, and you change the odds. Risk is real, but it is not fixed.

I’ve spent years in FIFO or resources work. What actually transfers to running my own business? More than people expect. Strong work ethic, reliability, the ability to follow a process and handle pressure all carry over. What is usually missing is the business side: marketing, quoting, systems and client acquisition. That is exactly the part a good support structure is designed to supply.

How do I deal with the fear that my business might fail? Answer the fear with information rather than avoidance. Look closely at the systems, the processes, the track record and the level of support on offer. Fear tends to shrink once vague worry is replaced with concrete facts about how a business will actually be built and run.

Is franchising a good option after redundancy? It can be, if the network is a good one. The value of a strong franchise is that it outsources the hardest, least familiar part of self-employment to people who do it constantly. The caution is that not all networks are equal, so the quality of the specific network matters enormously.

How do I tell a good franchise from a bad one? Ask direct questions and watch how openly they are answered. How does the network make its money? What happens if you struggle? How often will you actually hear from them? Who are the coaches and what have they personally built? Good networks welcome those questions. Evasive ones tell you what you need to know.

Is self-employment really “employment”? Yes. It earns an income, it occupies your working life, and it supports a household, which is the definition most people apply to a job. The main difference is control. You decide how much you work and, to a large degree, how much you earn, rather than accepting a fixed ceiling set by an employer.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while but never done anything. Is that normal? Completely. On average, people have been turning the idea over for around a year before they make a single enquiry, and some have been thinking about it for years. A long lead time is not a sign you are not serious. It is usually a sign you have been waiting for the right moment, or the right amount of support, to make it feel possible.

Listen to Episode 70 and explore the full series at The Real Franchise, real conversations with real people building businesses through James Home Services.