Since making the decision to become self-employed, I've been constantly on the lookout for opportunities to get new clients, find new income sources, and generally become a better entrepreneur. However, every time I mention my ideas to my family, even though they are theoretically supportive of self-employment and have both successfully freelanced (my mum transitioned from employee-status to self-employed status in the industry she'd previously worked in, and my dad has moved from employment to consulting and now owns a business using the same sort of skillset as he used before), they always give me negative comments. Both the industries they were/are in were high-demand industries, but for which I don't find the type of work that would be required interesting. I haven't really been looking for their approval of my ideas, but it's still a bit disheartening.
Whenever I suggest an idea I came up with to make a bit of money (not necessarily loads, but a bit) to my mum that's different from the idea I initially had as my "main" idea the first week I was self-employed, trying to think outside the box a bit and increase my success, she's all, "Oh, that won't work!" or "Who is going to buy this?" and stuff. I had an idea to make money on holiday, and she said that no one would want to pay me to do the thing I thought of because I wouldn't be a local and there wouldn't be that many people needing that particular service anyway. All I was trying to do was think of a way of covering my holiday costs while on the holiday, since they're a significant chunk of my (already low) expenses for the year, but she was being such a crab about it. I'm still planning to look for opportunities to use this idea, though.
And my dad, while much more supportive of entrepreneurship in general, keeps suggesting I drop my own ideas and take up web design instead. Please note here that while I know a little programming and web design, currently my coding skills are just about good enough to produce something out of the nineties. I only find about 20% of the web design process interesting. I don't want to put in the time it would take to get good enough at web design to do websites from scratch for paying customers. He knows this. Why does he keep suggesting it to me?
Plus, even though they keep dissing my ideas, they are putting pressure on me to earn money faster. I was trying to suggest areas where we could cut back on the household budget, and Mum said something like, "Never mind saving, how about earning more?" I thought, what do you think I'm trying to do by coming up with all these ideas and teaching myself how to market and sell things better?
I love them, I really do, but I often wish they understood my mindset better.
Anybody else have problems with unsupportive or negative friends or family?