“I Thought It Would Have Been More about Only the Fun Stuff”—Exploring the Expectation–Reality Gap among the Novice Solo Self-Employed

Research on the career expectations of employees and the potential (mis)match with their lived reality is abundant, yet the research field has paid less attention to the expectation–reality gap of the self-employed. Self-employed people’s attitudes towards work are, however, important for determining business success and persistence. Therefore, research is needed to examine their expectations as well as how self-employed people’s expectations materialize in their experiences. By analyzing in-depth interviews with 19 self-employed workers without employees in Belgium, both desired and undesired career expectations were revealed. After becoming self-employed, these expectations sometimes materialized in reality, in both a positive (e.g., independence and doing what you love) and a negative (e.g., risk and insecurity) sense. Our results also imply that expectation–reality gaps going in two directions exist. We identified positive expectations being met by less-positive experiences (e.g., loneliness, increased responsibility, being unable to do what you like, overestimated financial success, and unavailable or expensive formal support), as well as negative expectations being met by better experiences (e.g., social support between self-employed colleagues). The study signals that the social environment of the solo self-employed (SSE) merits policy attention. Efforts need to be made to create self-employed networks, where professional and social ties can be formed.