Just the essentials

One of the reasons you can earn more money as a 1099 than as a W2 employee is because your personal cost structure are likely way lower than a company's cost structure.

As a 1099, you don't need a fancy office, an HR person or middle management, a company Christmas party, boring annual trainings, or free coffee.

Okay free coffee is nice, scratch that.

But this infrastructure costs money, and while a larger company may need it, you don't, which means your costs are lower, which means more money in your pocket.

You can just pay for what matters and focus on what you do best: the actual work.

You can just do the essentials and be happy for it.

This is why, at a gut level, you don't like corporate culture. A lot of it feels unnecessary and instead of focusing on giving you the things you care about and need to do the job well, they focus on irrelevant perks, administrative overhead, and "motivating" employees.

So if you just want to focus on the small number of things you care about, go 1099.

Want the full playbook? Check out Going 1099.