Are you ready to dive in?
Are you an entrepreneur at heart? Are you itching to start your business but not sure when’s the right time to dive in — or if the debt will be too much, the hours too long, your personal life will be over? When you’re smart enough to be a small business owner, it can also mean you’re cautious about the risks. These are serious questions that must be considered, but make sure to consider the pros too, not only the cons — and all the reasons you want to run your own business in the first place.
To inspire you, here are …
14 reasons it’s a good idea to run your own business:
1. Follow your passion. You get to choose what business to start. Think about what you love, then find a way to make a living involving that passion. The great benefit of this is that entrepreneurs don’t feel like they’re working hard, even when they’re working 14-hour days — because they love what they do!
2. Find job security. It may sound counterintuitive, but there’s a special kind of job security for an entrepreneur. You’re the boss, so nobody can fire you. You know that to succeed, you must get the job done — so you’ll work hard. Your motivation to get the job done is intrinsic, not arbitrary.
3. Be financially independent. Related to the above, this means you control your own destiny. You decide how hard to work for your money (no need to ask the boss), and most importantly you decide what to do with that money — now you can decide to give yourself a raise, invest more to grow the business, set aside more for retirement, take two months off to vacation with family, it’s your choice.
4. Choose who you work with. You know when someone feels like a good fit, whether it’s a co-investor, a new business partner, or a new employee. At a corporate job, your co-workers are the luck of the draw, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
5. Work anywhere. Thanks to Wi-Fi, if you want to work from your favorite local café, or at home in your underwear, you can do that every day. Unshackle yourself from the cubicle!
6. Enjoy more variety. Let’s face it: many jobs have a narrow focus, same stuff every day. We humans get bored with that. When you run your own company, you’ll handle everything from executive decisions to ordering materials and calling customers.
7. Learn new skills. You’ll become an expert at your core mission. Plus, you’ll learn a hundred new skills — even if you open a pub you’ll likely learn how to do accounting, online advertising, spreadsheets, graphic design, plumbing, and how to setup your cloud backup and network-attached storage! It can be a challenge, but a very satisfying one. After this, you’ll know you can do anything!
8. Get things done faster. No more corporate bureaucracy! You know what you need to do, and how to do it right — now you can just do it!
9. Earn tax write-offs. Most small business owners can write off lots of business expenses, from your new laptop and cel phone bills to airfare and hotel costs. Even daily gas and some food, if you’re driving and eating to get work done.
10. Get more free time. Sure, you’re likely to work long hours at first, and often you’ll work very long days several days in a row. But eventually, especially after you’ve setup processes and discovered what to delegate — your rhythm will be determined by the real need for work, not a corporate time clock. Eventually the ebb and flow of customer needs and real work requirements can give you larger blocks of free time than the typical corporate vacation allowance.
11. Live ethically. You can setup your processes to be environmentally friendly, put the customer’s needs first, treat your employees the way you always wanted to be treated. Of course you can live ethically in a corporate job too — but this way you control every aspect of how your work impacts the world.
12. Make a difference. Not all of us can change the world like Steve Jobs, but you can certainly organize your business activities to make an impact in your local community, whether it’s through the unique product or higher quality of service you offer, the little league team you sponsor, or the subcontractors you choose to hire. This stuff matters to real people’s lives, and you can feel satisfied you did what you could to make a positive impact.
13. Make life interesting. You’ll always have something to talk about at cocktail parties, because your job will no longer be narrowly defined — life will be filled with every aspect of business from idea-generation to customer satisfaction to e-commerce and liability insurance!
14. Be proud. Every day you’ll know you’re working to realize your own vision, and for your own future and nothing else. And when you’ve built your business, you’ll be able to see the results and know you made them happen.
You probably have some reasons of your own to start that business (or reasons you’re already an entrepreneur). Help inspire your fellow free spirits — tell me your reasons in the comments, or at our Facebook page!
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Who is John Paulsen? A former small-business leader myself, I feel your pain (and joy) and hope you’ll enjoy the blog. I launched and ran a well-regarded production company in San Francisco with a team of 9 brilliant, hard working people. I learned to manage a wide array of tasks a small business must handle — business strategy, facilities design, HR, payroll, taxes, marketing, all the way down to choosing telecom equipment and spec’ing a server system to help my team collaborate in real-time on dense media projects from multiple production rooms. I’ve partnered with and learned from dozens of small business owners.
Crap Steve…..you never told me this. I have been able to get a taste of 1, 5, 7, and 11…….and best goal is 12&14
Finis