Eye Opening Opinion About Starting Your Own Business

I am speaking from experience here. This is no bullshit, just the truth as I see it having built a successful business myself. The idea of owning your own business is seductive. You think about what a great boss you would be. You think about the prestige that being a business owner carries. You think about how great it will be to have total control. You imagine how much money you will make and what you could do with it.

But once you actually begin doing it, you realize that all that glamour is somewhat of an illusion. You realize it is a lot harder than it looks; a lot harder. You begin to realize why so many people fail in business, even people smarter than you. Eventually the prestige you thought you would feel by being able to introduce yourself as a business owner wears off. As a matter of fact, when I meet people I don’t introduce myself as a business owner. Rather, I just tell them what field I work in. I leave the accolades and other bullshit to someone else. I am not in this for the prestige at all anymore. It is simply a means for me to provide for the lifestyle I wish to live.

Being successful in business takes a big set of balls. You have to be willing to risk a great deal. When you get to the top you are all alone. Nobody really understands the pressure on you except for maybe your spouse. You will have a core group of friends. But, it probably won’t be the same group you are with right now. Even some of your employees whom you thought were your friends will secretly resent your success. It is the nature of the beast. Some people just can’t stand to see other people succeed. You’ll end up hanging around with other business people. Some of them are quite interesting. Some of them are ruthless powerful success driven people with little time for pleasantries.

If you think that you will be this great boss and all of your employees will be your best friends, you are sorely mistaken. They employer/employee relationship has a strange way of ruining all chances of developing a really close friendship with most workers. The fact of the matter is that you are their boss. There will always be things that they cannot confide in you about. They will always think they are worth more than they are and that you are worth less than you are. It is the nature of the relationship.

Being a boss with employees to manage isn’t all it is cracked up to be either. One thing that employees often don’t realize is that the boss is in fact worried about their jobs. At least that is the case with me. I worry about keeping my employees employed so I don’t have to send them out looking for a new job. Yet, most employees never see that side of the boss. They just think they are being used as tools. In small businesses this is not the case. Every employee is a useful tool but they are also much more than that.

While you pour your heart and soul into your baby (your business) it will come to your attention that most of your employees really don’t give a shit. They are just there to collect a paycheck. The only reason they are happy to see you keep your doors open is because they need a place to work. If they weren’t working for you, they wouldn’t give two shits about your business and whether or not it survives. If you find an employee who goes out of his way to make things run smoothly, someone who is really ambitious, you better find a way to hang onto him. They are extremely rare.

To make a long story short, you better have a list of some damn good reasons for getting into business before you actually take the plunge. There are many advantages to being an employee rather than the boss. If you go out of your way to be a great employee, I can assure you that it will eventually pay off.