Let’s take an example of a business owner named Bob. Here is his story: Just last night I was sitting down to examine my tasks for the coming week. I was excited at the prospect of implementing some creative new tech ideas, when my task list reminded me of pressing bookkeeping and personnel management tasks that needed to be handled before anything else. I sat down and took care of them and made note of my new creative ideas, which would have to wait for the time being.
Owning and operating your own business will require you to be in charge of all aspects of the business. Many of us start a business out of the desire to do what we love and work for ourselves, what could be better? For most of us, however, operating a business also involves aspects of work you may not enjoy, and maybe some that you did not expect.
Let’s say you are a carpenter working for a firm, but dream of doing the woodworking you love and being your own boss. You look into starting your own business, and learn the basics about forming a legal entity and what your government requirements will be. This all sounds great so far, you’ll fill out some paperwork, consult with a lawyer, and start finding clients, right?
Well you’ve hit your first complication right there, finding clients. They are certainly out there, and maybe you’ll be able to keep some of your previous clients from the firm you worked with before. But you’ll want to grow, and you’ll want to find more clients, so you will need to put some effort into marketing yourself. The next step is an advertisement campaign. Who is your target market? How will you reach them? You will need to understand these issues, or be able to hire a marketing firm that can handle them for you.
When your marketing strategy is figured out, you will ideally have a lot of clients and a lot of work. But, how are you making sure you get the most out of doing this work? What factors will influence the pricing that you charge customers? How are you budgeting your time to get the most out of your work week? Where are you recording transactions, and how are you organizing them? You will need to be an effective manager to handle these tasks.
You now have looked at a few aspects of your business; marketing, management, and accounting – but what about carpentry? Keeping up with all that goes into operating a business, as well as putting in the time to produce a quality craft, may end up limiting the amount of work you can do. There simply won’t be enough hours in the day. As your business grows, you will need to hire employees to meet your growing demand. With hiring these employees, you need to manage them effectively. This will involve many management aspects including training, scheduling, and developing a solid compensation strategy. Once you have your operation set up and growing, you may find that you have not worked with your hands in a while. But, this does not mean that you can’t spend time doing what you love! If you are effective in managing your time and your business, you can allow for yourself to work on the carpentry projects that you are passionate about – because you’re in charge.
You should realize that as your business continues to grow, your role will likely shift more and more to being a manager and not doing the technical (or production) related things you loved doing. Start to find parts of the management role that you really like and see how you can expand on this. You need someone steering the ship, and as the owner and CEO, you are going to be the one that needs to steer it in the right direction.
Starting your own business is an exciting and involved experience. Your dream can certainly be realized, but you must look at it from a realistic and complete perspective to be successful.
What this means, simply, is that your responsibilities as a business owner are huge compared to those of an employee, even a manager. Don’t let this be roadblock for you, instead take some time to understand the whole picture of running a business, and be excited about it. If you approach entrepreneurship with the right mindset, it is the most fun and rewarding thing you could ever do!
When you do training or mentorship programs like what I am offering here, the idea is to remove roadblocks and unknowns from your path so you can improve your chances for success.
I respect entrepreneurs and business owners a lot. It takes a lot of guts to run your own business.
My purpose is to help entrepreneurs be successful.
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