At times of economic transformation, when organisations create cultures that feel more like pressure cookers than fun places to work, many of us consider setting up our own businesses. “What is it really like?”, people ask. “Will I like running my own business” and “Am I suited to do so?”
This article is designed to inform and get you thinking.
- The Care Factor: The more time and money you invest, the more you care about it. With this comes a huge sense of satisfaction when you achieve and similarly depression when you fail. The tips are to celebrate all the small wins and move on quickly over the failures.
- Fear of Failure: The desire to be successful, and to prove yourself often drives business owners to succeed. However, it can create huge expectations and pressure depending on your personality type. Those that are highly perfectionistic can find this overwhelming.
- Abundant Mindset: This is very different from an employee mindset, where individuals are encouraged to compete for a declining number of positions. In small business there is enough business for everyone and not every client is going to want to work with you. Collaboration is the simplest way to grow your business.
- Opportunistic: The market is always changing unlike an employee job description business owners look for change, gaps in the market and opportunities for new products and services.
- Always On: Employees have very defined working hours although this has changed to be more flexible since COVID. Business owners are always on, or they have set up systems & people to support the needs of their clients. For those who love what they do this is not a chore.
- Comfortable with Uncertainty: Financially there is a lot more uncertainty as a business owner. It is in your hands, so you do have control but often it is hard to adjust to this level of uncertainty. As time goes on and you build loyal customers this lessens.
- Jack of all Trades: AS an employee many of you will be technically excellent at something and this can translate well to being a business owner. However, as you are unlikely to be surrounded by a team at first you need to know the basics about a lot of different topics, finance, tax, law, marketing, sales, websites etc. Outsourcing will be essential but to manage things you do need to understand the basics.
- Appetite for Risk: The market is constantly changing; no small business can stay unchanged and be competitive. Every time you make a change you are taking a risk. Those that are used to risk understand that taking calculated risks is a key part of success. In fact, you need to be failing at some things to find those that will help you succeed and grow.
- Feeling lost or overwhelmed: Embracing new things without a roadmap often causes people to feel overwhelmed and lost. There are some stages to establishing a business that you can follow, but many people tend to head down the path of trial and error. To overcome this, we encourage you to embrace the proven methods to success; mentoring, collaboration and joining in with a network of successful business owners.
- I Can’t Afford it: Be clear about your budget and honest about what you can invest in or not. Unlike working as an employee, it is your money and so you need to be prudent. Ensure you are well set financially before you launch a business, often it is advantageous to set things up whilst you are still employed.
For those of you seriously considering setting up a business check out our Business Accelerator program. This has successfully educated hundreds of people. We run this as a program with some councils to empower unemployed women to set up a business, many of whom have scaled and gone on to employ others.
If nothing else the topics we cover will give you an idea of the order you need to think in to grow your business. Learn more
