The Downside to Business Ownership

Some businesses make it, some not, sometimes there are legitimate reasons why they failed and sometimes it makes you wonder why a business didn't last when they seemed so successful and upward bound. The reasons can be many; but most of the small businesses initially require a mass amount of energy, passion, hard work, street smarts, and a long list of other attributes that no one really tells you about until you get there yourself. That is when you know if you have the "it" factor; and not until then, when you are smack dab in the middle of running your own business.

It is a major lifestyle change to go from employee to business owner and from a structured employer directed work schedule to an "anything it takes" work schedule. The passion is there in the beginning to spur you on; but once you are a business owner you will also need to change some of your belief systems, attitudes, schedules, eating habits, health issues, vocabulary, holidays, personal relationships, and on and on as will be required by your new status.

If you were already in a management position you may have a leg up on this portion of your business; but as a business owner the buck stops here with you on all counts and you will quickly learn that for every problem and activity that you planned out and knew about there will be many more that you didn't see coming. Now, this doesn't always mean bad things or events happening; but even with the good comes some burn out of energy after awhile. The best thing is to know that you cannot prepare for all of the contingencies no matter how good you are, you can't see the future, that's what makes life fun.

There are the people who truly have been put on this earth to be business owners and you probably know if you are one of them or not. But, it is a very big risk to find out too late that maybe the grass seemed to look greener somehow when you were looking into maybe buying or starting a business. There is always a lot of hype out there about "being your own boss" and taking courses so that the person selling the materials and books can make money at their business of hooking people into pie in the sky schemes. It pays to do a lot of soul searching and to take your time assessing the "life costs" before you start to believe that this is what you need to do in your life.