I recently read an article from Entrepreneur magazine about what you can expect about being your own boss of your business. It is really a great article and you should take a look at it. After you get a look here though. Lets see, what did they say. Isolation, Patience, Depression, Rich, Boss are the terms that they highlighted. Let’s dig into those as I see them because in my time of running business as well as owning a retail store for over a decade, I have a bit of knowledge on the subject.
On your own
You will need to make sure that you like working on your own. They called it isolation, but that is just not right. When you are isolated, you have minimal input. That should not be the case. As an entrepreneur you should be gathering input from hundreds of areas. Newspapers, websites, social groups, phone calls, customers, and others and then it is your job to make a decision on your own. That is the lonely part of the job. Not only do you need to make the decision, then you sit and think about whether it was the right one.
Patience
This is definitely true as having patience is an absolute need. No one works at the speed of you. No one keeps up with me because the cannot read my mind. My wife and I have had so many differences when we were trying to manage the store that we never got anything done. I did not allow things to happen the way that she thought that they needed to get done. It was only after I got so busy at my job and had to leave the store to her that I really saw things happen. I needed to let the decision play out and have some patience with that decision.
Depression
I cannot argue to much with this one. Straight up depression happens. Different people have different types though. I just call it feeling sorry for yourself or in the dumps. There are times that I just don’t want to talk about things and then I go play some video games for 3 hours to take my mind of things. That works great for me, but for others there is no options sometimes. Being married allows me to vent if I want. Rarely do I, but just knowing that I can is a relief. This ties directly up to the lonely part of this article. It is lonely at the top and as an entrepreneur you are by yourself and when you make a bad decision, and you will, there is no one that is holding your hand saying that it will be alright. Sometimes it is not alright and you lose the business. Sinking into a deeper pit of despair can happen very quickly.
Wealth and Riches
There is a perception that our family is well off. Most likely we would be considered rich by the standard definition of the term. That is so far off from the truth though. Every day we are waiting for a sale to happen. Everyday we are counting when that credit card deposit is going to hit the bank. We did not hit our numbers this month, or last month, what will this month look like. Will we have to take some of my salary and put it into the business. See those kind of things are not measured in that “rich” calculation. It is just asking how much you make a year. It is true that we have equity in the business and that has value, but that does not mean that you can take that money and go buy a Nissan GTR tonight.
Be the Boss
Everyone wants to be the boss until you are one. I should clarify the sentence though. Everyone can be a boss, can everyone be a good boss. That is the real kicker. I just had a scenario the other day that I had to point something out to someone, but in order to do a good job and not be too critical I had to point out how they made a good decision in an overall difficult situation. As the boss you will make all the decisions good and bad. You will not be credited with all the good choices and you will be mocked and criticized for making the bad ones. Prepare yourself for being the boss. Understand that you have to make those decisions and your employees must recognize those and abide by them. If you are not strong then you will have a very difficult time with dealing with them when something bad happens.
When I look at all of the things that happen as an entrepreneur I like it. The freedom that it brings is worth it as long as you can deal with the stress of things. You must have a partner that is going to be strong and understand the things brought up here. The family will need to know that you will not always be around. You must understand that when you are around, you MUST take time with them. I learned many of these things the hard way and made those mistakes. To be a good entrepreneur you will make mistakes, learn from them and make better decisions going forward.
Good luck!