Starting your own business requires a substantial amount of personal sacrifice, financial commitment, and physical dedication. If the lack of any of the above prevents you from elevating yourself in your current position then you should work on improving them since entrepreneurship requires a greater level of these and more.
Entrepreneurship is totally rewarding (especially when successful). Unfortunately success is not guaranteed nor is it always easily attained. One thing is for sure, success abounds where persistence is plentiful. It should go without saying that your heart must be in the right place when starting your own business. If an increased income is all that you seek then I suggest you reexamine yourself and see if there is another viable approach to improving your financial status.
Consider this:
Starting your own business requires a substantial amount of personal sacrifice, financial commitment, and physical dedication. If the lack of any of the above prevents you from elevating yourself in your current position then you should work on improving those areas since entrepreneurship requires a greater level of these and more.
Pay special attention to the “Personal Sacrifice” component. This is often taken lightly but business start ups are mentally and emotionally challenging and require long hours, most often with little tangible reward. Financial security is also something that entrepreneurs sacrifice. Owning your own business means that you are can claim everything that you charge as your own but I often say that it is one thing to earn a particular sum of money, it is another thing to collect it. You may earn double your current salary in one month but be paid over a three-month period. At the end of each month you would have received less money than you would have if you weren’t on your own. In the same breath, this would be fine if your monthly expenditure permits this “temporary salary reduction” since if it does, you may save the money you do not use and at the end of the day pocket (save) more money. This brings to the table the discipline component.
By far the most important character listed, I adamantly encourage you to become disciplined well before you enter into entrepreneurship. If your current income verses your current expenditure affords you an opportunity to save a relatively reasonable amount of money then DO! Discipline yourself in your spending habits now, and you may find that it was not your level of income that needed rising, it was your discipline.
As appealing as the thought of changing your own working hours is, you may quickly find that this practice is costly and that you may have to work longer than normal hours to achieve maximum efficiency. You may not only lose your personal time, it may be difficult to take vacation when you want (if you have a gift shop you wouldn’t want to take vacation in December since Christmas is a marketable time for you). You then may be losing holidays with pay, you may also lose pension rights, sick pay and other typical company perks. The latter may be available dependent on how your business is registered and setup with the local authorities since most governments make arrangements for payment similar to pension and sick pay. It is also important then to have the support of your family, friends and a network of seasoned entrepreneurs as their support and advice would be necessary to ensuring your success.
The final thing I will have you consider is that you cannot start a business solely based on passion for the particular field. I always urge people to ensure that they like the field that they are considering starting their business in but what is more important and I make this clear, is that they do market research to determine if the product or service they will be offering is something that is needed. “Man shall not live by passion alone…” If that were possible I would be immortal so to speak. Note that as a small business owner you shoulder the responsibility of the success of your business and so your time will for the most part be split between, marketing, accounting an your service or product development.
If you have considered the above and still consider entrepreneurship right for you then join me next week as we continue our discussions on business start up.
ervinWelsh
Beyond Timeless
CEO
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Good Topic (Y) keep up the good work!
Kool Blog Erv!