There’s no doubt about it, running a small business is no walk in the park. While it has its challenges, there are also personal, as well as practical benefits to being a business owner. Here are a few of them.
1. You can take it as far as you want.
You have the power and the freedom to run your business as effectively as you want; the sky really is the limit. The point here is that you can build a business that is as professional, as grand, as specific as you want it to be. The only limitations you have are the ones you set for yourself. You set the tone, you establish the parameters, and you stop exactly where you decide you want to stop.
2. Power to change things as needed.
If you see something about your business that isn’t being done the right way, then you are in a position to make the necessary changes that will remedy that problem. When you work for someone else, and you see a problem, you can only relay that information to your boss so that they can make the decision. As the business owner, you don’t have to clear it with anyone else first; you can simply execute the needed changes directly.
3. Control over your own fate.
Your fate as a business owner is in your own hands. In other words, nobody is going to fire you. You’re going to have a job, and you’re going to be in business as long as you can keep the business alive. You never have to worry about someone else in authority pivoting in the wrong direction and deciding your fate for you.
4. Choose the people with whom you want to work.
When you work for someone else, the people with whom you work are chosen for you. Now you’re the boss. And as the boss, you’re in charge of picking the people you’re working with. You can pick the best team to make your vision a reality, a team that you work well with, a team that you even enjoy working with.
5. Gain access to industry secrets.
Let’s say you work a job that you love, one that you’re really good at. Even so, as an employee of someone else’s company, you cannot learn as much about your work or craft that you can as an owner. A business owner in any given industry, by necessity, has an esoteric knowledge of, and unique access to the tools and trade secrets of that industry.
6. Contributing to your local economy & job force.
You can have a special peace of mind with the knowledge that your business is putting money back into your local economy. You might pay other local vendors or partners, who in turn do the same, contributing to the locality. At the same time, it’s likely that you are also creating jobs for people who live there, who take the money you pay them, and again recycle that money.
7. Sense of accomplishment & self-worth.
You are enriching yourself, working towards a goal, and doing something that many people cannot do when you run a small business. There are a great deal of challenges that you have to overcome to be successful, which provides for you a tremendous sense of self-reliance, self-worth, and self-esteem. When you are hired by a company, everything is already set up for you; when you start a business, you have to create its structure and set the parameters, which is not easy to accomplish.
Stephanie
Stephanie is the Marketing Director at Talkroute and has been featured in Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur as a leading authority on business and telecommunications.
Stephanie is also the chief editor and contributing author for the Talkroute blog helping more than 100k entrepreneurs to start, run, and grow their businesses.