Stuck in regular employment? Sick of your day job and the office politics? Dream of striking out on your own and being your own boss? Read this first:
The grass couldn’t be greener could it? Working for yourself, answerable only to you and doing everything the way you want it to be done. It’s the dream ticket but also one of the most common misconceptions about running your own business.
The truth is; working for yourself means working for more people than you ever have done before…
Don’t fret, this isn’t a blog trying to convince you not to pursue that dream and that employment is better than running your own shindig (by the way, if you can be convinced that your dream isn’t worth pursuing then you probably shouldn’t do it anyway…but that’s another article). This blog just aims to highlight the point so that it doesn’t come as a shock to you when you cut loose on your lonesome.
Yes, you may have a painful hierarchy of managers to report to now and a truck load of bureaucracy that limits your activity but think about who you will be answerable to when you run your own business:
- The obvious one is customers. Meet your new managers and I emphasise the ‘ers’ – plural. Chances are you will have some no matter what type of business you run. Do you think they will be as easy to compromise with as your current manager? You will want lots of them and you will need their expectations met every time. Out of hours phone calls, repeat visits, after-sales support are all recurring themes from business owners I talk to.
- If you aren’t kept busy enough looking down the supply chain then get busy keeping people on side up the stream as well. Yes, once you are a huge corporation with leveraging power suppliers will be bending over backwards to work with you but to begin with you won’t be. You will be a small operation, tight on resources with suppliers to pay that will be low on patience. Striking and then maintaining a relationship with these people will be key and a common feature of your working day.
- Professional services. Accountants, the Tax Man, Lawyers etc will almost certainly be on your case to provide them with information in a timely manner (remember that phrase from your current job description?). You need their help and they need info from you on time and in full to provide it.
- The wife. The husband. The mother in law. Your parents. A fourteen year old son who needs a lift home from the football game after school tonight. You are probably well versed with the amount of time these stakeholders already require but their interests must not be compromised now you don’t have a regular 9-5. Primarily this is because they are more important to you than the first three but I see a lot of small businesses who have parents and relatives as their financial backers. They may have loaned you some start up capital or let you use their garage for storage, whatever it is if they have skin in the game then you probably owe them the courtesy of keeping them informed on what you are up to and what your plans are.
- Emloyees: Not too much explanation required here other than to say don’t for a minute think you are not answerable to them in some way, shape or form. Get it wrong and you will have a workplace full of people reading articles like this one as they start to research the greener grass on the self employed side of the fence!
I know you knew starting your own business was going to be hard work, now you know some of the specific areas of hard work that don’t always come across in the self help books and blogs. This shouldn’t put you off, just turns a little more of that ‘un-known’ into a ‘known’.
Edward Lane
stopdreamingandstartliving 