Running a business is like riding
on a roller coaster. Although it is fun and exciting, there will be times when
you’ll be scared and feel powerless. During the bad times there isn’t much you
can do, other than to keep on pushing forward.
Business,
more than any other occupation, is a continual futuristic process that involves
calculation and an instinctive exercise of foresight.
Business
is an occupation, if you would spend
over eight years in school to become a competent doctor, over four years to
become an accounting trainee, why would you think you can start your own
business without first learning the trade.
In
the next couple of paragraphs, I will address three wrong reasons to start your
own business.
Lets begin with the first wrong reason, which is
to become wealthy. To this I say its either you are naive or you are simply not good at mathematics. A research from the University of Tennessee released in 2012, showed
that 60% of businesses fail at the 6th year. These are even the odds on the
business being alive how much more being profitable so much as to bring wealth to the owner.
My
advice in this regards is that if
you are an employee, spend less than you earn and invest the
difference regularly because statistically, the chances of being wealthy from your
own business are broadly lesser than being employed in a large corporation.
In addition, the second wrong reason
is to have more time for self and family. Thinking
you will have more time starting your own business
is quite erroneous. Right now if you are in a job, you probably are focused
only on a tiny segment of the business while other segments are handled by other people. For example, if you are a
teacher, you teach so well that
the school demands your service so much you hardly have time for yourself. You
decided to start your own
school thinking this would give you more time to focus on stuffs about
yourself. Wrong. Now you would not only have to cope with teaching, you will have to face recruiting, training,
managing and firing other teaching staff, you will answer to regulatory bodies regarding school and
curriculum accreditation, you will attend to the government regarding tax,
not only for the school but also for the property on which the school runs, you
will have to answer to the different unwelcoming attitudes of parents and many
more issues you didn’t bother about as a teacher, all in the same 24hours you
had previously. Now tell me would you have more or less time for yourself.
Finally, the third wrong reason is
to be your own boss. When you work at a 9 to 5 job you have one boss that
you have to report to. Whatever your boss tells you to do, you do. You may not
always like what he or she is telling you, but at least you only have one
person (worse case 2 people) bossing you around. If
you decide to start your own business, every one of your customers is a boss. If you think one boss is bad, think
about having 100. Whatever they want, you have to do. If you don’t, your bosses (customers) won’t
be happy, which means you won’t be in business much longer. As a fact, your
staff, suppliers, and even your landlord all become your boss.
So, becoming wealthy,
having more time for self and family and being your own boss are certainly
wrong reasons to start your own business.
Am I against entrepreneurship? Certainly
not. I support entrepreneurship to the core but, the overconfidence of the
average wannabe entrepreneur might plunge them into a lifetime mousetrap if
care is not taken.
(An award winning Toastmasters Speech)
(An award winning Toastmasters Speech)
