9 Reasons To Start A Small Business

Learn How To Deal With People

Learn to deal with people. I’m not just talking about people you like; that’s easy.  I’m talking about dealing with certain customers who enjoy being difficult. This is excellent practice for learning the skill of not taking things too seriously. How to remain logical and professional in the most trying of circumstances, whether it’s dealing with suppliers or customers, you’re bound to have your patience severely tested at some point. Can you cope? Can you remain professional under pressure? You’ll never know if you are not pressure tested.

Know The Thrill Of Taking Risks

Unless you’re a seasoned gambler or on active military service, only in running your own business can you experience the thrill of taking risks. Even those overpaid business leaders cannot know the fear and excitement of the independent small business owner who has everything riding on a decision he or she has taken about pursuing a strategy. For the overpaid business executive, deep down, he doesn’t really care if he makes a bad decision, after all, it’s not his company and he still gets paid if it all goes wrong. Someone else will pay for his bad decision. Usually employees who are made redundant. Look at the banks. The people who made all the bad decisions still got their millions. It was the employees who had to pay the price. In your own business, if you’ve made a wrong call, you will pay. When you put together a strategy, invest time and money in it and need it to work, you’re on a rollercoaster ride and you feel every turn and twist.

Learn To Overcome Fear

There’s no getting away from it, if you run your own business you are going to be confronted with challenges that will test your character. You will have to do things you may find uncomfortable, step out of your comfort zone on a daily basis. It may just be negotiating a new price with a supplier. If you’re easy going, you will have to learn to put some steel into your character, so you can deal with suppliers who will want to sell you things at a high price. As a small business owner you will have to take on roles you may not be familiar or comfortable with, like sales. Every day the small business owner has to exercise fear and continue to function professionally.

Challenges You To Excel

Learn to be your best, to extract every bit of mental and physical stamina from yourself, to continue going when you are exhausted. To continue thinking when all options seem closed, to keep looking for solutions when others would have walked away saying there is none. Running your own business will present you with unique challenges daily. Can you deal with them? How do you respond under pressure? Can you remain calm and in control or do you fall apart?  Don’t know? Start a small business and you’ll soon find out.

Get A Mission

If you’re drifting through life, following the same routine every day, year after year, starting a business gives you a chance to launch yourself into a mission.  We need a mission. Life’s not just about filling our time with pointless leisure pursuits all the time. Or working so we can afford to buy another trinket that will offer us no lasting satisfaction. We humans need to be doing, to be planning and testing ourselves. That’s when we’re happiest, pursuing goals and dealing with all the problems that entails. We need a cause greater than ourselves to pursue. Get a business, get a mission.

Open Up Your Creativity

We’re all capable of being creative, most people though never touch on their creative powers. If you start a business, you will unleash them. You’ll have to if you want your business to survive and prosper. Being in charge of your own business will allow you to express your creativity, whether in marketing strategies, or business organization, no small business can thrive without a creative driving force behind it.

Make A Million

Well maybe not, but there’s no denying that it could happen. You should certainly aim for the million but if you only make 250.000 it’s 250.000 you wouldn’t have made if you’d never started. Anything you make is a bonus and will add to your wealth. Starting your own business is your own wealth creating system. The alternative is to trust a banker to look after your money. We won’t go there.

Experience Variety

If you work in a job, doing the same thing every day then starting a business will give you plenty of variety, from doing accounts to working out a marketing plan, from dealing with suppliers to organizing processes. It’s a daily adventure that will require you learning many new things.

Build Your Character

There’s no doubt that running your own business is a character forming experience. Apart from taking part in combat, there’s no other area of life where you can test yourself so thoroughly. And win or lose you will definitely grow from the experience and come out of the other end a better and more rounded person.

7 Reasons to Start your Own Business

 

Today people are reaching middle age much fitter and stronger than our parents We can expect to live much longer and the 65-year old retirement date is looking, well, dated. There’s also the fact that we need to fund our retirement and the state pension isn’t going to do it. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life, counting how many watts of electricity, you can afford to use each day. If you haven’t working for the state, it’s almost certain that your private pension is not going to bring the returns you expected after Gordon brown’s frequent tax raids on it to fund labours social experiments.

 

There’s also the consideration that we don’t all want to down tools at sixty five and visit the coast or go walking in the countryside every other day. Middle age offers us wonderful opportunities that may not have been available when we were younger. It’s a perfect time to start that business. The kids have grown up and gone (hopefully) so you have more time to spare. Now’s the time to challenge yourself and become the person you know you can become.

 

As a middle-aged person you are equipped with great skills, ability and experience that they can’t teach to the clones coming out of business school. Here 10 reasons  why it’s a great time to start a business. Part-time or full-time:

 

It’s a great way of producing an extra income.

 

Forget wasting your money in a building society for a meagre return. Invest £100 in something and sell it with a 40% mark-up. Repeat and watch your income grow. If you started a part-time business in your fifties and grew it, imagine the extra income you will have for your retirement if you choose to retire.

 

Work at home using the internet.

 

You don’t even have to leave the house. The internet has made it easier than ever to earn an income.

 

It’s a great way to challenge yourself and build a business around something you love. .

 

Here’s your chance to prove to yourself that you always had the skill and drive to become successful now you have the chance, take it.

 

 

Become your own boss.

 

Even if you start your business on a part-time basis while continuing to work you will be in control. As the business grows and you money increases you won’t worry about redundancy, you’ll pray for it.

 

Learn new things. .

 

Life’s about learning. Some people are happy to have spent all their lives in one job. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as they realise their life experience is limited. By stepping into your own business, you will embark on a great learning journey that will fill you with satisfaction. And believe me there is so much to learn that you will spend a lot of time reading. You’ll have to learn about marketing, pricing, negotiating, buying, shipping and a multitude of other skills if you are going to succeed.

 

Bullet proof yourself against age discrimination

 

I know age discrimination is supposed to be illegal but so is speeding but we all do it. Let’s face it you can’t legislate human nature out of a situation. If you are made redundant at 55 and go for another job. At the same interview is a 23 year old. Whom would you employ? The 23 year old will get it every time. If I were a 25-year-old manager having to make the decision, I wouldn’t be employing anybody old enough to be my dad. When did your dad ever do anything you told him to?

 

Increase your self-esteem.

 

How? Think about it. You’ve spent most of your life kowtowing to others who were supposed to be better educated than you making decisions that directly affected you, usually for the worse. You’ve listened to a lifetime of bullshit from bluffers and sycophants. Now you can be the boss. You can read all the spreadsheets and predict monthly growth rates. You’ll be the head buyer negotiating with suppliers. You’ll be the marketing director dictating marketing policy. You’ll be the CEO and you don’t have to waste time worrying about the arse kissing bluffer trying to oust you.

 

Statistically you are going to live a lot longer than your parents.

Can you imagine anything worse than 20 years of visiting the same places, going for the same walks or even worse watching telly. Take up the challenge and prove you can become more than you thought.