Four things: 1) What I have noticed is peoples self esteem get attached to their business, job, work. 2) Also people shun responsibility which when you are in business for yourself - you are totally responsible. 3) The scary part might be you feel like you are on your own. When you worked for someone else - if you failed on a project - it might reflect your raise but you had other chances to prove yourself. You also had a litany of victim of circumstance type excuses to use when you worked in a large company. Your mistake might get lost in the shuffle instead of stand out like a $10,000 mistake that you may have made with your own money. And 4) The unknown! (enter theme music from Jaws here). If I go to my job - it is a known quantity - 9 to 5. I can plan my life around that. When you work for yourself - you might have to go in early or stay late or work holidays. How can I plan my life around that?
Step through it - 1) are you attaching self worth to your business? If your business fails - so what? You start another one. The same as if you lost your job or the company you worked for went out of business - you went and found another job. If your business succeeds - praise God! Start another one anyway if you have other interests. Start as many as you want.
2) Responsibility - I encourage everyone to start and run their own business. Some people are not cut out for it. The responsibility weighs too heavily on them to the point that their dream of running their own business is ruining them even though the business might be successful. At least get up to bat and take your swings - take a few swings - even if you strike out, try again. But if you don't like it - don't do it. Running and owning your own business is a large responsibility and stressful at times - don't kid yourself. My brother in law wanted to own an ice cream parlor. It was a life long dream. He opened it up and closed the same summer. The dream was not the reality. It was a relief to close he said - it was nothing like what he thought it would be - at least he took a swing. Yes you will be responsible that is part of owning and running your own business.
3) You're on your own (related to responsibility). Truth is you are on your own only if you want to be. Some truly do want to be. You might see them - super business owners, that do their own taxes, write their own contracts, do their own sales and marketing, design and build their own web-sites. The truth is as a business owner you can make more money sticking to your specialty and letting the other specialists handle the others. If you are good at building web-sites and that is your business, let someone else do your taxes or handle your contracts. Yes that costs money but one slip on a contract typo and that will probably cost you much more. Experts save you money. The jack of all trades are handy to have around but I would rather have an expert look at my taxes than a novice. I really don't have the time to keep up on all the tax law changes.
4) The unknown! -> get used to it. When you are in business - you will be solving problems. Problem solving is a large part of everyones job, work, family, business, life! Instead of letting the victim of circumstance mentality seep in - overcome the circumstance. You are drawing a plan and you run out of paper - the back of envelopes & paper napkins are famous for solving those types of problems. There are really no guarantees out there in business. Just know this that you actually have risked more of your future working a job than working your own business. That is a known. It is little known but known. also notice that the comfort of the 9 to 5 job is really more restrictive then working for yourself. You can plan your life around the 9 to 5 job but you can plan your business around your life it you own it yourself.
So as many people put it, what is your passion? What were you perfectly wonderfully made to do? If you feel you are being led by God to go do something - take the leap of faith. If you fail - you might have read the feeling incorrectly (a lot do). You learned something - not a total waste. Obviously there is nothing wrong with working for someone else - wisdom does prevail - you need to provide for your family and if you can not do it working your passion - jobs can be blessings too. So your passion might not be enough income to support your family but maybe enough to supplement your income and learn a few life lessons on business along the way. No harm there now is there.
Don't think just because you need a lot of money right now your own business will solve all those problems. It might create a whole new set of problems. Cashflow in some businesses is immediate and others take time to develop that is why so many of us have commented on making a business plan. You want to wing it - take your chances - you can do that also. But if you succeed you might not know why you succeeded and if you fail you might not know why you failed. If you have a business plan - you can see what worked and what did not and do more of the stuff that worked and stop doing the stuff that did not work.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
I hope this helps, God Bless, Ed R.
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