Friday 4 November 2011

Make Your Business Support Your Life

Why do you want to be an entrepreneur?

So many answers arise to this question:
I want the freedom it offers.
I know it can lead to lots of money.
I have a great product or idea that I want to share with the world.
I want to be my own boss.
I want to control my destiny.
I have a need to create.
Insert your answer (or several of them ) here.

There is no right answer to this question, but before stepping into your first business creation, make sure you understand why you are doing it.

If you truly want to find personal success in entrepreneurship, you need your business to cater to your motivation.

For example, if freedom and being your own boss are your motivation, then starting a consulting business and hiring yourslef out to one or two big companies probably won’t make you happy about your business. There will be specific demands on your time and productivity. This will make it feel like someone else is in control of your time. A person with this motivation may be better suited to a retail or manufacturing business where staff could be hired to handle things in the business owners absence.

If your motivation is controlling your own destiny or a need to create, you may want to avoid that retail or manufacturing business. Your ties to a physical location and staff may limit your ability to change your business as you create new ideas and goals. You may be better suited to a broader service that can walk into several fields or industries. An example of this might be an efficiency consultant or something similar. This would give you the opportunity to work on short term projects with several different companies. In turn that would make your business seem fresh and open to change all the time.

Here are some questions that you should ask yourself to make sure your new enterprise will support your motivation and goals:

1. If I could only have one of these, which would I chose? A stable income or control over my time?

2. Do I enjoy managing people, delegating responsibilities and encouraging others or do I prefer to work solo?

3. How far do I want to take this business? Built it into something I can sell, create a business that can exist in my family for generations or something in between?

4. Do I picture myself being hands on, every day with my business or do I see myself turning day to day decisions over to a manager?

5. If I lack a skill involved in running my business would I rather pay to have it taken care of or learn to do it myself?

6. What does a perfect work/life balance look like to me?

7. Which is more important to me if I was forced to chose between the two? Showing growth in profit every year or creating a certain life style for myself?

8. If I had to sum up all my goals for my business, as it relates to my lifestyle, into a 10 word sentence; what would it be?

9. How do I feel about dealing with unexpected problems and issues? Do I feel excited by the challenge or do I feel frustrated by them?

10. Can I motivate myself to give 100% every day or do I prefer having deadlines to motivate me?

By answering each of these questions honestly and in detail, you will be able to see a pattern appear as to what a business needs to be like in order for you to be happy with it. Does your current business idea support these answers? If not, can it be structured differently so that it will? Is there a new idea out there for you that will provide the things you discovered in your answers?

Happy, successful entrepreneurs have one thing in common; their business works with their lifestyle and values. Structure your business to do that for you right from the start and you will realize success and fulfillment very quickly.

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