When you’re teetering on the edge of wanting to start your own business, it’s hard to decide what to do. Should you take the risk, or just go ahead and get an adult job that you know will help you to fulfil adult responsibilities like paying bills every month? Let’s look at the reasons to choose each path – and what kind of person should go for either of them.
Reasons to start your own business
You should start your own business for a great variety of reasons related to how awesome being a business owner is. These include:
- Setting your own schedule, office location, and projects
- Not having to answer to a boss or supervisor ever again
- Taking all of the profit from your business yourself, instead of making money for a big company
- Exciting things like making business cards and coming up with a new business plan
- Being able to build the lifestyle you want around your income
- The excitement of finding out whether you will succeed or not
- The pride of being a business owner
- Potential to make a lot of money and become a serial entrepreneur
- Being able to write expenses off on your taxes
- Getting to do the work you want to do, not the work your contract says you must do
Reasons to get a job
On the other hand, there are plenty of good reasons to get a job. These include:
- A stable, steady income
- Set working hours with no need to bring work home in normal situations
- You can train and learn new skills in an established environment
- If you mess up, you’re not likely to lose your life savings – even if you mess up really badly and lose your job, you can get another
- It’s easier to balance your work and personal life
- You don’t have as many responsibilities to worry about
- You only do one job – the one you’re contracted for – instead of being a business owner, accountant, marketer, supervisor, and so on all at the same time
- You can switch off and go home instead of being immersed in your business 24/7
- You get more pay if you work overtime
- You’re entitled to holidays, sick leave, and other benefits
Who should start a business?
So, there are clearly good reasons to go down both routes. That may leave you even more confused than before, so let’s take a look at the kind of person who should start a business.
To launch your own company, you need to be driven and focused. You need to have a solid plan which you have spent a lot of time developing, and you need to be ready to work all hours of the day and night to get it going. You won’t be able to stop doing this, ever – as a business owner, the quicker your business grows, the more work you’ll have to do. But you’ll want it to grow quickly, so you’ll need to understand growth hacking principles to get your profits flowing in.
You should have savings set aside just in case things don’t work out – and enough cash in the business fund to run for six months without profits. Having dependents, such as children, can make it too much fo a risky option in financial terms.
If you don’t fit the description of someone who could start a business, then the answer is clear: you should get a job. You can work on building up a business in your spare time if you wish to, but a steady job is the best answer for you right now.
Linda Binklage is a Content Manager at VPNCompass.com. She enjoys blogging about entrepreneurship, online marketing, career development and freelancing. In her spare time, she loves catching up on the newest technological trends and finding new places to travel to.
