I know it sounds like an awesome idea, but there is a lot that you might not know about starting a company or a business. Before you make your decision, here are a few things you should know:
1. You don’t have one boss, you have multiple bosses
When you work at a 8 a.m to 5pm job, and 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.
2. You don’t get to set your own hours
You can’t always choose your own hours or get to work from home. Business is all about making money, so you have to do whatever it takes to succeed. If that means you have to answer calls in the middle of the night, then so be it.
3. Your business will impact your personal life
Could you go weeks without seeing your wife or kids?
Could you go months without seeing or talking to your friends?
There is no way you can keep your business and personal life separate. Your business will impact how much time you can spend with your family and friends. If you aren’t willing to make a sacrifice, then you are going to have a tough road ahead of you.
And even if you are willing to make the sacrifice, is your family ready to make it as well? Because if they aren’t, you may ended up losing them.
4. The odds are against you
Ebay did buy Skype, Facebook is worth billions. You are hearing all of these great stories, but are you hearing about all of the failures? I don’t know what the exact odds of succeeding are, but I’ll bet you for every Facebook there are millions of failures. You never hear about these failures because no one likes talking about how they failed, but instead they only like to brag about how successful they are.
5. When it rains, it pours
Everything may look great when you are first starting your business, but believe me, a lot of things will go wrong. And when things go wrong, it will probably be your luckily day because more things will end up going wrong.
You can’t predict the future or control everything. All you can do is try your best, which in many cases won’t be enough. This is one of the main reasons that will cause you to stress out, lose a lot of your hair like me, and maybe even get depressed at times.
This happens to all entrepreneurs, and it can be devastating.
6. Your lifestyle is going to change
If your company does well, you will be living the life of the rich and famous. But the chances of it doing well aren’t so hot.
When you first start your company, you are going to have to make sacrifices.
Your lifestyle can get back to normal, but it maybe years before that happens. Or even worse, if things don’t go the way you are planning, it may never go back to how it was before.
7. Success isn’t easy to come by
If you are going to start a business you have to be willing to pay your dues. Don’t expect things to look good within a few years. Even if you are starting to make good money, you shouldn’t get greedy by taking a high salary. Consider the bigger picture and reinvest that money back into the company.