Working For Someone Or For Yourself

My husband and I have always been entrepreneurs at heart. It was in our blood since we were both in grade school. When we started having kids while attending college, we both decided that we needed the stability of a full time pay check instead of the erratic and extensive but flexible hours of running a business.

Most all businesses need capital, and time to kick start. This could mean up to three years of investment without any real return. That makes selecting a business that you are passionate about even harder when that business may not return the dividends you hoped to get just to pay your bills and survive.

In our case we went for businesses that had a good infrastructure and at least moderate success, knowing we would have to work to fund the business. We chose Real Estate and worked that business for almost ten years.

HAVING A BUSINESS IS ABOUT THE HUSTLE OF THE SALE

Most people want to start a business to be their own boss. It sounds great until we as the sole source of income for our household realize that we aren’t making any money at it – initially. Pouring 50 to 60 hours of effort into something that doesn’t pay off can be a drain.

Here’s what we did to focus on sales, but not worry so much about returns when we first started.

Work part-time to fund marketing and sales for business

Use part-time job to network and gain customers through relationship building

Use part-time job to fund household while building business

Realize that business income is based on sales and that at the base of the business, you have to sell the business offerings

Partnering with someone that can help run the business and take some of the pressure off

Partnering with someone to get vacation time    

Many people are in love with the type of business they own, but hate the aspect of selling it. If that is you, maybe other options are better.

WORKING FOR A COMPANY – THE BENEFITS OVER OWNING ONE

With having a bill from college debt, we realized that owning the business didn’t gain us what we needed most at the time-a regular paycheck, health benefits, vacation paid time off, sick leave in some cases and standard work hours.

In most cases, working a job, you can depend on the pay being the same every week and getting the deposit with no more effort than what you were expecting going in.

DECIDING ON THE BEST-CASE SCENARIO

The best case for us was working for a company that allowed us to have our business as a part-time endeavor. Having a constant stream of income, we could count on most of the time, gave us comfort and joy in building our business part-time. We partnered with others and the part time business grew to the point my husband could work it full-time. It helped for one of us to stay employed to gain health benefits and others from a well-established company.

FINDING WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

Doing your research and evaluating what your reason is for starting your business is your first stop. Then map out a business plan. Decide when you need to make money on your business and if you are willing to put in the time and effort selling your product, marketing it, and being on social media to promote it. If you aren’t interesting in the selling of your product, are you willing to pay someone to do that for you? Then you will realize what the cost and benefit is of starting your own company or working for someone else.

By LM Preston, www.empoweredsteps.com, author of Building Your Empowered Steps, Homeschooling and Working While Raising Amazing Learners, blog: http://empoweredsteps.blogspot.com/