Small Business, Big Lessons® — On Your Own

In this blog I share real experiences that can be from my corporate roles or my small business. Lessons I’ve learned along the way can be applied both in small business, where this is primarily targeted, as well as a crossover to corporate roles. In high school and college I worked in fast food. Initially hourly and eventually management. I started my professional career in technology and evolved into a small business owner. After many years “on my own”, decided to move back into a corporate role. Each lesson along the way, while on the surface may seem totally disconnected, made me better along the journey.

I’ve known many people that have been miserable in their job. Yet every day they complain and say, if I had my own business, I’d do everything totally different. But I can’t do that followed by numerous excuses on why that isn’t possible. When my wife and I decided we would start our business, we had many people cheer us on with encouragement. We also had several people give us the statistics on small business failures and more negativity. When I encountered that, I made the statement “anyone can come up with those reasons, give me one reason we can succeed.” At that point it usually ended that conversation. Had to keep the power of positively front and center of my mind but not “rose colored glasses”!

The phases / stages I’ve gone through thus far in life:

1)    On Your Own – I had always dreamed of having my own business. Waking up and doing as I see fit. Making all the decisions that I felt tied my hands when I worked in corporate roles. There is a fair amount of truth in that. We finally jumped out on our own! There is a longer part I will share in the future.  During multiple economic downturns, we had to make difficult decisions. They ranged from cutting staff, and we never did that, to prioritizing daily expenditures. We did have to reduce some hours and bonuses but never impacted a job. We also had to at times defer repairs and think hard about where we invested free cash such as marketing. Very fortunate to have made good decisions that allowed us to grow and eventually sell.

2)    You’re Not on You’re  Own – There were a few revenue streams to our business. The main ones were franchise owners & area developers (two), real estates investing, and business consulting. Each one had limitations that constricted the “on your own” aspects. With franchisees, the rules we needed to follow constantly changed. By the time we exited that, we learned a great deal about contracts and what can change without your explicit consent from the initial agreement. Real estate we learned about renovations, licenses, and the complexity of ensuing local laws are followed. Consulting adds a layer of complexity that I personally do not enjoy, ensuring all the contracts are in place to limit liability. The fun part was consulting and helping people.

3)    Crossroads – Found out that banks really only like to loan against hard assets such as your house. In order to finance future growth, we would have had to take on business partners. This would be required to obtain the capital we needed to continue to expand at the pace we wanted. At that point, what is the difference on working in corporate or “on your own” with one or more partners? Even the best of partners could result in conflicts that could paralyze the business and take the joy out of it. That was the turning point where we decided to take our new skills and leverage them back into corporate roles.

Think through

What drives your reason to get up every day? Are you happy whether running your own business or in a corporate role? If not, it is up to you to make the change, I see from a different perspective than I did early in life. I see some business owners that were once joyous and full of energy that now appear drained and the life has been sucked out of them. Also see, too many people in corporate America “phoning it in” and trying to retire before they are fired. I took what I learned in corporate roles, leadership, organization, and scaling a business into small business. What I took back into the corporate work was entrepreneurial energy, can do attitude – never complain, and looking for ways to succeed to beat the odds.

Has anyone else been down a similar path or at least thought about it?. Feel free to post comments or email them to me. Small Business, Big Lessons® – On your own, not alone, or at a crossroads, do what brings you energy and fulfillment or change now!