Why Own A Business?

Recently I attended a conference of business owners in which the speaker, Bill challenged the attendees with the question “Where do you really want to take your business?” Most of the business owners were initially at a loss for words in response to the question.

Indeed, they were so busy with the tyranny of the urgent within their organization that they had not taken the time to reflect on their long term goals.

As I thought about the question I realized that there are in reality three related questions that should be considered:

1. What are or were the real core reasons why you started your company?
2. Very specifically, what do you want your enterprise to look like 3, 5, 10 or even 20 years from now?
3. What kind of lifestyle do you want your company to provide you with?

The reason that the first question is still important is that it may affect where you want to take your business in the future.

Since we are in the month of January and the concept of New Year’s Resolutions is probably fresh in your mind I thought that it might be very useful to address these three questions from the unique perspective of considering – what are the true benefits of owning a business? In other words, is starting and growing a business really worth the effort?

Advantages of Owning a Business

 Listed below are a number of potential advantages of owning a business that I came up with:

1. 1. You have control over the decisions affecting your life.
   2. You have the creative freedom to potentially do whatever you want to do with your business.
   3. You have extensive flexibility as to what your workday, work week, and personal schedule looks like.
   4. You obtain the personal satisfaction and pride that comes from owning a thriving and successful business.
   5. You have the self-esteem that comes with operating a business that is a pillar of your community and society.
   6. You gain the personal fulfillment that comes from pursuing your dreams.
   7. You have a business that gives you a purpose for your life.
   8. You can increase your wealth dramatically through a successful business.
   9. In essence, you have complete job security and you do not have to worry about age-related job biases.
   10. You can ease into retirement slowly and work the amount of hours you wish to work as you age.
   11. You can possibly strike it rich by selling your business, providing you with an exit strategy and retirement lifestyle that you could not achieve otherwise.
   12. You can create an organization that you could pass on to your family.
   13. You are able to tailor your fringe benefits to meet your particular needs and personally benefit from the tax laws.
   14. You can benefit from the many tax advantages that are available to business owners.
   15. You reap the benefits that come from strengthening your community as a result of your business being part of your community.
   16. Depending on the type of your business, you obtain the satisfaction that comes from positively impacting society and the world.
   17. You realize the incredible sense of satisfaction that comes from creating and providing jobs for other people.

Why Do People Really Start Businesses?

We have worked with over 1,200 companies in the past 17 years and what we have found is that the vast majority of people start businesses not just for financial reasons, but for lifestyle objectives.

Therefore, it is very important to figure out specifically how you want to use your company as a “vehicle” to get you from where you are in life to where you want to go.

To assist you in thinking through this – how you could use your company as this “vehicle” to take you where you want to go in life, I would suggest that you review the above 17 items and then re-sort them according to your priorities.

Next, as part of your New Year’s Resolutions set very specific goals to accomplish your priorities. Then finally, develop a comprehensive strategy to achieve your goals.

If you need assistance with creating a comprehensive strategy to take your organization where you want it go, so you can have the lifestyle you long for, please contact us. We can show you how do this in an easy, straightforward way as a result of using the principals in our unique Structure of Success™ methodology.

Fountainhead Consulting Group, Inc. is an Innovation and Business Planning firm. During the past 17 years we have shown over 1,200 companies how to achieve the goals for their business by using our unique, comprehensive and systematic business planning and growth methodology, the Structure of Success™ so they can Work Less, Make More and most importantly Have Fun in Their Business. Using our Structure of Success™ methodology each month we examine one of 12 areas of a business or organization.

Office phone: (770) 642-4220

www.FountainheadConsultingGroup.com

George.Horrigan@FountainheadConsultingGroup.com

Tags: small business consulting, small business planning