Being in love is great. Being in love with your business, when you’re an entrepreneur, is even better. Waking up each morning knowing you are getting to do exactly what you love is more than most people could ever say about any “job” they have had. Although there are days when tossing in your hat seems like a viable option, remembering how much you love your “job” can quickly snap an entrepreneur out of that mentality. Different business owners also have different reason why they love their business. It might be the products or the customers they deal with, or it could even be the fact that they are the ones in charge of it all. The reasons are as varied as the businesses themselves.
We asked some entrepreneurs what they loved about “being their own boss.”
#1 – Rediscovering Myself
The best part of being an entrepreneur is that I am constantly rediscovering myself. Every day, I rediscover my passion for what I'm pursuing, my strength in tough situations, and my resilience when there's an obstacle. Being an entrepreneur means putting a piece of yourself into whatever you're creating, so every day I feel like I'm personally developing along with my product. Another great thing about being an entrepreneur is that all of your hard work is completely self-benefiting. Every hour of work you put in is ultimately reflected in either you or your company. I never have to worry about someone else finding out about my progress, or whether or not my work is furthering my career.
Thanks to Alexandra Pierson, Springpop
#2 – Making the Decesions
By far the best part about being my own boss is being able to make all the decisions myself. At most jobs that I have had working for someone else, I generally had to run everything by my supervisor. I hated that immensely and it really was what propelled me to become an entrepreneur. I make all decisions from the small ones like designing my business cards to major ones like branding myself and incorporating. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes not, but being able to take full responsibility when things go wrong but rejoice in when they go right is incomparable to ever working for someone else. The lows can be low, but the highs are so worth it. The other biggest reason is that I own my time. I decide if I work 2 hours a day or 15, if I have an appointment, a need for exercise, an errand, or anything else in that nature, I can decide to say yes or no, I don’t have to ask anyone for permission, and that is priceless.
Thanks to Francesca Montillo, Lazy Italian Culinary Adventures
#3 – Helping Employees Grow
I love being able to reward success and help employees grow in their careers. I love being ultimately responsible for the success and failure of myself and my company. I love being able to create a company culture for our employees based on values that are important to me like loyalty, work ethic and personal responsibility. I love watching the bottom line and being accountable to it. I love the opportunity to create a diverse team of unique personalities from all over the globe who want to contribute to their own success as well as the success of their colleagues.
Thanks to Gino Colangelo, Colangelo & Partners
#4 – Choosing an Adventure
Being an entrepreneur means I get to chose my own adventure. It gives me the freedom to be creative, nimble and evolve my company in real time. At Le Tote, we have an exceptional team in place to help drive the future growth of the company. And it’s incredibly fulfilling to see our team become a family, our customers become loyal members and our product offerings expand to meet demand. Being an entrepreneur is absolutely a high stress job, but the great moments far outweigh the rest.
Thanks to Brett Northart, Le Tote
#5 – Absolute Freedom
I LOVE being an entrepreneur because every day I wake up to absolute freedom. Freedom to be creative, freedom to go where I want, freedom to do what my heart desires. Being an entrepreneur does pose challenges however, which is another reason why I love it. I have learned to embrace these challenges in order to develop personally, and to become a better version of myself daily. When you're an entrepreneur, you can't simply ‘learn lessons,' rather you are forced to embody the lessons, in other words put them into practice. As an entrepreneur, I truly pursue my own dreams, rather than working for other peoples' dreams. I love that I can be an example of a risk-taker that found success, in hopes to inspire young people to become more courageous, more true to their selves, more trusting of their intuition, and more creative.
Thanks to Makenzie Marzluff, Delighted By Hummus
#6 – So Many Options
So I get to travel where ever I want, hang out with whom ever I meet, and take photos of what ever interest me which is one of my biggest passions. Besides being my own boss, as an entrepreneur a long as you set it up to also be inline with your passion, being an entrepreneur is by far the most satisfying thing one can do. You get to set your own schedule that fits with your rhythm of life, do what you love and feel rewarded when it grows and has the outcome you've worked for. I'm curating a world wide collaborative book project hosted at OneStoryRoad. Currently I'm hitchhiking and train jumping around the country to campaign for others to join in the adventure and journey to help create the book with me. The website is built to create the Many Voices book project but is also a platform to help writers grow their audience and publish their work and in time actually sell their published copy. Still growing every step is extremely satisfying and even when it's work I find my self smiling and full of joy. Rather than working for others dreams as an entrepreneur I gets to work for my own and that is what makes it great!
Thanks to Caleb Beal, OneStoryRoad
#7 – Impacting People
I love being an entrepreneur because it gives you the freedom to impact people in completely unique ways. We're one of the only tech social enterprises in Zambia, where 2 million youth are unemployed. This is an English speaking country with a huge talent pool that doesn't have opportunities to utilize their skills effectively. Being an entrepreneur means we can pioneer a new range of opportunities for this untouched population while providing business value to companies worldwide.
Thanks to Dimitri Zakharov, Impact Enterprises
#8 – Inventing
The reason I love being an entrepreneur is because I love inventing things from scratch. Nothing is more rewarding than taking an idea, creating a plan and then seeing that idea come to life when people use your product or service. What’s especially gratifying is knowing that you are building solutions to solve real problems with the mission of helping people. There is a certain passion, focus and appetite for risk that is a common thread for most entrepreneurs. I love that being a founder requires all sorts of bravery to stretch yourself outside of your normal comfort zones on a daily basis into uncharted territory. You wake up every day with drive and purpose. You feel alive. What you do every single day actually matters.
Thanks to Jody Clower, Nestiny, Inc.
#9 – Express My Gifts
Being an entrepreneur has allowed me to create, to express my gifts and to share all of that with the world, particularly other entrepreneurs. It gave me the platform to do what I do differently, in a way that I knew worked. Without barriers and without limitations. That is freeing. I also love that I really don’t work. I play. In a playground that I created, filled with the kind of people I want to spend my days with. Being an entrepreneur has allowed me to create a life of purpose—which I found through entrepreneurship—and live it on my terms. It’s given me security while at the same time the thrill of innovation and risk. It’s allowed me to give of myself fully to others and make a living doing it. Entrepreneurship defines me.
Thanks to Kathy Heasley, HEASLEY & PARTNERS
#10 – Time With Family
What I love most about being an entrepreneur is being able to spend time with my family and take cases that make a positive impact in our community. When I worked at a large law firm, the firm dictated my hours and which cases I took. Now, I set my own schedule and can take cases that I know will make a meaningful difference in someone's life. My firm Jeyaram & Associates focuses on helping individuals with disabilities and their families. It's not always an easy work life balance, but by having my own practice, I have more flexibility, and at the end of the day, I feel like I'm able to help individuals who are underserved and often overlooked.
Thanks to Cassandra Jeyaram, PhD, Jeyaram & Associates
#11 – Affecting Change
Being an entrepreneur allows you to affect change in a big way and to create the type of company and culture that you want to have, but you can’t get there on your own. As a business scales, you need employees that are able to help maintain what you've worked so hard to create. Entrepreneurship is a 24/7 consuming job where you have to be able to fill many roles and keep many different sectors of people happy and challenged — I have employees that rely on me, investors to answer to and clients whose expectations need to be met. I go to bed thinking about work and I wake up thinking about work, but in the end I know that I have built the best team around me to bring an idea into reality and to provide solutions for real problems companies are having.
Thanks to Jeff Ellman, UrbanBound
#12 – Everything Depends on Me
I love that I am my own boss and everything depends on me. The challenge to succeed is what keeps me going. However, the major reason I love being an entrepreneur is I love being able to help others accomplish their goals. I love being able to give back. I started my companies because their was a need in the market for authors that didn't want to sign over their publishing rights to a Traditional Publisher but couldn't afford a high end editor or marketing. Success is only measured by how well you are able to help others on your journey in this life.
Thanks to Vid Lamonte' Buggs Jr.
#13 – Ensuring Growth
One of our organization's core values is to ensure growth. More specifically, we value the learning and evolving personally and professionally, as a team and as a firm. This value is definitely one of the things that excites me the most about entrepreneurship. Seeing growth in people and even in myself is extremely rewarding. Often we hire individuals who have little experience or knowledge of digital marketing. By putting a lot of time into honing our traning process, we help new hires quickly learn the business and perfect the skills they need to positively impact the company. Observing this growth is incredible. It often stems from our team's proactive spirit, which highlights another core value of our firm.
Thanks to Ajay Pattani, Perfect Search Media
#14 – Fun Trips
I love being able to sneak my son Grey off to the zoo on a weekday. I love hearing him tell me that the shirt I made for him is cool. I love being able to choose who I work with, and knowing that the help I've received to get this to where it is now is a result of good karma and relationships I've built over the last 12 years. I love that it allows me to create beautiful product and connect with amazing customers that share my aesthetic and appreciation for quality and the little things.
Thanks to Sawako Yamauchi, Miki Miette
#15 – Constantly Learning
I absolutely love being an entrepreneur! Even when I am challenged with things that I don’t know how to do as an entrepreneur, I am able to constantly learn and grow without a glass ceiling telling me how far I can go or what skills I can sharpen. I wake up thrilled to be able to serve, help, and uplift the people who want and need what I have to offer them as The Momepreneur Lifestyle Strategist, founder and CEO of Denise Damijo International, LLC. I also love being able to create a life for me and my family that we are excited about and love to live. Being an entrepreneur has changed my life for the better and I am honored to help change others lives for the better as well.
Thanks to Denise Damijo, Denise Damijo International, LLC