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 – Control of Destiny
Without question, I love being in control of my own destiny. I alone determine my level of success or failure. Also, I am completely in love with the idea that there is no safety net. If I fall, I will hit the ground. This forces you to constantly better yourself and strive to improve your business. Another thing I love is how I am forced to provide value to the marketplace in order for my company to be successful. I must convince customers to engage in a voluntary transaction that benefits them enough for them to part ways with their money. Outside of entrepreneurship, you just don't experience these things.
Thanks to Anthony Martin, Choice Mutual
#2 – Organic Opportunities
Entrepreneurship has a myriad of benefits, but one of my favorite is the organic opportunity it provides to teach life skills to our children. Since we work from home and homeschool, our children are exposed to business life each and every day. They see the struggles, they celebrate the triumphs, and they participate in the everyday routines which build a foundation for success. I love that the work my husband and I do serves multiple purposes, including the training of the next generation. Without entrepreneurism, our children might have grown up only having a cursory perspective of what goes into running a business. Instead, they have a front row seat to real life business and are daily learning lessons that will impact their careers and their own families.
Thanks to Carrie Seibert, Soap Commander
#3 – Dream Job
Being an entrepreneur has allowed me to create my dream job in the food industry. I'm able to immerse myself in a profitable passion that is also my job and career, as a culinary business consultant and educator. Being an entrepreneur means I can take risks, choose how to be challenged, and feel rewarded for the direct impact I can have. On a daily basis – I can leverage my strengths and industry knowledge to help others and make a difference.
Thanks to Terry Frishman, Culinest
#4 – Providing Value
I love providing value where it once did not exist. We believe we bring true and unique value to four different groups of people. For lake home buyers, we have THE easiest way to find lake homes for sale across much of the country. For lake home sellers, we are the best way for them to connect with these home buyers. For our licensed agents, our value increases their value to the buyers and sellers, providing a true local market advantage. And for our staff, we are a company where our staff grow as individuals and professionals. When we started, we just had an idea. Now every day we create value to others. That is truly rewarding.
Thanks to Glenn S. Phillips, Lake Homes Realty
#5 – Decide My Schedule
There are many things I love about being an entrepreneur but the #1 thing is that it allows me to still be the primary care provider for my four daughters. I set my own work schedule, which means I am able to get everyone to school each morning and pick them up each afternoon. I set my office hours from 10am – 3pm. Additionally, I often go back to work after the kids go to bed but I am completely hands on with parenting (no work at all) after school until bedtime. I am able to accomplish this by having very strict boundaries and systems in place that keep me on task, focused and productive during my work hours.
Thanks to Heather Vickery, Vickery & Co.
#6 – Change the World
As an entrepreneur, the feeling of building something that can change the world is amazing. I wake up in the morning knowing that I can make a difference, believe that I can make a difference and make my decisions off of this premise. I know that I can do anything I set my mind too and that with this mindset my business can and will take off. I find that when I believe anything is possible people are attracted to this energy and begin to believe with me. There is nothing more powerful than a group of determined people ready and willingly to only to one thing: Change the world.
Thanks to Rakeyia Collins, Crown
#7 – Sense of Control
I love being an entrepreneur largely because of the sense of control I have over the trajectory of my career. I don't have to worry about waking up and being fired or laid off from a job that I love unexpectedly. You can't get fired from a job that you created for yourself. The success of my career has to do with the strategies that I take to make it prosper, not an all-powerful person at the job who can decide my fate. Being an entrepreneur gives you the freedom to experiment, take risks and make mistakes without worrying about the rug being pulled out from under you. Unfortunately, doing those same things frequently at a traditional 9-5 can leave you out of a paycheck.
Thanks to Marissa Russell, The High Achieving Woman
#8 – Work/Life Integration
There are many reasons I love being an entrepreneur, but being a mom of two young kids, what stands out the most is the abilitty to create my own work life integration. I don't believe you can ever completely create work/life balance, but you can find ways to better integrate work with your life. By owning my own business I have the ability to focus on what I need to when I need to. By not having a job that forces me to clock in at 8 a.m. and clock out at 5 p.m., I have the ability to walk my kids to and from school and be more involved with their school and afternoon activities and continue to pursue the career I am so passionate about. As a business owner I also get to provide this same opportunity for work life integration for the people who I hire. We lose so many incredible women in the workforce when they become mothers, I think it's imperative to provide more opportunities where they can pursue their passions and contribute to our economy with more flexibility than an 8-5 job provides.
Thanks to Michelle Ellis, Orapin Marketing + Public Relations
#9 – Control of Twists and Turns
The most rewarding part of being a successful entrepreneur would have to be the fact that I am solely in control of the twists and turns my life and business take. I wakeup every morning excited to go to work everyday and know I am the one who my staff will come to for problem solving and advice because I have created this company from the ground up. Financial freedom is also a major plus. I know the amount of money I bring home at the end of the day will depend on the amount of work force I put in, which is a unique part of being an entrepreneur that one might not find in another work setting. This is a driving factor for me to work harder and harder every day and reap the benefits. Along with the financial freedom in my personal life, I absolutely love the fact that being a successful entrepreneur with a business bringing in a lot of revenue allows me to give back to my community. For example, I am a corporate philanthropy partner for our local children's hospital and I could have never made such an amazing accomplishment had I not been an entrepreneur. I love being an entrepreneur because I have the control to do great things within my own life and others.
Thanks to Shawn Henry, Efficient Home Services
#10 – Helping People
Being an entrepreneur isn't about making something to make money, it's about identifying a need or a problem in the market and solving for it. Many people start companies to help themselves make more money, but being an entrepreneur lets me help others. Making money is great, and working for a company to make money is fine, but at the end of the day, being able to go to sleep knowing that the company I founded has been able to help someone – that's what makes me love being an entrepreneur.
Thanks to Cindy Chen, Amber Financial
#11 – Giving Opportunities
I love that I have been able to give others opportunity. So many of the people that I hire started here from dead end jobs or were not employed. Even if they eventually end up leaving me in the long run ~ I have definitely brought them along and developed their skills and training, improved their confidence and marketability. It is awesome to see them grow professionally and also as individuals. Knowledge and skill = confidence and success.
Thanks to Gail McMorran, AirX Utility Surveyors, Inc.
#12 – Redefine My Life
I love that at 52 I was able to redefine my life. I've been a teacher ( totaling 20 years) I painted murals for 15 years, raised kids as both a stay home mom and working mom. We start the company in 2007, in my 40's leaving security behind. Forging new relationships. Going into sales, creating our own base of clients. Gaining trust and respect in our local business community. Finding and keeping our accounts based on knowledge, creativity and collaboration- our core words. I pushed myself from the start to be invested in our community, to me it shows long term value and connection. My husband who is also in the business with me, hands the nuts and bolts like accounting. He was the one with the business background a former CEO. He had ideas about how to grow the company, which would not have been my path. In fact a time or two it's been a sore spot to be a volunteer when there is food to put on the table. However, he let me try it my way, which mean building business relationships from the ground up- ole fashioned grassroots. I worked to get my certification in our industry, which is held by only about 3% of of distributors. My husband will often comment 9 years later than I've acquired a business mind to go with the creative side I already possessed. It's nice to know that one can truly achieve goals with vision and determination.
Thanks to Olivia Scott, Promotional Partners Inc.
#13 – Financial Future
Entrepreneurs who are established have the luxury of creating their own hours. If you are set and believe you have grown as large as you wish to, then obviously your working hours can be short and you can just sit back and relax. If you are like me, then you know your work is never done. I work hard and I work long hours, but only because I know I am getting something besides money back for everything I am putting into my business. Owning a business means that you have total control over your own financial future and that is why I work so hard at keeping my business viable; it is also why I love being an entrepreneur.
Thanks to Alex Bar, Megapolis Movers
#14 – Difference in Education
Having worked in the children business for over 10 years, including managing the Angry Birds and the Smurfs brand, I wanted to make a little difference to the education of the next generation of learners. I believe that every child is unique, and they entitle to their very own individualised way to reach their unique potential. We wanted to help young children to grow in a smarter, more well-balanced, more informed and in more customised way. It can't be more satisfying to see children love to play with our award winning learning modules, while parents are able to get recommendation on how they can make their children's learning more well-balanced based on their own needs for development.
Thanks to Suzanne So, Joy Sprouts
#15 – Human Connection
I love being an entrepreneur to fulfill a drive for human connection. Touching someone's life from your actions is the single most fulfilling thing an individual could achieve, but touching that life because you built a business is absolutely indescribable. We at SocialsFirm believe that the purpose of business is to create social change and not just profit margins. Our company utilizes 50% of profits to incubate social entrepreneurial ventures aimed at mitigating poverty in our community. We choose to wake up everyday and work at SocialsFirm not because we are in the pursuit of monetary riches but because we are in the pursuit of something far more valuable: the wealth of empathy and a genuine human connection. It is very hard to achieve such a sense of life fulfillment at a typical 9-5 job. While entrepreneurship is no easy ride, we do it because we simply wouldn't be happy doing anything else.
Thanks to Mathew Martinez, SocialsFirm
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