The reality of owning a small business
Sometimes owning a business can get hard or feel like a struggle. But when you look at other businesses online, it can make you feel like you're the only one who's struggling and that you're a failure as a solopreneur.
This is not true!
Building and growing a business is hard. It's probably one of the hardest things I've ever done.
It has been completely worth it for me. But it's not for everyone. If it's not for you, there's nothing wrong with that.
So let's talk about what owning your own business is really like.
It's so much work and time
First of all, one of the realities that we have to deal with as small business owners is that starting a business takes so much work and so much time.
When you are first starting out there are so many things that you need to do, and you are the one doing all of them. Unless you can afford to hire somebody to do something like set up your website or get your social media platform started, you are responsible for those things. If you don't know what you're doing, they're going to take you more time to learn and figure everything out.
You also wear all of the hats in your business. You are responsible for all of the administrative tasks, bookkeeping, social media, billing, scheduling, etc. You are doing everything.
When you start a business to do the things that you are good at, the things that you enjoy, and then you have to do all of these other things, it can be a struggle. Especially because all of those other things can often take up way more time than the things that you actually started your business to do in the first place.
It can feel sometimes like there are just so many things keeping you from doing those things that you want to do. It feels like you're never going to get where you want to go. Like you are never going to be finished setting these things up. It's a very daunting prospect.
You also have to learn so many things. You don't just have to be an expert in that thing that you do, but now suddenly you have to be a marketing expert, a sales expert, a social media expert. And it is too many things for all of us to be experts in. But, again, we are the ones responsible for doing these things, because most business owners when we're just getting started as solopreneurs cannot afford to outsource these things - or at least we feel like we can't. We feel like those are not the things that we want to invest in, so we struggle through learning how to do all these things ourselves.
It's so much work learning all of these things, especially if they are not things that come to you naturally or that you pick up easily. The unfortunate reality is that many of them are going to be things that you don't enjoy.
I recommend starting a list of the things that would be the priorities to outsource if and when you get there. Because we all have that list in the back of our minds of what the top thing would be that we would love to hand off to someone else if we could.
For me, some of the things that I have outsourced in my own business are repetitive administrative tasks, because those are the kinds of things that I don't particularly enjoy doing. But it's going to look different for all of us.
The reality is, your family and friends may not get it
Another reality of being a business owner, and something that can make business really hard, is that often our family and friends are not going to get it. Honestly, owning a business is one of those things that I think is very difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand unless you've actually done it.
If you have never actually owned your own business, you are never going to fully grasp everything that is involved. All of the time, the effort, the pressure, the expectations - everything that goes into it. So you will have friends and family members who do their best to be supportive, but they're never going to fully understand what it is like to do what you do.
That makes it really hard. It's hard to feel like you're surrounded by people who don't get it. Who don't get what it is like to live your life. And it can make them challenging to be around, because they don't understand the pressure you're under, how stressed out you are, and how hard you're really working.
One of the things that I encountered is that family and friends who are not entrepreneurs do not understand the time commitment. Especially when you're early on in your business. You have to work basically 24/7 when you're first starting out - or at least you feel like you need to. You're pretty much on call all the time, because you don't want to miss a lead or leave a client hanging. You don't want to miss out on a chance of income.
Friends and family are not always understanding about why you need to have your phone out on the table when you're out to dinner, or answer messages during your down time.
I remember towards the end of my first year in business I went away for a few days with a friend. That friend was on vacation from work and I had done my best to limit the amount of work that I had to do that week. But I was not able to completely eliminate work that week.
So we would get up in the morning and I would do an hour or two of work. Then we would go and do whatever we were going to do for the day. When we came back in the evening, I would do another hour or two of work. And that was a very reduced workload for me at the time, so I felt like I was doing a good job or balancing both and we were still having fun.
And it was a fun trip.
But at the end my friend said to me, "The next time we go away together, can we please do it at a time when you don't have any work at all?"
And my first thought was, "So, never?" At the time, this felt unattainable to me!
I've since reached a point in my business where that's not true, thankfully! But I think it's perfectly understandable why she would feel that way coming from her experience, and it's also perfectly understandable why I felt the way I did coming from an entrepreneur experience.
It is so hard to get across the fact that you can't just drop everything whenever you want. You are responsible for everything. You don't get set vacation days like people working a traditional job. Work doesn't just stop because you're out of the office, and, depending on your type of business, if you stop work for a few days you don't get paid. It can be really challenging explaining that to our loved ones.
Another thing that can be challenging to explain to them is that we don't just have completely flexible time all the time. I have people in my life who think that because I am self-employed and I work from home, that means that I can drop things on a moment's notice if they want to do something. That they can drop by whenever they want, I can go out for lunch on a weekday any time, or I'm available for a phone call any time.
While I have worked hard to have the flexibility to go out for lunch with a friend on a weekday if I want to, or take an afternoon out of the office, that doesn't mean I can just do those things at a drop of a hat with no planning.
Yes, I have control over my time and I have managed to create a more flexible schedule, but I do need advanced notice. And this has been a challenging conversation to try to have with friends and family.
Owning a business is a long game
Another reality for most small businesses, unless you happen to get lucky or magically be in the right place at the right time, is that it is probably going to be a long game.
It takes time to grow a business to the point where it is full time and has enough consistent income to support you. It takes time to build a client base, network, and reputation so that you have that consistent business coming in without you having to constantly go looking for it.
It also takes time to figure out who you are as a business owner, what you actually want to be doing, and the direction that you actually want to go.
As I've discussed in the past, when I was first starting out in my business I started out with very general services. Part of this was that I didn't really know what I wanted to be doing yet. Part of it was that I thought those were things that people needed. Part of it was that I listened to bad advice from some people around me at the time about what business owners would and would not actually pay for.
But as I got further into my business and worked with more clients and did more things, I really started to understand what I enjoyed doing, what I was good at, and what people were and were not looking for. That really allowed me to focus on an area of expertise that I have gotten really good at. Things that I really enjoy doing and where there is a market.
This is something that takes time for you to develop, but the more you lean into that in your business, the better it's going to be.
If you continue to offer general services and try to serve everyone, your business is not going to be as successful.
When you're first getting started, the goal is to build your business to the point where you can just take a breath. Where you feel like you can step away for a moment without everything falling apart. Where you have enough income coming in that you are not constantly anxious about where money is going to come from.
When you reach that point, that's when you have more choices and more opportunities in your business. That is where you're able to choose who you do and do not work with. What you do and do not offer. It's a great place to get to. But the reality is it takes time and it takes effort to get there.
If you are at the point where your business feels like a struggle, there are things you can do. I'm covering this in my next post. Click here to have me send it to you so you don't miss out!
If you have any questions about the realities of owning your own small business, please leave a comment or feel free to reach out.