True Benefits of Being On Your Own

As a follow-up to my earlier post regarding health insurance and in reference to Mikie8's comment about the benefits of running your own business, I pulled together a list of what I've found to be the true benefits of being on your own. This is just from my personal limited experience so anyone else out there who wants to add to other ideas please jump on in!

• Flexible time - most people like to think that entrepreneurs have free time but that's not quite right. From speaking with other entrepreneurs it seems like most are working more hours then they would have in a corporate environment but now there's no clock to punch. There are definitely deadlines that have to be met but aside from those, if I want to work on my 2007 Growth Model at 2pm or 2am that's really up to me. This is probably one of the top ten reasons I wanted to go into business for myself since I came from an incredibly stifling corporate job right before business school (I joke that "The Office" tv show is based on my old company - sad thing is, it's not that far from the truth). I love being able to, for the most part, set my own schedule.
• Risk-Reward Tradeoff - a great thing about entrepreneurship is that if the business takes off then you will see the rewards of your work. Granted, there's also the opposite scenario that if things don't pan out...but let's stay positive for the moment. there's something incredibly exciting about working hard with the knowledge that success will benefit you directly versus simply picking up the same standard paycheck week after week. This is also something that was very importat to me because at my "Office" job, if the company met its sales goals then the sales folks would be handsomely rewarded but the rest of us, who had been developing and/or marketing the product that the sales guys were selling, would get nothing other than a less-than-cost-of-living salary increase. At a certain point you had to wonder why, other than simple job security and the personal desire to do good work, you were working so hard. I'll let you guess how morale was among the non-salespeople.
• Watching Something Grow - I get a charge from starting something from scratch and working fervently to help it take off. Right now I am working on next year's groth goals and there's something incredibly exciting about looking at different channels and playing with new product ideas to try and figure out the best growth strategy for the business. It will take a lot of work to make it all happen, but the possibilities really are endless.
• Never a Dull Moment - No two days are alike. One day I'm working on product, one day I'm working on packaging and new product ideas, the next day I'm trying to decipher state guidelines, and the next I'm playing with QuickBooks and setting up a merchant account. Every single day brings its own unique set of challenges and that keeps it interesting and keeps me learning which is especially important for someone like me who quickly bores from day-in/day-out routine.