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Why Did You Start a Small Business?

Well it’s almost 9am here in the office and I’m getting down to some serious work. Not that I haven’t been working already but that was just some reading and a business meeting down at our favourite cafe.

Now I’m down to the serious part of the day. I’ve got articles to write, a resume to put together for a friend who wants to change his employment, and a website to finish work on as well. And of course, I’m doing all that here in sub-tropical Queensland where the weather beautifully warm.

Because I’m self employed I can sit here with the window open, the breeze coming in and I don’t have to wear anything but a pair of shorts.

It all sounds like heaven doesn’t it?

But of course, if you read yesterday’s post you will know that heaven kind of slipped away from us and the business has been running us rather than us running the business.

So today I want to ask you, why did you start a small business?

Michael Gerber in his book - The E-myth Revisited - suggestst that:

The purpose of going into business is to get free of a job so you can create jobs for other people.

“The purpose of going into business is to expand beyond your existing horizons. So you can invent something that satisfies a need in the marketplace that has never been satisfied before. So you can live an expanded, stimulating new life.”

How does that fit with where you’re at in the life of your small business?

small business

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 27th, 2005 at 9:19 am and is filed under General Info, Small Business Challenges, Small Business People, Survival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Why Did You Start a Small Business?”

  1. Mike Sansone Says:
    October 27th, 2005 at 11:06 am

    The reason I went into business was because I found that I kept hitting my head on a creative ceiling when working “for” someone else. So far, so good.

    Thanks for being authentic and transparent. I’m re-reading the books you’ve suggested (though Dave’s book is getting dog-ears).

  2. Stuart Says:
    October 27th, 2005 at 11:16 am

    Hi Mike

    We did it for similar reasons - we just knew we could do a better job that what we saw others doing.

    And I think we were right but getting back to that point where we are running the business and not having the business run us is the challenge for us. We exchanged reasonable pay, holidays, sick leave and 8 hours a day for … not where we’re currently at now :)

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