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| Small Business Risks Do You Really Want to Start a Small Business?
All to often I read messages from people who want to start their own business because they are tired of working for someone else. They want the freedom that working form themselves can bring. They want to be the captain of their own fate. They want this and they want that but do they really want reality. Obviously they don’t know the reality of running your own small business, they don’t understand the impact that it can have on a person and they don’t understand the effect that starting up and operating a small business can have on their families. Sure, working for the man might be boring and it might seem to almost imprison you but is the reality of small business any better? Just in case you really are wondering let me tell you that when you go to work for yourself you can expect to work long hours and seven days a week is the norm not the exception. Holidays become a thing of the past because when you work for yourself if you’re not working you’re not making any money and so there is little time for holidays. Money will be in short supply and a lot of those little luxuries that you and your family enjoyed when you earned a salary will become hard to afford. Not only will money be in short supply but in the early weeks and months of the life of your business your income may be non-existent. And through it all you will be worrying about money, about your future, about the work that you are doing, about your family, about everything you ever worried about before and then so much more besides. Finally you will be gambling. You will be gambling your future against cold hard statistics that show that the survival rate for small businesses is somewhere around 2%. So if you
think that you have what it takes to succeed in starting and growing a
small business spend a few moments thinking about what I have said and
deciding whether working for someone else isn’t better than working
for yourself. 30 Aug 2005 |
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