Why go into business for Yourself?

In this section, labeled "Starting a Business", we will address all the questions one should ask before making the decision to go into business. These are fundamental questions whose answers one must be absolutely certain to have firmly in mind before taking the necessary Leap of Faith that is required before starting a risky adventure. Faith that all the planning, all the efforts will yield the expected results at the end of the journey.

There will be a series of Posts addressing each question separately. This will allow you the readers, to interact on the subject by either adding your professional expertise on the matter being discussed, ask questions, argue a point you'd like to make or contest one that I made. It will also allow some of you to share their personal experience on the subject to illustrate this posting with real life testimony on a specific example.

"Why go into Business for Yourself?" is the very first of the series. There will be 10 Postings in the series for the moment. I may add others as this section evolves with your interaction and as per your suggestions, queries and recommendations. Here' s the Series preliminary Index:

1. Why Go Into Business For Yourself?
2. Who Should Start His/her Own Business?
3. What Do You Need Before You Start Your Own Business?
4. With Whom Should You Go Into Business?
5. What's The Best Size for a Business Start Up?
6. When Should You Go Into Business For Yourself?
7. Where Should You Establish Yourself?
8. Who Do You Need?
9. How Much Do You Need?
10. What Should Be The Annual Objective of the Business?

Volume One

WHY GO INTO BUSINESS FOR YOURSELF?

Everyone has a personal reason to do anything. Just taking a simple single step requires a personal reason to do so. I will not speak here of motivation, since that relates to the choices each and everyone of us make every single instant of our entire life. Motivation, while very important is irrelevant to this discussion. I will, however, speak of rational reasons to go into business.Whether we do it consciously or not, we are always aiming higher than our current condition. We are in a perpetual quest to better ourselves on all levels. We strive to provide better for our family and for ourselves, and if possible something more meaningful, more rewarding on an intellectual level, not just mind-numbingly trading hours for dollars while doing meaningless tasks indefinitely. Many pathways are available to us from the time we hit the job market. Whether we have been fortunate enough to receive an education or not, that constant in our lives remains true for all of us. 

There are two major phases in an individual's life; the "Training" phase and the "Survival" phase. The former consists of the years where the individual just learns to interact with society under the protection of his parents, within the family unit, or lacking a family environment, within the community itself as well as possible, and with limited responsibility or consequences. The latter consists of taking that theoretical knowledge and putting it into practice by getting into the job market and starting to take on one's own shoulders the burdens of life, such as starting to pay one's own bills. It also means taking responsibility for one's own actions and face up to the consequences of one's own choices.

Most of us will seek and hopefully find a position within a private or public organization and start trading our time, knowledge, conscientiousness and will to a good job  for on the job training, real work experience, hopefully a sense of fulfillment for doing something that matters to us and that we like doing, and certainly for money. That path is pretty stereotypical, simplistic and of course idealistic. But for the sake of this particular argument, I will dispense with the aleatoric details of a given individual's life path. As we apply our theoretical knowledge, gained in the Training Phase and acquire skills by practicing our duties on the job, we become better performers, acquire experience and therefore qualify for a "better" job in terms of remuneration, quality of work environment, relationship with clients/co-worker/superiors...etc.

As one keeps traveling down that path, "working for someone else", fully engrossed in the day to day obligations of the "Survival Phase", an individual will from time to time reach a point in his career where his skills, experience and knowledge, surpass the requirements for his current position. There are only two choices available to that individual then:

•  One is to keep going down the same road, not rocking the boat, hoping to be recognized for the true asset he is and simply playing it safe. This will of course, will lead him to become an overqualified and underpaid statistic, which eventually leads to loss of motivation, stress, frustration and feelings of not being appreciated at one's just value.
•  The other will require taking a chance, coming out of one's comfort zone and either ask for a better position within the same organization or go out and look for a better position in a different organization, consequently risking the current position or realizing after the fact that the new position is not what one expected. 

The risks in this scenario are easily manageable. Time is not a factor since the current position for this overqualified individual is secure for the moment, the upside is therefore greater than the down side so the decision is not too difficult to make.

This situation will repeat itself throughout the traditional career path of any given individual until retirement. The Qualification/position requirement ratio should remain slightly overbalanced (Top heavy as it should be), but not overly so. Everyone should be very well qualified to execute the duties required by his position, so the task is done smoothly, faultlessly, with effort but not difficulty. This breeds self-confidence in the individual holding the position, and confidence in whoever is at the receiving end of the product or the service being produced by said individual. When the upper side of the ratio becomes much greater than what is required by the position, it  will prompt the person to move forward on the career path. He will eventually obtain a position at, or slightly above, his qualification level and the Ratio will be slightly bottom heavy, challenging the right individual to strive to acquire the knowledge and skills in order to right the balance of the ratio. This phenomenon will continue until either retirement age or... until, for one reason or another, there are no  better positions available, whichever comes first.When there are no more positions available, where an individual can better himself by accepting the intellectual challenge of rising to the occasion of a more complex task and rip the intellectual, social and material rewards that comes from achieving it, not to mention the satisfaction of exploiting ones full potential, what then? 

When someone reaches that crossroads in his/her career, the decision of which way to go depends on the financial situation the person is at that point in his/her life. I am not writing about how much money or assets have been amassed, but how much passive income one can expect from that day forward to offset the cost of current standard of living. The timorous individual, if the passive income is either insufficient or nonexistent, that individual will either forge on until retirement age and collect his/her pension and social security or until s(he) has set up sufficient investments to secure enough passive revenue to retire early, that's when motivation comes into play. The confident, bright and ambitious person, on the other hand, might arrive at that crossroads on his/her career path, much earlier in life. What then? What should someone do when there is no more upside possible on a career path and the person is overwhelmingly overqualified for the position s(he) is currently holding? The character of such a person would not be able, and should not be able to clip his/her wings and remain gloomily grounded waiting for the ripe old age to be put to pasture without having ever reached his/her full intellectual potential. As the United Negro College Fund's Slogan says: "A mind is a terrible thing to waste". It is indeed, and more so when it has already reached its full potential. The only solution to such a conundrum is for the individual to create that position himself by taking, his skills, his experience and his vast knowledge on his given field and go into business for himself. 

That is the only logical reason why one should go into business for himself at any given time. Going into business is the riskiest career path. The upside, while unlimited during and beyond the growth phase (Year 6 to year 15  in my book) is incredibly limited from the inception of the business concept to the end of the growth phase (first 6 years of existence). The downside, on the other end is tremendously high during the same period. The risk is potentially the total loss of capital, time, effort and family's financial stability. To embark on such a venture, one must have no better alternative available. Going into business should be because no better option is available to someone who has reached the professional crossroads where one can only do better working for himself than for "The Man". In spite of all the risks involved, it should be better that any position that could be offered for the set of skills, experience and knowledge one has. THAT should be the only reason WHY. Any other reason is just foolishness of an oversize ego and delusions of grandeur. Of course, not everyone is motivated enough to undertake such a risky proposition. Who should do so is what will be discussed in Volume II.