How much pressure and responsibility comes with owning a business?

How much pressure and responsibility comes with owning a business?

Hi Nicholas:

I was hoping someone else who truly owns their own business would jump on this question. But, I will provide you with an answer from the “spouse” of someone who owns her own business.

For 25 years, my wife has owned her business(es). She has been in two totally different fields. She owned a Dental X-Ray laboratory for 20 years. And, she currently owns a real estate home staging business the past few years. The pressure and responsibility is immense. But, for her, the rewards are worth owning her own business.

As a business owner, my key observation of my wife for the past 25 years is… her work never goes away. She is working or thinking about her business all the time. She receives emails and text messages from clients and customers almost 24 hours a day. The first email / text message typically occurs early in the morning at 5:30 am and the last email / text message typically occurs around 12:30 am well after midnight. She is almost always on the clock working. The work never goes away. Not at dinner time. Not while on vacation. It’s constant. And, she also has the responsibility of several employees who work for her. She has to meet their needs, expectations, and payroll, too. There is a lot of pressure and responsibility owning your own business. (And, don't even get me started talking about the TAXES she has to pay !!)

But, the rewards are… she is her own boss. She makes the decisions. She sets her hours. She sets her goals. She does what she wants. She is accountable for EVERYTHING. And, she basks in the glory of creating something that is entirely hers.

On the other hand, I could never own my own business and have no desire to do so.

I enjoy having set hours and work expectations. I enjoy my company’s medical plan, 401K investment plan, paid holidays, pay raises, paid vacation, free parking, fresh office space, etc.

When you are the business owner there is a lot of responsibilities to make sure the business is operating correctly. If you do not do your daily checks to make sure everything is in place from the Inventory, Labor, Marketing and Customer Service you will have a lot of stress so do a daily check off for what is needed for the next day and go from there.

I've always found pressure to be relative. What one person finds to be pressure, may not be that much pressure for another person.

However, most of the pressure I've felt was a direct result of the responsibilities that come with owning your own business, particularly when you have employees that are counting on you for their livelihood. As long as you are willing to work hard and put in the time to make your business successful, you will find that owning your own business can be a very rewarding experience.

Hi Nicholas,

It is very interesting that you asked this question. Whether working for someone else or owning you own business, both have some amount of pressure and responsibilities. That is simply a good work ethics, that you will want to make sure everything that you do, you are doing it right.

In most cases, the pressure and responsibilities is more when it is your own business, because your you paycheck is really based on how well your business perform, and you will work harder to make sure that in the end of the month you have enough to pay the overhead, as well as yourself. Of course, things can be easier, if you have experiences prior starting your own business. The experiences of knowing how to do the job, how to handle the accounting and etc. can lift some of this pressure off.

There is a lot of think about before starting your own business: can you afford it- start up cost, overhead, what if you can't breakeven or make any profit for the first few months? How are you going to get health insurance?

I also agree with Roger's advice above, when you are working for yourself, it is 24/7, because you are the only one that accountable for everything. Even if you higher an employee, you will still have to make sure everything is done right.

I'm not trying to discourage the idea of owning a business. I'm suggesting that you should work with different companies for a few years, to gain some precious experience, before thinking about starting your own. With the end result in mind that one day you will want to own your own business, learn about how to run a business, what is the taxation, what is the accounting, how marketing can help a business, how to networking in the business and how to run a business successfully.