There’s an old saying that the happiest days in a boat owner’s life are the day they buy the boat and they day they sell it. Never having owned a boat larger than a canoe, I’ve always chuckled when I’ve heard this truism, particularly as I watched my nautical neighbors in Annapolis clean, paint and other-wise maintain their boats.
One would think the same truism would apply to running a business, particularly when building a business from the ground up. As many entrepreneurs and small business owners know, it’s not uncommon to work 60 or more hours a week when starting a business; customers and clients will come calling at all hours of the day and night; and, sometimes you have to stretch more value out of a few bucks than a third-world soup kitchen. Even when the business is stable, vacations are never truly vacations – there’s nearly always a crisis that requires your input, which prevents even three-day weekends from being work-free.
So it may surprise some of my friends and business associates that, after running a business for a little over five years in the first decade of the 21st century, followed by roughly five years working for others, I’ve decided to start another business again in 2010. There are a few reasons I’ve decided to do this, but here are the most significant:
- Running a business enables me to pursue my passions. As with any consulting business, your client is your first priority. However, after all of the client’s work is done, there is still time to improve your own business, to research new innovations in your industry, and to help your co-workers to learn and grow, too. Along the way, if you identify a new market or business opportunity, it’s yours to pursue – no approvals necessary.
- Running a business enables me to consult in multiple areas, preventing me from being typecast as solely a “strategist”, a “technology expert” or a “project management guru”. If you are both a voracious reader and an experienced practitioner, it’s amazing how effective you can be in many disciplines, not to mention the synergistic benefits of being knowledgeable in many areas. As an entrepreneur, you aren’t bound by the practice area or job title that someone else gave you – you are bound by the knowledge and experience that you truly hold.
- Running a business enables me to live according to my own values. A number of years ago, a former PR Manager for an energy company told me why he’d moved out of PR and in to HR by saying, “There was an incident at one of our plants where an employee of our company had made a mistake. I was head of Public Relations, so I wanted to say to the public, ‘We screwed up, we’re sorry, but here’s what we’re doing to make sure it won’t happen again.’ Instead, I was told to deny that the incident ever took place, which was a flat out lie. I did what was asked, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the next time an incident occurred and I’d have to cover for our mistake.”
While few events in business pose moral challenges as great as what he faced, there are day-to-day decisions that may help your business but harm your soul. As a business owner and a Christian, I can say how nice it is to be able to do the right thing should the need arise, yet not have to worry about whether I’ll land in the unemployment line.
- Running a business adds weight to my advice. It’s one thing to say something because you’ve seen it work for others, and an entirely different thing to speak from firsthand experience. As a consultant, so much advice is based on observation, but as a business owner, you not only speak your advice you live it and breathe it. Your clients know this, so they respect your advice even more.
- Running a business enables me to balance work, family and charity. There are many myths about running a small business versus working for someone else that I’ve uncovered during the past ten years, but the most important factor is this: Never was I more able to meet my clients needs, to arrange my schedule around family activities, and to put in time to perform charitable work than when I ran my own business.
I can safely say that I have met many wonderful people while working for other businesses, I have served a number of clients that were well worth the time and effort expended, and I have worked with some very talented leadership along the way. In addition, I have served more than a few Fortune 500 companies and managed more than a few multi-million dollar endeavors in the process.
However, I’m looking forward to living the life of a small business owner once again. I know it’s considered by many to be one of the hardest jobs to hold. But it’s also a very fulfilling life, one that holds the most promise for me to positively impact others – and it’s nothing, apparently, like owning a boat.
Donald Patti is a Principal Consultant with Cedar Point Consulting, a management consulting practice based in the Washington, DC area, where he advises businesses in strategy, process improvement and project management. Cedar Point Consulting can be found at http://www.cedarpointconsulting.com.
The chatter in Washington is that the U.S. Treasury Department is going to sell most of its shares it received in General Motors stock in 2009 as part of the auto industry bailout package, perhaps as early as this summer. The reasons are either political or financial, depending on whom you ask. Some will tell you that the Obama administration wants the sale this year so that the federal bailout of GM is a non-issue in the 2012 presidential election, and some say that the sale is going to happen this year because the Treasury department thinks the current stock price is as high as it’s going to get for the foreseeable future. 
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