Owning a small business is:AAEAAQAAAAAAAAXMAAAAJDAxY2NiMzBkLTg0MDItNDg2Mi05ZTlmLTgyZjkyMTMwMzMxOQ

  • The ultimate career risk because the financial downsides can be so severe.
  • The ultimate career opportunity – because the upside have so few limitations. 

Let’s start with a disclaimer; I may be overstating my case a bit with the headline that “small business is the greatest career of them all.” The truth is, small business IS the greatest career of them all only “if your life goals happen to be somewhat similar to mine.” What this disclaimer means is that if your goals includes such pursuits as, say, day-to-day financial security, a life of leisurely weekends, a lack of stress in your work environment, and/or ratcheting up your golf game, then small business ownership would not be a great career for you. (Nor will this article be a great read for you either. Sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier.)

With that disclaimer in mind, here are two of my most compelling life’s goals; if they match up with yours then you’ll find the rest of this article worth reading:

  1. Independence. I don’t like people telling me what to do. No shareholders, no voters, no bosses, no unions, no nada. (Wife Mary excepted.)
  2. Making a difference: Steve Jobs once told his biographer that he wanted to make a “dent in the universe”; which meant – and I’m making an assumption here – that he wanted to make a difference. In my version of small business ownership, “making a difference” includes providing opportunities for employees, solving customer’s problems, and filling a niche in the marketplace.

I think we would all agree that Bill Gates is a poster child for a small business graduate who has 1) enjoyed a significant degree of independence in his business life and 2) made a humongous difference. Let’s face it, today, Gates doesn’t have to answer to shareholders anymore (really now, did he ever?), and he gets to spend the majority of his time and money pursuing new and creative ways to make a difference – on a global scale, no less.

Imagine! Talk about the ownership of a small business providing the opportunity to be independent AND to make a difference. Furthermore, doesn’t the degree to which Gates can make a difference just boggle your mind? It does mine. What an incredibly satisfying way to spend a second career.

To my mind, while independence is a welcome benefit of small business ownership, the opportunity to make a difference is the primary reason I believe that our career is numero uno of them all. OK, so maybe Presidents of national governments have more opportunity to make a difference, but there are only a few of them scattered around the world. Ditto with Prime Ministers and, of course, there’s only one Pope. However, I don’t want to be a President, Prime Minister or a Pope, they have way too many people with personal agendas – aka voters and citizens – trying to tell them what to do.  Besides, I don’t relish doing what those folks have to do in order to get elected. 

In a study published in 2009 by IZA, the international Institute for the Study of Labor, the researcher found that the mean, median, and standard deviation of incomes for entrepreneurs were significantly higher than for any other profession. Furthermore, the study determined that there is more job security in an entrepreneurial career, where your continued employment rests entirely in your own hands, than there is in a corporate career, where your job security is dictated by the next guy (or gal) up the food chain.

Finally, the same study concluded, the entrepreneur does more good in the world than his corporate or government counterpart. The article did not specify what the study’s definition of “good” is, but I’m assuming it could be, in part, defined by such activities as job creation, product innovation and life-changing philanthropy. Again, consider the fore-mentioned Mr. Gates as you ponder those three outcomes; it’s virtually impossible to find anyone who has done all three better than him.

For me, the indelible lesson to be learned from studying what happens in the evolution and growth of a small business is the role thatleverage plays in the making-a-difference process.  Leverage, as it applies to achieving whatever it is we set out to achieve, means the ability to collect resources, dedicate those resources to resolving the issue at hand, and increase impact by virtue of the multiplier effect. As a small business grows into a big business, as Microsoft once did, so does the entrepreneur’s leverage.

While providing us the degree of leverage required to make a difference (through scaling the business) is the primary reason why I believe small business is the greatest career of them all, I’ll give you another reason why I wouldn’t trade this career for any other. I love to hang out with people who live and breathe finding a better way to do stuff, who enjoy starting with nothing and turning it into something, and who get their jollies by creating opportunities for others.

Another cool thing about being a small business owner is that anyone can do it. Check out the backgrounds of some of the most successful small-business-owners-turned-mogul stories: Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) is a Russian émigré, Steven Jobs was adopted and spent his early years as a hippy, Oprah Winfrey is an African American woman, and Warren Buffet came to us straight out of Omaha, Nebraska, the heart of corn country. Nary a Harvard grad among the lot.

Oh yes, and lest I forget, there is one final reason why owning a small business is the greatest career of them all. We can bring our dog to work, anytime we please.

 

About the Author:  Jim Schell is a lifelong bootstrapping entrepreneur with post-business careers in writing and social service also part of his resume. Today, a card-carrying old guy, he works on cool stuff with cool people; cool stuff designed to help his adopted home town, Bend, Oregon, become a better place to live. Jim’s wife Mary is a small business owner too; he is doubly a lucky man. He can be reached at jim.schell5@gmail.com.

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