[business school]
BEFORE YOU OWN a business, here?s what you complain about: office politics, bone-headed management, and crummy salary and benefits.
After you own a business, here?s what you complain about: slow-paying customers, employees who aren?t as passionate as the owners, and the outrageous expense of compensation and benefits.
I was thinking about this because I just met with two women who want to start their own company. This is one of the many privileges that small-business owners enjoy; people seek us out for advice. Just as many people took the time to encourage and advise me when we were forming Upsize, it?s fun to be able to return the favor.
They wanted to know all about how we started the magazine, now in its sixth year, what I and my partners were thinking when we decided to take the plunge, and whether I miss anything about my former corporate life.
What I miss? That?s simple: direct-deposit of paychecks, including a substantial company-paid health care benefit, on time every time. Like many employees I used to spend time griping about my corporate salary and benefits; now that I?m a small-business owner I worship the corporation that so regularly and handsomely pays my husband.
Other than that it?s all good, and like most small-business owners I can?t imagine having to go back to the corporate world. As one business owner said recently: Once you?re an entrepreneur you can never go back, and that?s not just because no one will hire you anymore.
As I listened to these two women discussing their plans, I heard their excitement ? they have a great track record building from scratch a business unit within a corporation, and now an opportunity to purchase a similar business to run themselves. They outlined their plans, and they could hardly wait: how they?ll invest in product development, how they?ll leverage relationships throughout the country, how they?ll contract with talented people to get the company started.
I heard their fear: Like me before starting Upsize, they?ve always been employees, and now in their 40s they?re going to tap their home equity lines, max their credit cards and take their chances.
I heard their complaints ? being passed over for a promotion, watching squabbles between members of the family ownership, disagreeing with the cost of an acquisition. And they expressed the classic complaint of hired managers who run a business with someone else?s money: They haven?t been able to compensate people as substantially as they want to.
I laughed at that last one, knowing their tune would change soon enough when they start paying the bills.
I hope by now, a few months after we met, they?ve made their move. If so they?ll be using every bit of experience they?ve amassed, and they?ll be learning many more things at mid-career than they ever thought possible, all for the success of their own enterprise. And except for the lack of a regular paycheck at first, they?ll be having a blast.
Oh, and they will no longer think of the phrase ?cash is king? as simply a business clich?.
To them and everyone else thinking about starting a business: get all the advice you can, take out a home equity loan BEFORE you quit your day job ? and go for it.
? Beth Ewen
editor and co-founder
Upsize Minnesota
bewen@upsizemag.com
