Understanding Your Motivations

People become business owners for many different reasons. Some for example want to make a hobby or a life-long passion pay off. Many people have turned their hobbies into small businesses. A friend of mine is a good example. He was a runner in high school and college. He started to work part-time at an athletic shoe store part-time while he was in college. He then became the manager of the store. After a few years he quit and started working for a smaller athletic store as the manager. A few years later he bought that small store and became the owner/operator. He eventually branched out into fitness marketing and has been doing it now for 25 years.

So what was his motivation for going into businessfor himself? More than likely he wanted independence, autonomy, and control over how and when he worked and what he did in his life.

Entrepreneurial businesses can be classified into three interrelated categories; lifestyle, small but profitable, and high-growth. A lifestyle business is usually designed to satisfy a strong need for independence, autonomy, and control, such as the person above who bought the small athletic store.

Some people may become business owners because someone in their family owned a business. Some become business owners because they see a niche or market that they think they can provide a product or service. Some because they became tired of working for someone else, some because they had the need to achieve something, some because they wanted to do something different in their lives, and some maybe out of economic necessity. Some might even have retired from a large corporation and wanted to start a small business after working many years for a large company. All of the examples above have their own unique reasons and motivations for wanting to become an entrepreneur.

Generally, entrepreneurs, who place non-economic goals as a priority in their lives, are more satisfied owning their own business than they were working for someone or working for company. That's not to say that making a decent living or even a good living through the small business is not important to them. It's very important but probably not their main motivation for becoming an entrepreneur.

As stated in an earlier article, the Internet has enabled millions of people to become entrepreneurs. A recent article in Business Week mentioned that the dot.com businesses, specifically small entrepreneurial businesses are coming back strong after the dot.com "bust", in reality the article states that for small businesses the dot.com "bust" never really occurred, only the large venture capital enterprises went bust.

What are your motivations for starting your own business or becoming an entrepreneur? Think about it. You might be surprised.

By Tom Metts
Consultant