How to Be Your Own Boss - Looking Inward

Over the next few months, we’ll be exploring the steps involved in running your own small business. I write this as the owner of Checkmate Pictures, a Venice Beach production company producing video and stills for broadcast, the Internet and DVD’s, the most prominent of which is Reverse Aging Now, a feature length documentary that examines the cutting edge of anti-aging medicine. Every day that you work for somebody else, you contribute to your company’s profit with, as Karl Marx put it the “surplus value of labor.” Employees by their very nature are paid less than they contribute to a company’s bottom line. Here’s a concrete example: Picture that you earn $10 an hour including all benefits assembling cell phones, but that you work at a machine that produces $60 worth of phones that same hour. If your material and machine costs come to $20 an hour, then for every hour you work your company is profiting by $30 an hour. As an employee that is money you’ll never see. As an entrepreneur you will. Other reasons to start your own business include freedom, personal pride and scheduling flexibility. Since you’ve chosen the work to do it is far more interesting and challenging than working for somebody else . However to get started, you really need to begin with a psychological assessment, an honest look at who you are.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Are you self-directed?
   Do you have the mental discipline to accept responsibility for your success or failure? You will have the ultimate responsibility to organize your time, develop and manage projects executing details.
2. Can you plan and organize?
   We all haves strengths and weaknesses, but as a small business owner you’ll be forced to wear many hats. Can you handle production, sales, marketing and basic accounting? A creative inventor of a cheap electric car would still need to keep good financial records, pay bills on a timely basis, manage credit and meet deadlines. Can you deliver your goods according to a schedule?
3. Do you have the stamina to rely on yourself?
   One advantage of working for somebody else is that when your work day is done you can forget about it and walk away. There is no overtime pay for the self employed. Can you handle the mental and physical demands of long days and nights to deliver when needed? When I’ve been asked how I like working for myself, after a grueling week I’m inclined to answer that I like everything about it except having a tyrant for a boss.
4. Do you have the burning desire to succeed? Being your own boss involves hard work and sacrifice. Is personal success, as measured by your own shingle, worth the effort? It’s a question only you can answer.