Small business owners come from various fields with many different skillsets, but in this role they are all tasked with wearing far more hats than it’s reasonable to expect expertise in. Unfortunately the amount of time spent wearing each hat tends to be proportional to the amount of experience a particular business owner has in that area. Thus some small businesses have amazing tech, some have impecceable books, and others have brilliant marketing. Just as true is that some don’t take advantage of technology, some use napkins for bookkeeping, and others were built “expecting walk-in traffic”.

It’s not reasonable to expect to be able to ignore the facets of business that you don’t know much about and hope to compensate with a really great product or strong marketing. A great business succeeds in many areas because the owner(s) have taken the time to learn the additional skills or find great people who have them. It may seem like a daunting learning curve to start picking up accounting and marketing, but this is actually your opportunity to repeatedly increase profits, save time, and eliminate many levels of stress.

I was in high school when I first became interested in owning a business. I knew a lot about computers. I could fix them, build them, and make them do my evil bidding. Unfortunately I knew nothing about running a business so my computer sales & repair venture didn’t go very far. I progressed onto other ventures and after aquiring my fair share of lumps I developed more respect and seriousness for the business side of business. I started reading about marketing, business management, and more marketing. I expanded my horizons gradually to improving my sales skills, networking, and accounting. I can only say that each time I wished I had learned sooner and faster as the techniques I’ve picked-up have doubled and tripled my profits over and over again. Certainly worth the time and the learning materials cost, both of which are trivial compared to the rewards of knowing what you are doing.

As Tilted Pixel’s plans to grow into an office and fulltime staff begin to come to fruition I will now be shifting more time to learning how to be a great boss and revisiting the strategies of How to Bag an Elephant. With every stage in the life of a business there are new and exciting things to be learned and mastered.

When starting your business, regardless of what background you come from, take the time to fill in your skills gaps. One of the advantages of starting a business with somebody rather than hacking it alone is that you can find a partner or team whose skillsets are very different from yours. In fact if you are looking for serious VC funding you are going to have well-balanced management team whose competencies sum up to a great business mind. If this is a solo venture then don’t allow yourself to be intimidated by new areas. I always dreaded learning accounting, but now I can do my bookkeeping on my own and could even survive without accounting software doing the calculations for me. These skillsets can be picked-up in various ways. I’ve learned a lot from university courses, speakers, online resources, and books. They all have their place in the learning process so I wouldn’t recommend limiting yourself to one resource.

Some of the books that I’ve found particularly useful are:

• Bag the Elephant: How to Win and Keep Big Customers
• Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got
• Getting Things Done
• Selling 2.0

In Canada, the US, and other countries with strongly capitalist economics you have a right that doesn’t get as much attention in the press as “freedom of speech” or “freedom from unwarranted search and seizure”. Yet it’s quite well protected and one of the few paths to wealth. The right to start a business allows you to sell goods or services with minimal government imposed barriers, to run it as you see fit, and to own the risk and profit associated with the business (minus taxes of course). In other words, you have the freedom to come up with a great idea and to capitalize on it for your own personal gain.

There is a strong myth in employee circles that starting a business is a complicated and difficult process, but a big part of what makes the above a right is minimal government imposed barriers to exercise it! Anyone capable of fulfilling some basic tax requirements and perhaps filing a few forms can be up and running as a true blue business. In Canada we have the concept of “incorporation as of right” which allows anyone who properly fills out an application, pays a reasonable fee, and meets some basic requirments, to incorporate their business. Starting a corporation in the US is similiarly simple, and in both countries it’s even easier to start a sole proprietorship.

Why virtually everyone should have some form of business, even if you plan on working for someone else for the rest of your life.

For starters it’s an amazing right to have. Never has it been easier to go from being poor to wealthy through one’s own ingenuity and hard work, rather than needing to be born or married into the right economic class. Not being wealthy no longer means that you are required to become a servant or employee, surrendering the bulk of the value of your efforts to your owner (see: Is it Wrong to be an Employee? and Steve Pavlina’s 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job). Yet that’s exactly what most people are doing, locking themsleves into being peasants of a modern feudal system!

Running a profitable business greatly reduces your risk of losing your income. It’s no secret that layoffs happen all the time and high performance or seniority are no longer enough to save you if you happen to be working for a department that is bleeding money. You can literally walk into work one day and find out that you no longer work there, as I’ve done before. Since you aren’t required to spend a certain amount of time on a business in order to own it, you can gain the income benefits of a part-time business without quitting your day job. I’m not telling you that you must jump off the cliff by quitting your job immediately and hoping that you know how to fly. You are free to build your business gradually and cut the shackles of your day job when it’s sustainable, or forever keep it as a side venture.

Starting a business provides enormous tax advantages. You are not taxed on the money spent by the business, allowing you to leverage the full power of your capital. This means that if you’re income tax is 30% a year, it will cost you $100 to buy a $70 golf club or $70 worth of stock. That same $100 can be used to buy a $100 piece of equipment for your business. Rather than having to give that $30 to the government, you’ve been able to invest it in your own venture for your own gain. Better still, business losses can often be written off against other income, dampening the hardship caused by a business that is not yet profitable.

Your talents and passions aren’t limited to what your job requires. You may even feel that your existing job doesn’t make use of your talents at all, and you certainly wouldn’t be alone. Your business allows you to profit on these talents, providing both income and an opportunity to develop yourself further in these areas. I wouldn’t know nearly as much as I know now about website development or programming if I hadn’t started businesses that allowed me to put these skills to use. I certainly wouldn’t be able to write this blog on entrepreneurship, which has allowed me to gain many insights into my own business knowledge and to develop my long-neglected writing abilities.

Finally as mentioned above, business is one of the few paths to becoming wealthy. No matter how many raises you get at the end of the day, a pay cheque has very finite growth limits. Reaching $100 000 per year is an applauded accomplishment and a mere $300 000 per year is astronimical. True money comes from ownership, which is why the real value of the money you save each year comes from the returns you receive from having it invested (and you are saving, right?). Own your own business, own real estate, own shares of a corporation. Those who do have $300 000 pay cheques are millionaires because they’ve invested the cash, not because it’s all piling in a bank account. Never has it been so easy to become an owner and to reap the tremendous rewards that come with it. A business is a powerful vehicle for getting there and the accessibility of starting one is phenomenal.

Just How Much of a Right is This Really?

Every country has its own laws, but those that have embraced free enterprise based economies necessarily need to make it possible to start a business easily. You can’t have free enterprise otherwise. Nevertheless every right can be revoked for fair or unfair reasons, and as part of this article I unsuccessfully tried to find out what kind of situations would deny a citizen from starting a (legal) business. I would be interested in any insights from readers who are more familiar with the law and government.

Disclaimer: some or all of this information may not apply for your particular situation. I’m not a lawyer, accountant, or otherwise able to provide advice to guarantee a successful or legal business. Please seek appropriate counsel in your local area. Persons acting on any information on this website do so at their own risk.

Time and time again I get comments on this blog and in person that can be summarized as:

“There’s nothing wrong with just wanting to be an employee. Not everyone wants to start their own business like you and they shouldn’t have to in order to be considered successful or to have their choices in life be valid.”

This is of course 100% true, and I agree with it! Unfortunately since I am both a very strong advocate of entrepreneurship and very vocal about employment disadvantages, some people automatically attribute to me that I think it’s somehow fundamentally wrong for someone to be an employee.

Business isn’t right for everyone. I can tell you this as a fact because I know people who are very happy with being employees, find their work fulfilling, and would be miserable in a business ownership situation. However it’s also true that there many people who are either stuck in jobs they hate or who aren’t suited to be employees at all. This group isn’t some dysfunctional minority, it’s an entire culture of cubicle misery. Dilbert and Office Space are so insanely popular because it’s based on very real frustrations of the traditional corporate workplace, a theme that an amazing amount of people can identify with.

Employment is a Choice

Much of the unhappy workforce doesn’t consciously realize this fact. People get trapped in job situations they are unhappy in because they see no other alternative. In a previous article I named four of the major perceived “Barriers to Starting Your Own Business, but in hindsight I could have named it “The Barriers to Doing What You Really Want to Do”.

You can choose to be an employee in a field that you enjoy, working for a company whose values and employee treatment are in line with your expectations. This can be an extremely rewarding experience, allowing you to achieve that seemingly mythical “getting paid to do what you love” life. That life that people in magazine interviews have, but that doesn’t happen to normal everyday common people. All without the stress of being a tycoon or a celebrity.

You can also choose to start your own business, a relatively common employment alternative, perhaps due to the appeal of “being your own boss”. With hard work, willingness to learn, a competent team, and a great product you can become a millionaire “doing what you love”. That life that people in magazine interviews have, but that doesn’t happen to normal everyday common people. All without the fear of being laid off or having to rely on your boss for a pay cheque.

But these aren’t the only choices. You can be a rock star, author, scuba diving instructor, world-reknowed scientist, art collector, consultant, baseball player, farmer, and thousands of other “careers”. Most of these are actually some combination of employee and business owner. An athlete for example works for a sports team, but is also his/her own brand and company. This has led me to recently conclude that “employee” and “business owner” are really just legal terms and not two absolutely opposite concepts. It’s not employment that I’m bitterly against, it’s the mental enslavement of a person perpetrated by educators and employers. The prison of working to put bread on the table rather than to further one’s own talents and growth.

Unhappy people in all walks of life need to wake-up and break free of the notion that work must be difficult, doing what you love is a dream for “someday”, and that making money is why we work. Buying into this philosphy is a matter of confidence, which must be rebuilt after years or decades of being consciously and accidentally trained by those around you to be a drone.

This author is dedicated to the path of business ownership and entrepreneurship. My blog exists for those currently running a business or having aspirations to do so. If entrepreneurship isn’t your cup of tea then this particular blog may not be for you, but resources for your chosen field exist. Just be aware that whatever your true calling, there is absolutely no need for you to:

• Perform meaningless and unfulfilling work.
• Put up with a terrible boss.
• Constantly have others take credit for your work and ideas.
• Live in constant fear of being laid off due to downsizing or speaking your mind.
• Sit in a sea of grey cubicles.

Unless of course you enjoy the above. Then by all means…