Can I Start My Own Business? Deciding Whether You Want to Be a Business Owner
So, you’re thinking about starting your own business... Maybe you’ve been dreaming of being your own boss for years, or perhaps you’ve just had a lightbulb moment and wonder if it’s the right move for you. It’s an exciting thought, right? But before you jump in headfirst, there’s a lot to consider—not just the how but also the why. Running a business isn’t all glamorous; it comes with its fair share of challenges, and it’s not for everyone.
And who am I to advise on this? I know this from experience. I left a career in marketing and business development in corporate America where I was, dare I toot my own horn, killing it to start a coaching business in 2022. (And just to circumvent any conclusion, in the years since then, I stopped coaching and evolved that business into what you see here where I’m a content creator that offers resources related to confidence, dating, money, productivity and travel from your internet big sister - me!)
Interestingly enough, I had been told multiple times in my life that people thought I’d start my own business one day but in the years immediately before, I was sure that it wasn’t the right fit for me. So I wanted to put together the perspective I needed when I started to really consider it that could help any of you evaluate whether it might be the right move for you. Whether you're in the early stages of considering this leap or already thinking about taking the plunge, it’s important to be clear-eyed about what the journey involves. So, let’s walk through some key factors that might help you decide if business ownership is really the right path for you—emotionally, psychologically, and financially.
Should I start my own business?
The internet likes to glamorize being your own boss. Schedule flexibility, passive income and sexy branding photoshoots, oh my. But I’m guessing, deep down you know that it’s not all rainbows and butterflies and it’s certainly not as easy as everybody makes it look. But what really are the costs or downsides of starting your own business. Let’s start with…
The Emotional Requirements of Owning a Business
Just as you have bad days and good days at work right now, the same thing is true as a business owner. But the emotions of being a business owner can actually feel even bigger, so let’s talk about the emotional toll. If you’re someone who thrives on structure and predictability, you may find the emotional rollercoaster of entrepreneurship a bit overwhelming. You’re going to have a lot of uncertainty, stress, and pressure on your shoulders. So, before you commit, ask yourself: Am I okay with that? Let’s dive a little deeper into what this looks like…
Uncertainty and Stress
Here’s the thing: running a business means you’re going to face a lot of unknowns. You’ll deal with the constant wondering about your company’s future—whether that’s your next sale, new competition popping up, or what’s going to happen in the economy. And that stress? It’s actually your job. As the CEO, your job is to be building a strategy for the business to thrive, identifying potential headwinds that might make it hard and figuring out how to overcome the obstacles to stay successful.
Depending on what business you start, there may be more or less resources on how to effectively run these businesses but even in industries with tons of support (or hundreds of business coaches telling you that they know how to support you to major growth), you still ultimately have to make the decisions.
I’m generally a pretty decisive person and in my corporate life I always had strong perspectives about how to manage problems that were coming up in my role. But when I became a business owner myself, I realized that I had never had to actually dictate true business strategy before. When is it time to launch a new product? When should I focus on increasing profits vs. increasing overall revenue? How much should I prioritize marketing vs. product development?
Without someone else to tell you the priorities, the unknown is always sitting on your shoulders. This can be even more intense when you consider that these decisions also directly affect whether or not you’re making money. The constant weight of those unknowns can be exhausting, and I won’t sugarcoat it—it can seriously affect other parts of your life.
But that’s just part of the deal. If you’re okay with handling that uncertainty, you might have the right mindset for business ownership.
Long Hours and Sacrifice
Is it possible to make six figures in income with under 20 hours a week? Yes. Will most business owners get there in their first year in business? I’ve never met a single one. This is one of the ways the internet often steers us wrong because well meaning coaches share the promise of what can be possible with online businesses but they don’t offer enough context as to the timeline. As a result people get into business and feel like they’re failing when they’re six months in and still haven’t made money. We’re going to talk more about the financial side later but it’s so important to prepare yourself for the uncertainty of not knowing whether things are working for an extended period of time and needing to trust the process without any real proof.
The other important factor to know is that when you stop working, typically the business stops running especially if you’re a service based business. This doesn’t mean as a business owner you have to be working 24-7 but it means realizing that if you want to take a full weekend off but there are support requests coming in, it may affect that client experience. Want to unplug for vacation? You may lose out on revenue or need to put significant hours in ahead of time so you can rest easier knowing things are taken care of.
I was able to manage running my business without compromising my social life even in the first year, because I decided it was important to me and my sanity. But the compromise was that I was pretty much always thinking about the content I needed to be producing or the product I was developing, even when I was on vacation. You’ll be juggling multiple roles, from CEO to customer service rep, to marketer, and more.
If you’re working on something you’re deeply passionate about, this can feel like fun, always getting to daydream and scheme. But when things are hard, it’s important to know that your life can start to feel absorbed by this decision, so make it carefully.
Volatility and Responsibility
On top of everything else, let’s not forget about the responsibility that comes with owning a business. When you’re the CEO, whether you have zero employees or one hundred, filing taxes? On you. Running payroll? On you. Deciding what investments are worthwhile? On you. Killing a product line or launching a new one? On you.
Once you add employees into the mix, you’re then responsible not just for your own livelihood but for the livelihoods of your employees, and you're also the one who needs to ensure customer satisfaction.
The Psychological Requirements of Being a Business Owner
Do emotions and psychology go hand in hand? Yes, of course. But beyond the ways that being a business owner can be emotional, I have noticed over the years from very real impacts to my mindset as navigating this life. Here are a few things to think about:
Self-Doubt and Imposter Syndrome
Here’s the thing no one tells you about entrepreneurship: you’ll face a lot of self-doubt. And that feeling of imposter syndrome? It’s real. In the beginning, I constantly asked myself, Who am I to run a business? I was often plagued by the fear that I wasn’t qualified or experienced enough to make it.
It’s a weird paradox—you need confidence to make it as a business owner, but you’re usually the only one able to tell yourself that you’re good enough. Some business owners talk about just committing to being delusional about what you’re building and if that works for them, great! For me, the piece that helped me navigate this was the basic principle of “why not me?” Looking at other business owners who overcame bigger challenges or had less experience with this piece or that piece and if they could figure it out, why couldn’t I?
Adaptability and Resilience
As a business owner, you need to be able to roll with the punches. Things will never go exactly as planned, and sometimes the best thing you can do is pivot and adapt.
The thing I learned the hard way is that resilience is key. You have to bounce back from failure, learn from it, and keep moving forward. There will be setbacks, whether it’s losing a client or facing a financial shortfall, but the ability to shake it off and keep going is what sets successful business owners apart. As a former perfectionist overachiever, this was something I definitely had to build over time as making mistakes felt very extreme for me at the beginning.
I’ve talked a lot about resilience in terms of all parts of confidence so the good news is, running a business can make you a more confident human and vice versa but it can take some learning at the beginning.
The Financial Requirements of Running a Business
Alright, let’s talk about money. This is where it gets very real for a lot of people. While emotional and psychological aspects are huge, you’ve got to make sure your finances are in check before you make the leap.
Initial Investment and Financial Risk
Starting a business requires money. And I’m not just talking about a few hundred bucks for a website and business cards (please don’t spend money on business cards in this day and age?!). I’m talking about real investment—whether it’s inventory, equipment, training, or marketing costs.
Even if you’re able to keep startup costs relatively low (for context, mine were about $1K), you still have to account for how long it might take for you to actually make money. I went three full months in business before I made a single dollar. It was another four before I was even close to paying half my bills.
For some people it might be right to consider a small business loan but I’m generally not going to advise that because it puts even more pressure on you to make business to make those payments. But shouldn’t you bet on yourself, Samantha? I might be sounding like a downer here (I swear, we’re going to talk about the positives too!) but most small businesses don’t survive. And every business owner I know is now doing something slightly different than when they first started out. So my advice is to have enough buffer saved before starting your business that you have the time to navigate and grow through that process and don’t need to generate returns right now in order to survive.
This is especially important for certain businesses with more inventory or upfront costs like software development or even for many of the venture-backed models like you see with many software based companies. For these style businesses, you might not turn a profit for a while. In fact, it might even lose money for the first few months (or even years). Can you handle that? Are you financially prepared for the rollercoaster ride?
I had enough saved for the first three months of business to make no money without dipping into my existing six month emergency fund. (If you don’t already have six months in expenses saved, then I’d definitely definitely do that first before making the leap!) Nine months of expenses might sound high but honestly, I wish I’d had more. When I hit month three and started dipping into the emergency fund, my stress levels spiked and I wish I’d been able to stay more balanced with the help of more of a backup.
Cash Flow and Profitability
Let’s talk about cash flow for a second. This is one of the less talked about parts of running a business—predicting when money will come in and how much you’ll have at any given time. If you’re not careful, cash flow issues can quickly lead to bigger problems.
As the CEO, you get to pull the levers of costs. Sometimes it might make sense to have higher costs because you believe those investments will lead to more revenue down the line. Other times, you might want to focus on lowering your costs so you can keep more profit for the business. In either scenario, you also get to decide how much you want to pay yourself vs. investing in the business. Paying yourself more might result in slower growth for the business but investing more in the business may lead you to feel financially restricted in your personal life.
The upside of this is when you get things going right, the power of cash flow starts to create that feeling of “passive income.” But if you haven’t managed these types of decisions before, it’s definitely going to be a necessary part of educating yourself in order to be ready to be a business owner!
The Positives of Being a Business Owner
Okay, enough downer energy. I’ve covered the emotional, psychological, and financial responsibilities of being a business owner. I’ve probably sufficiently scared you slash brought you down to earth that it isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. But I want to be clear, I still absolutely believe many people can be really happy and successful starting their own small business. Let’s talk about why it might be worth it and what those rewards really look like.
Autonomy and Control
One of the best things about being a business owner is the autonomy. You get to call the shots. You make the decisions. And if you have a vision for your business, you have the authority to have things exactly the way you like them in execution. It’s incredibly satisfying to see your ideas come to life.
This means that if you always hate at work when they run meetings one way, as a business owner, you can decide how you want meetings to run. If you want to only work with certain types of people, you can make that decision. If you want to be able to dot your i’s with hearts and use girlie colors that your current job would call “unprofessional,” you have the power.
Being your own boss is liberating, even if it comes with stress sometimes. You’re not reporting to anyone else. You create the direction for the company and, ideally, shape the culture and values that are important to you. You’re in control of your own destiny.
This is one of my favorite parts of being a business owner because while I know I have to own it if things go wrong, I also got to feel all the credit when things go right!
Personal and Professional Growth
There’s no question that owning a business pushes you to grow. Whether it’s learning how to lead a team, manage finances, or simply think strategically, you’ll develop new skills and abilities every day. For me, every challenge has been a learning opportunity. And while it can be tough, that growth is what makes it all worthwhile.
Beyond learning the ins and outs of actually running a business, there’s also tremendous personal growth in the reflection process of what kind of business you want to run and the impact you want to make on the world. So many people sleepwalk through life without ever doing this type of real thoughtful reflection work that can lead to so much fulfillment.
Whether or not your business succeeds, having run a small business can make you a huge asset to companies in the future. Your self-doubt might try to convince you that it would be “failing” but most hiring managers see previous small business experience as an asset because they know that you are responsible, self-starting, and understand the larger elements at play of a thriving business.
Flexibility and Freedom
This is definitely my favorite perk of being a business owner. It’s important though to remember that not all businesses are created equal. I started a business that’s completely location flexible and with flexible working hours. If you open up a retail store, you will neither be location or schedule flexible. Running a bakery is built in to give up your mornings for the forseeable future. But within reason, as the boss, you get to dictate your hours or where you’re working from as long as it doesn’t conflict with the business schedule.
I have many times over the years spent a Sunday morning when I was feeling productive cranking through a few hours at work. Because I spent that time, I then felt no guilt stepping away from my computer one afternoon when the weather was nice or running errands around midday when traffic is less bad. I am almost always working in comfy clothes and can bounce from my desk to the couch whenever I want.
The more your business gets off the ground and becomes more stable, you’ll find that there’s potential for you to scale up this flexibility and freedom even more. I spent a year trying out cities to potentially live in next and traveling Europe for 2 months at a time. During that time as long as I had a laptop and wifi, my business kept running. I took calls from hotels in London and built presentations in a chateau in the Loire Valley.
Whether it’s travel, time with kids, or just the ability to invest in hobbies, running your own business can open up doors for flexibility and freedom beyond what you can even imagine.
Pride and Accomplishment
When a major corporation has a big win, hundreds if not thousands of people collaborated to make it happen. When something goes well in your small business, you know that a large part (if not all of it) is a result of you. And let me tell you, it’s a really awesome feeling.
Seeing your hard work pay off whether it’s watching social media channels grow, a new product launch or of course, the balance sheet, is an amazing sense of accomplishment and a very powerful antidote to imposter syndrome. Even if you ultimately decide to close or evolve your business, like I did, nobody can ever take away the work and the results that you created for yourself.
Money!
And of course, if a business is thriving, you should be making money! The ability to support yourself is worth celebrating on it’s own but the more success you have in your business the more you can unlock new exciting levels of lifestyle for you and your family. I think this is the obvious draw for many people because when you own the company, your salary isn’t capped! You can make an almost unlimited amount of money as the business grows. This is a life changing opportunity if you can make it happen for yourself.
How to Assess If Business Ownership Is Right for You
So, how do you know if owning a business is right for you? Here are some things to think about:
Do you thrive in uncertain or high-pressure environments?
Are you financially prepared to take on the risks involved?
Are you emotionally prepared to face setbacks and challenges?
Can you handle failure and bounce back quickly?
Do you have the resilience and long-term vision to keep going?
If you’re still unsure, maybe start small. Test the waters with a side hustle or a smaller business venture before fully committing. That way, you can get a feel for it without going all in.
Whether you’re going all in or starting small, make sure you have the support system, financially, psychologically and emotionally, built for yourself to back you up throughout the journey.
Starting your own business is a big decision. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but it can be incredibly rewarding if you’re prepared for the ups and downs. If you’re ready to embrace the challenges and reap the rewards, entrepreneurship might just be the right path for you.
Good luck on your journey—and remember, you’re not alone. Being a small business owner can feel lonely but there are so many of us all around you who have been in your shoes and navigated similar uncertainty, doubt and more. The more you can include in your support system, whether through following them online or becoming friends in real life, the less alone you’ll feel as you navigate this crazy journey!
