Or put another way, you have to be aware of who you are.  People that are successful realize this.  Inventors are inventors, not business people. Business people are business people, not inventors. When an inventor realizes that he or she is good at inventing, and a business person realizes he or she is good at doing business, then they both profit. When neither are aware that their talents are limited, they both fail. We live in an age where parents and “life coaches” preach “you can do anything as long as you set your mind to it”. Bull shit.  This little mantra is the reason we get to watch people make fools of themselves on the first few episodes of American Idol every year.  Too many people “chase their dreams” when they should be looking inward to learn what their strengths are and how they can add value to the world with them.  The people who make millions with their ideas come from two camps of individuals.  Those who got extremely lucky that their “dream idea” happened to have a monumental demand behind it. And those who, despite what their dreams were, wisely researched markets and their demand, and intuitively created a product or solution that satisfied the supply and demand curve we all learned about in Econ 101. 
Take Thomas Edison for example.  He wasn’t out to gain fame and fortune from creating the light bulb. He was just working on something that he knew he was good at, and subsequently happened to gain monumental notoriety and monetary reward from his final product.  Good for him.  The point is that he didn’t create the light bulb to become wealthy and to create “passive income”. In other words, he wasn’t a dream-seeker, but a hard worker. He wasn’t sitting at Starbucks saying to himself “What solution can I solve in this world in order to own a Ferrari and become financially free?”. I would have to believe that his creation of the light bulb was driven by his passion to solve a problem that he knew in his heart he could solve, and not so he could own 5 houses on the beach.  

So, is it better to own your own business? Like the author of this post said, and like all answers in business and economics, it just depends.  Starting a business is more than passion or dreams…in fact, that’s a sure recipe for failure. 

Also, businesses involve this little thing called cash flow, which is something the average “entrepreneur” knows nothing about (excluding  most MBA’s and Accountants).

 Entrepreneurs may think they know a thing or two about cash flow, but they really don’t.  They will simply assume that their “cash flow” is how their money flows in and out of their business.  And yes, while this is technically what cash flow is, if your basic understanding of the concept consists of receipts coming in minus expenses paid, then you might want to stop what your doing immediately.  

What about your financing or investing cash flow components? For Q4, are you able to mitigate an anticipated dip in customer demand by investing a percentage of your free cash flow in Q3? Are you able to more efficiently meet your annual budget targets by borrowing X amount of money, or reinvesting your free cash into your owner’s equity account? Do you even have a budget target? Are you over-extending your free cash flow by being too lenient with your credit terms? Do you have credit terms? Could you make more money if you created a credit system for customers? No, you say.  Why not? Have you researched and confirmed this, or does the concept not apply to you because “you’re a small business”? Should you fund your company completely with your own funds? What is your cost of capital should you decided to seek external financing? Is it just what the lender tells you it is? What is your expected annual return on your reinvested funds? Does it matter? Do you want to eventually sell your business? Do you know what it’s worth? Do you have a target for what you want it to be worth in order to attract more lucrative investors and/or PE firms to buy you out? Do you care? Or, do you just want to sell widget x for price y and not think about the rest? In other words, owning a business is about everything but what you’re actually selling (excluding supply chain and logistics…the type of product you are selling affects your operations heavily). And for some, this is what is exciting about owning a business…they don’t care what product or service they’re selling, it’s the business component of it all that excites them. For others, they just want to sell cute pet products because they love pets. If the extent of your desire to go into business is because you love something, you might want to rethink going into business at all (unless you love business itself).  Owning a business can be a doorway to personal and financial freedom, more so than working for someone else. However, blindly opening a new business could also be the one mistake you made in life that kept you from retiring early,  retiring comfortably, or retiring at all.  All decisions in the world come down to one thing: opportunity cost.  What is the next best use of your time, money, and energy? For example, let’s say that you inherit $500,000 and decide to start your own business with it. Is the 5-year return generated from your business expected to exceed the 5-year return of Apple (taking into consideration the capital gains tax when you decide to liquidate)? I doubt it, but it could. For simplicity, let’s just assume that you aren’t going to outperform the world’s top company. Then it might make more sense to buy $500,000 worth of Apple shares and reap the rewards from their management team, instead of making your money compete against them.  Just a thought. 

I owned a business, a small but profitable business actually, I abandoned it for an excellent offer of working in big multinational company and a promise that they will sponsor me for a grad school, good to be true right ? yes..  I went to gradschool with their sponsorship and working there  for several years.  then I got laid off.

Finding a job with few years of multinational experience and graduate degree is like winning a lottery in this economy, plus I am an immigrant.    I have sent more than 300 applications, hire a HR specialist to polish my resume and even pay a headhunter, I got one call and no result. ZERO.

I tried to find a job not only in US, but also in Europe, Middle east, Asia.  ZERO.   

It’s been 6 months since I don’t have a  job. Now I support myself and my family selling stuffs from Ebay and deliver papers in the morning, something that I did when I was a highschool student.  

So even THINK to get a job is a a BIG MISTAKE on this economy.

I will educate  my kids to start their business from NOW, when they are still in elementary school. 

Keep up the great work on the blog – I’m going to bookmark it!

However, there is always thrill & innovation coming out of you when you run a business. It does not happen when you have a routine job.  Running your own company is such a good learning experience that may not fetch you millions of dollars but, if you can stick on & bring some constant revenue to it, you’re gonna live a respected life and may have savings for your sons & even grandsons. This however, may not apply to a job where you’re more keen to spend all that you’ve earned by living a richer life style as your salary increases with few savings.

Like the author of this post wrote, not everyone can become an entrepreneur (or) businessman. It takes lot of effort, lot of mistakes(yes!) & lot of hard work to be a good entrepreneur. 

Mostly, the people owning a business fell into losses quickly due to their temperament & lack of self-belief / efforts. These guys generally move on to the next stages of life & start getting into jobs …without ever thinking of returning back to their business.

For people who stick on, its gonna take time based on the understanding of their business. It might take an year, couple of years (or) even more …but, they are gonna succeed as long as they don’t “repeat” the same mistakes and learn from their mistakes. As simple as that. Luck plays some role too in deciding when & if you’re gonna make the break even soon.

I own a business now (a real one–not Amway or something like that) and I like it too. I’ve liked some jobs I’ve worked and I’ve liked having a business.

But to say that having a business is always better than a job is a wrong statement. It’s better for some people…and just because some people have jobs that they like doesn’t make them less of a person than people who tried to start a business.

Just my thought…but read my counter-post…the link should be at the top of the post.

2. Steady income: Not only have thousands of people lost their jobs but even more have taken pay cuts. Again a person who works a job is only paid for the hours he/she works. What happens if that person becomes disabled? Owning a business with passive income would continue to provide manageable income without putting in the time and effort of a paid-by-hour job.

3. Work less hours: As proved by millions of small businesses throughout history, if you prospect correctly and build a team rather than doing everything on your own (which is self employment not business ownership by the way) you have a large work load shared by several individuals. This leaves you more time to spend doing other things of interest. In fact I closed a deal today without even leaving my house. So I made $500 while eating lunch with my mom and buying her flowers. I can live with that.

4. Fewer Headaches: You’ve got to be kidding me. Having some jack ass who thinks he’s Jesus tell me what to do, when to do it, what to say while I’m doing it, how to say it and what to wear while I’m doing and saying whatever he thinks I should? Then after I’ve complied he comes back and tells me what I’ve done wrong and that I’m not good enough and that I need to try harder is the biggest headache I’ve even had to deal with. Working a job, for somebody else’s success, is a horrible headache. Owning a business is doing something you love that others see as valuable. Sure there are complications, but not headaches.

5. Can’t lose your house: Sorry, Tony Cliffton is right. Tens of thousands of people lost their house. and thousands of those tens of thousands never made enough on a wage to build a savings as Juliet Austin pointed out. In fact, I have found that 61% of polled Americans said they don’t save enough, 68% said they would save more but lack the funds and overall 61% live pay check to paycheck (Yahoofinance.com 2010 & CNBC.com 2009). So when those 61% of americans lose their jobs they’ve lost their only source of income and therefore have lost all of their money.

So I ask you, who wouldn’t want to be a business owner if they could seeing as working a job is such a horrible solution to adequately sustaining their life?

Now I’m not naive enough to overlook the fact that it takes a special mindset to be a business owner, but this can be learned.

I’m also not saying that it’s a breeze, it’s very hard work and takes serious dedication.

But if you have the stones and the will power and the ambition to make your goals and dreams a reality you can do it and so can anyone else.

I was a job worker. I am now a business owner and I would never go back. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back.

I don’t mean to be rude so please don’t misunderstand me, but you’re wrong.

Creating a job is and always will be better than finding a job.
You’re time is worth more than your employer will ever be willing to pay.