Running a successful business can be the best thing in the world, you can choose your business partners, make your own time, and create great work you believe in. However, the little-known downsides of running a business include vaporized dreams, business meetings, payroll, and accounting, to name a few. You should want a business that extends and lives past you. This means you have to be able to push yourself past limits of your current skill set. It also means that the business must be able to run to some extent without you there.
If the business work cannot function without you there, then you would be better off as an employee of someone else. If you cannot duplicate parts or the majority of your work, then you are capped by your own time. A business not capped by your time is something worth investing in.
3 Questions to Ask Yourself to See If You Have a Business or Are Just An Employee of You:
- If you were gone for 2-3 weeks, do you fear your business would fail?
- Do you perform the work that brings in over 40% of revenue?
- Can your brand exist without you?
If you answered yes to any of these it is very possible, you are just an employee of yourself. You need to take a step back and look at how you can turn what you have into a business. It will not be easy but better to adjust now than when calamity hits.
At dotedison, we focus on helping business owners with marketing and we often run into this exact situation with our clients. Marketing a limited resource can often result in work overload, poor customer service and have the reverse desired goals. Our goal is to help identify some of these items early on so we can help. Often we help in value delivery automation, setting goals and even the hiring process. We also have partnerships with other businesses such as Key Capital that can help you with formalized business plans.