When you start your own business, most of your friends and family are going to basically picture you running a business, with the exact same setup that they have at work. But, being an entrepreneur is inherently different. Here are 5 things that no one is going to understand when you become an entrepreneur.
1) The Budget Come Out Of Your Paycheck: If you look at some pages of my website, they can look unfinished. Whereas my wine of the month club landing page, is finished and professional, not every page on my site looks the same. Why don't I fix it? People ask me all the time, why I don't I just finish it or hire someone to do so? The answer is pretty simple, I spend as much time as I have on fixing it, but some weeks that's a couple of hours and some weeks that's no time at all. Why don't I hire someone? Because if I hire someone, that money comes directly out of my own pocket.
2) Yes, My Time Is Flexible, But Please Don't Take Advantage Of It: I have a school-aged kid in my house and every summer vacation, the same request gets made by friends, hey can I drop my kid off for a bit while you're working? Do you mind picking the kids up from camp? While I'm hardly the only one juggling more child care during the summer, continual requests from friends and family to help care for their kids makes it easy to think that they don't view my work as important as their own. Plus, my wife is home over the summer, but she shouldn't have to care for the kids all the time, either!
3) I Wear, Many, Many Hats: I think back to my work before I started my own business and it was relatively easy. I had a job with specific responsibilities and I completed them. That's what most people do at work. It's a hard transition for most entrepreneurs to realize that the next big idea, the next big push is going to have to come from them. Plus, I get to wear many many hats. People love to ask what a normal day is like in my world, it's literally impossible to answer because every day is so different from the last.
4) Regular Work Hours? What are Those? I first started realizing this when a customer complained to their credit card company because I hadn't gotten back to him by his lunch break after having a shipment returned. He called twice and emailed twice and didn't receive a response. He's a stockbroker in New York though, so that means lunch happens for him at 8 am Pacific. I end up returning emails in the morning and in the evening, with some more time during the day to take care of stuff you all do at more normal times.
5) I Realize, Nobody Cares As Much As I Do: There are times when it seems that every single person out there wants something. People want free wine via a donation, even if they have not ever bought anything from me. Others want discounts. Mostly though I realize that I care about my business a heck of a lot more than most people care about what they're doing.
There are a lot of aspects of being an entrepreneur that most people simply do not understand. Much of it stems from a basic misunderstanding that small business is normally quite small. If you want something for free from me, it literally takes money out of my pocket, does your donation at work do the same?