Reason #1: Why Everyone Should Be in Business
You'll be surprised.
Not long ago, I saw a post stating that employees were just as important as entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs need employees to do the work. Employees need the imagination of entrepreneurs to have work to do. It was an even trade. Obviously, the person was an employee.
Starting your own business will change your thinking and your life. You become more of a global thinker. You see the connections between your thoughts and your reality.
From 1978 to 1981, I worked for IBM. I wasn’t highly paid, but I was doing alright. I put in a lot of hours. I knew that I would have a paycheck and never worried about paying my personal expenses. I won awards. I had several managers during that time. I know about meetings, corporate politics and corporate expectations.
From 1985 to 2022, I was self-employed. I no longer had a paycheck. If I didn’t get paid, I had to borrow money to pay personal expenses. I had to think differently. I had to change myself.
Marketing: What do you want?
How will your business attract customers? If you are the business, you have to figure out marketing. It is much tougher than many believe. It is really all about what you want.
For example, a man opened a beer bar a few blocks from my home. He had been a successful employee at a software company. He had an idea of how he wanted to run his business. He did everything himself. He knew a lot about beer. He wanted to have a place where people could come sit and talk. He didn’t want to talk to people. There weren’t enough tables to make that profitable. He thought that he could just pay Google and the algorithm would bring him customers. The problem was that he really didn’t want to have a lot of customers. He was not willing to grow as a person. He wasn’t willing to adapt his model. He failed within two years.
Contrast that with an experience I had in practice. I was about to leave for lunch. I closed the exam room door, and the thought came to me, “where are my new patients?” Before I could get to the front door, a man walked in and said, “Is this a chiropractic office? I’m looking for a chiropractor.” He and his wife were my new patients.
Another example of our interconnectedness, my practice grew, and I was considering hiring another chiropractor. I wondered who? Instantly I got the image of a classmate. I wondered how I could find him. Two weeks later he walked into my office. He had driven from Florida to Washington State.
I have also had the opposite experience. Similar to the man running the bar, I too had paid Google to run ads. It didn’t work for me either. Many successful entrepreneurs have found the same thing - the universe responds to what we really want. If I had other things on my mind, advertising didn’t work.
My son was hired by an insurance company as a marketing statistician. They wanted to send out a mailer. Sam wanted to track the success. They said, “we’ve already done that. Sales went up 20%.” Sam told them they needed a control. “We did that too.” He compared the control area to the area that received the mailer. The control actually outperformed the mailer group. The company grew, maybe not for the reason they thought.
I found the same thing in practice. I could advertise and business would improve, but often new patients had not seen the ads. How does a thinking person make sense of that?
I personally believe in a God with a sense of humor. It sets up situations that ask, what do you really want? I could have made a lot more money, but I would have made more sacrifices in my family life. I’ll give another example.
Early in my practice, I worked Saturday mornings. My wife wanted me home by 2:00 pm to attend a party. I had four new patients call that morning. That was at a point where four new patients in a month might have been good. Did I want to take care of patients or go to a party? I was late. Other doctors have experienced similar situations.
A friend of mine has a store. He told me that when sales are down, he walks around the store and says, I love retail. I love retail. He believes that is part of his success.
Seeing the relationship between our thinking and our results is something that many successful entrepreneurs experience. Most employees just don’t have the same opportunity.
I believe athletes experience something similar. There may be other fields where you can experience your relationship to the universe. Starting a business, especially if your lively hood depends on it, is one of the best.
Ask someone who has been successful in business. See if you get a similar answer.