Business vs Self-Employment

This is a reply i gave to an aspiring entrepreneur on a forum in Sg. I was browsing through and found that maybe someone would find this useful. =)
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There are pros and cons when it comes to working first Vs Starting a Business first.

Pros and Cons for starting your own business first.

Initiative -You take initiative, sooner or later you'll make a habit out of it and being proactive is one of the most sought after tools in the market if you're looking for employment and especially if you're setting a business. 90% of employees these days need to be told what to do and they do everything just as they are told, or worse less than expected.

If you start taking initiatives you will lose the fear of failing. It's not whether you fail or not, it's how many steps left before you succeed.

I remember a quote by Thomas Alva Edison when asked after making his 10,000th failed attempt when he was inventing the light bulb, said

Results? Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward....



Influencer- When you start your own business there's no who one pushes you forward, you push yourself. When your staff gets demotivated you don't get demotivated with them you problem solve and motivate them back. 90+ % of people get influenced rather than assert influence, perhaps humans are just passive creatures. It takes a lot of character to be a leader, leaders lead by example. They have no time to lick their wounds when they fall.

Starting your own business first helps you to break the code, break the code of "herd-like mentality" where you follow everyone else instead of having independent thought.

Great Learning Exposure- One of the most saddening expects when it comes to working is that everyone cares only about their own work and yet expect a promotion a raise and a big fat bonus to come to them.

When you start your own business, you break this cycle. You will have to expose yourself to a torrential amount of information and push yourself to learn things you wouldn't even have bothered to in the past. Learning about everything and anything is crucial because you may never know when opportunity might strike next and even in an un-seeming circumstance you might get rewarded.

The founder of Fortune 500 companies don't get to where they are without spending 100 times the effort of the average employee to learn daily. They do it at a different level.

From accounting and stock keeping, A&P and Sales, learning how a business runs will help you even if you change goals and stop being an entrepreneur in the future.

Build good habits- I can't state how much starting a business helps build good habits, of course you do build bad habits too, but the pros usually tend to outweigh the cons. You pick up a lot of crappy habits when working for others and with others getting influenced an employee like mentality. Every 15minute smoking breaks, dilly dallying and the list goes on. Of course this is a part of influencing.

Etc- I could go on but this few itself should give you a thing or two, always remember it's the little things that make or break businesses.

The art of the start by Guy Kawasaki is great for startups. You can download his 30minute talk at his website, just google it.

Cons

Arrogance/Pride - I don't know about others but i find that this one of top 5 reasons partnerships and businesses fail. Ego and pride is worthless when you're not making money or worse in the red. Throw it in the dumpsters, pride and arrogance is worthless even if you have the talent to back it up, if you don't even have the talent to back it up you're just thrash talking thrash and thinking you're right.

Humble yourself nobody is always right and nobody may truly be totally right always, there's always something to learn from someone, from the toilet cleaner to Bill Gates never look down on others or too highly of others. Always stay focused to the task at hand, even if you have to step down as Ceo like what Bill Gates did, if it's for the good of the company why not? If you maintain a humble but confident yet focused spirit you will go far in whatever you do.

People Management- One of the cons when you lack working experience is that you will often fall short in people management skills as most managers might concede, managing people is one of the most difficult and sought after tools in today's market. When you work for others you will understand people better, understand how they feel and know what makes them tick thus enabling you to motivate them to perform better.

One of the biggest mistakes managers and Ceo's make is that they disregard the opinions and feelings of their staffs. It's not Ceos who make millions for the company it's the ground staff that gives the superb service or delivers the superb product, understand that and keep that in mind, without staff you are a manager of nothing.

So being on the ground and working for others will enable you to become a better employer. Employee morale is often a key indicator of a company's performance.

You're right Mentality, sums up most of the cons that you will get when you lack working experience and start being a boss first.

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Ultimately initiative plays a huge role, so don't think too much, instead try your ideas even if what you experiment with seems doomed to fail you never know the gems of experience and wisdom you might gain from it.

Of course experiment with that which you have in abundance, time and energy. You should withhold bigger investments till you have enough experience and skills to handle it.

I recommend doing both, working for others and at the same time looking for opportunities to work for yourself. Even a stint at Mcdonalds can give you a wealth of knowledge and experience.

People fail to see the reason why Mcdonald is so successful when they view working there as just a job, perhaps you could learn a thing or two from working there which would prove valuable when you're out there on your own one day.

Be passionate about something and ignore the $ signs, the floodgates will open when work becomes play.

Do it the Nike way.