243. What if entrepreneurship isn't the best option for you

The Sweaty Startup

The painful truth is that not everyone is cut out to be a business owner. Another hard pill to swallow is that people cling to ideas, and concepts they think will get them ahead. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but my fear through all of this is that people who are listening to the show 10 years from now, will wake up one day, having started a business, are underpaid, overworked, and have a business that's not worth very much--that they just gave themselves a job. That's my fear, because the bottom line is that owning a business is tough.

Roughly 95% of business owners fall into the rhythm of owning a business that they're involved in, where they work and get paid. Sounds easy. That’s because they're not entrepreneurs. They own a job. Or, to put it frankly, that job owns them--they are the property of their business.

Being a business owner is often glorified while we shame W2 employees. However, a lot of business owners are working 70 or more hours a week. They hardly ever see or know their children. Many haven’t made it to a family dinner the last four nights in a row. Many are divorced, unhappy, alcoholics, or have some other addiction. All this is sadly a big problem with entrepreneurship--not knowing how to have a balanced work-life relationship.

So how do you achieve success? Better yet, how do you achieve happiness? If you have a job, how do you avoid being one of those people that complain about their work-life balance, their crappy bosses, and what they're doing? How do you avoid that? Well, you delegate.

Every business owner will lean on their best employees to get the job done. They’ll hand more clients and problems over to their best producers and problem-solvers, and most employees will just trudge along and accept it all. But, the next thing you know is the employee is working 80 hours a week for 5 years straight, making good money for their company, but they likely are not making much money for themselves.

Whether it be a business owner or a solid employee, both need to understand the power of delegating--how to assign work to other people within the organization or team and know when to say that they have too much on their plate. This is why surrounding yourself with solid people is essential when building a business or hiring the right employees for your team because then you can properly delegate and still get the job done.

So let me tell you one more time that if your job or business owns you and you have no work balance, it's your fault--you need to know when to say “no” and delegate, managing the expectations of your customers, your boss, and your coworkers.

You always hear about the successes of running a business. But the truth is, being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. You have to make hard decisions. You need to figure out where you're most comfortable, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and build on and around them. You need to figure out if you want to get paid building a career working for somebody else, possibly doing what you love, or if you want to start a business and see if you have what it takes.