5 Reasons to Love Entrepeneurship
Entrepreneurship. A sea of challenges. One must become competent at both going with the flow and rowing through the current. More importantly; purposefully developing an acute sense of when each is required.
There are many aspects I have come to appreciate about entrepreneurship and of course even some I dislike. I believe the good outweighs the bad however, independent of a great sales period. Here are a 5 reasons I believe we can give to love entrepreneurship:
1. Set your own schedule
Perhaps the most common one thrown out. “You get to set your own schedule” is a common exchange when entrepreneurs speak on the benefits of their practice and a common aspiration for those looking to make the leap. Yes, you may set your own schedule and thus be challenged to follow through on it. When done well, it is heavenly. Sick days, vacation days and hours of productivity are within your control. Even better, if you have a customer facing business, being transparent with your customers on your availability is a good thing. Given the choice, people prefer doing business with a living, breathing human being who they can relate to as opposed to a faceless company.
2. Make time for what’s really important
A direct descendant of “Setting your own schedule” haha. For me, this is perhaps the best perk. Time is a commodity we are unable to replenish and so what we do with our given time and where we prioritise our spending of it says a lot about us and greatly impacts those closest to us. Consequently, I think we should be intentional around how we spend it. Being able to structure our time around what’s really important such as family, service and a healthy productivity cycle is priceless. One day when I do have a family of my own, I hope and aspire that any time spent away from them working is miniscule.
3. Live counter to the world’s inherent clock
The Ford motor company is credited as one of the first to establish the iconic “9-5" working hours. At that time, during the industrial revolution, they found that these were excellent hours of productivity for their respective operation. Decades later, we are inundated with this structure as “tradition” begets. As a result, the wee hours of the morning before ‘work begins’ and the late afternoon hours when ‘work ends’ are some of the busiest. Traffic is a recurring nightmare and people are understandably more miserable. Parent/ teacher’s meetings, bank visits, doctor’s appointments and important life milestones battle to fit into designated lunch times and vacation days at the discretion of the workplace’s leadership.
The freedom of structuring your time as an entrepreneur bears fruit here as well. Imagine fulfilling errands, obligations and being proactive in familial duties during the hours of the day when the traffic is lightest and the crowds the smallest. In other words, when everyone else is at work. Entrepreneurship offers that choice.
4. Values
What is truly important to you? If you were to do “x business” in your own way, what would you make sure to include? What would you make sure to omit? As a lean and nimble business, you are able to focus in on niches, and adjust according to customer pains that you yourself have experienced. In other words, you are able to create value for customers aligned with your core values. Too often we measure a business’ success, relevance and usefulness based on their revenue and profits. I daresay that just as with people, how a business treats its customers and prospects, what they believe in, what they do with the responsibility and trust given to them are more important. Entrepreneurs have the privilege of being human and directly offering value.
5. A call to maturity
Let me be the first to admit that working in and on your business is hard work. At the earliest stages, you may log even more hours than that “9-5” if we are being honest. Through practise you learn that you must follow through on your word, you must be proactive and not only reactive, you must be dependable. Our world today subtly teaches us to avoid responsibility, putting forward the idea that it shackles us.
Responsibility, I have found, is unique. It build muscle just as an exercise regimen does. Work with it for awhile and you find that things that were previously difficult and “heavy” become “light”. Responsibility is good for us in the same way then that healthy eating and exercise, while laborious as you climb that initial hill, allows us to better function through our day to day life and is full of long term benefits.
By no means am I putting forward that every entrepreneur needs to blindly stack on items on their plates to be responsible for, payrolls to manage and the like; no. Rather I think that our 21st century lifestyle of supermarkets, vehicular travel and 1-day shipping (how ironic haha) have caused us to atrophy a key ability of our humanity. The ability to hunt, gather, forage and nurture. Entrepreneurship in my understanding challenges us to once again call upon these innate abilities, to be responsible, to mature. I would encourage us to wake up and make effort to return to this place.
In concluding, I believe we can love entrepreneurship because it calls us to employ our increasingly forgotten, innate abilities; it challenges us to mature and take responsibility; it can afford us the freedom to purposefully allot our time to the most important things.
“Mek we stop run nuh”
”Hangle yuh business”
”Love like cook food”
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The Popcorn Maker
