Are You Running Your Business, Or Is It Running You?

 

Every business needs a passionate, dedicated force behind it to make it successful. This force is long before the working staff comes into play or even the investors. This force is the idea maker, vision creator, and overall coordinator: the Business Owner. A business cannot run without a person standing behind it pushing it to what it could be.

However, sometimes passion isn’t enough. Often times a person has a lot of love and dedication to a field of work, they create new innovative ideas and have a vision of where they could take this work, so they start up a business. The problem with building a business off passion is the fact you aren’t just running the part you love; you run the whole business.

Think of it in this example: you love baking. You’re excellent at it, in fact. People are constantly telling you that you should start up your own baking company, and so you do. But what you didn’t take into account is that you are actually running a business. You have expenses to think about, operations, marketing, accounting, how many people are you hiring, do you have the money to do so? You have to spend less time doing what you love (baking), and more time actually running your company. Is your passion for baking enough to keep up the business and have it run smoothly? Probably not.

You might think that you will hire a marketer, an accountant, and any other position you need help with, but you’re a new business, you just don’t have the funds. It is your time getting dedicated to all these other tasks, and so a lot of potentially great businesses are failing before they really get the chance to succeed. It isn’t impossible to run a business doing what you love, there is just more to think about than your passion for this field of work.

Are you running your business, or is your business running you?

If you’re struggling to stay afloat and the thing you loved working with has now turned into a time and work commitment you don’t have, your business is running you. It’s okay to admit to being overwhelmed, and there will be times you get in over your head, but this should not be a regular thing for you. Think about the other people you need involved to help your business function.

To run your business effectively you need to be ahead of the game. Plan the people that need to run departments or the staff you will need to help enforce the vision you have created for your business. Don’t get behind or go under because you just have passion and drive. Sometimes that just isn’t enough. You need to be ambitious, but you also need to be realistic and prepared. Get ahead so you don’t get behind, know your strengths and weaknesses and run your business before it has the chance to run you right into the ground.

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