Small Business Owners on the Economy, Credit, and Compliance Issues

In one of my postings last week I suggested that one of the two main reasons for making a profit was to create a cash reserve for solving mistakes. (The other reason, of course, is to improve the value of your company through retained earnings.) I posed the question “why do you need to make a profit?” I pointed out that all small business owners have things they can control, such as what services or products they sell, and things they cannot control, such as the economy, availability of credit, taxation and government compliance, or labor issues. Closing with a request for reader response about which uncontrollable issue was most concerning, I received some interesting comments.

Several small business owners laughed about the mistakes they made on a regular basis – because they were small and inexpensive to correct. When pressed to choose which specific macro issue bothered them most, however, there wasn’t a single answer (although labor issues were not mentioned). Instead, the common theme was that dealing with the economy, credit market, and governmental compliance issues distracted them from their primary purpose – to enjoy doing the work they created their business to do.

That response resonated with me deeply. We start our businesses so that we can dedicate ourselves to doing things we like to do, things we do very well, and things that pay better than our alternatives. Everything else – the things we do because we own the business – constitutes our “second job”.

The folks I heard from are happy to remain in business as long as the time and satisfaction of their primary job exceeds that of their secondary job. That works for me!