A huge omission in current business literature is that it doesn’t mention anything about how it will change you – in ways you couldn’t possibly have anticipated. Sure you’ll learn more about accounts, sales and marketing and management, but the real and surprising changes will come in your personality. Here’s just a few from my own experience:

  • More resilient. No matter how resilient you think you are before you start a business, being in business will make you more so. You will go through periods of self-doubt like you’ve never had before as your ideas and plans fail to meet your carefully laid out expectations. You will go through times when you don’t even know whether you can survive financially until the end of the month and you have no idea how you will meet your bills. You will have suppliers screaming down the phone to you for payment – and customers who do the same and refuse to pay you. And you will spend 24 hours a day 365 days a year thinking about your business – with the vast majority of that time spent dwelling on how to solve a variety of different problems. Becoming more resilient is a right of passage of being a business owner.
  • More realistic. Entrepreneurs have a habit of being over-optimistic. Once you start a business and get let down by a few people, and see your own ideas crash and burn, you will develop the ability to predict and assess possible downsides. So you’ll start to have a more balanced view rather than just seeing the positives in everything.
  • Less trusting. In business somebody is going to breach your trust – or at the very least severely disappoint you. Staff members will leave when you most need them – and some will set up in competition against you. ‘Customers’ will visit you to learn about your products and services – and then suddenly appear three months later as competitors. And suppliers will promise you the world only to overcharge and under-deliver. You can’t face this onslaught without becoming less trusting – but becoming less trusting will make you a better business person as it will help you to keep out of trouble or at least identify it earlier. 

This list is just a snapshot and deliberately brief to encourage you to think about your own experiences and the ‘adaptations’ you may have made over your time in business.

But notice this… all the above will make you a better business person. But will they make you a better life partner? A better parent? Or a better human being? It would be too simplistic to say that owning a business leads to character deficiencies but I think both business owners and non-business owners need to recognise the pressures that business owners are under and how it can affect them. 

Categories: Worklife