Why I Chose to be a Business Doer and Owner Concurrently

Some years back before I became a self-employed entrepreneur, I had side businesses which I started and owned while I was fully engaged with my day jobs. In my first year after graduation from school, I stumbled on a small book called “Think and Grow Rich.”

I read, devoured and digested it with rapt attention. With the business nuggets shared in Think and Grow Rich, I decided in my spirit and mind that I was not going to be an employee forever for any one to be building wealth at my own expense. I started abhorring the idea of anxiously working and hoping for retirement benefits from my employers.

Spurred and filled with the zeal to start a business of my own immediately as a side hustle, I invested all my life's savings to rent a shop without a plan or purpose. This was actually against and the exact opposite of my education, training and profession. But with careless abandon, I dived in with both feet and my eyes closed!

With the benefit of hindsight now, this was the worst decision I had ever taken in my life as a young accounting graduate. Obviously, it was business lesson number one that I learned.

Armed with a mental business plan, I said to myself that the venture I was going into will be profitable and successful. Although I was actually right with that conviction but little did I know and realize that you've to be a business doer in your first or second startups in order to forestall your employees posing as cogs in the wheel of your success.

In this part of the clime where I am born and live, the general notion of people is that you must be rich and wealthy if you can start your own business along with a paid employment. My workers took an undue advantage of this erroneous belief and became everything in my business but accountability and transparency.

They were gradually depleting my business capital and resources with uncalled-for expenses without commensurate income flowing into it. And because I was not on ground most of the time to do oversight functions and supervise the project to overcome its teething problems, I experienced business failure number one.

I tried all the best I could do to shore up and fund my side business from my monthly salary in order to survive and thrive but it still went under and died a gradual death.

Up till now, I cannot put my fingers on it and say this is what happened to my side hustle as it fizzled out like the morning dew. It became the biggest white elephant project I've ever undertaken in my life up till date. It was always outflows and never inflows to sustain and make it float.

From my first business failure and lessons, I said to myself to be a business doer before settling to be a business owner of any kind. When you roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with the workings and nuances of your business, you'll understand and know it better.

Understanding your business inside out will help you to know where to plug holes and leakages if there is any especially in the area of accounting for all income receipts. You will also have first hand knowledge and information of the unavoidable expenses necessary to grow your business to the next level.

I've successfully started other several small businesses in the brick-and-mortar world following the new mindset and resolution to be a doer before being an owner.

Here are the advantages you stand to gain as a business doer if you are an aspiring or budding entrepreneur who is just starting out.

1. You'll understand your business as an insider and no employee can say that without him your company will not remain a going concern and grow by leaps and bounds. 
2. You'll make more money from your enterprises because you can block or at least reduce to the barest minimum pilferage, wastage, indolence at workplace, and so on. 
3. You can use your current business success to speedily facilitate joint ventures, secure business loans and possibly win entrepreneurs' contest.

All in all, as a modestly successful offline and online business owner today, I want you to know that I decided to be a standout business doer in the first place. I encourage you to go and succeed as you read my free ebook download PDF on how to make money online as a beginner.