by Bruce W. Coffman

Created on: July 31, 2008

There are many advantages and rewards to owning your own business, as well as a fair share of struggles and headaches. Generally the positives outweigh the negatives and, as long as you can strike a good balance between the two, you'll find that owning your own business is an exciting adventure that offers something different every day.

The single most rewarding part of owning your own business is freedom. You have the freedom to make your own decisions and do business the way you see fit. You also have the freedom of not having a boss over your shoulder. Plus, you have the freedom to set your own hours and strike a better balance between work and home than you can with a traditional job where you work when you are told.

That freedom brings its own set of challenges and potential problems. Just because you can sleep late and nobody will be there to yell at you for opening late, you will find yourself losing customers if you have a retail or service business and losing productivity if you have another kind of business. It can be hard to keep yourself motivated to stick to a routine and work even when you don't really feel like it, without anyone around to make you do it. With a healthy dose of self-discipline and a drive to succeed, you can easily overcome these obstacles.

Another rewarding part of owning your own business is the sense of accomplishment and achievement you get. When things go well it's because you did something right. No one can take that away from you and it's something you can be extremely proud of.

On the flip side of that coin is the fact that when things go badly you have no one to blame and must accept full responsibility yourself. You'll have to take all the steps necessary to correct any problems and get things headed back in the right direction, but when you do that, you are back to that sense of achievement and accomplishment, so it's a worthwhile trade-off.

Money is another very rewarding thing about owning your own business. When your business makes money, the profit is yours. You're not working to make someone else rich or putting money into a company's pockets while making only a set amount for yourself. The more money your business makes, the more you get to keep.

There's a dark side to the money, issue, however, that many people opening a small business fail to take into consideration. When the business isn't making money, you don't have a steady paycheck to fall back on. Additionally, a certain amount of fixed expenses remain whether or not the money is rolling in. With some careful planning and a little self-restraint, this issue can be overcome, however. Just make sure that in prosperous times you're not tempted to take money out of the business for personal use just because you can. Leave some of it in an operating fund for when times inevitably get a little leaner and you should be fine.

Overall, the rewards of freedom, a sense of personal accomplishment and making money for yourself instead of someone else are very positive parts of owning your own business that you will be sure to enjoy. You just have to be careful to balance those rewards with the challenges involved in running the show. Those who thrive at juggling multiple tasks and are self-motivated and self-disciplined enough to be successful business owners will tell you that the rewards are well worth the struggle.

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