What's Your Motivation In Starting A Business?

Keyword for this post: Best Small Businesses To Start

What motivates you? What motivates your employees? The immediate -- and often WRONG -- answer is "money".

I know you are not in business for the money because most entrepreneurs earn less than their corporate counterparts. Honest. No, there are other reasons.

AUTONOMY. That's a good one. It may, in fact, be the most important reason. You simply like being your own boss. I personally know a number of entrepreneurs who just cannot make it in the corporate world. They are too independent, think too far out of the box, don't like red tape. I know one person who was fired from every single job she had over a 20 year career. She opened her own business and is a roaring success. Obviously, she works extremely well autonomously, and was a lousy employee.

CREATIVITY. It is an axiom that most corporations stomp on creativity. Most employees are little more than paper pushers and pin counters. And that is such a waste of a good mind. You needn't be daVinci to be a great entrepreneur, but odds are that you are far more creative than your present job allows you to be.

RESILIENCE. Entrepreneurs can bounce back. Corporations fire. Entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes, and go on to make stronger businesses. Corporations, well ....

These are just three of the many very valid reasons that you are an entrepreneur at heart, even if you are not yet starting a business. You know what you want, and you are ready to go after it.

And what about your employees? How will you treat them? Did you realize that money doesn't motivate most of them either? It is true. Money is not the motivator that most people seem to think it is. Take a look at this video . I was amazed. Like most people, I had always assumed that if you pay people more, you get more. Not true. Not true.

How willing are you to follow in the footsteps of Google and grant your employees time to make their own discoveries? (That's a real conversation stopper, isn't it.)

If you are not dealing with electronics in starting a business, but retail, then how willing are you to let employees design displays or otherwise step out of their assigned jobs?

Giving serious thought to this issue before starting a business means that you may have the pick of the litter when it comes to hiring. You can't offer employees what BigCo offers. But you can offer more, just as you want more yourself.