Why a Business

There are many different reasons why we get into business for ourselves. Sometimes it can just be a natural progression of where you were and now it’s time to take the leap and start that dream.

For me, it just seemed like the next logical step. I like to operate from a ‘logical’ standpoint when I’m establishing a business or working with other business owners on rebuilding theirs. There is a sense of order and clarity when you can work on a stable framework of logical and structured steps to help guide you on the journey.

Take a moment and think back to ‘Why did you choose the business that you’re in today’? I started my first construction business because of family connection. I grew up in the building and construction management industry and it was a natural progression for me. My father was a builder and an excellent and successful project manager. I remember when I was growing up, I would spend some of my school holidays on building sites sweeping the floors and cleaning the rubbish. Sometimes if I was lucky, I would be able to get my hands on some actual tools and get the feeling of contributing a piece of the overall puzzle which would ultimately create this finished building.

There was the challenge of creating this complex structure from a simple drawing that excited me. I didn’t view this as a passion or love for the job, as realistically, at that age I didn’t even understand what the “job” would actually look like as a business. I am very intrigued with certain aspects of the industry, but it wasn’t until I started approaching it as an actual business, did I understand the real impact of the choice I had made.

Being in business spans beyond just being passionate about what you like to do. It also spans beyond the particular skill set that you have in your chosen field. A Business is like the buildings that I aspired to create, they are a large complex structure made up of many smaller parts which when combined correctly, they create this amazing piece of art. Now imagine you forget to lay the foundations of the building, what do you think will happen when you start to load up the structure? It will eventually buckle under the pressure and fall over. The same can be said when building a business. If you don’t set the foundations at the start, everything you put on top of it will eventually cause it to fall over.

According to the Statistics (at the time of writing this), more than 60 percent of small businesses cease operating within the first three years of starting. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission released a report into corporate insolvencies that found 44 percent of businesses suffered poor strategic management, 40 percent had inadequate cash flow or high cash use and 33 percent suffered from trading losses.

The statistics now show that Motivation, passion and mindset are not enough. So, back to the question I posed above. Why did you choose the business that you’re in today? Be really honest with yourself about the choice you made. The first real step in building a successful business is understanding why you did it in the first place.
A difficult aspect about running your own business is being honest and authentic with yourself. Emotions are generally running your daily routines; you’re getting hit with challenge after challenge and sometimes stubbornness just sets in and your “Damned if you’re going to Change” right?

The psychology of business is still being studied as you read this, and it probably will be for a very long time after. We are always trying to discover the thinking behind the inspiration of why you did it, did you subconsciously just do it out of necessity and fear of loss and desperately needed the money, is it just transactional on a monetary basis or does it inspire you to give something back.

Whatever your reason for starting a business is, the fact is that running a business is rewarding and at many times, a stressful and daunting venture. You need to be prepared to make sacrifices in both the business and personal life. Working hard isn’t always enough so it is essential to have a real plan mapped out.