How Do You View Your Business?

Business owners are a breed of their own.  One characteristic of business owners is that their identity is closely tied to their business.  Most working adults derive much of their identity from their work, but business owners put this approach onto steroids. While many men, in particular, feel that they are their job, business owners feel that they are their business.  Since they identify with their business so completely, they gauge their sense of success, worth, and significance as a person by the success, worth, and significance of their business.

 It is not mysterious at all that a business owner loves running his business.  Paid work in general, and far more so running one’s own profitable business, is an amazingly good way to meet many powerful, universal psychological needs.  Tripp Braden lists a few of these:

·         Being the ‘boss’

·         Having control over one’s destiny

·         Achieving personal goals through the business creation process

·         Enjoyment of influencing and empowering others

·         Personal wealth creation (Salary, equity, and the business pays a lot of personal expenses!)

·         Personal guarantees tied to business loans

·         Personal promises and contracts made with co-owners and partners

·         Recognition as a ‘a successful owner’ in one’s community

 

How do you view yours?