There were A LOT of reasons why I started my business. If we went over all of them, we’d honestly be here all day. No one wants that.

But I thought it might be fun to go over some of the more common ones and see if they ended up being true. Will it actually be fun? Only time will tell.

No commute

When I was first thinking about starting my social media business, I was working for an organization downtown. I lived in the suburbs. My commute every day was between twenty minutes to an hour, and I never quite knew how long it would take. It felt like a lot of wasted time, especially after I started doing social media as a side gig and there just never seemed to be enough hours in the day. I just wanted to spend my time more effectively.

Do I have a commute? Obviously, no. But… When I was almost completely focused on tourism, I drove a lot. It was between two to four hours per week. That was down from three to eight hours commuting per week. So definitely an improvement. But the drives were actually productive. I used them to finalize the plans for the day and to create mental checklists for content. And then on the drive home, I’d use them to digest what I had just done so I could get into a creation mode the next day (or sometimes, that afternoon). Nowadays, I rarely travel for work and can do just about everything virtually for my nonprofit clients. I kind of miss that time of ramping up and coming down.

Schedule flexibility

When I was working a set schedule, I just found it hard to fit everything into my life. And during that time, I started suffering with a health issue that I had trouble getting over. If my boss had been open to me working from home and/or a flexible schedule, I know I would have been way more productive during that time. So with that in mind, I was looking for my next step to be something that could accommodate any health issues and a future child. Knowing I could put my life first and still work full-time was the goal.

Do I have schedule flexibility? Well, sort of. When I first got into business for myself, I worked more than full-time. I threw everything I had into it. So it would be laughable to say there was any flexibility in that, except if I needed to take an hour off during the day. I could do that without getting an okay from anyone. And that tiny bit of flexibility was enough to get me healthy again. Since then, I have balanced it out where I do work when I want, but it’s spread out throughout the day even as I am only working part-time right now. So it’s when I want but also all the time as well.

Only do business with people I like

Who I worked with during my career prior to owning my business was very up and down. Some were fantastic. Some were… not. It wasn’t until I started doing social media as a side gig and working with someone who I had mutual respect with that I realized what I was really missing in my career. I wanted more of this and to get fully away from anything that didn’t resemble it. So I went off on my own to find exactly this.

Do I only work with people I like? I think everyone hates me, and I think they hate me the most in those first few months of working together. I would fire every client I’ve ever had within those first few months if I stuck to only working with people I like. Please don’t listen to me about whether people like me. I honestly have no idea. So I changed completely on this. I’m now looking to only work with people who have a similar work-style, a desire to learn and an understanding that I’m not at their disposal twenty-four hours a day. I’m happy with just one out of three with a level of respect thrown in there as well. I’ve settled more towards thinking that I don’t have to like someone. I just have to be able to work with them. And that’s enough.

A need to do something cool

I spent a lot of time on the sidelines watching friends who worked in social media doing cool things. Everything was new back then, so we were all figuring it out as we went. And I was doing less of that because of the job I was in. So I figured when I ventured out onto my own, it would be fully of cool, shiny stuff and we’d constantly be reaching for the new.

Am I fulfilling my need to do something cool? My God, I was a poor, lost soul back then. The need to do something cool has been replaced by the need to fulfill business objectives. But, I mean, that’s kinda cool, right? The new and shiny just no longer interest me. Why is that? Social media has matured. If we’re constantly chasing the new and the shiny, we’re chasing after what is good for social media and not what is good for the organization and their fans. In the end, listening to my clients and their audience and then finding strategies to fit them gives me the high I thought I would get from doing something cool. And I have no regrets about that.

So many reasons for your own business

Like I said, there are too many reasons to list here, so in the interest of not boring everyone, I’ll stop here.

Most of us walk into owning our own business a little blindly with a whole lot of hope. There are days it doesn’t feel worth it, and there are days that it’s the best thing ever.

And it’s okay if your reasons to be here change over time. It’s normal for you to change, your business to change and the landscape to change, so your reasons just have to change as well. And keeping those reasons in mind (whether they’ve changed or not) help you ride the rollercoaster of owning your business. Those low lows just don’t seem so bad when you know your whys.

What are your reasons for owning your business?