How To Be Your Own Boss: A Guide for Entrepreneurs

Do you dream of starting a business and being your own boss? There are many benefits, including increased earning potential and more freedom to make your own decisions. But it’s essential to prepare for the additional responsibilities and challenges running a business can involve.

Read on to learn about the pros and cons of going into business for yourself, and how to get started, with advice from Shopify merchants who have forged their own path.

Advantages of being your boss

Not answering to anyone besides yourself is a huge perk for business owners. There are several upsides beyond that, too: 

Unlimited earning potential 

A traditional job typically pays a consistent yearly salary or an hourly wage. But when you come up with a business idea that allows you to work for yourself, there’s no cap to how much money you can make. The more work you take on, the more you sell, and the more you can earn. You can even hire employees or contractors to help with the workload and grow your business further. 

More influence on projects 

When you work for someone else, you typically don’t get to choose your projects or clients. Other people may decide the majority of your tasks without asking for your input. 

When you have your own company, you have the final say on the type of work you do and who you want to work with. If you’re a marketing consultant and want to focus solely on copywriting-driven projects, you can do that. If you’re a business consultant who wants to encourage first-time entrepreneurs from underrepresented communities, you can do that too. As a business owner, you have the freedom to decide what your work life will look like.

A more flexible schedule 

When you run your own business, you get to set your own hours, as long as they work for your clients. This is especially helpful for work-life balance if you have commitments like a young family or aging parents, or otherwise need time for appointments and activities during the day. You might work just a few hours some days or take Fridays off, or your needs may change from week to week. Ultimately, you get to choose what works best for your success.

Challenges of being your own boss

Despite all the benefits, owning a business isn’t always easy. It’s hard work, and often requires sacrifices and living with uncertainty, which are important factors to consider. 

The need for self-discipline

Owning a business can mean freedom, but it can also require more discipline than a traditional job. To-do lists tend to be long, and the majority of tasks fall on you to complete, especially at first. You must also balance completing projects while carving out time to search for new clients. And even though you can technically take off time whenever you want, many new business owners find it difficult to fully step away in the beginning.

Without understanding this upfront, it’s possible to burn out from the additional responsibilities. No matter how much you love what you’re selling or the work you’re doing, it will fall on you to handle the other tasks of the business, which you may not enjoy as much.

A business plan can help you stay on track and share your vision with other stakeholders. It’s also a crucial document if you decide to seek investment or apply for a business loan.

Financial and time commitments 

It’s probably unrealistic to expect to achieve success and stability overnight. Be honest about the time, money, and other resources you’ll need, and how long it’s likely to take before you turn a profit or become financially independent.

You may need to secure outside funding to get started. One popular route is to seek a business line of credit, but there are other avenues as well. When the co-founders of Ghost Town Oats started their oat-milk brand, they used equity crowdfunding to raise $250,000 in four days. 

Inconsistent income

Until your business is established, you may have to deal with fluctuating compensation. Your revenue could change drastically from month to month. However, you’re still responsible for recurring expenses like health insurance and employee wages (including your own).

🌟Starting a business can cost anywhere from nothing to millions, depending on its type, size, and location. Here’s a breakdown to help you plan your expenses.

How to be your own boss

• Decide on a business idea
• Assess your financial situation
• Start simple
• Define your target audience
• Be nimble
• Promote your business
• Be prepared to pivot

Now that you know the perks and pitfalls of being the captain of your own ship, here’s how to make it happen. 

Decide on a business idea

You may already have a business idea if you’ve reached the stage where you want to be your own boss. If not, think about your prior experience, the kind of work you enjoy, the target market you want to serve, and gaps in the market.

For Babba Rivera, founder of hair care brand Ceremonia, that gap was her road in.

“When we launched, we did not even have a shampoo and conditioner,” Babba says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “And when you think about hair care, you would normally think about the shampoos and conditioners of the world, right? But I realized that there’s probably not a single person out there who’s currently not washing their hair with a shampoo and conditioner.”

Instead of trying to win customers who are loyal to their current shampoos, Babba took a different approach.

“I asked myself, how can I get into someone’s hair routine with a lower barrier to entry?” Babba says. “And I landed on this scalp treatment opportunity, because we were starting to see all this science about healthy hair starting with a healthy scalp.”

Babba saw the buzz among beauty editors writing about the importance of scalp care, and the lack of products available, and decided to fill the market gap.

Assess your financial situation 

Think through how much money you will need to start the business and how much money you will need to earn to be financially secure. If you plan to run a service business, like being a freelance web designer or starting a financial consulting business, think through how many customers you’d need at a minimum.

It may help to start building a roster of clients before you take the leap. For product-based businesses, it can help to start small, creating and selling products on a small scale till you’ve validated your idea. Once you know there’s demand and you’ve worked out the kinks of your star product, you can scale up production. 

Start simple 

It’s easy to linger in the planning stage, but you don’t have to wait until everything is perfect to launch your business. Perfection can slow you down. One option is to offer an initial version of your service or product and see how the market responds.

“I think a lot of brands or founders sometimes overcomplicate things for themselves,” Babba says. “They think that they need to have a full suite of products before they can launch, or they need to have everything figured out. But the reality is that you have to start somewhere.”

Babba suggests starting sooner rather than later, so you can collect data and feedback from potential customers. For Ceremonia, that meant going to market with a single product.

Define your target audience

It’s critical to know the characteristics of your ideal customer, so you can develop more effective marketing, pricing, and service offerings.

The key things you need to know are: 

• Who will be using your products or services

• Why they will find your product valuable

• What sets your product apart for them

Talk to people you’d like to use your services to understand their pain points and what your solutions should look like.

Sometimes, there’s a demographic that’s obvious from the start. Michelle Johnson, of oat milk brand Ghost Town Oats, says she saw an immediate need to appeal to a more diverse customer base.

“I didn’t see anyone talking about how Black people and other people of color are more lactose intolerant than anybody else,” she says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “That, to me, was such low-hanging fruit for a strong demographic.”

Michelle used this insight to create an accessible, quality product targeting underserved market segments.

Be nimble 

Being a small business means you can move quickly. Babba highlights the benefits of small businesses over larger corporations.

“I think that one thing that I assumed before I started Ceremonia was that all the strengths of these big players were my disadvantages,” she says. “But then I realized that the fact that these companies are so big and have so much money can also be a disadvantage for them.”

Babba says it means they can be less innovative, and have rigid structures that raise the stakes on trying something new. Instead, Ceremonia validated ideas by bringing them to customers early on.

“We actually went straight to our community and involved real customers in the product development process,” Babba explains. “And that’s the kind of thing that a mega corporation can’t authentically do because they are surrounded by so much red tape and so much corporate structure.” 

Promote your business

From TikTok to trade fairs, there are numerous platforms and places to promote and market your enterprise, but you don’t have to be on every one of them. To get started, choose one to two channels your ideal clients already use, whether that’s LinkedIn, Instagram, networking groups, or your own email list.

Here are a few ideas for promoting your business:

• If you’re trying to reach a Gen Z audience and not already on TikTok, start a channel and start testing video content. 

• Attend or speak at in-person events related to your business. 

• If your business is location-specific, create a Google Business Profile so your products and services appear in search results.

Be prepared to pivot 

Your products, price point, or ideal customer might change over time, and that’s normal. Successful businesses don’t stay stagnant. As you gain feedback and learn what works and what doesn’t, your business will naturally evolve. 

Dylan Jacob started his company BrüMate in 2016 with the intent of selling a product to help insulate cold beer. His initial target audience was men, but he found it really expensive to acquire customers. Then, the brand launched its “Winesulator to keep wine cool. The product was targeted toward women, and Dylan found that women connected with the brand much faster. 

“Every single time that we would do a pre-order or launch for anything that was related to wine, it did so well. It was super cheap to drive these conversions,” Dylan says on a Shopify Masters episode. “We would get 20,000 shares on posts on Facebook. That, to me, was like, OK, I’ve been advertising to the wrong demographic the whole time, and I switched the whole direction of the company.”

The company makes products for everyone, but it largely caters its website and social media toward women.

“Men love the product, but men are very hard to get onboard to make an impulse purchase like this,” says Dylan.