Do you want to be an Entrepreneur or a Small Business Owner? Is there a difference, and does it matter?

There is a difference, and it’s easy to confuse the two or use the two terms interchangeably. A Small Business Owner owns their own business, but also actively participates in that business. Often the Small Business Owner is critical to the ongoing success of the company. Without him or her, the business either does not exist (i.e. medical, legal, accounting, consulting, freelancing) or would suffer greatly in the owner’s absence for any period of time.

We often use the term “Solopreneur” to refer to the individual practitioner who is their own boss but must personally deliver a service or create a product for their business to generate revenue. While this may certainly be better than working for someone else, it’s still about trading time for money – and time is our most limited resource.

Whether you are a Solopreneur or a Small Business Owner, you likely own a business that depends primarily on you. Perhaps the business is run by you and a couple of other founders. The point is, only a few people know and can execute on the secret recipe at the foundation of your business. And those key people must be present for the business to operate.

An Entrepreneur instead builds a business and supporting systems that are independent from the founder. The founder may well be an integral (or exclusive) part of the businesses initially, but the goal is always to grow the business to the point where the owner does not have to be involved in day-to-day operations. When you build a business that continues to generate revenues in your absence, then you have created a truly leveraged model and can call yourself an Entrepreneur.

Many of us start as Small Business Owners, enjoy success, and grow our companies. We may then move on to creating a larger business that does not require us to be present, and we graduate to the level of Entrepreneurship. If we repeat this multiple times, then we may call ourselves Serial Entrepreneurs.

“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.”
Howard Stevenson, Harvard Business School Professor.
You may not be clear at the start as to which one you want to grow up to be, an Entrepreneur or a Small Business Owner. But by asking yourself a series of hard questions, and honestly assessing your true desires, you are more likely to start a business that suits you best. And it’s certainly acceptable if you want to be Small Business Owner… we are not saying that’s a bad thing. But it’s important for you to begin understanding the difference between the two as it may impact the type of business you build and how you plan to develop it.

It’s also important to avoid creating another low-paying harder-working “job”, like the one you may already have! Michael Gerber explains this situation best in his seminal book “The E-Myth”. This book is a must read for small business owners, with one of its major themes being the difference between working “in” your business (you make the pies) versus working “on” your business (others make the pies following your recipe and systems).

As you prepare to become your own boss, or if you have already started a small business, it’s important to keep your long-term vision in mind. Doing so will help you determine the type of business you start and build, helping ensure that you achieve your definition of success.

Do you want to be an Entrepreneur or a Small Business Owner? Here are some questions to ask to help you determine want you really want:

Do you want to own just one or two locations (i.e. one or two franchise units, or your own practice) or do you want to create something bigger with multiple locations and perhaps grow internationally (i.e. offer franchises and hire others to run the business)?
Do you want to work in the business (i.e. make the donuts) or do you want to have someone else manage the day-to-day operations (i.e. someone else makes the donuts following your instructions)?
Are you looking for a job or are you looking to create a self-managing company (a business that does not rely on your day-to-day presence for success)?
Do you prefer to create or do you enjoy executing?
Do you envision creating multiple different businesses across multiple industries?
Are you able to let go of all of the details, or are you a micro-manager?
Are you the only person who can deliver your service or product, or can you teach others how to do it?
Is your goal to work hard until a certain age and then retire, or continue creating and leading your businesses until you are no longer mentally capable?
Can you sell your business as it currently operates and without you having to continue being part of it?

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.

If you’ve decided that working from home and making money is the best option for you to stay home and take care of your kids, then Christian home based business is often the choice of stay at home moms and dads. The obvious benefit being, having more time for you and your family while making a comfortable income working at home.As Christian home based businesses are plentiful, as long as you have telephone, computer, and an internet connection, you have the ability to work from home. Christian home business companies are always on the lookout for motivated workers who are Christian and want to work from home.Christian home based businesses can often be the best choice as most homes these days have internet connection and a computer. The possibilities are endless, at what you can do from home, be it work as an affiliate of a Christian company and promote or sell their products (most common) online.By joining a Christian home based business opportunity, your chances of earning a lucrative income will increase as many Christians will be assisting you while also assisting other Christians who have little to no experience with home businesses. Even those with no experience have the odds in their favor just for being involved with a Christian business, than if they were in a traditional non- Christian work from home opportunity.There are some work at home business opportunities to stay away from if you are looking to make any serious money. One of the many are taking online surveys. Online surveys do not pay very much for completing, and can take 30 minutes to 1 hour and a half to complete one survey which might only pay $1 in return.For those who have some experience in sales, there are plenty of Christian home based business opportunities available. Also for those who do not have any experience in sales, with most of your learning resources being online, learning sales is often learned quickly and easily by the non-experienced. Most times the sales are taken care of a website that is provided to you by the Christian home based business.By using the skills you already possess, and by using the ones you will learn from other Christians, you will have that edge amongst those who are not involved in a Christian home based business opportunity.More and more Christians are finding that they would much rather commit to a Christian based business that follows certain beliefs and ethics, than stray into the greed of other work at home companies. With people helping people as Christians do, the advantage if definitely your favor.