Investing For Dummies®, 5th Edition

Chapter 13. Assessing Your Appetite for Small Business

In This Chapter

• Knowing what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur

• Exploring alternatives to starting your own company

• Looking at small-business investment options

• Mapping out your small-business plans

Many people dream about running their own companies, and for good reason. If you start your own business, you can pursue something that you're passionate about, and you have more control over how you do things. Plus, successful business owners can reap major economic bounties.

Warning

But tales of entrepreneurs becoming multimillionaires focus attention on the financial rewards without revealing the business and personal challenges and costs associated with being in charge. Consider what your company has to do well to survive and succeed in the competitive business world:

• Develop products and services that customers will purchase.

• Price your offerings properly and promote them.

• Deal with the competition.

• Manage the accounting.

• Interpret lease contracts and evaluate office space.

• Keep current with changes in your field.

• Hire, train, and retain good employees.

Business owners also face personal and emotional challenges, which rarely get airtime among all the glory of the rags-to-riches tales of multimillionaire entrepreneurs. Major health problems, divorces, fights and lawsuits among family members who are in business together, the loss of friends, and even suicides have been attributed to the passions of business owners who are consumed with ...