Small Business Owners Reveal What Motivates Them

What motivated you the most to start your online venture? Here's what motivated our survey respondents.

Poll Results

What motivated you the most to start your online venture?

An executive calls for a pointless meeting. A manager takes credit for an employee's hard work. Someone is required to stay until the clock reads 6:00, even if the work is already done. Any of these sound familiar? Painfully familiar, perhaps?

Every time one of these scenarios plays out, another small business owner may be born. "Being your own boss" and "flexible hours/more time with family" are the powerful urges that motivated almost half of our poll respondents to start their own business.

These small business owners really do have it all

For Betsy Wilbur (http://master-plans.com), an event planner and mother of two young sons, being her own boss is the key to a successful work-family balance: "I can take as many or as few clients as I like. It allows me the flexibility I need as a mother."

However, while they may appreciate the joys of escaping dull meetings and clock-watching, small business owners encounter a new set of challenges unique to their situation. Wilbur points out that "there is no such thing as leaving the job at the office. I often answer emails at midnight."

Lynnanne Hanson-Miller (www.pale-moon.com) agrees: "You do the job or it doesn't get done." She goes on to say, "The biggest surprise has been the problem with availability and cost of health insurance; it's not easy to find a good plan and it's a huge expense!"

Still, for Lynnanne and husband Christopher Miller, owning their own business gives them the flexible hours they prefer and more opportunities for spending time with their daughter. As with many parents who are also small business owners, this control over their lives is worth the sacrifices.

The coolest "brochure" you've ever seen

The other great motivator for starting an online venture is to promote an existing offline business. Some businesses sell products online, while others use their web sites as business card, brochure and references rolled into one. Such is the case for Shannon Blake Gans (www.newdealstudios.com), who relies on her web site to attract and screen potential clients.

Gans says, "Our site is very important from a marketing and sales point of view. We have an informational web site primarily. But it is very important because it is instant information. Clients do not have to wait to see the work we have done." It also doesn't hurt that New Deal Studios' web site is so darned cool!

Turning those motivators into reality

We'd all like to work fewer hours, make more money, use our creativity and find the perfect work-family balance. If you know an instant formula for achieving all that, you have your own ticket to fame and fortune. For the rest of us, it's a lifelong (or at least career-long) path to achieving some or maybe even all of those goals. And small business owners are probably further along the path than most-now that's motivational.

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